It was natural for the dragon to attract the eye. However, that was just the start. Examining the rectangles, it became clear that they were skills—hundreds of skills combining elements of the common twelve skill groups and many species unique ones.

“Great Dragon Aurum,” Palag said. “Companion of the emperor Tamin the first, and believed to have been the strongest creature of this age.”

Strongest creature of the age… Dallion could see that. Something with that many skills could do infinite combinations. Even if it didn’t know spellcraft, which Dallion saw it did, the dragon would be able to conquer countries. That explained how the empire had turned into the power it was today.

“You’re thinking that it’s all luck, isn’t it?” the fury asked.

“Err?”

“The dragon. Any fool with a familiar that powerful could conquer the world without half trying. Well, you would be wrong. The Aurum didn’t start out like that. He’s not even a dragon.”

“He’s not?” Dallion looked at the creature’s outline once more.

The overall shape and body structure were similar to what was described in the magic bestiary. Furthermore, there was a striking resemblance between Dark and the other dragonlets Dallion had come across.

“It’s a Quickgold Wyvern that the emperor had as a companion as a child. It was later that he figured out how to grant it skills, transforming it into the “great dragon” it later became known for.”

“The emperor was a mage,” Dallion stated. This all but confirmed it.

“Yep. The founder of the Academy before it was called the Academy. His majesty was also an avid artifact collector, which is how he uncovered a lot of old knowledge bringing rise to several magic disciplines, including Echo Training.”

A fascinating story, making Dallion want to have met the man. By the sound of it, it was all but certain that the emperor was an otherworlder. The things that he did were what Dallion himself would have done. The major difference was that the emperor had been born with the magic trait, while Dallion was fortunate to acquire the empathy one instead.

“Seven hundred and eleven skills,” Palag said. “Some of them extremely impressive. However, this is where the interesting part ends.”

A new spell was cast, replacing the image by that of a standard human outline. There were nine clusters of rectangles surrounding him, not nearly as impressive as the what the dragon had displayed.

“This is a standard echo. The number of skills vary, but as a rule of thumb, it doesn’t have more than a few dozen.”

Speak for yourself, Dallion thought. With the exception of Nil, all the echoes in Dallion’s personal domain had considerably more.

“Why are some of the rectangles blank?” Dallion asked.

“That’s the echo’s potential—every skill that it could have, but doesn’t. And that’s where magic comes in. Think of it as a shortcut capable of unlocking skills your echo hasn’t learned.”

“A shortcut.”

“Not quite. The effort has to come from somewhere. You’re simply replacing it with an equal amount of magic. Remember your magic extraction classes? It’s the same here, and just as there, each skill requires more magic than the last.”

The image of the echo vanished.

That was it? No wonder this class didn’t have enough fans. The talk was definitely intriguing, but Dallion could have heard just as much while waiting in the dining room.

“Normally, I’d give you a few dozen books, have a few tests, check your answers, and that would be it. However, seeing you’re a special case, I think it’s time for some practical examples.” His fingers danced in the air. A moment later, a metal pyramid appeared in his hand. “Shall we?”

Dallion made his way to the fury and placed his hand on the item.

ITEM AWAKENING

The classroom disappeared, replaced by a small town. Looking about, Dallion saw that the buildings had a Greco-Roman motif—one that was rather familiar.

The PYRAMID is Level 20

You are in an enormous dark steel domain.

Defeat the guardian to change the PYRAMID’s destiny.

Did you make this, Nil? Dallion asked.

One of my better works, the old echo said with pride. I’m surprised that they’re still using it. At the time, I got a lot of grief that my designs were over the top.

The buildings, the statues, even the tiles on the ground were made entirely of metal, giving an alien feel to the whole thing. There was no denying the craftsmanship, though. What skill had Adzorg used while creating it? It wasn’t standard crafting, nor any of the magic courses Dallion had seen.

All of a sudden, a suit of armor appeared a few steps away.

TRAINING GUARDIAN

Species: METALIN

Class: IRON

Health: 100%

Traits:

- BODY 30

- MIND 20

- PERCEPTION 20

- REACTION 20

Skills: NONE

Weakness: NONE

Lux! Dallion burst into instances.

Weapons and gear emerged on him, ready for battle. The metalin, however, didn’t budge.

“Sorry,” Palag intervened. “That’s a dummy. It won’t fight you.”

The instances faded away, but Dallion remained in full gear.

“I should have warned you about this. I wanted to illustrate the actual process.”

There was no deceit visible within him, so Dallion unsummoned his shield and harpsisword. Any other entity, short of a chainling, would have been preferable to this. Then again, it was said that the Academy had created the concept of metalins, so it stood to reason they would be used for training.

“I take it you’ve seen a metalin before?” the fury asked.

“Yes. During a mission,” Dallion replied. Technically, he was telling the truth. Havoc had metalins in his personal domain.

“Mages tend to use them a lot to protect against realm invasions. Nobles too, though mostly for their children. Nasty things to face. This one, though,” the apprentice tapped the construct’s helmet several times, “is purely for skill training.”

