Nazure

"Oh man, even worse. Nazure's a common word, popularized by a children's three-part series written by Nazure Natten. You should check it out, it's pretty good. But it's a secret place in the sky that all sorts of creatures live on, but all of these creatures have one thing in common, they have all awakened at least one of their affinities. The main character is this child that has a mother who gets to ascend but while she's ascending, the child hangs onto her and is accidentally brought up too.

Usually, people who haven't awakened their affinity aren't allowed but since he came accidentally and was still young, he was forgiven but given only two options, forget everything and go back down, or remember but stay up there forever.

He was given two weeks to choose and the books are all about the two weeks filled with new people, wonders, and journeys. And Fran, who's this old man that hates him for accidentally making it there. Everyone expects him to stay but he grows homesick and feels like he cheated to go someplace others have fought and killed so desperately for and chooses to go home, forgetting it all for fear that his yearning would come back to haunt him. He promised to arrive after he had earned his own right to be there.

Anyway, the place is famous for creating immensely strong people who know nothing about common knowledge because all their parents are strong but don't tell them about the mid world. That's you."

"Oh. Thank you."

"Most take it jokingly. But it's usually just to comment on their lack of common sense."

"Did the boy ever go back?"

"The author was once asked that, all he did was smile. Many people think he is the boy and after going back, his memories are restored but that's widely accepted as a bunch of baloney."

"Huh."

"Oh, right! Teleporters. Before, teleporters were two complexes, symmetrical circles that must have nothing in between except air. But to do that, people either had to build them close or terraform the surroundings, both of which were inconvenient. People tried digging everything between the circles or building the circles on the tops of mountains, but it was too much effort.

So a theorist, Proctus Poler, created a new set that included a really long pole with an orb at the top that receives and transmits the matter from one circle to another, overcoming the obstacle of items. And that's why we have a bunch of abandoned tunnels and incomplete circles on mountains that were never updated. The new set completely rendered them useless.

He became so rich from selling the plans and helping build them that he decided to make the teleporters free to be better liked. A great man.

But the signal would have to be immensely strong to travel all that distance."

"No, we can strengthen the energy at the satellite."

"Oh, that works far better. And in the exosphere, the ozone won't protect the sun's rays. If we change it up a little, it could absorb a lot more energy."

Zeeth and Wistiga continued talking about specifics of the satellite as the Demons in Grinkhald continued with their plans.

Yem floated in the air with Nrubenchal inside a sizable circle of sand, flattened and smoothed, large leaves covering them. The sun beamed harshly onto the leaves yet neither of them cared. A single movement from her arm generated shockwaves, causing the sand beneath them to move like a rock thrown into a puddle, pushing sand in a perfect ring around them.

Their legs were intertwined into one pair of sturdy, brown logs. But they heaved up and down like they were breathing, revealing water between the solid bark.

Tatio and Utha floated nearby in the same, but a smaller circle. Their demons were mixing together as well, intertwining the hard, black exoskeleton with the flexible, green globs. They worked in the opposite fashion, the globs meshed the exoskeleton together from the outside, covering it like honey.

Karkov and the parrot stared at them from his castle, skulls, and bones surrounding him. The parrot sat on his shoulder and continued eating the flesh off an arm, squawking, "when will my partner come."

Karkov heard about how easily Yem killed Yemisia for Nru. How easily would this parrot kill him for its long-desired partner?

But in the meantime, he kept practicing his magic, turning various things into snakes. He made it a habit of practicing his skills on anything the parrot wouldn't eat, but by the time they reached him, many were already dead or on the verge of it.

So through time, he kept trying and slowly changed his skill so he could turn inanimate objects like dead animals or trees into snakes. Lately, he began noticing his skills causing changes in rocks and metals.

This skill that he learned to kill others was beginning to really take shape. He had dreams of entire armies of invincible snakes made from anything he could see.

Perhaps.

The next morning, Zeeth went to the medical ward to check on Ed. Before he left, he slipped Pinky out so it could heal him the entire night and along with Doctress' healing, he was sure Ed was fine.

