Supreme Magus

Chapter 3787: Crooked Towers (Part 2)

"Reality is no bard tale. You can’t move well when you are hurt." Vastor shuddered at the thought of his wife being injured. "Sometimes you can’t move at all due to the pain.

"Darkness fusion removes that pain and allows you to keep moving as if nothing is wrong with you."

"It’s amazing!" Rena said.

"It’s dangerous!" Vastor scolded her. "Just because you don’t feel pain, it doesn’t mean the wound got better. If you put weight on a broken bone, you can shatter it. If you’ve been cut, you can bleed yourself to death and not even notice.

"Pain is not a nuisance. It tells us when something is wrong, where, and how bad it is. If you use the darkness potion, always use the earth and light potion with it to limit the damage. Minimum."

"What do you mean, minimum?" Zinya asked. "Can’t we just activate all the potions at once in case of danger?"

"I wish it were that simple." Zogar sighed. "Please, sit down."

He conjured four chairs, and everyone obeyed.

"We still have lots of segments left." Rena said. "Also, what about darkness fusion?"

"Don’t ask me to hurt any of you. Especially you, Zin." Vastor replied. "If you want to do it, do it yourself."

He handed them a big needle each.

"Prick your fingers before and after using the potion. Beware, it will take you quite some strength since you all used the earth potion."

Hurting themselves proved to be way harder than they imagined, but not because of the earth potion. Everyone was scared of pain, and every fiber of their being screamed against that pointless suffering.

"It works." Raaz witnessed a fat blood drop forming on his finger, yet he felt no pain.

"Like it should." Vastor nodded. "Now, heal the wound and wait."

"Wait for what?" Zinya asked.

"The potions didn’t give you super powers, Zin. They gave you the means to exceed your limits, but your bodies are still those of non-Awakened humans. The more powerful the potion, the heavier the burden it poses and the worse the mana poisoning."

"Mana poisoning?" Rena swallowed hard.

"I used my mana to create them." Vastor replied. "Your bodies will reject the foreign mana as soon as it starts weakening."

Even though the Rena and the others had experimented with the tattoos’ various effects for less than two minutes, when the potions wore off, they started to pant like bellows. Their every joint and muscle ached like they had worked in the fields for hours.

"Is this normal?" Elina wheezed.

"Yes." Lith said. "It’s the reason only elite soldiers have access to top-grade potions. They train hard so that their bodies can take the strain that comes with the elemental enhancement without suffering too much."

"It’s also the reason I said that two minutes is too long." Vastor added. "Had you used all six potions for two minutes, you would have fainted from exhaustion if not worse. These tattoos are for extreme situations, not a toy.

"When you train in their use, activate them one or two at a time at most. Are we clear?"

Everyone nodded, and Raaz thanked his common sense for not having expressed his "training" plans out loud.

"Good." Vastor used his breathing technique, Beyonder’s Eye, and healed all the side effects of the potions. "We don’t have all day. Now you need to practice the tattoos that strengthen your spells."

"How do they work?" Rena asked.

"The same way as the body-enhancing potions." Vastor replied. "Feel their power and draw it in. This time, however, you need to project it outward, and there’s no need to call upon the earth element unless you want to conjure one of its spells."

"Is chore magic enough?" Eina asked. "Don’t we need to learn more advanced magic?"

"No, or these potions would be useless." Vastor shook his head. "Just do like Raaz."

Instead of asking, Raaz had moved straight to testing his tattoo’s powers.

"Infiro!" He produced a sphere of fire too small to be called a fireball, but it still blasted a mannequin to smithereens and blackened the floor where it had stood.

"Jorun!" A second dummy froze from top to bottom, losing its balance due to the ice and shattering upon hitting the ground.

"Brezza!" Air blades cut a third mannequin into many pieces

"Magna!" A stone hand erupted from the floor and crushed a fourth mannequin in its grip.

"Ekidu!" The bullet of darkness was so slow compared to the other elements that it was embarrassing to look at.

Yet when it reached the human-shaped dummy, the darkness element turned its target into a pile of dust.

"My warrior!" Elina said with pride.

"Yeah, he’s great. Against dummies." Vastor’s words were met by confused looks. "Real people move. Also, they bleed. Would any of you have the guts to strike another human so hard?"

"No." Elina, Rena, and Zinya shuddered at the idea of killing.

"Depends." Said Raaz. "I wouldn’t do it for sport, but if they were attacking my family, I wouldn’t hesitate."

"Come here, Dad." Lith said. "You have yet to test your healing spells."

He shapeshifted a finger into a claw and opened a long, shallow cut in his own forearm.

"Are you crazy? Vinire!" Raaz grabbed his son’s arm and poured light magic into it.

The blood was reabsorbed, and the cut disappeared immediately.

"It wasn’t even a scratch, Dad." Lith replied. "Less than a burned finger."

Raaz had many things to say, but the thought that his son could wound himself so casually upset him. Even more when he realized the kinds of injuries Lith considered as a normal occurrence in his life.

"Don’t do that again." Raaz said. "I’ll practice on the animals and the farmhands. Those blockheads always get hurt."

Vastor allowed everyone to practice until the two minutes ran out, and they hated him for that. They felt nauseous, dizzy, and their eyes drooped like they hadn’t slept in a week.

"What you are experiencing now is mana abuse and mana poisoning." Vastor said after treating the symptoms just enough to have the class’s attention. "They are two different side effects, and only one is caused by the potions.

"The other is all you, and every mage sooner or later experiences mana abuse."

"No offence, Zogar, but why did you go overboard with this?" Zinya held her aching head.

"I didn’t." He replied. "Only here can you activate one potion at a time safely. In case of danger, you’ll have to use them all together. Which means you’ll suffer from the aftereffects of all of them.

"Moreover, the more of the tattoos’ segments you consume without rest, the worse the outcome. I need you to understand this is no miracle. You need to use the potions wisely, or you might survive an attack just to go into shock when their effects run out."

A long, heavy silence befell the room. It lasted for over a minute before Zinya found the strength to ask:

"Is this why you didn’t want Filia and Frey to know? Are you afraid they would want the potions and then abuse their powers?"

"That’s just one of the reasons." Vastor replied.

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