Chapter 127: A Master's Love Is Cruelty

The flames of Gigi's blade seemed to burn hotter than ever before, it was because she took Oliver's lesson on Mana Infusion to heart. She meant to cause her flames to burn hotter than ever before -- and it was working brilliantly.

"Um..isn't this a bit dangerous?" Dealla asked as she struggled to hold down the hood which covered her draconic features. Gigi's flames grew higher and taller by the moment, causing waves of hot wind to lash at the people behind her. The sword of flames grew nearly three meters in length (9ft) before Gigi saw fit to lower the fire sword in a single slice.

Oliver looked unperturbed. In fact he was downright nonchalant as Gigi leapt forward to bring him into range of her attack. The blade crashed downward, cleaving air and consuming it violently as it passed. Oliver lifted his extended hand and clenched his fist closed, slowly. In that instant the heat was drained from the atmosphere and Gigi's impressive attack quickly began to shrink, sputtering as the flames were deprived of fuel.

In the end Gigi was left dumbfounded as she stared across the way towards Oliver Pagnal. The elven man had not moved a centimeter and barely shifted position at that. With a single motion he'd somehow managed to completely extinguish Gigi's flames.

"Mana Reading. One could say it's a more...advanced application. But this much is possible using the principles of Mana Reading." Oliver's voice broke everyone's stupor of disbelief, even Gigi's.

"How? How did you do that!?" Gigi practically shouted. One would have expected her to be upset. Instead she quickly bridged the distance between herself and Oliver and was now shaking him back and forth by his shoulders.

After pushing an overzealous ginger away, Oliver explained what was to happen next.

"Mana Reading works by spreading your particles over an area of your desire. This area doesn't need to be sphere shaped, it can be irregular, rectangular -- anything that feels comfortable to you. The main thing of importance is the intentions you set into your magic. I will say it again--your role during this expedition is not to battle. You're expressly forbidden to do so unless you have absolutely no choice. We are so serious about this that you will be expelled from the chapel if you fail to follow us on this matter." Oliver's voice grew stern as he continued explaining.

"As such, think well about what you'd like your magic to do for you. You will wear these." Oliver said as he handed out several blindfolds, each made of fabric so thick that it would be all but impossible to see through them.

"While you wear these, you will focus only on developing your Mana Reading. Your goal is to evade increasingly difficult attacks from myself and Doyenne Lex." Oliver said as he motioned towards Vivi, who had been all but silent up until now.

"I only have one final piece of advice for you. You need to feel the shifting 'waves'." Oliver said as he took a few steps back and motioned for everyone to put on their blindfolds.

For a moment everyone just looked from face to face, their gazes meeting and sharing a sense of confusion.

"Is he for real?" Dealla muttered, even as she began to place the blindfold over her eyes. Slowly everyone did as directed, and each was surprised to learn that the blindfolds were much more than cloth.

[You've been afflicted with Blind and Deaf status'.]

"What the hell?" Agni said aloud, but the sound of her own words escaped her. She quickly removed the blindfold, only to realize that her senses were returned to her. She gazed around, bewildered and found that everyone else had the same reaction -- all save Gigi who was smiling as she said, "Oh! I like this!"

"Do you really expect us to train without being able to see or hear? We barely know what we're doing. And you haven't given us sufficient instructions. How do you expect this to work?" Dealla asked, it was obvious she'd grown annoyed. Agni couldn't help but agree on some points, though she wasn't as worked up as the dragon-kin.

*Then again -- it's not like my friends lives are on the line..* Agni thought to herself.

Oliver sighed, then motioned for Vivian to take over. The Doyenne made her way before all of the people gathered as she prepared to speak her piece.

"Life isn't fair, I think we all know that. Neither is battle, in fact - one could say that life or death struggles are one of the most natural, most cruel situations one could ever face." Vivian met each of their eyes as she continued to speak.

"For this plan to work, your senses need to be razor sharp. You need to react at a moment's notice and the best way for you to do that is to 'feel'. Activate your Mana Reading and feel what's around you. Don't worry, we'll start off easy to begin with and ramp up our efforts. Just don't expect mercy -- your foe won't show you any. Likewise, we'll make every effort to bring you back safely -- but there's no guarantee for anything in unpredictable situations. You need to be able to evade strikes or capture. This is the only way you'll get up to speed. Or--" Vivian paused momentarily as she shot a glance towards Dealla.

