CHAPTER 5

It was the middle of a class, Liz looked over to the desk beside her at Nick, who was, just looking into space, tapping his pen lightly on the table. he was completely unfocused, or rather, completely focused on something else. He almost appeared to be in a completely dazed state. 

It had been like this for about two weeks now. She was worried for his grades, and she was suspicious. There’s no game that would have absorbed him so deeply for so long; it was unthinkable for her.

He left school early, always seemingly in a rush; and the number of times he came late in the last two weeks, exceeded the number of times he had come late in the last year before these weeks. He was usually always on time, never too early, never too late. With that in mind, his recent behavior was just too strange to be as simple as him playing a new game. She was going to get to the middle of this.

“Nick”, she called out to him,” You’re in a class for crying out loud, pay some attention”. This was enough to temporarily snag him out of his trance, at least till the end of the class.

At the end of the day, he left early as usual, not knowing that his childhood friend had already picked up suspicion, and worry for him.

She didn’t follow him, but rather went home to think of a plan. She couldn’t just act carefully. It could be that he’s having very bad problems that he just doesn’t want her to worry about. It might be something very private, but she just had to know what it was that made Nick act the way he did.

Nick went on his way to his old house like usual. Went into the library and met with Eden in her usual pocket dimension office.

“Send me in” he said, without a greeting.

“That’s a lot of confidence”, Eden laughed as she opened up the portal.

“That’s just because today’s the day I get past that hall of traps, and finally learn some real magic” Nick said smugly as he walked through the portal with a confident smile on his face.

He appeared in the familiar first hallway in the Labyrinth of Trails. Looking through the hallway, he passed mana around his body. The sheer amount and fine control were so incomparable to two weeks ago that it seemed like he was a different person.

He went in to a kickstart position and took a deep breath; then lunged forward with the force of all the magic flowing in his body. Cutting through the air like a bullet, he almost literally flew to the other side, putting both the world record long jump and sprint to shame. 

At the other side of the hallway, was the second room, the trap room. He had failed and almost died quite a number of times already because of this room. If it were not for Eden, he’d be dead already. Well, if not for Eden, he’d never had come here in the first lace, but that’s beside the point. Channeling mana to his eyes, he activated his magic eyes and scanned the room for traps. He could see the position of most of them except the ones on the ceiling, which had dense mana and was far away. The clarity of his magic vision had also become a lot better due to his increased proficiency in mana detection and control. Spreading his mana around him in all directions, he created a spider web type magic detection spell. Well, though Eden called it a spell, it didn’t really feel like one to him; apparently people with less mana perception and control use an actual spell to pull it off. But Eden forced him to nearly master it because “spells are a lot easier to detect”. Though his range wasn’t too large, but he could cover up to five meters up ahead and three to the back. The irregular shape was apparently due to him being used to focusing more on the things in front of him. 

After cracking his knuckles, he broke out into a sprint in the direction of the other end. Shortly after he side stepped to the right, and as if on cue, the ground where he would have been stepping opened up to a pitfall. There wasn’t time to rest though, because just after, he had to shift slightly to the side and catch a flying shard arrow that was flying towards him. He threw the shard and it stuck into a random point on the wall ahead of him. He ran towards that side of the wall and took two steps on the wall to avoid the wall to avoid the slab, but made of a laser beam that appeared out of nowhere and covered the room around his waist level. Instead of landing on the floor, he jumped and reached for the arrow on the wall which he managed to catch and hold on to, just as the whole room was flooded by lava. He swung on it and managed to land on top of it and then jumped to a statue which he immediately jumped off as it exploded behind him. 

He landed in front of an altar at the other side of the room. There was a magic circle on it. He placed his hand on it and channeled his mana through it. It emitted a blue light, and with a small tremor in the room, an opening appeared in the wall behind the altar; just, the tremor didn’t stop. Sensing the danger, he ran into the opening on the wall; and as he went through it and turned around, he saw that the ceiling had fallen and covered the whole room.

He tuned and continued into a very small path that had formed. It led him to a door. Behind that door, was a humanoid figure with a dark obscured face and a purple robe. It held a staff emitting ominous energy, and once he took a step inside, the door behind him shut and disappeared, seemingly merging with the wall, as the being’s white glowing eyes opened.

“Oh,” came Eden’s voice, “That’s an elder lich, you probably have seen one in a game or something”.

