For the next few days, August worked ceaselessly, and I mean nonstop, man. His mother was so worried that she asked me what happened. The guy didn’t sleep for about four days, nor did he actually rest. He just beat his hammer all day – no, not in that way. He made weapon after weapon. Using up almost all his father’s materials.

In those days, I checked the codices I had page for page, inside-out. There was still nothing. So, I opted to focus on something else for the time-being. The Voidwalk spell. It would be in bad taste for the Order’s ambassador to know so little, so I opted to learn a little from the first wave of Ingen mages to grace the Order. They showed me the ropes of the spell. And to be honest, after seeing Invisibility so many times, coupled with the understanding I had of Convergence, it didn’t take long for me to understand how to do it.

I practised ‘til I got sick of it, but ultimately there was hardly any use for it with my repertoire of spells, and I wasn’t one for sneaking anyway. It would be one week from now until we left for the spirit world, August included.

I returned home for the day, looking over anything I might’ve missed from the codices. I now had five of them and no idea what they were about! Well, they were spell tomes according to Gabrielle, so I was quite excited to learn from them, but all I learned is that I couldn’t learn.

Donna came out whilst I took reclusion in my bedroom and walked around idly in circles. “Void magic is strong, you know. Even I know some of it. Its uses are numerous. You should also learn a shield magic. You’re stuck on light magic so it’s best you resort to a strong shield magic. You’re strong, but people like Sven exist and there’s no telling what he’d do.”

“Are you worried about me, Donna?”

“Uh, yeah I am. If you die, I die, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” At that time, my mind shifted elsewhere. No longer was magic the priority. I stood up and entered Voidwalk, sneaking around behind Donna. I wasn’t exactly sure if she could feel my location through the link that we shared with each other, but it was worth a try. Now that I stood directly behind her, I suddenly placed my hands right in front of her breasts, as if cupping them.

“You thought I’d act surprised?” she asked, then slithered her hand to my manhood.

I released Voidwalk, “Guess you can sense me.”

Right then, I could’ve sworn I saw something emit a faint light from my peripheral vision. I immediately shifted my attention to it, but I saw nothing of the sort. Huh? I re-entered Voidwalk, and man was I glad I did that.

The codices littered about my bed were radiating a soft light from them, so I immediately went to them and opened the first one Donna came out of. There were strange scribbles on the first page, not at all meant for reading, judging from what happened. The moment my eyes looked at it, it’s like information just rushed to my mind. It was almost like how Emily taught me Light Resurrection. She did something to pass on the knowledge of the spell to me. This page did the same, but it was all information lacking a greater context; in other words, useless.

So much for teasing Donna. Everything else in the world became unimportant. I flipped through the pages of the thick book in but a night. It spoke of a spell, of course. Gabrielle was right in that regard. There was just one teensy little glaring issue. When the information from a page transferred to your mind, it would be forgotten on the next transference. I spent the entire night trying to figure out how to store that information for good, even trying to let my Division clone in my head remember it, but that was pointless too because even if I remembered one and he remembered the next, the third page’s knowledge transfer would deplete the memories of the ones we once held – even the clone’s.

But behold, reading it the normal way worked just fine; the scribbles became legible after staring at it for a while; weird book. The only issue with the normal way was that you had over one thousand pages to read through. There weren’t even chapters, just one long-running paragraph that melted your brain. I pulled Donna out of me when I went to bed. “Donna, I realise now that you’re the real witch. Who does that? Who makes a thousand-page book that can relay info but makes the person forget what they just learned? Do you hate me?”

“Aww, are you mad?” she teased.

“Shut up,” I hooked her body with my legs and brought her onto the bed. “You’re my pillow now. Pillows don’t talk.”

She fidgeted a little, not in attempts to get out of my clutch but to actually get comfortable. Incorrigible.

I woke up around noon the next day. Helped the Ingen with some spells they wanted advice about, read some books from the library and had a late lunch with Dawn. Pyro pestered Donna for spells sometimes, and Volt spent his remaining time with Violet and Kira.

By the hundredth page, the week was up and it was time to go to the spirit world. August slept all day before that day after repeatedly using quint. I didn’t understand anything about it seeing as my attention was focused primarily on the first codex, finding a shield spell and ultimately uncovering the mysteries of light magic.

We said goodbye to our families and met at the Order to go together. There were some spectators watching along. Everyone laid a hand on me and August watched on in question. “Come on dude, touch me. No homo.” Once he put his hand on my shoulder, we were off to the lightning faction to drop off Volt.

“I’ve got to train your apprentice now?” Tarit complained a little but didn’t really seemed bothered by it.

“Yup! C’mon don’t be like that. Hydra and Phoenix are doing it too. Don’t you want your rays to be in the hands of a capable mage? Besides, you’ve been a loner for like a hundred years now, time to get some friends, buddy.”

