The brainstorming session ended with a successful conclusion and Tercius was completely agreeable to the choice of the two elder Mistresses.

Still, the accumulation of so many things that happened to him in a single day finally wore him down. As soon as the three women left his room, he collapsed on the creaking bed and took that nap that his body so wanted and needed.

When he woke up all groggy it was nearly dark.

A note at the nightstand informed him that his Mentor needed his presence at his earliest convenience and he scrambled to put himself in presentable order.

Minutes later, the wooden floor below Tercius’ feet groaned as he knocked on her door.

Looking down, a frown appeared on his face. The entire hallway that he walked through had groaned in that suspicious way as if getting itself ready to give up all the weight it held. It unsettled him in some primal ways, the knowledge that the floor under his feet was made of aging wood and not blocks of solid stone, melded together and supported by firm arches from below.

Tercius wished he had suggested another place to stay, but unfortunately this was the only one that he remembered as familiar. Maybe it was the after-nap grogginess, but he seriously contemplated writing down a list of all the things in dire need of repair that he had seen, heard, and smelled. Maybe he could give the list to the innkeeper just before he and the Mistresses left the place? A year had gone by and nothing had changed in the inn, after all. Perhaps if the owner had a list to go through, he could bring himself to work through them one by one…

The door of dark wood opened slowly and his Mentor tilted her head to invite him inside. Her room, like his, was small, with enough space for a bed meant for one person, a small nightstand with a candlestick near the bed, and a shelf that held a small ceramic basin and pitcher with fresh water for drinking and washing your face. A few stories he heard mentioned that the water was also there for the guests of the inn to douse any fire that the candle might have started, which was apparently a more common occurrence than he had thought it was.

“Feeling better?”

“Very much so. The note said you needed me, Mistress?”

“Yes. I have the rest of your reading material,” Mistress Kalina held up a group of booklets. “Freshly translated and put down to paper,”

“Thank you for this, Mistress.”

“No need for thanks, Tercius, I told you,”

Tercius shrugged. “Saying a few words is the least I can do.”

"Gratitude is misplaced on a Mentor, Tercius. When you became my Disciple, it became my obligation to educate, counsel, and help you survive your ordeals. I'm only sorry that I'm prevented from doing more. As for the books, well… Magi often go to all corners of the world all the time, and I would venture that those kinds of books have saved more lives than even our shields have. A known threat is anticipated ahead of time and easily avoided or dealt with, after all."

Tercius nodded, weighing the books in his hands. Information on the path ahead was a lifesaver, he could agree with that. He felt silly now, for avoiding reading more on certain topics back at the Academy. Exploring the world on his own was something he had daydreamed since his rebirth and when he found the maps of the planet he stayed away from them in fear of spoiling the future experience.

After all, true explorers made maps of their own.

Stupidity, it would seem, came from all kinds of places and for all kinds of reasons, and not even he was immune from the disease.

“Still, these couldn't have been easy or cheap to create.”

“It’s not as hard nor expensive as you think. The Endless Vaults are filled with enough ink and blank paper to satisfy the needs of our entire Society for hundreds of years even with no new production— and more of both is constantly created by the junior Scribes. Provided that the contents are all translated beforehand it takes senior Scribes an hour or so for that single booklet.”

Tercius’ eyebrows went up. “This was done in an hour?”

His Mentor shrugged. "Maybe less, maybe more. It depends on the Skills of the Scribe who did it. Expert Scribes have Skills with which they can create such texts as fast as they can read them and master Scribes can create books with the speed of thought. The main Skill that the Scribes use is based on a spell that some magi use to write. You might have seen the spell used by the senior students or the Academy staff."

Tercius nodded.

He did see the spell many times and from close up. Mistress Helfira preferred to use the spell, at least she did before her rejuvenation. From what he had seen and smelled of the spell's effects, it worked by burning the paper. The spell was, Mistress Helfira told him, sometimes used as a test of control during the exams which awaited at the end of the six years of Academy. Anyone capable of burning their thoughts onto the page without burning the paper down was considered as sufficiently trained in control to be able to continue further education with one of the many Guilds of the Pyramid. The best of the best were apparently able to write out their thoughts on both sides of the paper, without any unnecessary damage done to the paper itself.

