Magus Reborn [Stubbing in Three Weeks]

399. Pending lessons

Kai ended up spending a few hours with the tribals after that, not only because he needed to speak with them more about the blood drinkers and sort through the different plans forming in his mind on how to deal with them, but also because he could tell that his presence itself mattered.No one said it outright.

They didn’t need to.

Kai could feel it in the way people looked at him, in the way the tension in the city eased little by little once word spread that he was here.

The tribes had only recently begun learning how to live together as one people. Before that, they had been scattered and divided for too long, and although they now shared the same city and the same cause, that kind of unity still needed time to settle into something strong and natural. The blood drinkers had struck at exactly the wrong moment for them.

A threat this large, so soon after the orcs had been driven out, was never something they could simply ignore.

Kai was sure that more than a few tribals had already started wondering whether it would be safer to abandon the city altogether and try their luck somewhere deeper in the desert, somewhere the blood drinkers might not bother following. So him being there mattered. It gave them something solid to hold onto, the feeling that maybe this would be dealt with soon enough and they would not be left alone to endure it.

He also stayed because there was work to be done.

The blood drinkers had left plenty of ruin behind, and Kai helped where he could, moving through the city to clean up the damage and tend to the wounded with the potions he had on his person.

The tribes did have some healing supplies through trade, but not nearly enough. Potions were expensive, and there were too many injuries for the potions they had in stock.

By the time all of that was finally handled, Kai asked for a day to properly plan the coming attack.

Only then did he leave for Valkyrie’s Tower.

Kael came with him, along with a group of tribals dragging the blood drinkers Kai had captured earlier. All of the prisoners had been gagged, their faces covered, and after being forced to swallow the sleeping pills the tribes used, none of them were in any state to resist.

Because of that, Kai didn’t bother flying ahead. Instead, he took one of the Zirkaan beasts and rode beside Kael, who by now had actually learned how to handle one of the creatures fairly well.

Although they kept quiet throughout the ride, Kai let his mana senses stretch outward the whole way, watching the desert around them for any sign that blood drinkers might be following. He found nothing. Even the captured ones remained asleep the entire trip, slumped and useless beneath their bindings.

Once they reached the tower, Kai used his wind hands again. The spell had quietly become one of his most useful tools simply because of how many different ways he could use it.

With it, he lifted the blood drinkers and carried them inside with Kael while the tribals left, moving up through the floors until they finally found Neris and Amyra.

Both of them were in the library.

The moment Kai entered with several gagged figures floating behind him, they looked confused and then hesitant, as if unsure whether they should even ask what they were seeing. He spared them the trouble.

“They’re blood drinkers,” he said. “I captured them for questioning.”

Then he looked at Kael and Neris.

“Take them to one of the rooms and lock them up. Put the syphon cuffs on them too. I don’t want them trying anything if they wake up.”

Both Enforcers nodded immediately.

Kai watched as they dragged the blood drinkers away one by one into a nearby room. Even unconscious, the creatures were not light, but Kael and Neris handled them well enough, and it did not take long before the room was sealed and the cuffs were in place.

While all that happened, Kai stood there with Amyra in the library.

He could feel her gaze on him every few moments, even when she pretended otherwise.

He knew she had a lot she wanted to say, and truthfully, he had already decided to give her the time for it. He had not planned to be gone so long, but intentions mattered little beside absence. Months had passed, and no matter how composed Amyra looked on the surface, Kai knew she would have worried far more than she was willing to show.

So when the two Enforcers finally finished locking up the blood drinkers and left the library to get some rest, Kai turned towards Amyra and said, “I’m sorry I took so long. There were some issues in the Earth Plane that forced me to stay longer.”

Amyra looked at him, and for a second it was obvious that she wanted to say a lot. But in the end, she only pointed toward a stack of books nearby. “It’s okay. I read a lot while you were gone. I also learned a few more healing spells.”

Kai’s brows rose slightly. “Did you?”

She nodded and moved toward the table, picking up one of the books before opening it to a marked page and showing him the spellcode there. “I’ve been practicing this one,” she said, “but it hasn’t been easy to learn.”

Kai looked over the structure and immediately recognized it. “This is the kind of spell that heals multiple people in a radius, right? It’s a good light-aspected spell.”

Amyra nodded again. “Yes, but I keep having trouble pushing the light mana far enough away from my body. It feels completely different from using projectile spells.”

Kai smiled faintly at that.

It was actually a very common problem for Mages who were just starting to branch out into different kinds of spell applications, and fortunately, it was also one of the easier ones to correct.

“What you’re doing wrong,” he said, “is treating it like a projectile spell when it’s actually an aura spell. You first need to learn how to push your mana sense out around your body in a thick stream of mana, enough that you can feel everything inside that space. Then you cast the spell through that field instead of trying to launch it like an arrow.”

To show her what he meant, Kai formed a simple first-circle wind spell and activated it.

A second later, the air around him turned cooler at once, and a soft rush of wind spread outward, stirring Amyra’s hair as her eyes widened.