Dallion nodded slowly.

“As with many things in life, there are three parts to echo training: mapping, testing, and teaching. Mapping is close to combat splitting in a way. You see, a web of possible abilities the entity could take skill-wise.”

The explanation made Dallion think of precise item improvement. There he was still relying on combat splitting to pick the desired result during the improvement process.

“Difference is that here you use a spell.” The fingers of both hands moved as he slowly drew the magic pattern—an irregular six-circle frame with over thirty symbols, most of which Dallion had never seen.

Ten colorless rectangles appeared around the metalin each containing the name and symbol of the respective skill. Interestingly, only the basic skills were shown, not the subskills related to them.

“Only ten skills?” Dallion moved closer to one of the rectangles. His hand freely passed through, causing them to crumble away into nothingness. The moment he pulled it back, the rectangles re-emerged, the same as before.

“That for this level of spell. You only see one layer beyond what the target has.”

Fiddly, no doubt, but it provided a number of options. One thing was clear—one would require a lot of additional information before granting skills to an echo or familiar. Back on Earth, it wasn’t rare for gamers to waste points on useless skills, crippling the entire build of their game characters. Of course, anyone could simply reset the creation process, then go online and follow the best practices established there. In this world, there was no such thing. Or was there?

“What’s testing?” Dallion asked.

“Sharp.” Palag smiled. “While the spell is in effect, you can use your own mana to see what I would be like if a character had a skill.”

“Like a test run?”

“At some point, it had been. According to past records, the nymph mages did just that. The copyettes, too, but they always tended to steal abilities. Now, sadly, we can only test what skills would appear following a certain track.”

Purple filled up the attack rectangle. Dozens of new rectangles popped up in the vicinity, all connected to the old one with semi-transparent threads.

“The magic transfer is temporary. The moment I end the spell, it’ll return to me. In this state, though, I’m temporarily weakened. If you were to attack me, I’d be one magic level less.”

“One level for each skill?” Dallion asked.

“Precisely.” Another blank rectangle filled up with purple.

“What if I kill the dummy? Will you lose all invested magic?”

“No, they’ll just go back to me.”

The fury sounded rather calm, but he still ended the spell. All the rectangles vanished, making the metalin feel bare.

“So, did you get the basics?”

“It was difficult, but I somehow managed, sir.” Dallion struggled not to roll his eyes.

“Including the spell?”

This time Dallion had been caught off guard. He should have figured as much, given how slowly the fury was casting the spell. Explanations were only meant for toddlers, or in this case, rank one novices. From here on, no one was going to explain spells step by step, just slow down the casting time so that the students could catch a good enough glimpse of the pattern and learn to recreate it in their own time.

“Almost,” Dallion mumbled.

“Good. Have a go and then we’ll continue with more training specifics.”

Dallion was ejected from the pyramid’s realm, returning to the classroom. This marked the long and tedious phase of getting the training spell done.

Days passed during the rest of the afternoon, with Dallion recreating the unknown symbols one by one within his own awakening realm. The complexity had jumped astronomically, making everything else he’d learned so far seem pathetically easy. Even with Harp’s method, it would often be hours before he could successfully learn a new symbol, and just as much for him to perfect drawing it with ease.

After a weak real time, Dallion could no more. Moving back to the classroom yet again, he admitted defeat. His action was expected, even welcome—it showed both instructor and student where Dallion’s limits were.

The rest of the lesson focused on discussing a few examples of creatures, the skills of which were entirely mapped. As it turned out, in addition to their skill-potential, creatures, as well as people, had something called affinity. That explained why low level awakened could be better at certain things than mid-level nobles. Vend—Dallion’s guild mentor—was one such case. His combat splitting remained unparalleled despite his current level. When it came to combat training, affinity played another, far more interesting, role: no magic had to be invested in the echo to learn that skill as long as another skill branching from it was learned as well.

Immediately, Dallion started thinking how he could game the system. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that affinity was rather a weird quirk than anything major. A person had one, or at most two, of those and the only way to find out for certain—outside from observation the obvious—was for the person to create an echo and spend a while exploring.

By the end of the lesson, Dallion was exhausted. Skipping the library visit, he went straight to his room to sleep. Katka must have known this would happen, for he found a letter from her telling him to skip their next two sessions. After feeling annoyed for a few minutes, Dallion then checked the letter with the kaleidevristo on his bladebow. There didn’t seem to be any hidden echoes. Just in case, Dallion went through the letter’s realm and even improved it a few times as a means of distracting himself. The result ended up as a letter made of glass. Naturally, that attracted the attention of Gem, who started casting spells on it. Despite all of Dallion’s attempts, the aetherfish was simply unable to understand the concept of awakening. As far as it was concerned, everything had to be a form of magic and Dallion either didn’t know the right spell or was keeping the information secret.

“Harp,” Dallion said to his harpsisword. “Are you permitted to help me with magic training?”

I can guide you, the nymph replied in her ambiguous fashion.

“That’s all I need.”

PERSONAL AWAKENING