“Well, this one is similar to that, only the Scribes use a special ink instead of focused heat. The ink itself is actually quite fascinating, you see. It’s made by alchemical—” his Mentor suddenly caught her words and chuckled. “You go read the books, Tercius. You will need the meaning of their words much more than the details of the ink with which the words were written…”

Tercius looked at the books in his hands. “You never know, Mistress… but yes, I suppose I should get to them.”

*** *** ***

As the candles melted and their flickering flames illuminated Tercius’ rented room, the five unread parts of a compendium about Izmittor mountain range sat unopened on his creaking bed. At their side sat a hunched Tercius, his unblinking dark green eyes staring at the weathered floorboards around his bare feet but his focus was on something else.

Skill {Magia Touch} developed. Obtain Yes/No?

This was not the first time he had delayed taking a Skill until he had some time to think things through, and a few times he had spent days weighing in on the decision. Where once it had been difficult to observe, move around, and even speak with someone else while the center of his vision was occupied, today his persistence and practice had developed his peripheral vision enough that he could do it all well enough.

Reading was one of those things that had remained difficult, and in truth he had spent very little time and focus on that kind of exercise.

And so, the notification had to go and it had to go now. The candles and the books were waiting for him.

The room’s sole window was wide open and the night’s warm air was pleasant on his naked skin, but the dockside was abuzz with life and movement and shouts. Tercius let out a breath and laid flat on his back, closing his eyes. Reaching for {Distant Mind} robbed him of all of his senses, leaving him in a void unconstrained by sight, smell, sound, touch, or taste. The Skill was practically born for escape and unapologetic bouts of brainstorming that often went wild. Somewhat paradoxically, he also used the Skill to provide himself those moments of silent existence where no thinking at all occurred, where he simply existed barely aware of his existence.

This was the Skill that made it all possible, the Skill that led to him being placed on the radar of a powerful group of magi, and sometimes Tercius wondered how different things would have been without it. Some things would have been better, he plainly saw, but others… Well, they could have been a lot worse.

Everything had its ups and downs, after all.

Tercius quickly reigned himself in. That train of thought was not on the order tonight.

Here, he came to think, think big and unrestrained, but do so in the direction he chose prior. Tangents were allowed and even desirable, of course, but only if he had the time.

{Magia Touch} was the first order of business.

Accepting the Skill now would mean an increase in his natural tactile sensitivity to magia. That had both good and bad sides, but the biggest drawback was that most of his natural production of energia would be spent on pacifying the newly matured Skill’s Core in his Anima. That process would prevent any other Skills from coming to maturity for as long as it was present and even very slightly reduce his magia regeneration rate. Normally, he would help that process along and complete it on his own in a couple of painful hours, but right now he did not think it wise to tinker with energia. Mistress Kalina’s warning was still clear in his ears.

Even a minute presence of his brand of energia could weaken or outright destroy the Seal.

The Seal was there to hide his Well and it was his passive defense from juvenile spirits. If he were to go energia harvesting in his Anima, then absolute control over energia would be needed. Not a single scrap of energia could be allowed to leave his Anima and enter his Body. The control and focus required for that would have to be at the top of his game at every moment. It was doable, but difficult.

In the vast dark void, Tercius’ thoughts branched to consider another path.

On the other hand, he could reject {Magia Touch}. He knew that rejecting a Skill resulted in a period of accelerated level growth for other Skills, but what was the mechanism that enabled that phenomenon? He could take a little time now, go through the effigy into his Anima and then find the Garden of Skills, and finally learn what actually happens to a rejected mature Skill.

There would be no need to risk messing with energia, and no risking of the seal.

At that, his thoughts looped. He didn’t know that. In fact, base conjecture painted a picture that rejecting the Skill would likely result in a release of the accumulated energia, which was what he strongly suspected was ultimately responsible for that growth period.

But what kind of a process was the release of energia from that rejected Skill? Was it a one-time burst that somehow lingered around the Anima or the Body, or was it a slow gradual process like wilting and eventual decomposition of a severed plant?

Both could be dangerous for the Seal…

Both choices had their appealing sides and others that were less so.

On one hand, he could pick up another piece of the puzzle that were Skills, but the cost was risking the Seal and rejecting a rather appealing Skill.