“I never thought of that,” she said. “The book didn’t mention it.”

Kai smiled. “That’s what masters are for.”

Amyra smiled right back at him, and it was only then that Kai properly felt the weight of how much he had neglected her. It couldn’t have been easy for her to study on her own, and he needed to change some of that right away. “Do you have any other spells you need help with?”

Amyra nodded immediately.

For the next hour, they went through one spell after another, all the ones she had been struggling with on her own. Some of them she actually could cast, but the output wasn’t what she wanted, and in those cases the problem wasn’t really her skill. The spell structures themselves needed slight adjustments. That, more than anything, reminded Kai again what she was.

A high human.

Someone born almost unnaturally suited for magic.

It showed in everything. Her structures were clean, her mana output was smooth, and even the mistakes she made were not the sort that came from lack of talent. They came from lack of guidance. In truth, Kai was sure that given enough time, Amyra would have solved most of these problems by herself. But that didn’t change the fact that he still had a role to play as her master.

He had taken both her and Rhea under him, but with everything that had happened, he had barely been able to guide either of them personally. At least Rhea was still in the Sorcerer’s Tower, studying in a place full of other Mages and resources. Amyra was different.

He couldn’t simply leave her somewhere, not even in a city as safe as Veralt. Not because Veralt wasn’t secure, but because of what she was.

Keeping her in Valkyrie’s Tower was still the safest choice, but safety had its own cost. It was isolating and lonely. And because of that, Kai tried to make sure that whatever little time he did get with her was actually worth something.

Slowly, as they moved through spell after spell, he could see the frustration she had been holding toward him for being gone so long beginning to fade. The tension in her shoulders eased, her questions came more freely, and before Kai properly realized it, he had drifted from answering individual spell questions into giving her a full lecture on mana itself and how it behaved in different environments.

Kai hadn’t realized it until then, but he needed something like this too.

A few quiet hours where he could simply be another Mage teaching an apprentice. Not a king. Not a man trying to hold together kingdoms, stop plagues, and keep the world from sliding toward ruin.

Just a Mage talking about spells, mana flow, and theory. He didn’t hate the weight he carried—he had accepted that burden a long time ago—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t exhausting. Constantly thinking about the fate of the world had a way of wearing even him down, and those few hours of normalcy were enough to make him feel as though he could face the larger problems again without his mind fraying at the edges.

Still, once the lesson wound down, he had to remember why he had wanted to see Amyra in the first place beyond simply checking on her.

So after answering another of her questions, Kai looked at her. “Amyra, there’s actually something I need to talk to you about.”

She straightened immediately. “Do you have to go to another plane again?”

“No. I’m not going to another plane for a long time.” He paused, then added, “But there is something I need your help with. Something only you can really help me with.”

It didn’t take Amyra long to understand where he was going. Her eyes brightened almost at once. “Dead mana?”

Kai nodded. “Yes. Maleficia has unleashed another plague, and it’s spreading through Lancephil. The Enforcers and Mages are already trying to contain it, but once they’ve cleared out the weavers and fiends, I’ll need your help to purge the land itself.”

As soon as he said it, Kai found himself wondering whether she would hesitate. Purging dead mana was not easy work. And Amyra was still not even a Third-Circle Mage.

It had taken a great toll on her to purge so much of Vanderfall. Even if Amyra herself had never spoken to him about it directly, Elias and the soldiers he had sent alongside her had mentioned it often enough that Kai knew how draining it had been. So if she had wanted time before going out to cleanse more land, he would have understood.

But when he looked into her eyes, all he found there was resolve. A kind of steady determination he had never expected to see so clearly on Amyra’s face.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Kai studied her for a moment before asking, “Are you sure? I know I’m asking a lot from you. You can think about it first. We don’t need to move to purge the land immediately.”

Amyra shook her head again. “No, it’s okay, Lord Arzan. I don’t want Lancephil to fall to dead mana either. I’ll go wherever you need me to go and make sure there’s none of it left.”

Hearing that, Kai couldn’t help but smile.

A part of him wondered whether he himself had been that brave at her age, and he doubted it. For much of his own youth, dead mana had been something to fear above all else. He had seen what it did to the world. On the streets where he grew up, staying away from dead mana was one of the first lessons a child learned, before they even understood much else about life. And yet here Amyra was, meeting it with that kind of resolve.

Still, Kai had no intention of simply throwing her into the corruption zones as she was.

“It’ll still take time for the Enforcers and Mages to clear out the fiends and weavers,” he said. “And until then, I think we can work on something that’ll let you do the job even better.”

Amyra lifted a brow. “More experiments?”

“That, and something else.”

He paused for a moment, watching the confusion deepen on her face as he considered whether this was truly the right step. But he already knew it was.

“Other than the experiments,” he said finally, “I was thinking I could help you advance your circles. Reaching the fourth might be difficult right now, but I’m sure you could reach the third.”

***

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