Their arrival back to Anima was not heralded with any particular fanfare. Just work…

“Here’s the paperwork for your classes. Staff meeting in tomorrow at noon. Be there.” Were the first words out of the Headmaster’s mouth after the group went through the portal.

And family…

“Casimir! It’s so wonderful to see you again! I was so worried!” Were Master Southwind’s first words after they left the portal room into the adjacent waiting room, the incredibly tall elf picked him off the floor to maximize the affection of her hug.

“You sure cut it close, didn’t you son?” Asked another obsidian-skinned elf with thick muscles and a bandana covering their bald head.

“Father!” Exclaimed Faron, surprised to see the sailor.

“What, you think an old salt like me wasn’t going to visit?” The unwrinkled man asked as he gripped his son’s hand in a handshake that he pulled into an embrace.

Peter’s mother, a rather short woman who was older than Casimir expected, was also waiting, as was Professor Giltblade, Hanna’s guardian. Casimir glanced at Illivere, who had no one waiting for her, but that just put the girl in Master Southwind’s sights, so in a matter of seconds her crushing, if heavily cushioned, grip was shared by the both of them.

“It’s nice to be home, Master.” Casimir said with a grin.

Master Southwind set them both down, grabbing Casimir’s hand and starting to walk away. “There’s so much to do, Casimir. I handled all of your marking appeals, but we need to go over the results of those, and make sure you have all of your material requirements updated for your courses. Obidaiah finally got fired so you’re teaching that whole course this semester, “ What? He has to teach the sorcerers even more? “-and there’s a few student complaints that I need to go over with you, did you really tell your students you wouldn’t take on personal students until after the semester?” Did he? “Also, Professor Harper wants to get you to agree to help with the dueling club, on top of that-” Master Southwind kept talking, piling on more bureaucratic necessities with things she had agreed to on his behalf while he was gone and was thus now stuck with.

Ah, academia. It hasn’t changed a bit.

----------------

Hanna shuddered as Casimir placed the acupuncture needle into a specific spot on her back. “Why needles?” She asked.

“If you want me to get as precise a picture as possible on what’s going on with your soul, I need the full picture. This will ensure the clearest view.” Casimir responded clinically. “I don’t do this kind of work much, so I need to work a little slow.” Her soul/body connections were really, really strange. After another few minutes analyzing what his magic senses were telling him, he inserted another needle. “I’ll spend a few more minutes to see if that’s all of them, but while you have twice as many body/soul connections as most people, they’re still mostly clustered in similar spots.” He would have had to feel things out to find them all anyway, so it wasn’t as much of an imposition for him to do it in comparison to someone who would do half of them by memory, who would have gotten most of them way off as a result. “I still think I should have brought Master Southwind here for this.”

“No.” Hanna said immediately. “You won’t do anything bad, but… She’s too…”

Casimir grunted in understanding. “She’s pretty bad with keeping secrets, yeah.” He agreed. “Hang on…” He brought out yet another needle and jabbed it into Hanna’s left foot.

The teenage girl yelped. Ah, he must have screwed it up. He removed the needle, looked at the extra connection point more closely, and stuck Hanna’s foot again. She only winced that time. Good.

“Was that the last one?” She asked pitifully.

“Maybe…” Casimir said as he strained his mana sense to see if he had missed anything. Two hundred nineteen needles were sticking out of her as she floated in mid-air. “...Yeah, that was it. Now, for the next step.” Gently, he started channeling the low intensity life mana slowly through the needles, filling in every nook and cranny of both her physical and spiritual anatomy. When dealing with exceptionally complex curses, the kind that are usually reserved for body modification or mana attunement, this kind of preparation was the best way to pre-empt any flaws in your matrixes, the equivalent of ensuring you have a nice and flat floor that was level before building something. It just so happened that it was also the first step for, say, creating a full soul map of someone.

As it turned out, Hanna was some kind of artificial human created by spirits, with no biological parents. The issue was, Hanna didn’t actually know much about what that meant, beyond her ability to create spirits of life by ripping off parts of herself, also to re-absorb them later.

Thus, the full analysis of her soul anatomy. “And… I’m ready.” Casimir said. His eyes were glowing intensely, he knew. Casimir tapped the needles one by one, each tap creating a tiny pulse of mana that traveled along Hanna’s soul structure. Hanna was stoic externally, but each tiny flash of pain lit up her soul as she endured the minor but annoying pain.

“Okay, I think I’m almost done. Just need to…” Casimir trailed off, channeling mind mana into the pre-prepared crystal. After finishing that process, he projected the soul map inside the crystal, creating an image that he compared to Hanna’s soul. “Perfect.” Casimir started removing needles from his student, lightly turning her as he went before finally turning off the enchantment that kept her suspended in the air after the last needle was on the tray. “You can put your clothes on now, by the way.” He said idly. She hurried to the chest in the corner of the room to do so.

