Chapter 347: Shortcuts

Chapter 347: Shortcuts

In the courtyard of the classroom, a spark of electricity crackled in the palm of Shailys hand. There! she rejoiced.

Nice. Good progress! The mana structure is still unstable, but the basics are there. I think you are ready to move on to the more intense training method I have devised if you want. I have to warn you, though, it is quite painful.

Shaily wiped the sweat off of her forehead with the back of her hand. She looked at Sofia, her unsteady gaze betraying her uncertainty. How much pain are we talking about? she asked, her voice wavering a little.The original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.

It is quite bad, since it involves a lot of stabbing, but probably not worse than some of the injuries you should have gotten with all the duels you've been doing. I don't even understand how you managed to get so many tokens already, Sofia told her, thinking back at the ranking scoreboards. Shaily was currently first with a good margin of thirty tokens over the second place. Saria was third, En fourth, Opal seventh, Erian twelfth, and Lola twenty-sixth among all the students. Of Sofias class of seven, which now included Topaz and Opal despite their obvious lack of summoning skills, only Topaz and Guerand did not make it to the top fifty. Sofia was quite happy with their performance and was currently in a good mood due to Erians return to her class, who had profusely apologized for his uncles behavior, despite Sofias insistence that she did not care.

M-Most students are in my level bracket, so it's easier to get a lot of tokens Shaily tried to justify herself. Seeing Sofias unconvinced expression, she added, I might be a bit addicted to dueling It's just so efficient at leveling skills; I have a hard time stopping as long as I don't run out of mana

Hmm. Training is good, but pace yourself a little, alright? You are starting to get some dark circles under your eyes; that is not a good look.

I-Ill try to get more sleep

Please do. Now, Shaily, are you up for the stabbing or not?

Shaily reeled back. Is that really necessary? she asked.

Sofia shrugged. It is not. But it will make learning the skill much easier, like learn in a few days instead of a few months easier.

That much?!

Yeah. How do you think I learned the summon sprite skill so fast? In terms of creativity, I am not bad, but I am far from a genius; for example, it took me like a full week to learn [Identify] from a scroll, but my friend Alith learned it in something like one day, just based on my description of the mana circuits and a few drawings in the sand.

Shaily hesitated for a few seconds. She clenched her fists. Alright, Ill do it, how does it work exactly?

Good, Sofia approved, then she pointed at the bone sculpture of Angels Bolts circuits and explained, It's very simple; I put that thing into your arm, where the mana is supposed to flow, and you use it as a guide to practice the spell.

In- Inside Inside?

Yes, inside. As I said, kind of painful, though Angels bolt is mostly inside the arm, so it's not too bad; the bones won't be piercing any major organs. And of course, I will summon a healer skeleton, so you don't bleed out. Are you up for it? We can start by a short session; we stop whenever you want, just tell me.

Shaily listened to Sofias explanation, then she frowned. She summoned a light sprite, looking down at her chest, and her frown deepened. She gulped. Major organs You- You said you did this for [Call Elemental sprite]?!

Sofia kept walking away, a spring in her steps, she hummed a lighthearted melody.

What a good day.

Days passed quickly in the academy, when she was not tutoring her students, Sofia spent most of her time either attending Astelias classes to learn the classless teleportation skill, or training VPPV. Teleportation without the help of the system was surprisingly hard, but after a month, Sofia had gotten enough of a grasp of it to randomly teleport nearby. Which was useless, but a decent start.

Her speed at converting her blood to light had kept going up until she found a good pace and hit a plateau, still, it was fast enough that by the end of her second month, she had gone from just above a thousand drops changed to light to being more than halfway done.

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] - Second step of the Light forging realm :

Your blood becomes light (76 524 / 126 441 drops converted)

At this pace she would finish the second step of Light forging before the end of her third month at Brighthall.

During the second month, she was only attacked by students for her tokens once, a group of five had prepared an ambush, which had miserably failed and resulted in a new collection of hands on Sofias entrance wall. None of the teachers had lost their tokens so far.

She held her second public class. A lot of new people came, bolstering Sofias salary quite a bit as well as her confidence as a public speaker. Neither the Empress nor the Deep creature had shown up this time, which Sofia had found strangely underwhelming. In fact, the Empress hadnt really shown any sign of life ever since the first public class, and without too much surprise, when Sofia had asked around, nobody except those who had been there for her first class had ever heard of the woman named Elizabeth Fraus.

At the end of the second month came time for the second event of the token competition. Thanks to Sofias reporting of the first events attack to the Headmaster, the second event had been changed to be something a bit more secure. First of all, the teachers would work in pairs, and they were also all given communication catalysts which they could break to signal an emergency and allow the higher-level academy officials to teleport directly to them.

For this second event, Sofia was taking care of the exact same group of students as the first time, along with Astelia who also had her own group of five students in her care. Together, they had to help their students clear the first half of a Dungeon before taking over and showing them how they handled the second half with stronger monsters.

Saint Tartaros had brought the entire group with him to the location of the Dungeon in a single teleportation spell, and this time, they had a level 360 Priest of Death in long white robes following them as an escort.

Tartaros closed his eyes and Sofia could feel waves of mana coming from the saint gently washing over her and spreading in every direction.

Opening his eyes, he addressed Sofia and Astelia, There was no one foolish enough to follow us. I will make sure no one can find this place. As long as you do not leave the dungeon, it should be safe. Do break the catalyst if anything goes wrong. Too many disturbances would be bad for the competition. May Strengths blessing be upon you all.

His speech over, Tartaros disappeared, and the priest of Death took their distance from the group, slowly turning invisible.

Sofia turned to Astelia, Lets do this!

Lets get our students plenty of tokens! the small Vampire cheered back.

[You have entered the dungeon : Forgotten Halls of Mezanthil - Lv. 50-250]