On the other hand, he could pick up a rather appealing Skill that would broaden his sensory abilities. That would in turn positively cascade further into multiple fields and lead to an unforeseeable amount of growth in every single one. The increased sensitivity would also make him more vulnerable, at least until he managed to adjust the Skill.

Tercius’ thoughts hovered between the two branches, as he kept assessing and weighing the pros and cons, both those of the short term and long term.

One of the first corrections he made was to exclude the Seal from having any weight in his judgment.

Mistress Prime’era was still with him, after all. He was sure that she would remake one from scratch for him, if that had to be done. Besides that, Tercius had an idea on how to take the Seal she had made and make it more permanent and personal in the form of a new Skill.

He could just imagine it— a cloak to hide his Well and energia when he needed it and for as long as he needed it. The benefits that would come out of something like that… Well, even with dulled emotions, he felt a little bit of drool-inducing greed and giddy at the thought of trying, even as another part of him feared the reaction of Mistress Prime’era at such a blatant theft of her work.

Here, his thoughts went on a tangent.

The idea of making a Skill based on the Seal had been stewing inside of him since the moment he got it— around a day ago.

For starters, to successfully do it, he figured that he would have to take the Seal in its entirety— encapsulating the different morphological types of magia and all the frameworks into which those types were made, the combination of which was what made the Seal what it was and gave it the functions that it had— and he had to do that without altering anything in any way.

Between morphology and framework, it was the Seal's framework that was the less important, but even that he thought that with a certain amount of tentativeness and hesitation.

After all, without a proper framework to provide proper guidance, even if he knew all the morphological magia types present, the Seal wouldn't work. It would be as if he had all the building blocks required, but alas the structure they stood as was not a livable house.

This Seal didn't come with a strongbox from the Repository of Magi, a strongbox that held a crystal and a scroll. He had no one-by-one examples of the different components of the Seal's magia morphology, nor an instruction that had detailed explanations and equations of the spell's framework. In other words, he had no way to easily deconstruct the Seal and then take out a part he wanted and use it for something else, like he did when he created his thought-based telekinesis Skill from a telekinetic shield spell.

No, this was not that. This was an enchantment done on his Well by someone else, an enchantment that he didn’t see, that was designed so that neither he nor anyone else could feel in any way.

For this, he had to think outside of the box.

Disrupting the framework would disrupt the magia morphology inside of it while disrupting the magia morphology would disrupt the framework. A single error and the carefully constructed Seal would be gone and his opportunity for an excellent Skill with it. How many times would he get an opportunity to get a Skill based on the work of a millennia-old Magos?

His endeavor was, he admitted to himself, difficult. Very difficult. And dangerous, if it turned out that Mistress Prime’era minded…

But this was all purely hypothetical, of course.

Just some interesting ideas stewing…

If he was honest with himself, perhaps this idea was beyond the current him.

But… if he placed his lacking Skills aside, he did have one thing which could end up working for him, something which could potentially allow him to work around the entirety of the Seal without actually disturbing it in any way.

The Seal’s complex inner workings of magia morphology were created out of his own magia, magia which he himself had first purified and then freely given to Mistress Prime’era to create the enchantment with and provide power. It had to be done that way. If the Mistress had used her own magia for the enchantment, or anyone else’s for that matter, then the Seal would have only lasted for around a week or less before degrading completely. Three or four days and the Seal’s integrity would have been compromised, the edges of the cloak lifted at the sides, which would have left him open to juveniles to strike.

Contrary to what he thought at that time, Mistress Prime’era assured him that internal body enchantments weren’t weak by any measure. If the target of the enchantment had been any other organ or body part then the same enchantment would have lasted significantly longer.

Here, he had learned something extremely interesting from Mistress Helfira, just before he had gone under for the open-chest surgery. Apparently, the appendix was quite popular among magi to hide a special spell or maybe even two in case of an emergency. Done properly and with high-quality materials, an enchantment placed there could last decades all the while being hidden even from the best of magical senses.

Oddly enough, no one offered to place anything on his appendix, not even his Mentor.

