Chapter 7 - Death Mage’s homework

Reaper reached for the low quality (LQ) death crystal hesitantly, even after absorbing a fair amount of the energy he still felt a little afraid and repulsed by it. First, came the usual drop in his vitality, followed by an intense feeling of sorrow, but instead of ignoring it, he decided to experience and try to understand it as his instructor advised. His initial response was to feel sad and push it away, but he dove into it.

The feeling was much more complicated than he thought, the sorrow was only the external cover, it made Reaper remember all the things he couldn’t do, all of his regrets, everything he wasn’t allowed but had desired anyway. The two recent experiences came back to his mind, the wolf wanted to run freely in the fields and eat so much delicious meat, the water Mage had a strong desire of sitting on the ice throne, of watching his family grow powerful.

Reaper opened his eyes and looked at the black crystal in his hand, he didn’t felt the discomfort anymore, but he was still doubtful and reached for another to confirm. After touching a couple of other crystals, his expression changed to a pleasant surprise and even a hint of pride could be seen. The change didn’t escape his instructor.

“Congratulations young Master! You finally started to connect with your element…”

Reaper continued to stare at the crystals, but he couldn’t help but notice the sadness hidden in the instructor's voice.

“It’s time for us to move on with your training… I’m gonna report to her Grace and make a request to enter the graveyard…”

“What…?”

.........

Alice reached for the strong feeling of protection inside her heart, but stopped once she felt the Bubble forming and allowed it to drain the rest of the needed resources from her body. It grew around her, forming the familiar bluish layer of protection. After using the innate spell five times, she still didn’t felt tired, which made her feel pleased and earned many compliments from her instructor.

“You can keep training and improving it by yourself… But don’t be pressured, you’re moving faster than the other Mages… Now, we should move on to study other spells, how about going for something useful and fun?”

Alice stared curiously at the instructor, he was usually very serious but now he wants to teach her something to have fun?

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a common spell, most bubble Mages start learning from it… For now, it’s only useful to carry things around or to have some fun, but with the training, you might improve it to combat…”

She already guessed what spell he was talking about, but she listened carefully nonetheless.

“The Bubble Floating is one of the most useful and most important bubble spells. Because it’s connected with the feeling of freedom, it’s one of the easiest spells to grasp… Although the casting is different for every Mage, most describe it as moving bubble energy to the mouth and reaching for the feelings of freedom while forming a bubble… The spell has many levels, but forming the bubble is the first one.”

Alice started to ponder on it, she knew how to form bubbles underwater, but not without, either way, she decided to give it a try. First, she used her spiritual energy to extract a small amount of bubble energy from her necklace and move it into her mouth. Reaching for the feeling of freedom was something easy for her, as soon as the energy entered her mouth, she felt it inflating. Alice opened her mouth instinctively before letting a bubble out. Under their surprise gazes, the bubble that was bigger than her head, slowly descended until landed on the ground. A normal bubble would disappear when touching something, but this bubble was reinforced with bubble energy and thus stronger.

She bent down and picked it up before analyzing the soft yet resilient bubble. Strangely, Alice felt a strong connection with the bubble, she could clearly understand its characteristics, how much it would last and take before exploding. After fiddling with it, she put it down and sat on it, her instructor eyes almost bulged, earning a giggle from her.

“Ahen… Ahen… I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting your first try to be so successful, but I guess it makes sense since your innate spell is so strong… You should train to make different bubbles, using less energy, trying to make them smaller, stronger and even weaker… Once you can control its composition we can move on to…”

.........

Reaper and Shadow exited the boat before moving forward hesitantly, he even looked back at his instructor a couple of times to get confirmation. This region of the city didn’t have many people living near it, even for commoners it was very uncomfortable to live close to a graveyard. Reaper placed Shadow on the ground but reminded it to stay close, the pet danced around him and checked the surroundings but didn’t stray far. He had brought the shadowcat against his instructor’s advice because he didn’t want to stay in this kind of place alone.

The graveyard wasn’t what he expected, just thousands of soil patches disorderly positioned with a few gravestones here and there. Since the dead water Mages would be thrown into the sea, only commoners and Merchants made use of the graveyard. Even though the nobles didn’t care about the commoners’ problems, they couldn’t deny them a proper burial, otherwise, they would risk creating a death energy outbreak.

“Shadow, don’t wander off, I don’t like this place…”

Reaper was trying to convince himself, but the energy around the graveyard actually attract him, making the death energy connection inside him excited. In his defense, he was indeed afraid, but not from the gloomy atmosphere, he was afraid of enjoying the visit.

Most of the graves only held corpses in decomposition, but many souls refused or were unable to return to the cycle of life, keeping with them some amount of death energy, which was what attracted Reaper. Fortunately, he could only vaguely feel their form and anguish, if he could see it, he would regret coming here. Even so, Reaper repressed the strong desire of absorbing the energy, he didn’t want to desecrate the souls.

Although they didn’t have a lot of information about the progress of a death Mage, the information gathered by the Duchess’s attendants, pointed to some basic steps. The first was establishing a good connection with the element, which was the same for every element, but a little more complicated for death because it opposed the vitality from a living body. The second step was comprehending the soul and death connection better, which could only be achieved by experience. Fortunately, the Duchess didn’t force Reaper to watch dozens of deaths and tried to send him to a graveyard first.

Reaper was relieved that he only had to observe and try to feel the souls, he could only shiver at thought of having to go through the graves and corpses. Even so, he was still trying to avoid getting close to the unrested souls, he wasn’t ready for it. Unfortunately, after walking around for some time, the words of his instructor appeared in his mind. If he didn’t want to come back many more times, he would have to try it seriously.

After reluctantly accepting the task, he decided to start with weaker souls, somehow he could differentiate them. He move towards one he could barely feel, it was strange he couldn’t see it but he knew of its presence. Reaper swallow dry, closed his eyes and reached for the soul. First, he felt an urge to absorb the death energy on it, but he pushed it to the side and focused on trying to feel it. The usual sorrow poured into his heart before revealing the regret and longing emotions. He understood it and even sympathized with the soul, after dying all the possibilities of life were cut, who wouldn’t feel regret?

Then, came an awful feeling of drowning, if it wasn’t for Shadow passing through his legs, Reaper would have released the soul because of the fear of drowning. The water Mages wouldn’t understand how others felt about living surrounded by water at all times. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop at only fearing, many commoners would die from drowning in the Water Capital, which was probably the case of this soul.

Reaper couldn’t help but try to calm the soul, emanating feelings of comfort and calmness, but the feeling of drowning continued, whomever died couldn’t be saved anymore. Instinctively, he reacted by trying to silence and suppress the soul, which lowered the sensation greatly. The difference between the soul, the strong feelings and the death energy was finally clear to him. Without noticing, he smiled proudly while petting Shadow.

“I understand now Shadow… Maybe I can even help the soul to rest…”

He reached for the soul again and carefully tried to absorb only the death energy. Unfortunately, when he was done the soul flickered before forming another layer of death energy around it, the soul looked weaker now, but still remained. Reaper guessed that the strong emotions were keeping the soul from moving on, when he absorbed the energy the emotions seemed to lessen but so did the soul and he didn’t think it was something good, if he kept going he might destroy it.

Reaper moved around looking for other weak souls to explore, after a couple of tries, he could even absorb a part of the energy without weakening the soul, but he was helpless in helping them move on. He could keep doing it indefinitely, even though he had to spend some energy to analyze the soul, the absorbed death energy was more than enough to replenish his spiritual energy, he even felt quite energetic. Reaper kept going through the weak souls until Shadow started to complain, probably of hunger, and he realized it was almost time for dusk. He bowed respectfully to the graves and promised to come back later to try freeing them, before running out of the graveyard.

However, before he left, Reaper felt a strong attraction to simple looking unmarked grave, the soul lingering around it was only a little stronger than the previous souls, so he decided to check it. When he passed through the usual external feelings, he was assaulted by a lot of emotions, but also a sense of familiarity. He couldn’t comprehend it, so instead of silencing it, he tried to feel it even deeper. After exploring many souls, Reaper’s abilities had grown to another level. He started to hear voices and experience memories, dozens of images appearing in his mind at the same time. A strong pain assaulted his head and he was about to push the soul away when he saw his mother’s face in memory. Then, the memory changed to a baby of black eyes and hair.