“So… now what?” Hanna asked, dressed in a light dress rather than putting on her full kit.

Casimir hummed, projecting the soul map. “Well, I can start with telling you what you feared? Not the case.” He pointed to a few of the stranger bits. “If Chestnut was merely trapped within you, and then recaptured after you freed him, these… callouses? Scars? Whatever these are, you’d expect to see them here” He pointed to a distinctly non-calloused bit. “-and here, and for the soul’s composition to be distinctly different as it re-integrated, but there’s nothing.” Admittedly, it wasn’t completely definitive, but once he understands this exotic piece of soul anatomy, he’ll know more definitively.

“What is happening, then?” Hanna asked, carefully examining the soul map without any real comprehension.

“I don’t know.” Casimir said honestly. “They don’t match up to the tears you outlined before we started, so they’re clearly not that. I’ll need to do some research.” He shut down the soul map display, taking out a wooden egg-shaped container and deposited the crystal into it, snapping it closed. “This will keep it safe from detection.”

“Um… about the… other thing…” Hanna said softly, uncomfortable.

Casimir smiled. “Don’t worry Hanna, first thing we’ll do in the next break is visit your home, okay? We’ll get that prophecy thing knocked out, no problem.” Apparently, ‘The Forest Father’ had sent her here to gain strength to face ‘the threat below’ which was prophesied to arrive soon. Hm… could it be? Well, they’ll find out.

“Right.” She said, brightening at Casimir’s confidence. “So…?” She trailed off, glancing to the exit and fidgeting.

“You can go home, yes. I’ll see what I can wrangle from the Academy’s library to see if I can make sense of this.” Really, the weird thing was how… normal it acted. It responded to curses more or less the same as any spirit-blooded person. Oh, there’s an idea. He could track down the soul map of someone with a similar bloodline and compare them. Maybe there’s some insight there.

As Hanna left, Casimir put the wooden egg into his most secure pouch. His fingers brushed the other major item in there as he did so. “Oh, right. That thing I’ve been putting off.”

Well, no time like the present.

----------------

“I don’t know how to thank you for this.” Abbess Redpoint said as she led him to the empty tomb.

Casimir sighed. “The bounty was plenty, thank you. I went on that quest for personal reasons.” Ah, they were here. He passed the Abbess, the woman chirping in surprise as he channeled mana into the shrine.

The light shined like high noon, just like before. Not a single shadow was allowed within the area, each flourish of color in the murals as rich as when they were first painted, over a year ago.

“Now, if you could…” The Abbess said, holding her hand out for the purpose of his visit. “There are spell defenses I need to circumvent.”

Casimir snorted. “I got it.” With all the time he spent here, the idea that he couldn’t open this is laughable. He tapped out a sequence of mana pules on various spots on the shrine, alternating between light, space, and life mana to emulate whatever authorization signature Helel used for the tomb. The ornate box that held pride of place on the shrine opened up, causing the priestess to gasp in shock. “Here we are.” He said with a small smile. Still got it.

Reverently, he took Luci’s skull out of the pouch, pulling it from underneath his city gear armor. Revenant bones didn’t have anything about them that was particularly concerning in comparison to their formerly living counterparts, so this wasn’t that unusual, for an adventurer. He gently placed the skull in its proper place. “Luci…” He whispered, trying to find the perfect words.

“...Welcome home.”

----------------

“Here he is.” Peter said, uncharacteristically somber as Casimir walked into the room. An elderly man laid in the bed, wasted away, practically gasping for air. “My grandfather’s… can you help him?”

Casimir hummed. “Well, if the Helelites couldn’t fix it… maybe, maybe not.” He took the blankets back to inspect the man.

The old man’s eyes sharpened. “Who’re you?” He said with surprising strength. Casimir could sense the man readying his withered mana heart, but Casimir was not concerned.

“I’m a doctor.” He lied. It was close enough to the truth.

“Boy, I told you not to spend money on me!” He said, frustrated. “Go to school!”

As Peter argued with his grandfather, Casimir analyzed the man’s soul. It was definitely some kind of curse, that was for sure. It was exceedingly complex, though… clearly it was a spirit curse. “Swamp spirit, right?” Casimir asked. “It’s important that I know the source of the curse.”

Peter grinned at Casimir’s deduction, while his grandfather looked stupefied. “...I didn’t tell the boy that.” He said.

“Do you have more detailed information?” Casimir asked. “Mud spirit, rot spirit, fetid spirit, toxin spirit?”

“...It was a rot spirit.” the man said. “Cursed me for killing its favorite toad.”