Perhaps they thought that he hadn’t heard what Mistress Helfira said but this alone made him suspicious that they did place something and just didn’t tell him about it. If Tercius had to place a bet, it would be on a tracking spell of some kind.

Thinking about it a little more, if he got {Magia Touch} to a high enough level maybe he could have a feel and let the matter rest. Should he just ask his Mentor? Perhaps…

Tercius turned away from the brief tangent and back to the beautifully dangerous, completely hypothetical idea.

The magia that made up the Seal had been transformed by the Mistress, but at the end of the day it was still his. That was where his greatest chance of success was found. At least, for the magia part of the Skill.

For the energia part, he would have to get a bit creative.

Since the magia part of the Skill would be already complete in the form of the Seal from the start, then it stood to reason that the energia part of the Skill ought to be the same way.

But how to do that?

How would he grow half of a Skill crystal on the Garden that would later accept the magia of the Seal? That Skill crystal would have to be… hollow inside. Not in a physical way, like a cavern or something, but more like it lacked the other half— Actually, on second thought, perhaps a physical way was a good way to look at it… This semi-Skill would be like a… semi-incubator of sorts. It would grow itself to a certain size, then stop and wait for the Seal to enter inside. Only when the two of them were finally joined into one would the Skill grow…

The parallels between his idea and the official dogma of Divine Balance were interesting to note, but he pushed those errant thoughts away and returned to the real question.

How to make an energia incubator that would fuse with the magia seed placed inside it?

For a while he existed in darkness, not a single thought passing to answer his question. A few dozen times he thought he had some idea, only to realize the contrary the next moment. Slowly, a few puzzle pieces came to him. A simple way forward was best. Instead of micromanaging something which he had no idea how to do or even begin, he should just let energia do what it already did by its very nature.

Energia was not magia, after all.

It did not need precise measurements and detailed orders, rather even a vague sense of purpose was enough to stir it to action. Energia followed instincts and emotions, imprints of desire and wishes, even physical motion— that was how normal Skills came to be formed and then how they grew. What he should do instead, was think of how to imprint his desires and wishes on the energia in such a way that it would form one half of a Skill seed…

That might take some time… Although… His {Energia Manipulation} was at its second “boundary of change”, as his Mentor called it, so perhaps he could nudge it down a path that would be useful for something like this? If he managed something like this, it would be another powerful ace in his sleeve. Something to ponder on, certainly…

Completely hypothetically, of course. It felt good to have a solution ready before the problem presented itself…

With that line of thought over, he finally got around to what actually got him here.

Skill {Magia Touch} developed. Obtain Yes/No?

The majority of the points spoke for taking the Skill rather than rejecting it. All that was left was to think hard: Yes.

With the message finally gone, Tercius focused on {Visualization} and {Memorization}.

Imagined as white letters on the endless black canvas, the list that started writing itself out held all of his hard work so far.

{Language Acquisition} [40] {Visualization} [43] {Distant Mind} [61] {Stone Shaping} [43] {Green Hands} [45] {Pattern Insight} [47] {Running} [49] {Precision} [42] {Stone Sight} [25] {Teaching Bond} [20] {Magia Manipulation} [28] {Magia Sight} [55] {Sword Mastery} [23] {Shield Mastery} [23] {Energia Manipulation} [40] {Energia Sight} [30] {Memorization} [21] {Small Blade Mastery} [34] {Dexterity} [14] {Stealth} [29] {Acting} [20] {Familiar Bond} [?] {Magia Metamorphosis} [15] {Spring of Crystal Thoughts} [16] {Magia Touch} [1]

He read them one by one and his thoughts stood still for a few moments in silent observation. Twelve and a half years of life and work and research surmised in twenty-five short lines, listed in the order he got them. It was almost double the number of Skills that his sixty-six-years-old grandfather had. If people knew of an anomaly like him, everyone and their grandparents would be up in his business with their own agendas.

That was why he had to hide his true capabilities. To do otherwise would mean that his days would never be his own any more.

Tercius let the vivid list fade into the darkness and the {Distant Mind} faded immediately after it, leaving him back on the bed inside his rented room.

His gaze fell on the booklets at his side. “Now let’s see what Mistress Polariana Fell’Ara and her team of magi had to say about the Izmittor mountain range some two and a half thousand years ago…”