He walked past a door he hadn't noticed before labeled, "staff only". Black saw cabinets full of first aid kits, herbs, medical equipment, completed remedies, and an assortment of products he had never seen before.

"Hey, Ed. How are you feeling?"

"Still hurts. My back feels like my skin is peeling off."

"Really?" He genuinely asked, "get better soon. Hey, have you noticed anyone in class acts differently?"

It's a long shot but it was worth it.

"What do you mean?"

"Has anyone in the past few days changed in behavior or done anything weird? Even something small."

"Um… no, not really. Why?"

"Meh, no reason. Just wanted to know if they also knew about the machine." It was a bad lie but he couldn't think of anything else.

"I doubt it."

"Yeah."

Zeeth trotted towards the class but something was different about everyone. While some stared at him since he was new and was in a special class, never had so many stared and whispered at once. He focused on one girl who just turned around, saw him, widened her eyes, and nudged another friend. He heard her whispering, "you see the new kid?"

"Where?"

"The ugly one with the belly."

"Oh, yeah."

"I heard he got a 0% on the talent test on the highest setting, which has never been done before."

"Oh, great Nazure. Is that bad?"

"Yes, it's horrible. It means he can't ever awaken a talent."

"How sad. Wait, how do you know?"

"Galv said he read it from a 'secret' letter that Professor Zafrakos told him to send to the headmistress. He just gave it to him folded in half, nothing else to cover it."

"Oh, wow. Really?"

"Why do you never believe me?"

"What? I believe you."

"Why do you always ask, 'really?'?"

"It's just a habit."

Their conversation told him everything he needed to know and began to detract into an argument so he stopped listening.

'What's wrong with Zafrakos?'

As he walked, he thought about the electricity slime he gained, slipping it into his palm. Blue lightning crackled around the slimes and his hands, causing flashbacks to the electric strikes. They were unpleasant memories so he slid the slimes away, trying to look on the bright side, that he had gained a rather considerable new ability. For the first time, he marveled at the intense journey he had gotten to this point. How lucky he was to take on slimes because he unintentionally gave himself the ability to copy any magic so far with a small twist of his own.

Luik the slime didn't have a skill, it just turned yellow and said, [unknown changes].

Pishku slammed his broom against the door hinge of a room that said, "DO NOT ENTER", knocking screws and torn metal apart. Inside was a large, blue gem glowing like the sun. five people sat around the gem, leaping at his loud entrance. He heard one of them yell, "release HeavyHitter!"

The floor opened and a large creature bounded out. It had four hands and four fingers on each hand pointing outwards, shaped like an "H". The fingers curled together, burning red, and began hunting him. Pishku carefully redirected the fists around him with the mop. When HeavyHitter stopped punching to breathe, he noticed dozens of slices across his arms and fist. Pishku was cutting his arm with the sword in the mop.

HeavyHitters skin dulled and bent the edges of the sword while heating it, giving his weapon a red and eerie look. He coated it with a layer of water, releasing steam from the entire blade. For some reason, the heating didn't end and steam simply kept coming out of it.

One of the five people yelled, "haw haw! Be Careful, you don't want to be punched by those fists! He has a God-given gift, anything his heated punches touch will never cool down! Until he wants it to!"

"God-given?"

"You can't beat him. One of those punches and you're toast."

Four ice chains whipped out of the scythe, locking each of his four hands. But the ice rapidly melted against the red skin, and with one tug, HeavyHitter ripped them all off. He then charged in and began bashing again, forcing Pish to carefully step back while using all his resources just to stop his dangerous fists from landing.

His scythe kept digging into his skin but the water was being evaporated before he could get it close and the sword was too damaged to help.

Annoyed, he dropped the staff, directing everyone's attention to it, and kicked it straight at his shin, banging out one leg and knocking Heavy over.

He reminded Pish a lot of Eddie so he knew the main points of weakness. His hands hit the floor like rocks, boiling and melting them as he bounced himself back up.

