Born a Monster

329 229 – Apprentice

Plotline: Main

Type: Interaction/Social

“Where is my fire mana?” Bei Lala asked, emphasizing her point by smacking me on the back of my head with her fan.

“I have the conversion from Water to Wood complete, and will be restarting fire as soon as you are done striking me.”

She hit me again, aiming for an ear. I turned my head slightly, so the tip of her fan struck scalp instead.

“Ow!” I said, rubbing that ear.

She leaned back, looking satisfied. “It should have taken you fifteen minutes. Instead, it’s been what, a quarter of a candle?”

“About that long, honored superior.” I said. Cripes, the things they demanded... there was no way to do it safely. None.

“You should keep it as one flowing operation, not this multi-stage transformation you’re doing.” she said.

.....

“Keeping it in small steps keeps me safe, honored superior. And you absolutely don’t want the Water mana to come into direct contact with the Fire mana.”

“Don’t talk back to me! Just do what I command!” she barked.

“I try.” I said.

“You are NOT trying. You could do this, if only you focused!”

“Perhaps honored superior would care to perform this transformation with me, that I might see it done?” I asked.

Her lips paled, pressed to a thin line. “Bonus training it is, then. Stand over here next to this water barrel, Ping.”

I did so.

“Fires, daughters of the sun, look upon me and answer my call! It is I, Bei Lala, Incinerator, and your sister!” she began.

“Water, trapped in wooden barrel, hear me, answer my plea.” I said, “It is I” “whom you know, your brother.”

“Ignite the air and singe my enemy, burn the flesh from his bones. Flame Spear!”

“Suppress the flames, your preferred... Move Water! Water Shield!”

I hadn’t finished my incantation, and the uncontrolled water bolted for the sewer grate.

[Ability: Boil, Boil, activated.]

[You have been struck for twelve points of Fire damage. After ability activation, nine points have been taken. 22/80 health remain.]

At least the strike was hot enough to incinerate my clothing in a broad circle rather than ignite it, which had happened during my last training session. I splashed water on the smoking skin which had been growing loose around my belly.

Why do burning humans smell like bacon? The rumbling in my center shook the raw flesh, increasing the raw amount of pain.

“You see, Ping?” Focus. “Your magic should have easily bested mine, incantation or not. Now quit fiddling around and get to work!”

I’m supposed to say that the pay was enough for hay bales, but it wasn’t. Apprentice mages mopped up messes, cleaned glassware, polished and infused candles, and yes, did mundane mana transformation in bulk. At increased speed.

Given the risks of that, there should have been two or three of us for every mage. At one point, there might have been. I’d like to claim that was the reason they wanted me, but the truth was that my predecessor, Yishi Zhi, had turned her lungs into spiders and died a rather painful death. Her tale wasn’t even worth noting, by the mage’s reactions.

I had hoped, originally, that perhaps I might at least speak to Blacksoul Madonna, my wife and a devil from the Hells. Her fire magic was impressive, especially considering her age.

Or maybe the magic went by the forty years her soul had been around, rather than how long she’d inhabited her body. That... actually seemed likely.

The reason Incinerator Bei was relying upon me was the sheer volume of mana I could process. In the space of half a candle, I could move four points of Water mana into Nature (or Wood, as most of them called it), and then three from Wood into Fire. Naturally, they wanted me to shorten my time by a quarter, a goal they held as reasonable.

I wasn’t eager to reduce my safety margin, and it showed. Still, Yishi Zhi had only been going at half the pace I had been “asked” to perform at. The other starved and harried apprentices usually made the transformation of a single point of mana, or perhaps three (if they were practiced in both ends of the transformation), in the same time.

Remember how I said that magic ALWAYS tries to get away, to do things it wants to do? Repeating the same long, boring process, was a recipe for the magic getting loose. Add the food rationing on top of that, and you ended up with two or three mages per apprentice.

And the pay, because we were “learning valuable magical skills” was piddling. Not as bad as a rookie swordsman, but it was nothing to crow about. Not enough to afford the bale of hay I needed daily to meet nutritional minimums, in other words. And that was even if the prices of everything weren’t rising.

And, on some days, Incinerator Bei would Ignite (the spell, not the action) my bale of hay just to teach me a lesson. Honestly, too many lessons like that and... well, no, I still couldn’t actually eat her. And before you compare her to Kismet... hrm, okay I can see why you might.

The difference was that she believed her dominant female handbook. Women were always better than men, could do nothing wrong that men wouldn’t do worse, and of course anything she couldn’t do was because we males just weren’t pulling our own weight. Oddly even Tsi Ba, our female apprentice, talked about ways to kill her.

Just as an idle conversation, I don’t think any of us actually planned to kill her. Or, if either of the others truly desired it, their plans relied on luck, or on resources we only wished we had, or on her being a total dumbass.

And, whatever my other feelings about her were, her mind was razor sharp. Better than mine, and my Insight was rated at 4, above human average. When I’d first met her, I thought she suffered from the mage sickness.

I think I’ve mentioned that before. When a mage contains too much of magic within themselves, it affects how they feel. When they still flood in more magic, it begins affecting the mind as well. Beyond that... bad things began to happen.

But as I said, I think it was just a combination of her own prejudice, combined with unreasonable amounts of stress, and a willingness of her superiors to look the other way, as long as she could burn her fair share of enemy soldiers.

I just ... kinda wish she didn’t feel the need to burn ME.

Because I’m selfish like that, and as I mentioned, it hurt as much as having a fire lance thrust at your belly.

Coupled with the slower healing rate on most days, and my health was dwindling.

It wouldn’t do to get assaulted by Bei Lala twice in one day, though. So I got back to work.

Now, I know what some of you are wondering. Why not crunch some of that cultivation XP, and just buy faster mana conversion abilities? Well, for one thing, they were expensive.

For another, I didn’t want to actually develop as quickly as they thought I should. I might not have System Mathematics (a System module, not as useless as it sounds), but even I knew that with as many classes as I had, their planned progress was excessive and dangerous.

Not reckless; they had a plan, and it appeared to be turning me into a champion of magical support. That wasn’t entirely a bad thing, I just wanted to put some of my development points into other ability trees.

Oh, and yes, there was the minimum divisor posed by my Inherent Longevity, but I had long since learned to live with that. At any rate, I seemed almost capable of keeping up with my peers, which was no small feat.

And among such as my fellow three apprentices, the breadth-over-depth approach that so many classes mandated made me almost useful. If only they weren’t slowly starving us.

Gods! To think that others had endured that for over three months by then! Whatever wrongs I can say about the Daurian people, their Resolve and the skills built upon it were just damn impressive.

Spinning, spinning, spinning. Newly minted Nature mana, removing the impurities and augmenting those qualities that would assist in generating Fire mana. Freaking fire mana.

Oh, accept no substitutes in the arena of destruction. And it was nice to have when crossing a mountain above the snow line. And... okay, it was mana, which meant it had its uses. But still, there were reasons why Black Madonna had purchased a crossbow and begun training on it.

Mana allowed one to do impressive things, but only the once, and then it took at least ten minutes to tap a new site. Most skirmishes were done in far less than ten minutes. Good mages, like Adara the Blue, could do impressive things more than once in a short time. Others, like Du Jing, instead focused on doing simple things on either a large scale or for extended periods of time.

But the bottom line was that even magic had its limits, its costs and risks. And yes, everyone on the wall was risking their lives in combat.

I’d just determined not to needlessly be one of those fatalities.