Chapter 199 - Lightning

Sell. 

Adion smiled at the painting in front of him. Sell was sleeping, leaning against the wall in a training pit at the Academy. 

Adion couldn’t help but want to start another painting right away, to experience another memory together with Sell. Unfortunately, he would be completely exhausted if he tried that.

I guess I’ll just be content with this for now. 

“Who is that?” Shindo asked from behind him.

Adion turned around and asked, “How long have you been here?”

“I just got here,” Shindo said with a smile, “So? Your girlfriend?”

“That’s right,” Adion nodded. He touched the painting and found that it was dry enough before rolling it up and putting it away.

He looked out through the hole in the wall and tried to determine the sun’s position.

I probably painted for two hours or so.

“How is it? Any breakthroughs?” Adion asked.

“What breakthroughs could I have be myself? I need your help destroying the rocks,” Shindo said, “I have removed most of what’s loose, though.”

“Alright, I’ll come help,” Adion said.

It had been four days since they arrived in this place. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to discover, as they found that the hallway had collapsed and was blocked off a few hundred feet deep into the mountain. 

At first, Adion felt like that was a sign to give up. He didn’t want to stick around for too long, as he missed his family. 

But Shindo managed to convince him that staying for a while wouldn’t be a loss. They had no idea where they were; it might take years to travel back to Cyalis. If they left the mountain before searching through the place just to save a few days of time, they would surely regret it if the Empire showed up later and found the treasures that Adion and Shindo had left behind.

So Adion had been using his volatile space to crush the stones blocking their path, with Shindo helping clear the small pieces left behind. 

“But I won’t do this forever,” Adion said, “Worst case, this whole place has already collapsed. It would take months or even years to clear it all.”

“Let’s keep going until we find another room,” Shindo said, “If that room has also caved in and is full of rocks, we’ll give up.”

“That sounds reasonable, I guess,” Adion said. 

Adion put all his painting materials in his backpack and left down the hallway with Shindo. 

“You are free to use your lightning to clear the way if you don’t want to wait for me, you know,” Adion said, glancing at Shindo.

“I’d get exhausted far too quickly,” Shindo said with a laugh, “You’re space is much more effective. I still don’t understand how you can exert so much power. I would have thought space to be an extremely hard element to conjure, giving you a lot of control.”

“I already explained it to you. The space I conjure is actually very small, but I can control it very precisely. It’s not strange that it’s powerful,” Adion said.

Adion knew he had to be careful with Shindo. This guy might not be an enemy, but he was full of mystery. Adion had no intention of giving Shindo a reason to suspect he had Authority over space.

To hide this fact, Adion only used his volatile space once a day, and only for a short period of time, claiming that was all he could muster in a day. Luckily, Shindo had no idea that painting tired his Will, so Adion could still make use of his Will every day without arousing suspicion.

“But I’ve thought about your lightning. You can’t control it very well, can you?” Adion asked.

Adion had some strong suspicions about Shindo’s power. The way Adion saw it, lightning was incredibly hard to control. It might not be as fleeting as wind, but it should be about the same level as fire. If that was the case, Shindo should be able to conjure a lot more lightning than he said. 

“You think I’m hiding my abilities?” Shindo asked with a smile.

“Well, yeah,” Adion said frankly, “Considering the amount of control you have, you should be able to conjure as much lightning as a fire mage can conjure fire, right?”

“Wouldn’t lightning be a little too powerful if that was the case?” Shindo asked.

Yeah. It would be frighteningly powerful.

“Fire is already seen as incredibly powerful; there is no reason to believe that another element couldn’t be more powerful,” Adion said. 

It was common knowledge that every element was equal in theory, but vastly different in reality. The elements harder to control, like wind, were weighed up by the fact that a wind mage could conjure a lot of wind. 

This should make it just as powerful as water, because even though the water conjured by a water mage stayed under the mage’s control for longer, they could only conjure a small amount of it. 

And that was also the reality. As far as Adion knew, both wind mages and water mages were seen as capable fighters. But they were nothing compared to fire mages. A fire mage could conjure enough fire to drown any opponent. Even if they didn’t have that much control, did it matter? It was enough to direct the flames to their opponent, and the flames would burn them to ashes.

Adion felt that lightning was like a more extreme version of fire. It seemed uncontrollable, but it didn’t need much control either, it just needed to be aimed at the opponent, and the mage could let go of control in a second. And considering it was so difficult to control, it should be easier to conjure. Making an incredibly fearsome combination.

“Lightning is a bit special,” Shindo said, “I admit it’s incredibly difficult to control. As soon as I conjure it, the Will of the world takes control almost immediately, refusing to let me use it. It takes a lot of Will just to make it shoot off in the right direction. Thankfully, that makes it so I can conjure more of it, but it’s not that simple. Do you think those bolts of lightning you have seen me conjure were made out of a small amount of my mana?”

“What do you mean?” Adion asked.

“Look,” Shindo said, stopping his steps and lifting his hand for Adion to see, “This is a more fair representation of what lightning looks like.”

Suddenly, small flashes of lightning shot off from Shindo’s hand. They were bright and quick, but they weren’t as thick as the lightning bolts Adion had seen earlier, and they were far from as powerful.

Shindo didn’t control them, so they shot off in all directions, some of them landing on Adion. But all he felt from them was a small tingle. 

