I had left the headmistress’ tower behind with a purpose. Since I was going to visit her again in the morning to receive another infusion of Divine Spark, I decided to spend all I had been storing for a while.

I could have gone back to my room, but after staying inside for the whole day for some fun, and some not so fun, activities, some fresh air would do good. Not to mention, I was going to absorb several times more Divine Spark than my earlier experiments. Staying away in case of an unexpected reaction was for the best.

No need to inform the headmistress about my little naughty secret.

Once again I sneaked out of Silver Spires and got away using an air elemental, but I didn’t go to one of my hideouts, not willing to hide underground in such a nice evening. Instead, I had reached a nice meadow, and after killing the beasts that used it as a resting area — a trivial effort with my power — I established a few wards that would hold for a couple of days, and sat down.

The Divine Spark was still locked in the storage I had created in my body, trying to burst out ineffectually. After my most recent studies, I could see several ways of improving the storage, not that it was necessary. Compared to what the headmistress was trying to hold, what I was holding was nothing more than a sliver, making it much easier to handle even with inefficient storage.

Of course, I would have no hope to a similar amount with the headmistress. The only reason she was able to do so was that she had achieved some kind of partial merger, aligning it with her pure mana.

With a calm expression, I crouched, letting my mana rotate, to let it dip into the storage during a part of its journey before rotating all along my body, slowly strengthening. However, I didn’t start that at first, and instead just rotated mana in the same patterns I had seen Janelor had been using whenever she had excess mana, and did my best to replicate the pattern.

[-18 Mana]

[-290 HP]

“Fuck, that hurts,” I groaned as I tasted the failure on a level I wasn’t expecting from such a little amount of mana. Luckily, I didn’t try it with something more.

I healed myself before repeating the trick, only to end up with nothing but pain again.

[-13 Mana]

[-345 HP]

And again.

[-16 Mana]

[-490 HP]

And again.

[-8 Mana]

[-550 HP]

“Okay, I surrender,” I murmured as I breathed hard, trying to ignore the unfamiliar sensation. Clearly, whatever I was doing wasn’t going to work, especially with the pattern. The more successfully I replicated her trick, the more damage it created.

Maybe I was doing something inherently wrong, or maybe it was a vain act in the first place. Maybe it was something that could only be applied by a dragon.

Pity that I couldn’t even use that as an attack, as after penetrating that deep into someone’s body, there were easier options to kill them, and that assumed I could replicate such a complicated pattern inside them with their mana trying to fight against me.

Regardless, I took a pause to heal myself and refill my mana pool once again before starting to rotate my mana, this time letting it dip into the reservoir of Divine Spark rather than relying on just my mana, and letting the small sliver I had stolen to be absorbed into my body, losing its unique properties in the process. Since it was a process I had replicated earlier, I expected it to happen easily.

Yet, there was a difference in the process. My body absorbed it at the same speed with one very important exception. One of my fingers, was the same finger I had used as the target for my experimentation. That part absorbed the divine spark much faster, yet other than that, showed no radical change.

Interesting, I thought as I let my mind wander about the implications of it. Pity that the improvement I had received didn’t justify the amount of mana I had to spend — or the excruciating pain I felt — during the process. And that was without considering the potential danger of replicating the same trick in a more vital location like my heart.

I focused on depleting the remaining Divine Spark, feeling it empowering my body. It took barely an hour, and only because I wasn’t in a particular hurry. The rewards weren’t particularly impressive. It was hard to quantify since it didn’t react with the System, but I doubted the overall impact was more than a few points split among various stats. From a perspective of powering up, it was a total waste.

Yet, I wouldn’t change it for anything. The more I learned about the System, the more I realized how unreliable the power it gives. Someone could block it the way I could block the others, leaving me powerless.

And I had no intention of finding myself powerless. Living two decades as the mule was more than enough.

After finishing the process, I was about to have a walk around the school, a mixture of relaxing trips and hunting beasts — as my reagent reserve was almost completely empty — when I felt a sudden mental flare. It wasn’t mine, but coming from an external source.

It wasn’t the first time I had felt that particular flare, a mixture of panic and loss of strength, but that hardly made me feel calmer, because the last time I had felt that, it came from Helga and Cornelia, and I had barely able to save them despite using Teleportation.

Yet, this time, it wasn’t even an option, because before I could even consider that, the feeling started to weaken, making it impossible to use as a guide.

It was time to take a risk, I thought even as I reached my other perk, Empowerment, even though my first experience with it hadn’t been any more successful than Teleportation.

Yet, it was better than the alternative, so, I threw it to the distance.

[Empowerment (0/1)]

Even as the counter of my skill dropped, I sensed the power of the Companion Node flare at a distance, turning into a flame from cinders.

Then, before I could do anything else, the sensation disappeared completely!

“No,” I gasped in anger as a sudden feeling of loss filled me. I conjured another air elemental, dumping as much mana as I could manage, and started flying at the full speed, making no attempt to stay concealed, uncaring the possibility of it being a trap.

It was reckless, of course, but recklessness was better than the sudden feeling of loss that filled my being.

I moved toward the direction of the flare. It wasn’t an accurate one, but it was the best I had, and certainly better than trying to teleport without a beacon.

While I moved, I focused inward, trying to understand the source of the feeling. I could still feel five Companion nodes, split across many directions. The two brightest ones — Helga and Cornelia, the carriers of completed nodes — were still together, with no sign of something wrong.

In a different direction, I could feel two together, though not as strong. Titania and Marianne, I recognized easily. And since the other one I could feel at the direction of the school, it suggested that Oeyne was safe as well.

It only left Aviada, the one that was most likely to overestimate herself to take a dangerous task. “Fuck, please be well,” I murmured even as I tried to focus on the absence of a feeling, only to come up predictably empty. I continued flying, hoping to find something that would give me a better target as I flew even higher on the sky, cutting whatever beast stupid enough to think that I made a good target, not even slowing down to pick any material from them.

A few minutes later, I finally found what I was looking for. A huge forest fire burning with all the colors of the rainbow, creating an extraordinary view.

I didn’t bother to slow down as I dived down, my perception allowing me to catch everything, in particular, a familiar redhead with a bow, trying to defend herself against the beasts, frenzied as they tried to escape the fire. I dispelled the elemental and dived down, already casting arcana bolts to kill everything that surrounded her without any risk of area damage.

She was my only source of information.

“You,” she gasped as she noticed me. “Help her, she’s in the middle of the fire!”

“What happened?” I asked even as I cast a modified healing spell, allowing me to detect any kind of life inside the fire, only to come up negative. There was no one inside.

Unacceptable, I thought even as I gathered my mana…

[Level: 32 Experience: 499110 / 528000

Strength: 46 Charisma: 63

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 6241 / 6528 Mana: 1890 / 8000 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [100/100]

Master Craft [77/100]

Expert Speech [75/75]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (0/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Cornelia – Level 22/26]

[Helga – Level 22/26]