Using that time, Pish leaped over him, straight for the crystal.

"Protect the power source!" One person yelled.

Suddenly, HeavyHitter turned entirely red got on his hands, and used the force of all six limbs to charge at him in mid-air. Pish had to use a staff to keep the distance between them, knocking him into the wall and breaking the staff. He used water to block himself and hold the staff together but the damage was already done.

He tossed the broken staff with water around it frozen into a spike at the crystal, which HeavyHitter managed to graze and melt the ice, causing it to simply create a small splash.

"Fine. I didn't want to do this but you've forced me."

Pish took his cap off, staring daggers into Heavy. He said into it, "Storm."

The floor began trembling and the roars of a hundred people echoed throughout. Men and women with shaven heads dressed in normal clothing bore weapons and ferocity, terrifying the already scared henchmen and breaking down doors. Five managed to find Pish, three stormed at the gem while two went after Heavy.

Pish created an ice wall and said, "don't touch him. He's mine. Destroy the gem, that's their only power source."

"Nooo!! Not the gem!"

The five each sent metal spikes at it, splitting the gem in half and crushing it. But nothing happened.

Pish froze as the realization hit him. "That's not the power source."

"Whatever could you mean?"

"Stop the act."

"Well of course it's not the only power source! Could you imagine how stupid that would be? Why would we have only one gem in one place that anyone could break into? Anyone who does that is a moron."

Zeeth stepped into class, flicking his finger. A shiny little coin fell from the ceiling directly into his pocket. He held it in his hands, folding the eight needle-like legs into the coin.

Over the year, he worked long nights and many meditative sessions on the circles to complete the coin spider he always dreamed of. And this was the result. A normal Styr coin, the currency accepted all across the continent, disguised as a secret spider that can understand him and will come back to him by sending his mana as a string.

He had two and a third one in the works but creating them reminded him of the only thing he couldn't solve. The blue shield he got from the dwarves. The more he learned about circles, the more amazed he was at the shield's craftsmanship. But he couldn't figure out the missing piece and occasionally, he would give up, accepting that maybe the riddle was about something else.

Every month he would take a look at it with a new set of eyes and think that he was into some lead but it always ends in a dead-end. Learning about circles from the basic knowledge from the dwarves and his own practices just wasn't enough. It needed a true pro, maybe only the creator can solve it.

But the spider had one feature that he was especially proud of. In the center was a small bead that could take in light and display it from the other side, meaning it was a recording device fitted in a coin. He sent one out and hung it onto one of the twins to watch what they did.

'With one device and one night, I can watch two.'

He sat down in the wooden chair and Dan said, "today, we learn about circles. And since I don't know much, Mister Zafrakos is going to teach."

Zafrakos walked into the class.

"What?!" Everyone grumbled and moaned, expressing what Zeeth was thinking. Yet neither teacher seemed to care. Dan was wearing his usual grim expression, if not a little more annoyed than usual, and Zafrakos was smugly smiling.

"Welcome, annoying children, to hell!! And today, I'm your satan! Open the textbooks to page 232, and begin reading. We'll get started once you finish the chapter."

Everyone sighed, lazily dragging the textbooks over. The pages flipped rapidly to the right page and showed, "transformation circles".

"What? We were on chapter 2, why are we learning chapter 8 stuff?"

"Silence. There will be no back talk, I am your teacher."

'That's nonsensical. Why should being an educator affect his authority over us? He is here to teach us, not command us.'

He had a sudden flashback, he was a child in training, wielding a short knife. A much larger man with stubble yelled at him, "DO IT AGAIN!"

Zeeth ran at him, panting, swinging the knife. It almost hit the man's knee but at the last moment, he was lifted and tossed to the ground.

"AGAIN!"

He noticed how much pain he was in but kept going for fear. He was tossed, again and again, all in different ways. He noticed he was taking the landings easier, rolling and blocking to avoid more pain. But the man kept yelling and kept stopping him.