"You can quit now. These are your options. Now, if you understand stop complaining and let's get started. You only have a fixed amount of time to prepare." Vivian said as she motioned for everyone else to replace their blinds. Dealla stared at the cloth in her grasp and grimaced one final time before she placed the blindfold over her eyes once again.

The first twenty minutes of their training wasn't as bad as Agni imagined. The blindfold functioned like sensory deprivation and after a while Agni could keenly sense particles of her own magic more readily. In her mind's eye she imagined hundreds of small orbs of mana floating equidistant from one another. These orbs were just tiny pieces of her own mana, used to create a "sphere of influence" via Mana Reading. The blindfold allowed her to get a better feel for sensing when something moved into that area of influence.

It could be more easily described as a displacement of her own placed mana particles, and through this she could locate intruding objects. It was here that Agni truly understood what she was being trained for. During combat, reaction time was the key to avoiding death or taking a mortal wound. With a sphere of influence extended around her she would have precious time to react to anything which might come her way. With extra time even something like dodging arrows, fireballs or blades with your eyes closed would then become possible.

Oliver's advice also made more sense. 'Waves' referred to the way the mana particles shifted in position as something moved through them. In her mind's eye this almost looked like a stream of water functioning in reverse, still as an object parted the waves.

The instructors began by moving in and out of their range, occasionally it would be something as simple as passing by. At other times they would reach out and touch. It was after the twenty minute mark that things began to get more….intense.

In her mind's eye Agni could feel something small and circular traveling towards her. She imagined it to be a ball of sorts. She was surprised when an orb of magical energy quickly spanned the distance and smashed into her chest. The impact was forceful enough to knock her down completely and cancel the Mana Reading she had active. Agni's first impulse was to rip off the blindfold and take a moment to recover -- but she quickly realized that the attack she just suffered would be nothing compared to a creature that could crush rank two adventurers with a single strike. The added benefit of the sparring room made the entire ordeal painless as well.

She got to her feet, the disorientation of suddenly being "blind" gave her pause. She could feel her heart beating rather than hear it, a strange sensation to say the least. All was silence and darkness as she strained her senses along with the mana particles which had quickly begun to spread outwards in a sphere-shape around the succubus.

The wait was a challenge in and of itself, anxious moments between each attack made Agni quick to react to the smallest sensation. Agni slowly walked backwards to create some distance, there was no particular method to her madness, she just felt it appropriate. Even as she did so, a projectile was fired her way. Having experienced the sensation once before, Agni was ready this time. She hopped backwards at an angle to allow the projectile to safely pass by. Unfortunately this was a set up. During her quick movement to evade Agni found herself bumping into a nearby person, from the sensation she felt it was most likely a man -- Gates.

Not only did she need to pay attention to attacks but also the objects or people nearby. With this in mind Agni created more distance between the particles of her Mana Reading screen. This caused the entire sphere of tiny magic particles to expand outwards. She could now "sense" a total of three meters in all directions (roughly 9ft).

Agni realized that she was closely bunched together near several people, judging from their rough shape Shula, Gates and perhaps Gigi. If she had to guess this was intentional on the behalf of the trainers, and most likely part of the training as well.

Agni smirked as she made room to move by hop stepping backwards a few times. It was right around this time that another two orbs were fired, each from different angles. She managed to evade one entirely, but the second caught her on the hip and knocked her off balance. This short period of time was all her tutors needed to focus their attention on her.

Agni could feel two large masses moving towards her. Despite the fact that she had significant warning, she was not used to reacting to threats in this manner. She felt a sharp blow to her abdomen followed by one to the back of her neck. As she fell face forward Agni's view quickly faded into the true darkness of unconsciousness.

"Oi. Oi. Oiiiiiiiiiiii." It was Shula's voice, accompanied by the stinging slap of Agni's cheek.

"Stop it, demon loli." Agni nearly grunted as she got to her feet. Her head still felt somewhat woozy and there was no telling how long she'd been out. At some point her blindfold was removed and everyone else seemed to be taking breaks. The other person who Agni surmised to be nearby was also unconscious, in this case Gigi.

"Break's over. Wake her up Gates." Oliver commanded.