“I thought this was a beginner place or something” Nick said annoyed “Then why is there in elder lich in the third room? It’s the third room for crying out loud!”

“I said beginner killer, not beginner dungeon” Eden retorted, laughing.

“I can send you back now that it’s not started moving. Though if you move even a bit, it’ll come alive” She added.

“I’ll stay, just take me out when it gets ugly” He answered.

The lich was staring at him, and making him very uncomfortable. He was shivering in excitedness and nervousness. It was going to be the very first time he witnesses magic I combat. 

He started running round the perimeter of the room, and on cue, the staff glowed purple and started shooting out purple beams at him. Each beam had a very ominous feel to it, so he decided he’d avoid getting hit.

He kept running around under continuous fire, it was quite intense and kept him from coming closer. 

Then the intensity of the fire reduced a bit and the lich started saying something he couldn’t understand

“Jeg tilkaller deg, (I summon you)

Dødens drage (Dragon of Death)

Frembring flammen din (Bring forth your flame)

og sluke min fiende (and devour my enemy)”

That’s when the purple beams stopped and the head of an energy construct dragon covered the lich, and covered a wide range purple flame that was too fast for him to escape. Just as it was about to consume his body, he appeared back in the library.

“Wow that was…” Nick said, standing in front of the table in the office, facing Eden.

“Intense right?” Eden asked as she hovered round the table towards him.

“I thought I’d die”

“Well, I knew you’d save me before that happened, but it looked like I was looking at death in the eye.” Nick said.

“Well, the time you’ve been waiting for is here; it’s time to learn some magic” Eden said, and immediately, his countenance changed into one of anticipation.

“The most basic form of magic, is magic imposition. It may be basic, but in the hands of a master, it can be destructive.” She then paused and wisped up a fireball floating above her hands.

“It’s basically creating phenomena by imposing your will on nature using your mana. It requires quite the imagination, and maybe a chant. A chant in this kind of magic, unlike in a lot others, is not necessary, but it helps to build and reinforce the image in the mind, because if the image isn’t strong enough, the magic will fail. Simple enough right? But before I forget, I’ll teach you something even more basic.”

“Ok, I understand”, Nick answered, “so what’s the thing you want to teach me?”

He then felt the ground go up; or at least that’s what it felt like to him. When he looked down on his feet, he saw a that he was standing in the air on translucent disk made completely out of mana.

“Well there’s other ways to pull it off using spells” Eden said, as she made a floating blue magic circle in front of her which she stepped on.

“But it’s about the many things, you can do with raw mana that saves the time needed to do it with a spell, you just need to be able to physically manifest your mana, and you can do things like this” She added as suddenly the space expanded and turned into a colloseum.

Targets appeared and she pointed at them, and a semi-translucent bullet he could barely see, shot through one of them. Multiple appeared around her, floating on her command. He stretched her right hand forward and the bullets flew towards the targets, hitting the bull’s-eye in all.

“It only takes a slight thought, and a lot of mana control to be able to perfectly shape and solidify the mana. You might not have twenty bullets floating around you like a protector on your first try, but your current mana control is enough to pull it off, just shape your mana, and just think of it solid.”

Nick decided to give it a try. According to Eden, he was supposed to be able to get it on his first try, so he wasn’t so nervous.

Channeling his mana into the palm of his hand, he shaped it into a ball; a small ball which he decided to do as Eden said and thought it into solidity. Although the thought of it seemed stupid, it worked.

He was able to make it go round his body in the air, but it took him a lot of concentration to maintain its shape and form.

After around a minute, He reached his limit of concentration and it dissipated into nothingness.

“That’s quite the excellent performance. Normally, a newbie would only be able to keep it up for a few seconds before it disappears. This just goes to show the effectiveness of my training style”, She said with quite the smug face. 

“Training on this will exponentially increase your mana control. Practice maintaining them for long and giving definite shapes, then increasing the number. And in no time at all, you’ll get up to this level” She conjured a mana sword which she held and swung around a bit, before leaving it to disappear after which she fixed her hair and yukata.

“Reminds me of the good times”, She said with a face fool of nostalgia, as if she was no longer in the present.

“Well, that’ll be all for today, I’ll teach you the rest tomorrow.” Eden said as she made the door appear beside him.

“Bye,” he waved as he walked through the door and as usual was just at the front door; but something was different today; because in front of the front door to his old house, stood Liz.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***