Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 617: The Second Lesson

By the time I leave the Sweatbox, I notice several new names in the challenge rankings, particularly in Tier 4, where it appears a few competitors have made a strong push.

In first place of Tier 4 in the Run challenge, there is a new participant named NotNoname. An interesting coincidence.

The same goes for Target Gauntlet, where a new participant is listed. Unfortunately, that person is in second place, just behind Sset, who holds first. Their alias is Emanon.

Finally, in the Current challenge, a new competitor has completely dominated the second-place score, doubling it with ease. The difference is so large it hardly seems fair.

This individual uses the ominous name: You should have told me.

I’m facing off against the Vice Director again, in the same training hall she reserved before. It is the second out of the three lessons I’ve paid for.

“Where is your bond?” she asks and ignores the peck from her owl.

“Probably walking around the Academy. Do we need him?”

“Yes, call him here, please.”

Another three pecks from her bond.

Hoo, hoo! Lulu calls as she does.

“I guess that means we don’t actually need him,” I note.

She returns my gaze and refuses to answer. Instead, she begins raising her mana, and I raise mine to match her level.

“It is fascinating how quickly you can channel your mana for someone at your level. You are still somewhere around level 310, right?”

She asks, walking around me, as her huge, wide brimmed, pointy hat covers most of her face.

“You probably have a trait to help with that, possibly some passives as well, which, I suspect, are arcane.” Her mana clashes against mine for a second, and she nods, “Possibly two, but it’s all a wild guess without your confirmation.”

“Who knows,” I reply.

“That’s true, who knows?” Her mana surrounds me again, as if it were attempting to choke out my own, and I continue to fight it back.

As if deep in thought, she continues, “Most of your ability to channel it quickly and relatively safely comes from your talent. It’s simply one of those things you’re naturally good at. The way you move your mana feels ancient, almost as if it belongs to a much older era. Very curious.”

I shoot back at her, “What’s the difference between Potency, Restoration, and Amplification mana upgrades?”

“That’s something you should already know very well as an Assistant Professor.”

“I want to hear your thoughts on the matter.”

“I see,” she nods and then turns to her bond, “Lulu, can you stop limiting my mana?”

Same as before, the owl hoots and waves its tiny wings, and the Vice Director’s mana flares drastically. I sense her trying to compete with me this time. She’s raising and channeling mana as quickly as possible, to the point it begins to place significant strain on her faculties. But I match her speed with ease. At times, I even surpass her, but only until I reach the bottom of my mana, and her larger pool begins to make itself known. And she continues far beyond that point.

As before, it’s a weird feeling to release mana so freely without needing to worry about killing someone. But it’s not really a bad feeling, in fact, it’s exactly the opposite.

”I can tell you chose your attribute upgrade well, Amplification suits you best,” the Vice Director says, and her mana continues to clash against mine. She doesn’t explain anything about how I should be moving my mana, seeming to prefer more or less to let me come to my own conclusions, while she directs me toward them.

She deploys multiple measures as we continue. She even uses items, a variety techniques, and her skills, things meant to show me how someone who was particularly skilled would go about countering an Amplificator. Some of the things she uses are things I hadn’t even thought of.

”You would probably have done well with both Restoration and Potency,” she pauses, ”but I think Potency would suit you more than Restoration. Amplification, however, is your true match. You rarely find a talent capable of handling that much mana without destroying their body.”

“It seems like it.”

The Vice Director nods, “Potency is more refined. Instead of increasing quantity, it boosts effects. Same mana, more impact. Think of it like sharpening a blade instead of swinging a heavier one. A skill used under the effects of Potency strikes harder, pierces deeper, and lasts longer. But the cost is that it’s much harder to control. Even a slight miscalculation gets amplified, and the margin of error narrows. It rewards precision and punishes recklessness.”

Then she deploys a five pointed array, and mana starts bouncing between them at a strange frequency. With each bounce, the frequency changes and sends out ripples. When these ripples crash into each other, the frequency changes again.

It has an incredibly irritating feeling as it does, and it clashes with my mana, disrupting it. It doesn’t even seem to use much mana, and it doesn’t really seem to affect me all that much, but for some reason, I find it incredibly irritating, that’s just the best way I can describe it.

Just as if someone were to keep throwing small rocks at a soldier in heavy armor for hours on end.

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The Vice Director notices my reaction, and out of all the disruption methods she shows me, this one seems to have the most effect. I notice a flash of satisfaction make its way across her face.

“Restoration?” I ask.

“Restoration doesn’t make your attacks stronger or give you more to spend. It just ensures that you’re never running on empty for long. Think of it as having an endless number of projectiles. You’ll never match the raw force of an Amplifier or the sharp edge of Potency, but you’ll still be casting long after they’ve burned themselves out. It rewards patience and resourcefulness, while punishing waste.”

“I see. So, Amplification for quantity, Potency for quality, and Restoration for recovery. Of course, only if you go about it optimally and pick the right one for you.”

She nods. “Exactly. And each suits a different kind of person. Amplificators are engines, brute force that overwhelms finesse. Potents are surgeons, precise, elegant, ruthless. Restorers can’t burn out because they don’t stop burning.”

“Sounds boring and too ”wordy”. Which one do you think is best?”