“See? This is what I get from lightning being uncontrollable. I can conjure lightning like this all day without a problem, but what’s the use?” Shindo asked.

“So…” Adion looked at Shindo questioningly, wondering what he did differently when he conjured the lightning bolts Adion had seen earlier.

“So if I want to make something powerful, I have to not only grasp concepts, I have to gather as much of these little things as possible and control them together. I need to compress them, using the quantity and turning it into quality.”

As Shindo spoke, Adion saw the small spark-like lightning bolts suddenly gather together. Shindo directed them down the hallway, and Adion saw the lightning colliding with the stone that blocked their path, to greater and greater effect. The lightning bolt was now much more like the ones Adion had seen Shindo conjure earlier. 

“Haaah,” Shindo breathed out and stopped conjuring lightning, “That’s basically all I have in me. Do you see? It’s like how a wind mage can conjure regular winds all day without issue, but if they want to have any real power, they need to compress it. My powerful bolts of lightning are made out of basically half my mana, released all at once.”

“You can do that?” Adion asked in shock. He had never heard anything about compressing elements before. 

“I can,” Shindo said with a shrug, “And the people in my family can do the same. But you're right, I haven’t seen any wind mage do the same during my travels.”

“Maybe it’s specific to lightning mages,” Adion said.

“No, I’m sure wind mages can do the same,” Shindo said.

“Is it common on Quemer?” Adion asked.

“I don’t know if it’s common, but it’s done,” Shindo said.

Is Quemer really such a different place? How come such important information hasn’t reached the Academy? Or is it that I’m still too young, and they go over this in later years? But shouldn’t I still at least have heard about it?

Adion might not remember all his experiences at the Academy yet, but he had gotten very good at feeling out what was true or not by following his intuition. If he heard about the things Shindo was talking about, there would be some sense of familiarity; something would either itch or click into place inside him. But it wouldn’t be empty.

“Can fire and water mages do the same?” Adion asked.

“It doesn’t work exactly the same, but yeah, they can,” Shindo said, “It isn’t as useful most of the time, so perhaps most mages don’t want to waste their time on it. But the most powerful mages have all mastered compressing their attacks in order to have a powerful trump card.”

“Incredible,” Adion muttered.

If that’s the case, I should be able to do the same with space. 

It’s just…the amount of space I can conjure is so small it’s basically useless.

But when I advance, this could prove relevant.

Until then…Maybe there is a way to use my Authority to compress space.

“How do you do it? Compress an element?” Adion asked.

“You really don’t know? Aren’t you the Headmaster’s disciple?” Shindo asked with some skepticism. 

“Just tell me,” Adion said irritably.

“Alright, I’ll see if I can teach you something. But we’ll have time for that later. For now, let’s get on with clearing out the hallway,” Shindo said.

“Fine,” Adion muttered, turning his attention to the caved-in hallway. 

Luckily, the ceiling above them was still intact in most places. It wasn’t like the whole structure had collapsed. So, removing stones didn’t result in it immediately refilling with new stones from above. 

Adion used his Authority to grasp hold of a small area of space in front of him. He quickly managed to make the space move around chaotically, and pushed the space into the stones in front of him.

The stones broke down quickly as the volatile space intruded. Adion could continue destroying the rocks in his way for a long time; there was no Will to stop him. But he didn’t want to arouse suspicion, so he only kept it up for half a minute each day.

“I see light!” Shindo called out.

Adion also saw that there seemed to be light leaking out from between the rocks. 

“I can see a doorway. Looks like we finally arrived at another room,” Shindo said with a smile, “Do you think you can remove the remaining stones?”

Guess I’ll push through a little longer today.

“I’ll handle it,” Adion said through gritted teeth, faking exhaustion. 

Once the stones were crushed, Shindo hurriedly stepped forward to remove the smaller pieces in the way. Adion also helped clear the way, curious if they could find anything good.

The area they had previously been in was open to the whims of the environment. It wouldn’t be strange if beasts had appeared here in the past, and the seasons of countless years could have worn down anything left of value. It was already a miracle that the formation was intact. 

But this room might have been locked away since the Age of Wonder. It was possible that they could find something well-preserved.

Shindo and Adion didn’t bother clearing all the rocks away. As soon as they could get through, they scrambled into the room.

“This…” Shindo said, looking around with a complicated expression.

This won’t be easy to clear.

This wasn’t a small living area like the previous room they had discovered. The ceiling reached dozens of feet high, and he could interactively carved pillars further in the hall, holding up the ceiling. 

Unfortunately, some of those pillars were broken in the middle, and the roof had collapsed in several places. The entire right side of the room was filled to the ceiling with huge boulders.

“Do you see that?” Shindo asked, pointing between two boulders. 

Adion turned to look and saw what looked like a statue of a woman. He could only see the top of her head from where he was standing, though.

“Well, this should be worth investigating, right?” Shindo asked with a smile.

It will take a long time if I want to keep my abilities hidden. 

“Fine,” Adion said reluctantly. He wanted to start his journey home as soon as possible, but he couldn’t ignore the treasures that might be right in front of him.

“Well, get a good rest,” Shindo said, “I’ll see if I can clear some of the rocks in the meantime.”

Adion nodded in agreement. 

I’ll take a nap and then paint something before coming back here.

I hope the time I spend here will be worth it.