The group quickly got back to training, with the exercises growing progressively more intense. The moment Agni would get used to a particular attack or aspect of the training, Oliver and Vivian would shift tactics. She didn't have time to think about anything else except the task beforehand, avoiding the blows of her enemies by any means necessary.

Agni realized one major weakness of the Mana Reading technique. In theory, if one could evade any attack they could win every battle. Unfortunately the ability required so much focus that doing anything other than staying on the evasive was impossible. Furthermore, in order to sustain a sphere of influence one needed to set aside a portion of their own mana. For Agni, in order to extend her Mana Reading to the maximum of five meters, it required over 90% of her mana.

Since her Mana Refinement wasn't exactly perfect, this was the most mana she could devote to the task. Even this was something she could only sustain for less than a minute at a time. She wouldn't be able to use any other magic during this time.

Train and train and train -- it was all that was required. During this process Agni learned several interesting things, the first is that when magic was faced with other magical particles one set would cancel out the other. In her current case, unless she infused her own mana particles with willpower to sustain impact, she would lose them altogether.

Something else Agni realized was related to Oliver's speech about infusing intent into mana. She began to imagine the mana particles to have slightly adhesive quality. As she did so she could "feel" the mana particles clinging to whatever entered her area of influence. Agni tried various methods for sensory using this method and ultimately she decided on one that she named the 'nerve' method.

She infused her particles with the intent to cause a tingling sensation when they were disturbed. It was akin to having a second set of exterior nerves which caused her a slight sense of discomfort. She could freely fine tune this as she desired which in turn caused her to become more adept at evading. After all, who moves towards discomforting things?

Soon the mana attacks grew bigger and more heavy. Agni was struck with an extending attack of some sort several times, no doubt courtesy of Vivian. The force of the blow was enough to bring her to her knees and dry heave, though it didn't hurt it was unpleasant in and of itself.

She would often feel the strangest sensations as attacks came from impossible angles -- overhead, aimed at the nape of her neck and sometimes even from below. Agni imagined this was something that Oliver might have been capable of.

By the end of the six hour training session Agni was beginning to grow fatigued. An adventurer's body was a truly remarkable thing. Agni could normally fight for hours on end without ill effects. Now, her body was covered in sweat and she found it increasingly difficult to lift her limbs. She hadn't been so wiped out since Bracha's intense all-day training regimen.

Agni quickly came to realize the costs of using Mana Reading in a prolonged manner. The technique was mentally draining as well as physically draining. In fact, the larger Agni made her sphere of influence, the harder it became to sustain. The sensation was like sinking into the depths of water, pressure felt applied from all sides.

The trainers forced her to move constantly, to react to any threats. In her mind's eyes she was forced to keep track of the positions of others as well as incoming attacks of increasing ferocity. At some point she lost track of time and relied on her body to move on its own, it was all she could do. She had no time to think or plan -- only evade attacks, sometimes by just a hair's breadth.

Just when she thought that her body might give out -- the attacks stopped and Agni felt a pair of hands lifting the blindfold from her face.

"Today's training is complete." Vivian said as she moved to the next person and removed their blindfold as well. Once everything was said and done she and Oliver both stood before the trainees. Oliver's arms were folded while Vivian glanced from face to face.

"Each of you here did well. For the most part you all have developed sufficient skill in Mana Reading. Get some rest. We leave at first light tomorrow morning. Report to the armory then so that we can properly outfit everyone. And remember, don't be late." Vivian said as she nodded at each of the adventurers in turn.

Oliver simply stood next to the kitsune with a smirk on his face as he looked at the group before him.

"Well done. I expected half of you to fail, honestly." Oliver said, yet he seemed strangely proud.

"At this point you should have a rather good idea of how to use Mana Reading. It will come in handy tomorrow. I don't have anything else to add, the Doyenne has said it all."

The group of adventurers didn't speak as they were dismissed, in fact they all looked thoroughly harassed. Shula looked ready to pass out altogether and helped herself to the comfort of Agni's back.

Each of them were more than happy to make their way back to their respective rooms for some much deserved rest. It wasn't until Agni, Katrin and Shula reached the doorway of their sleeping quarters that Dealla spoke up.

"Agni. If possible, there's something I'd like your help with." The dragon-kin said as she looked upon the succubus. Even with the hopeful gaze in her eyes Agni couldn't help but feel somewhat intimidated as the diamond-like shape of a dragon's pupils focused upon her.