Seeming annoyed by something I don’t understand, she doubles up on that disgusting method of disruption. I continue to defend against it while watching for any other attempts she might be trying to sneak by me.

All her attempts are very practiced, almost as if she were following a set of pre-made protocols she’s picked out. She tests me, then deploys two or three methods while keeping some in reserve. She watches my reactions and adjusts accordingly, testing me again. It all feels like it’s been designed for the purpose of facing down stronger opponents as well, something that seems deeply ingrained in her psyche.

After whispering something to Lulu, the tiny owl lifts up and starts circling around the two of us. I can’t quite detect the specifics yet, but as she does, something starts building up around us.

The Vice Director turns to me again and says, ”None are “the best”. If you’re asking what’s more common, it would be difficult to say with confidence. People lacking in knowledge usually go for Potency since it sounds like the best out of the three. Restoration is the most common for people who like to fight melee and need a steady upkeep of mana to activate their skills. Amplificators are… not as common. Even the ones who generally rely on large scale attacks early on tend to pick Potency. Plenty of them pay for that, as the increased need for precision causes them trouble.”

“That sounds unforgiving. A single wrong choice that can ruin you entirely.”

”Thatʼs just how the system works.”

”Have you heard anything about mana that is black in color?” I ask.

Her eyebrow lifts at the question, and she thinks for a moment. “Never. Are you sure you haven’t mistaken it for Primordial void energy or one of the Fragments?”

“It’s possible,” I nod. “What primordial energies do you know outside the common five, and what of the Fragments?”

Still circling around me, Lulu hoots and then perches back on the Vice Director’s shoulder. The field they’ve been constructing activates fully, pressing in around me.

Instantly, the flow of my mana grows sluggish, as if it were moving through thick mud. My control weakens, and every attempt to manipulate it feels delayed and strained, like a weight dragging against my will.

Relying on my control over my mana, I start pushing against it, trying to grasp how it’s happening.

A notification dings as my [Perception] levels up. But that skill shouldn’t worry, I’ll make sure to use it in skill combinations as well.

“Assistant Professor Gwyn, before I answer, may I ask you a question or two?”

“Sure.”

“You have no formal education, be it from the Academy, be it continental, family based, guild-based, or knowledge passed to you by a master, correct?”

I notice a pattern in the way this field is slowing down my mana and observe how it clashes against my Mana Wavelength Tyrant, the passive I use to take control of the surrounding mana and increase my own. Even now, the Vice Director is failing to come up with a proper way to counter its effects other than overpowering it completely. I understand her stubbornness and desire to find another method. But it almost feels like she looks down on the idea that she should have to overpower the passive and has been trying instead to find some more “skillful way.”

There’s nothing wrong with crushing something head-on if it solves the problem.

I think about my answer before telling her, “I mostly learned on my own and came to my own conclusions. Though I’m not shameless enough to claim it was all me, of course. I did have a lot of help as well, but I never tried to listen too closely and instead picked the things I liked and wanted to understand better.”

“So there has been no one you used as a goalpost, measured yourself against, or tried to follow their way of doing things?”

“I probably did subconsciously sometimes, but consciously I would say no.”

“May I be so shameless as to ask you why?”

“Why not? Because I can do better than any of them.”

Finally, I grasp what she’s been doing and expand my mana outward, fluctuating it in the exact way needed to counter her field. It doesn’t break what she is doing, instead, it counters it by using channels her field isn’t covering, then expands through them.

Satisfied with the result, I look back at the Vice Director. “Why would I copy someone who, in the end, failed to reach the same goals I have?”

“Thank you for answering. As for the primordial energies, I assume you already know the common five: lightning, kinetic, void, gravitational, and thermal. Otherwise, I know about two more, stellar wind and binding primordial energy.”

“Interesting. Does primordial stellar wind energy not sound strange?”

“It does.”

“I see. And fragments?”

“I know of Fragment of Eternal Fire, Fragment of Eternal Wind, Fragment of Endless Night, Fragment of Eternal Ice, Fragment of Everlasting Wound, Fragment of Eternal Hunger, Fragment of the first Sun.”

“I wasn’t expecting the last three.”

“People usually have that reaction. There are only likely only a dozen or so primordial energies, but dozens of fragments. A lot of them are incredibly weak and nearly useless, while others can be incredibly powerful.”

“What are the fragments actually?”

“I would recommend you ask Professor Elian about that. As far as I know, there are a lot of theories, but none have ever been confirmed to be correct.”

”Never mind then.”

”Yes.” With that single word, her mana begins to withdraw.

When the last of it fades, I check the time. She’s kept to the exact duration we agreed on, down to the second.

And I thought I might get a freebie from a fellow mana enjoyer.

She leaves first. I stay behind, sliding down against the wall to sit on the floor. My mana rises again, and I move it as she did, almost absentmindedly, while thinking through faster ways to counter her approach.

In the end, the conclusion is simple. The only difference between us is time. Given a bit more of it, I should be able to face her pretty comfortably. She’s a lot like me in some ways. She’s at her strongest when she has time to prepare. But I’m more combat oriented, while her strengths lie in suppression and support.

When the room starts beeping and forces me out, I leave reluctantly and continue thinking through what I learned, especially about the primordial energies and fragments.