After the salad with baked vegetables they had for breakfast, Azotreh was guided into the main room of the house they and Atu now shared. Unlike the bedroom they'd spent most of the last three days in, this room was made from thicker logs with a base layer of stone.
In the center of the room sat a beautifully woven carpet with symbols seemingly woven into the very fabric of the object itself. Azotreh's mana sense could feel the dense magic held within the fabric, though very little otherwise.
Atu sat down on the carpet and gestured for Azotreh to do the same. The room was illuminated by the open windows, which also let in a gentle breeze.
Azotreh sat as guided, and Atu stood. She stepped closer and began to gently move their body into something close to a lotus position, legs crossed in front of them.
After ensuring that they were both comfortable and in what her father had taught her was the correct position, she moved to sit down across from them. She took the same position before she spoke, "Now begin to breathe, big breath in, big breath out. Relax your mind, and relax your spirit. This is normal training, and it won't hurt in any way."
Azotreh did as instructed, their thin frame expanding and contracting as they breathed. Their mind cleared slowly, but without much effort. Worries of the future, of the past, and of the present slowly died in their mind as they just kept breathing.
They felt Nicholas, Fuzem, and Errazorrus at the dungeon core, close enough to reach them when they needed them. They felt Atu mere feet away. While the strange rabbit-kin had treated them well, they still didn't completely trust her. But they still felt relaxed by her presence. They felt Ruby, still in the tattoo on their face, and ready to emerge in cases of danger.
It was the safest place they could remember. So they relaxed.
Focusing on the world around them, they slowly started to consciously feel the presences around them. Like focusing their eyes, the relaxation allowed them to truly focus on the aura of the room, and the ways it subtly interacted with the mana.
They could barely locate Atu's overranked aura, but still felt it on the edges of their consciousness. Even without being able to pin down the sensation, they still felt her there. But instead, they concentrated on the aura coming from their own face.
Ruby's aura was tightly bound but pulsing like it was alive itself, rather than being a facet of her existence. It crackled and jumped like a fire, each action pushing against the poor control Azotreh was using.
They heard a soft chuckle from across the room before the aura at the edges of their senses pushed onto theirs just a little. Suddenly, the rough probing of their aura was guided through the motion of location. As they finally wrapped their aura around Ruby's, they were suddenly pulled from their training by a system notification.
They didn't understand how as they opened their eyes. The Skill System had previously used sounds to announce itself, doing so when Azotreh first attained it, when they changed archetypes, and when they killed something. But this was very distinctively not an audio cue.
[Skill: Aura Manipulation (A-1) has been learned]
Atu smiled brightly when Azotreh was suddenly jolted from their meditation, but Azotreh was frowning. They also noticed two other system notifications, letting them know that their Meditation skill had advanced to Apprentice-3. Neither notification pulled them from their meditation, and neither had given audio cues.
Seeing Azotreh frowning, Atu approached.
"What's wrong?" She asked.
Azotreh took a moment to phrase their question before answering, "Why did I suddenly get pushed from my meditation when I got Aura Manipulation?"
Now it was her turn to frown, "That wasn't intentional? You didn't see the window and pull yourself out of it?"
"No?"
She fell into thought for a long moment, but didn't have an answer. So she just sighed and looked at them, "I don't know." She said.
Azotreh sat there for a moment before standing up. They concluded that it wasn't a problem they could figure out immediately, so they decided to do something else. Atu stood after, "Where are you going?"
"The chief or whatever said I needed mana and aura manipulation to apprentice 25, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, every time I use Astral Bolt, I use some of my mana resource, right?"
She paused, almost stumbling. Azotreh had a bolt spell? How? She couldn't sense a conception in their aura, and aura soaking was the first phase of conception advancement. Instead of holding onto her thoughts, she decided to do the obvious thing.
"Where did you get Astral Bolt?" She asked
Azotreh turned to her, confused, "Nicholas sacrificed some purple vines to a big mouth in what he called my soul. I'm still not sure he's right about calling it my soul."
That only confused her more. Purple vines? She could assume the big mouth was a devouring power of some kind, but what were the vines?
But before she could ask anything more, Azotreh had already walked out the front door, with Ruby summoned atop their head. She was keeping an eye around them as Azotreh walked confidently.
She quickly caught up with them. Her long legs brought her behind Azotreh with incredible speed. Before Azotreh could do anything, she grabbed one of their shoulders. She brought herself down to their level.
"Don't do anything dangerous, okay?" She phrased it as a question, but it very clearly wasn't. Azotreh nodded before turning away. They pointed at a nearby tree.
Azotreh's hair began to blow in a nonexistent breeze. One moment, they were themselves, and the next, a cerulean pupil had joined their black and red ones in their eyes. They didn't speak at all; they didn't need to. Fuzem took up the hard work of computation normally done through chants or hand sigils.