Casimir snorted. “Yeah, they’ll do that.” Ironically, professional cursebreakers are rarely called for curses imposed by a curse wizard. Much more common were spirit curses, which were much harder to remove. Thus, the profession’s demand. “You know, you’d have been suffering for another four years before Peter’d be qualified to cure something like this, right?” Only a bit of an exaggeration. With motivation and a hyperfocus on the task, ignoring all of the other stuff he should be learning, getting under the two year mark would be quite possible. But it’s much easier to just cure it himself.

“But then he’d be set for life.” The grandfather said with conviction. “There’s good money in cursebreaking.”

“In other countries, maybe.” Casimir mumbled. “Well, he can easily afford it now, but I’m doing this for free. I have more money than I know what to do with.” That wasn’t strictly true. He could always try for even better armor and weapons, but taking a fair price out of Peter’s share wouldn’t really impact his ability.

The old man coughed wetly, the curse in his system flexing as the man’s phlegm thickened and spoiled in his throat. Peter’s grandfather went into a full coughing fit from the curse’s effect, but some quick water magic extracted the wad of rotten phlegm and soothed his throat. “Ah, thank you.” He said.

Casimir huffed. “Right, I could move this to a ritual room, get some potions and medicine, and do this the slow way…” He gave the old man a meaningful look.

The man’s smile had very few teeth, but resolve aplenty. “Do it fast. I can take it.”

“This is going to hurt then.” Casimir said, yanking off the covers of the old man. Peter recoiled at the sight of his grandfather’s nudity, but it didn’t bother Casimir at all. He draw out his cursebreaking needles, thick verenium ones coated with a less conductive metal in the center for safer handling. Casimir’s hands blurred as he stabbed the old man with eighteen needles, and as one he sent enough mana down each one to penetrate them straight through his body, if he were so inclined.

Peter’s grandfather’s scream ripped out of his throat, louder and clearer than ever after Casimir’s minor treatment of it. But within Casimir’s mana senses, he could see the rot curse shatter and break apart, which was promptly siphoned back out through a set of four needles that Casimir inserted as the man was writhing. “That’ll do it.” Casimir said, reclaiming all the needles with a gesture and flex of mana.

The old man breathed deeply as he calmed down from the ordeal. Peter scrambled to help him up. “Grandpa!” He said worriedly. “Are you okay?”

Exhaling with strength, the old man gave a wide grin showing all nine of his teeth: “Never better, boy!” Peter smiled right back.

Casimir coughed. “You can handle the aftercare, Peter. Vigor/Recovery curse variant, I brought a copy with me.” He fished out the scroll from one of his many bags and passed it over.

Peter’s eyes were full of happy tears as he accepted the scroll. “Thanks, Teach! I’ll learn this in a snap.”

Casimir grinned as he left the Woods’ apartment. “I know you will.” He said before adding: “Just remember to show up for class.”

“He will if I have to drag him there!” Shouted Peter’s grandfather.

What a lovely family that Peter has there.

----------------

Casimir strode into the room confidently, the riotous noise silencing as he went to the center of the cleared space. “Welcome, class!” He shouted, energy which his students returned with cheers. “Welcome to Advanced Combat Magic! My name is Casimir Toomes, heroic-ranked adventurer.” He was in full kit, and drew his ancient sword, the weapon alone worth more than most of his student’s families make in a year.

He started to swing the sword around, launching flourishes of magic from it as he did so. “The sad truth is that while you can fight battles quite effectively with naught but clever spellcasting…” On cue, his assistant launched a fireball. Casimir drew his verenium stiletto and cut it in two, using negative magic to ruin the flame and just ignoring the rush of hot air. He finished by throwing that knife into the dummy the assistant was carrying in front of him, right on the target circle that represented the heart. “There’s no one strategy that will win you all battles. Consistent victories in combat require a combination of a solid plan one, the ability to recognize when you need your plan two, three, or four, and enough friends that they can handle plans five on.”

Casimir pointed his blade at his students to emphasize his point. “If you plan to become a mage knight, this is not the class for you. The mage knights already have a program you should already be attending, and everything you need from here will also be covered there. This is a class for those who wish to explore the dangerous world we live in, filled with monsters and worse.” Like slavers. “Adventurers! Even if you decline to join the guild and get in on the grind, you should be able to take away enough from this class to not end up crapping yourself when you’re face to face with battle.”

He looked each and every one of his thirty-six students in the eyes, already assessing their mettle. Maybe a third seemed to have actual fighting experience? All of them had passed basic combat magic with a good rating to qualify, but it was a compulsory course, so standards were not high.

Still, his personal students were among their number, so between Peter, Illivere, Faron, and Hanna, they should be able to help him whip these kids into shape.

“Any questions?”