The tiger sighed and motioned Volt follow him with the flick of his head. He often kept in his real form as it wasn’t as hugely – and I mean that literally as well – inconvenient to interact with humans in like Phoenix, Kor’zha or Gale’s true forms. Don’t even get me started with Hydra, that behemoth.

Next was the volcanic wastes of the fire faction. Pyro reeled from it. Phoenix flew down upon detecting us, landing a-ways outside the lava’s infringing heat. “Oh hey, kid,” he said after transforming to his humanoid form. “I guess this is about the devil contract, eh? Can he summon it yet?”

“Nah, he’s at wyrm level,” I replied.

Pyro looked intensely at Phoenix. “Can I change my mind?” he asked.

“Be a man, you spineless coward!”

“Train him good, Phoenix. Don’t do anything reckless, ya hear?”

“He’ll be able to breathe fire out his ass when I’m done with him!” The fiery bird flew off with poor Pyro as he screamed for help. Of course, the natural fire of the bird would only hurt others should he will it.

Good luck, mate.

Next was Dawn. Hydra, of course, would be in charge of her. We went to a beach, walking along a long peninsula, but it wasn’t really a peninsula. It was more like a naturally formed pier. Long columns of earth jutted upwards to hold the mass of lengthy land upright, leading to a very deep part of the ocean. This peninsula-formed-pier was where I first met Hydra. I can’t believe I walked this far, I thought, using Levitate to speed me and Dawn along the long construct.

After a while, it began declining into the water. We floated right above the water. One of Hydra’s heads stuck out, a single fang of hers bigger than any human. Dawn was startled, but not totally scared since she’d seen Hydra before in the Dark Basin in full form.

“Hi, darling. And hello, darling’s darling. Is it time already?”

I nodded, rubbing along the serpent’s head. Dawn’s leviathan emerged after a while, in its shrunken form and flew out the water quite gently. “You’d best strip, Dawn. Clothes will only be a hindrance,” Hydra advised.

I immediately agreed. “Yeah, why don’t you strip, Dawn? No need to rush, take your time. Nice and slow.”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. After she took her clothes off and my eyes had their fill, she was about to dive. I held her wrist, “Really? Where’s my kiss?”

“Well, there’s no need to rush. We can take it nice and slow.” What a horrible thing to do, turning my words on me like that. Eventually, we did kiss, and she went on her way, being brought to the dark of the ocean.

Just me, now. My plans were to go over to Kor’zha, but I was quite reluctant and lazy. Although, with August tagging along, I decided to simply go back inland. I came to a compromise of staying within the water faction for the day. “So, I gotta ask, the quint training you’ve been doing, is it dangerous?” I was primarily worried about him injuring himself.

“Of course, it is, even more so than mana. Mana is the most manipulative source of energy. Quint on the other hand would probably take at least two decades before someone can even begin to harness its power.”

“But,” I scratched my chin in suspicion, “didn’t you use it to,” and sniggered, “hammer your sword for four days?”

“Yeah, I did. Witch gave me all the knowledge and understanding of it, remember? I knew how to harness it from jump.”

I built a makeshift hut from Earth Walls and a couple chairs and beds. “But, what does it do anyway?”

“It pulls the quint energy that’s all around us and directs it to your body. Very simply, it increases the efficiency and effectiveness of how your body functions. The only limiting factor is how much quint your body can hold at any one point in time.”

“So,” that’s interesting, I thought, “your body is like um, a funnel?”

“Yup. The channel in me is rather small since I just started, but it will grow as I use it. I reckon I’d be able to raze the royal castle with my bare fists when I’m at the height of my strength.”

Damn, damn that’s cool. “That’s pretty sick, man, but you’d still at least need to learn a couple essential spells.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

We camped alongside a small stream. He already began his training, which included your regular stuff like push-ups, squats and jogging, but every movement was enhanced with quint. Because of the infinite amount of invisible quint around us, he kept running it through his body, slowly increasing his channel size. And by slowly, I mean really damn slow; turtle speed. That was the one drawback, aside from having a small channel.

He knew what he had to do, but me? Not so much, especially concerning light magic. Donna relaxed on a hammock, sleeping most of her day away. Help from her was gone, but on the other hand, I could read nonstop – or at least as much as I could in Voidwalk.

In a couple days’ time, I was through quarter of the book. The writing seemed somewhat metaphorical, written in a narrative that wasn’t a straight shooter. I had to reread multiple passages, distinguishing from the former ones by comparison and trying my best to understand what the hell was being said. Anything I asked Donna about, she’d just shrug. To be fair, as far I saw it, this mysterious codex that Donna came out of, was not a spell tome. There were no clear-cut directions, no obvious ways in which to cast something, no help in visualisation or anything like that.

What there was though, was a very simple notion. The book was titled ‘Crescent Trinity’ and spoke of three pillars that could put any man in the highest position of money and power. The first pillar, which was finally concluded about quarter-way through, was telling of the most important ingredients needed to conjure mixtures capable of quintupling one’s magic force, physical strength and physiological wellbeing. In other words, it spoke of alchemy.

