Chapter 31: Constructs and monsters

"Arcana constructs?"

Looking up at the middle-aged man, Fen repeated a part of his last sentence while forming it into a clear question.

"Yeah, and from your reaction, I can see that you never heard about it before. That's good."

Suddenly, Mark stopped. As he was only following his teacher, Fen copied his action, puzzled about the abrupt change of their pace. Then, Mark suddenly turned up, clutched the young man's shoulders and pulled them tightly together while starting down Fen's face.

"Under no circumstances, no matter what happens, you are never allowed to tell that to anyone. Do you understand?"

Sensing the dangerous aura coming off from his master, Fen could only nod his head in response.

"Listen, it's not some kind of teen's love secret, that will break my heart if you share. We are speaking about real, confidential information here. While other archarities have their own means of approaching their topic - I will nail this point again - even if you are dying and that could save your life, never do explain, hint or overall say a single word about constructs to anyone from the church!"

Unable to move even an inch, under the pressure of the suddenly erupting Mark's aura, Fen could only keep nodding his head. At the same time, despite how strange and terrifying that moment was, the young man just couldn't help but get curious! What's more, with the starting question about Stiel mentioning the topic, what would be the problem in telling about those… constructs? To Kaisha? What would be the problem if she would learn about it either way?

"I will take it as a yes."

Finally letting go of the young man, Mark stepped a few paces back before looking around. Only after ascertaining that there was no soul present in the part of the road where the two of them were standing, did he start moving again.

"First thing first, I won't teach you how to create constructs. Not yet. But I need you to understand what those constructs are in the first place."

Despite how tense and strange Mark's introduction to the topic was, his words clearly indicated that Fen could finally learn something new about this world! Although the remark about not teaching him anything but the theory was a bit of a disappointment, Fen wasn't stupid enough to miss the point hidden behind those words. After all, even if the time when he would be taught about it has yet to come, it still meant that he would learn it in the future!

"While I will have to simplify to the point where anyone knowing the full extent of the reality would call my words a lie, arcanists can either focus on improving their own control, finding new ways to facilitate their talent or use constructs to increase their capabilities. While the first choice means that as creative as you can get, you will always be limited by your talent, constructs allow you to lift that restriction."

Slowing down his pace, Mark looked around the road, before leaning down and picking up a small stone from the side of the tract.

"Look."

Picking up his tempo right away, Mark closed his eyes for a moment. At the same time, his hand holding the stone started to shine in red, indicating that he was using his fire to achieve something. Soon, everything returned to normal, with the middle-aged man passing the stone he just picked to Fen.

"Throw it."

Curious about the entire thing, Fen didn't hesitate to fulfil Mark's orders even for a moment. Taking a quick swing with his hand, the young man sent the stone flying.

BOOM!

The moment the pebble hit the stones of the road, it instantly turned into a small ball of fire. Scorching the surface of the road, the flames vanished as quickly as they appeared, leaving just the smell of a burned mud behind.

"That's arcanist's construct. To put it in simple words, you infuse a certain intent and enough of your fires to power it, and upon the activation, a phenomenon will appear. But while it looks easy when I'm the one doing it… Your control over your talent has to be impeccable for you to even attempt creating the basic type of construct. From its intention, through how much of your energy can certain materials handle before rupturing and releasing it all at once, how should the construct be activated, at what pace should the energy be released… Those are just the fundamental questions you will have to be able to answer before attempting to create a first construct on your own."

Picking up the pace that Mark slowed while he was busying himself with the pebble, the two men quickly reached the line of the trees.

"But if you are not going to teach me how to make them, what's the point of explaining it all to me in advance?"

This was one point that puzzled Fen the most. According to how everyone behaved around him, how all the people that were supposed to teach him, continued to restrict him from learning anything before his enrolment, Fen could tell how important it was to learn everything step by step. Yet, Mark's action of explaining the basic idea of constructs now was nothing less but a gross break of his character consistency! Unless there was some kind of big reason behind it, then their current talk would have been even more confusing than it already was!

"Because you need to understand what monsters are. Some of them, are born naturally out of an element. Just like you said, they are mostly harmless, as the chances of natural monster ever achieving a level of power that would make it dangerous, are extremely low."

From the way in which Mark started his explanation, Fen could already tell how would he end it. Since both, the topic of monsters and constructs were connected, then guessing how wasn't that much of a challenge.

"Do you want to say that monsters that are not born naturally, are nothing more than constructs?"

As obvious as this conclusion was, Fen couldn't help but doubt it was true. If that were to be the case, then just where would all those monsters come from? With how even the forest back near his home village was full of them, wouldn't that have to mean that there was some kind of extremely powerful group of arcanists, spending their entire lives at creating more and more monsters?

But what would be a reason for such behaviour? How would they benefit from doing so?

"Not exactly. You see, even if a natural-born monster reaches a level of power where he can do any harm to normal person, or in other words, grade seventh, it has to develop its own consciousness first. And as stupid as they might be before reaching grade sixth or even fifth, they are still smart enough to avoid attracting the attention of humans, as that would result in a punitive expedition aimed at eradicating them."

Suddenly stopping in his tracks, Mark moved a bit to the side, taking a long, sharp look at the forest.

"Unnatural monsters, on the other hand, are created from the failed constructs. When the intent of the construct is not strong enough to rein its power, or even when an arcanist simply fails to properly create a construct due to various reasons, said intent does not completely vanish."

Unable to fully understand Mark's words, Fen stared at his face, looking for his answers in his teacher's expression. And it was plainly obvious, that as he spoke about this topic, there was a huge hint of sadness lingering at the bottom of his eyes.

"While it's still not discovered completely how, but those failed constructs will give birth to the real, unnatural monsters. Given how they are born from the flawed intent, their power is not only supplemented by the energy supplied by the construct creator but what's even worse…"

Seeing his master taking a break from explaining, initially Fen thought that Mark just wanted to increase the tension of his explanation as to nail the point even further. Only when he realised how regret-filled this middle-aged man words were, did the young arcanist apprentice realised that this topic touched Mark on a personal level. This pause of his was nothing else but an attempt to cope with his own memories!

"Those monsters will have this relentless desire, to return to their creator. But they are too stupid to differentiate between humans. So once you see a monster, unless it's controlled by someone, you can be fucking sure it will ignore its entire self just to get its hands on your blood!"