Nicholas had even needed to chant within, but Fuzem didn't. All she needed was some work to channel the energy into Azotreh's finger.
One moment, a child was standing at the edge of a forest, pointing at a tree. Next, the entire clearing Atu's house was built in was illuminated with purple and gold light. It started small, a spot of light smaller than a fingernail, but quickly expanded.
While the initial astral bolts Azotreh had cast in the forest had only been around the size of a palm, or smaller, this one was bigger than their entire body. Around a hundred times larger than its previous size, it swirled with brilliant lights.
Azotreh was deeply shocked, and Ruby just looked on with pride. She knew her bond was powerful. She couldn't wait for the tree before them to be blown to pieces.
Atu was as shocked as Azotreh. This bolt would be about the same size as one she could cast. She was two ranks higher. This shouldn't have been possible.
The magic within was as spread out as hers would have to be to reach this size. Normally, a bolt is the size of a fist and grows in density with rank and other factors. If one spreads out that energy, it could get bigger.
But their control was rudimentary. Carried by the stability of an ability and the secondary mind of Fuzem, it could still only exist in such a state for less than a minute before exploding.
Fuzem wasn't worried for herself. Even without her disparity damage reduction, she could have easily tanked the hit. But Azotreh couldn't. Before she could act, something suddenly grabbed the mana and aura of Azotreh.
Before she could do anything to help the child she had sworn to care for, the massive bolt was yanked up and fired up. It slowly dissolved and exploded high in the air, though the angle wasn't directly vertical. The bolt was also stable for far longer than she thought it would be.
It exploded nearly half a kilometer away in midair. The force still blew many of the giant trees and bent them. The fungi, on the other hand, were simply destroyed.
She couldn't sense it, but Azotreh felt that same tug that pulled them out of their meditation as skill system windows spread in their vision.
[Your ability: Astral Bolt has advanced to Level 13. +7 Mana Concentration]
[Due to the interference of an outside force: ERROR (GM-99), your Mana Manipulation skill had gained additional proficiency and advanced to A-3]
[You have gained titles: Suicidal, Interference from Above, Witness to a Grandmaster, Terror of the Nightshade Lich]
A sense of terror filled Azotreh, and they instinctively ran over to Atu. Even Ruby, previously filled with pride about the growth of her bond, was filled with an instinctive terror of the unseen force that took control of the spell Azotreh had created.
Mason looked up as something bright and purple exploded overhead. Their tree covering was suddenly swept away. He felt dozens of tiny cuts appear on his body as the winds brushed by. They were all only that small because of the difference in rank between himself and the attack.
The others barely noticed as they were pinning down a strange slime. One half of it was black, the other half white. The two sides kept rotating within the floating mass. At least it was a standard floater variant instead of one of the little hivemind slimes.
Leo was slowly accumulating shields around the slime to create a kind of cage, while Alabast was simply using psychic needles to hold it back in place. He kept using that to make it return to the sphere of hexagonal shields.
Any time it tried to break through, either Zinni or Izia created a domed shield within the larger shield to block it, spreading the force across multiple panels.
They had used this strategy to collect about a dozen slimes at this point. Mason was still recovering from the fight with the orcs, while Maria was keeping watch in the forest for other monsters.
The Lich of Nightshade was… impressed wasn't the right word. The little candidate had already exceeded his expectations. He knew the power was not intentional, but the ability to control that much energy for even the seconds they held it was far better than he expected.
He knew stepping in might have been a mistake, considering that Azotreh didn't know about his presence. But he wasn't willing to let Azotreh draw more attention yet.
Apprentice 25 on mana manipulation? That Asergia was out of his damn mind if he thought the child should only bring it up to that point. The sheer amount of mana in that body was enough to suffocate another at their rank. It would get even worse at higher ranks.
The lich decided to write up another book. It would improve his own skills again, even if only a little, while giving the candidate something to work with.
Just as he was planning to send this information to his true body, a different avatar appeared at his side. Dark green hair, matching eyes, and fangs protruding from her mouth. Her lower body was like that of a serpent, though with two tails instead of one. Scales also decorated other areas of her body.
The avatar was based on a human blueprint that many of the other beastkin used, though with the flair of the hydra's own design. She blinked a bit; even the twilight was far brighter than her massive cave.
"Why are you here?" The lich asked the hydra.
"Can I not observe the candidate?" She replied, her voice dripping with venom.
The lich knew the candidates weren't the biggest fans of his, but he really didn't care. He didn't like that his friends had to die in order to grant them power. But he tolerated them.
"You should not. If this one truly becomes a candidate, it should remain a surprise."
"You know it's never truly a surprise."
"You were a surprise."
"Because I was alone, and none of you knew that one of yours had died," she hissed with rage. Her voice was slowly rising, so the lich quickly made a sound barrier.
"What do you really want?" He asked.
She looked at him for a moment before holding up a small gray cube. