(What the hell happened to this young man?)
Carla asked this question to herself as she looked at Nick, realizing that his appearance had changed significantly since she last saw him. His hair was no longer black but completely white, his skin was a much lighter brown than before, he was about four inches taller and the most startling change was his eyes. Before, they were a dark brown hue but now his irises were pitch black with two dull red rings surrounding his pupil; Nick's gaze had become piercing and radiated a feeling of complete indifference.
Nick noticed the strange looks that he was getting from Carla and Alicia and asked:
"Ummm, can I go back to the academy now?"
Both women stopped staring when they heard Nick speak and Carla stepped forward, saying:
"You'll have to take a shower first before I can bring you to the academy, you smell of blood and filth."
Before Carla could walk up to Nick, however, Alicia acted:
(Summons Art: Long Nose Bear)
Suddenly, a magic beast that looked like a bear with a long snout who stood over ten feet tall appeared in front of Nick. Carla angrily shouted at Alicia:
"What the hell are you doing?"
Alicia replied:
"Let's just observe, his change is not normal."
The magic beast slammed down its paw at Nick and Nick frowned intensely at which point a thick aura radiated from him filled with a bloody malice that caused the bear to stop its attack out of fear but it was too late to avoid the consequences of its actions. Nick flicked his right index finger and cast his spell:
(Sever.)
The magic beast was cut in two, horizontally, at its chest region, the upper half falling to the ground while the lower half stood in place erupting a fountain of blood which happened to pour all over Nick. Only after five seconds passed did the lower half fall to the ground, its organs spilling out.
Carla and Alicia raised their eyebrows in surprise at Nick's display. The long nose bear was a basic rank 2 strength path magic beast with very thick skin and strong defensive capabilities but Nick had just cut it in half with only a flick of his finger. Alicia looked on with suspicion:
(What spell did he just use? The effect would suggest that it was either sword or blade magic but it doesn't feel like either of those two.")
As Alicia was about to make another move, Nick looked at her with killing intent and folded his hands into one another. Feeling Nick's clear malice towards Alicia, Carla shouted:
"Both of you, stop this foolishness before I get mad."
Nick stopped what he was about to do, after all, Carla was still far more powerful than him. He clicked his tongue at Alicia and walked towards the Mansion to go and take a shower. Carla looked at his receding figure and commented:
"That boy smells like death and he now has even become a rank 2 Apprentice Magician. I did not expect him to benefit much from his exploration, after all, he should have spent most of his time avoiding the magic beasts that are inside the realm but I guess I was wrong. That spell that he used...rumor has it that he sometimes uses magic of an unknown path. It looks like he has had some progress on that path."
Carla looked at Alicia and reprimanded:
"Stop attacking that junior without cause, if you do it again, I will take issue. It looked like he was going to cast that strange blade path spell on you. Do you think that you could have come out of the confrontation unscathed?"
Alicia scoffed:
"I was only playing with him a little bit and he took things so seriously. As for that blade path spell, never in a million years would I be hurt by an attack of that quality. Did you see the spell that he used against the long nose bear, that was definitely not blade path but it had extremely high killing potential for its rank?"
Alicia nodded.
"The young man is certainly full of surprises."
.........
Nick had gone to Alicia's room where he was now taking a shower; he had a lot of grime and blood to wash off so his shower took an hour before he felt comfortable and clean. As soon as he was done showering, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, taking a look at himself.
(I've really changed, the hair on my head is now white for some reason and what's with my eyes...scary.)
(Slade, when that bear attacked me, did you notice the aura that I released. I didn't imagine that right?)
Slade spoke:
[No, you didn't imagine it. That aura was palpable and it is a kind of quality that I've witnessed in very ferocious magic beasts and some profoundly strong Magicians. I have a suspicion as to its origin on you but I will need more information to confirm. Could you get access to a magical imaging device?]
(What's that?)
[Its a device that can observe magical laws not visible on objects or the body.]
(I can probably get access to one at the academy's magical anatomy office.)
[Good, do so as soon as you get to the academy.]
Nick put on a robe that was in the room and called Carla and spoke as soon as she picked up the call.
"I'm ready to leave, where should I meet you?"
"Come out front, I'm already waiting in the car."
Nick hung up the phone and made his way to the outside of the mansion. He approached Carla's town car and proceeded to go inside.
...........
Vaughn Jenner looked at the scene through his office's window as Nick entered the town car and asked Alicia who was sitting beside of him:
"You're saying that we should recruit that young man, is that correct?"
Alicia nodded in affirmation:
"Yes uncle, I've tested him myself and he seems to have extraordinary potential. He has only become a rank 2 Apprentice Magician but managed to kill my long nose bear so easily. He is certainly worthy of our family to use. The only problem is that he attends Richter Order Academy which we have a minor dispute with."
Vaughn clarified:
"I am already working to resolve that with the help of Carla I will only officially recruit him once he is in his third year at the academy, those are the unwritten rules so we'll just observe him for now."
..........
Nick sat across from Carla as they were driven back to Richter Order Academy. She sighed and said to Nick:
"You know, you could have asked for a new set of clothes instead of just wearing that robe."
Nick shrugged his shoulders, saying:
"I don't care what I wear, so long as it suits my purposes."
Carla sighed again and said:
"Other people will think you are crazy for walking around in a bath robe."
Nick replied coldly:
"I don't care what other people think."
Carla remained silent for a while before continuing to speak:
"Your next school year doesn't begin until about three weeks from now, what are your plans mister rank 2 Magician?"
Nick didn't want to say too much so he replied:
"I'm mostly going to work on completing our contract and study. That's all."
"...Right."
Inside of the car became silent as Nick and Carla stopped speaking. Carla thought:
(This Nick has become more difficult to talk to and his tone and body language has become even more distant and cold. The changes involved with his increase in rank are definitely not simple but he is not giving me a chance to ask...sigh, I should just let it go for now.)
Nick and Carla therefore spent the rest of the two hour ride in silence and Nick got out of the car as soon as it approached the academy's gate. Carla said to him:
"I suppose this is farewell for a while, I still have business outside of the academy so I won't be going in. You did well in this tournament and helped my faction gain a fair amount of benefits so you have my gratitude."
Nick nodded his head and Carla told her driver to head to their next destination. Nick walked through the gate at which point his exit permission card emerged from the back of his right hand which it had moved to when Nick's palm had developed the mark representing his cursed bloodline. It turned into a physical object again and Nick quickly handed it over to the guard stationed at the guard booth.
Nick walked away from the entrance to the academy already knowing where he was heading to next.
(Next stop, the magic anatomy office.)
Nick took only fifteen minutes to walk to the academy's anatomy office and when he entered the building he saw only a quiet lobby with hardly any visitors. The receptionist stationed in the lobby sat at her desk looking at documents when Nick walked up to her and asked:
"Excuse me miss, is it possible that I can use a magic imaging device?"
Without looking up, the receptionist asked:
"For what purpose?"
Nick replied:
"I need to take a look at possible laws that have been carved onto my body."
The receptionist slowly looked up while speaking:
"Well, I suppose that..."
She paused for a few seconds after taking a look at the brown complexioned young man wearing a bath robe with a head full of white hair and strange looking eyes that stood in front of her and then continued:
"...we can have someone do a full body scan but only the first time is free. The next time that you make such a request you will have to pay a fee."
Nick replied while handing over his student ID:
"That won't be a problem."
The receptionist received the ID card and picked up her office phone to make a call; she spent the next minute talking to someone over the phone and when she was done, she returned to Nick his ID card and said:
"A physician will see you on the 3rd floor, room 2."
Nick nodded and took the elevator to find his way to room 2 of the 3rd floor. When Nick got there, a young man that looked to be in his late twenties said flatly:
"Nick Capitol, right? Place your phone on the desk and lie down on the imaging machine that is behind the glass wall."
Nick looked around the room, seeing a glass wall that separated the area with the computers that controlled the imaging machine and the actual imaging machine.
(That imaging machine looks like a hospital's MRI machine.)
Nick did as the physician instructed, placing his phone on the desk with the computers and walking through a door that was cut into the glass wall to lie down on the bed like portion of the magic imaging machine. Soon, that portion of the machine drew Nick into the scanning apparatus and after five minutes of knocking noises, the scan was complete. Nick quickly left the machine and went to the physician who said:
"The imaging machine scanned all over your body including doing a kind of x-ray to see your bones and this is what appeared. I'm very impressed, do you specialize in body enhancement?"
Nick happened to know what body enhancement was and it involved a Magician carving magical laws into their body to produce an effect that enhanced their body's natural characteristics indefinitely. Body enhancement was an entire field on its own just like spell making but Nick knew next to nothing about the former so he had no idea what the physician was talking about.
"Why would you think that?"
The physician had a weird look on his face as he showed Nick the scans.
"Aren't these laws that have been carved onto your bones. How did you manage to carve them onto so many at your age?"
Nick looked at the scan and realized that the physician wasn't lying. The scan revealed that most of his bones from his skull to his feet had laws sparsely carved into them.
(What the hell, how did that happen?)
..............
Nick returned to his dorm room at about 6 pm thinking about nothing except the results of his full body scan.
"Where did the laws carved into my bones come from?"
Nick took out copies of his scan from his backpack and examined them carefully.
"These are definitely laws of the rule path drawn in Valteese. They are drawn on most of my large bones and they seem closely related."
Slade commented at this moment:
[They are definitely related and my intuition tells me that they are the source of the aura that you released when you killed that enslaved bear like magic beast.]
"Okay, but how did I acquire them?"
[Guess.]
"Hmmm...could it be because of my spell, Growth?"
[Exactly. Take a closer look at the laws and tell me what you can understand from them. I have no attainment in rule magic so you'll have to do it on your own.]
"Okay."
Nick spent the next five hours reviewing and translating the laws that he could read from the scan even though he was tired since he was excited to learn more about what he was capable of. Soon, he came up with a basic summary of his translations and assessed it.
"Most of the laws are related and they are definitely mostly of the rule path but they seem to be incomplete as a whole. Now, what can be coherently made out involves phrases and words like: 'Devour to grow.', 'Devour' and 'Growth'."
"Since becoming rank 2, the golden figure within my mindscape has developed a law etched into its forehead that reads: 'devour' and the laws representing 'growth' must have something to do with my spell, Growth."
"What do you think Slade."
Slade remained quiet for a while and then answered:
"Give me a moment, kid, I will use one of my wisdom path methods to deduce a possibility."
Slade became completely quiet for the next ten minutes while Nick waited for a response. He did not like the idea of Slade using his 'methods' but he needed answers.
Slade soon spoke:
[I've deduced that your spell, Growth, actually mimics food path and not wisdom path like I had wrongly guessed before.]
(Food path? What do you know about it?)
[I know that it involves a Magician consuming laws to alter them, destroy them or absorb them, making the laws their own. I had thought that Growth had a wisdom path effect that had given you the memories of the crane magic beast that you killed before but actually, you had probably gotten its memories and experiences from the various laws that you consumed and absorbed when you ate its brain and other internal organs, making them partly your own. Look at the scans again, there should be some laws that you cannot interpret.]
Nick looked at the scans again, affirming Slade's conclusion:
"You're right. there are laws other than those of rule path on this scan."
[Exactly. The rule path laws carved into your bones are probably from the effects of Growth after you ate those curse path magic beasts, after all, curse path is a branch of rule path so their laws are fundamentally the same. As for how the laws ended up manifesting a bloody aura, your guess is as good as mine. Can you summon the aura at will?]
"No, I've already tried."
[Then forget about it, the real benefit of those laws is that the more you have that are related to your affinities, the stronger your magic and body will become so just find a way to keep using your spell.]
"Yeah, I'll try to find opportunities in the future."
Nick decided that he would mostly focus on working on his spell, Copy, during the next few months so that he could complete his contract with the General Beast Store so he would not be exploring more realms any time soon. Nick got up from his desk and crawled into bed, getting ready to go to sleep.
"I'm only going to get stronger from here on out. I can't wait."