It didn’t exactly point out what those ingredients were, but it did point to their scarcity and go into more detail about what the effects of the mixtures, or potions rather, were. Breaching the next pillar in Crescent Trinity, was utilising worn items to imbue them with magic power.

Wait, so, there’s alchemy… It’s not like alchemy wasn’t known, but it was certainly just a mixture of one to three herbs. It was there, but with the prevalence of magic, it never saw the light of day. Maybe if there were some people who were incapable of utilising mana, but literally everyone could access mana. Alchemy was thrown to the wayside, but this Crescent Trinity basically convinced me it wasn’t a total waste of time. And thinking back, when the witch gave me that vial of strange liquid to drink and my mana skyrocketed into hemispheres previously unknown, I’d say it’s damn worth it.

With all the potential alchemy had, with a revelation that colossal, the codex dropped another one on me so damn casually. The imbuement of items previously untainted by magic.

Enchanting.

That, word, was outrageously important, at least if enchanting was anything I it thought to be. There were several magical constructs within the Order’s grounds, the most obvious being the teleporters. But, were those an example of enchanting? I didn’t know but sought to stop at that point.

“Hey, Aug, how’s it going?” I shouted upward. He was doing pull-ups on a nearby tree.

“It hasn’t even increased by one percent yet! This is damn ridiculous!” He said, dropping from the tree. “I knew it was difficult, but…” he grunted.

“Well, you need to approach it differently. Wh–”

“No, I don’t. What I’m doing right now is exactly the things I need to do, it just improves that slowly,” he tittered, one contrastingly filled with irritation, “guess that explains the twenty years someone without knowledge would take to learn it.”

“Oh, well, keep at it then.”

He gave me a thumbs-up and jumped right from where he was, up to the branch. An already impossible feat for most, but it wasn’t disconcertingly far enough to make someone think he’s not normal.

With the codex finally put down, I began practising what I dubbed Magnet. The spell’s idea was quite simple: to form an encompassing shield around me made of void magic that would suck in any spells directed to it into the void, and not into me. Simple, right? Nope! Creating an undistorted space inside of a spheroid of void magic was damn ridiculous! Hell, even creating a bended wall of void magic was an issue. This was the horrors of creating a spell from scratch. It could take years, or hours.

I started with a weak Convergence, opening out the ball of magic as best I could without the spell failing on me. Within a couple hours of practise, I was able to manipulate the Convergence sphere into any shape I want and that was nice. The issue was increasing the size to one big enough to cover me, and clearing the insides free of magic, making it only a thin, translucent film. But the void’s violet nature was one that would fill the inside the minute I morphed it into a spheroid.

What a pain in the ass. It’s not like I can’t do it. I thought, going back to the time I fought with Tarit. I placed my own Ice Javelin into the ethereal plane, then promptly brought it back to the corporeal plane so that it would pass through my Earth Wall and strike Tarit. But that spell I used was the same thing I was using now, the only difference being that I was trying to bend it into the shape with the least worrying mana expenditure. To be fair, the shape was easy to make, but clearing out the insides so that when it formed around me, my body wouldn’t be shifting back and forth into the void was another thing.

Wait, if Convergence is the opposite of… my thoughts went into doing something crazy, but seemingly needed. I used Voidwalk and entered the ethereal plane, then casted Divergence, which did what it always did. It’s not like I needed a spell to return to the corporeal plane, all I had to do was stop Voidwalk. Divergence didn’t form an orb or anything of the sort like Convergence did. It was just plain force pushing you back. I concluded then, that they were opposites, but totally different things. So that was a failed venture.

Hold up… I wondered, then reeled at the thought. Using Convergence in the void? Was that really a smart idea? How would it help me with my current woe? I didn’t know, but my curiosity was burning hotter than Phoenix’s flames, so I did it. There was a rumbling at first, as if the orb of Convergence sought to stabilise itself, and when it did, the colour changed to a sky-blue colour. No way. I made a small block of ice and threw it at the strange Convergence, then cancelled Voidwalk. Low and behold, the ice block was in the corporeal plane!

Yeah, that’s amazing, but how does that help me to figu–

My thinking paused as another idea promenaded in. Of course! If my experimental version of Magnet showed that when taking the spheroid shape, the inside of it filled itself in void, then all I needed to do was cast another, slightly smaller one, inside it. The inside would then turn to a space in the corporeal plane. That idea showed good on its promise to me. It worked! I stood within Magnet with no problem, without going to the ethereal plane. Removing the gravitation force that powered Convergence wasn’t an issue at all, otherwise no one would be able to Voidwalk.

August came down to test it out for me. He reached his hand inside and it passed through easily. He couldn’t feel my physical body at all and had a face of surprise at first, but then quickly made do with the insanity seen before him. “Crazy ass mages…” he muttered, going back to his training.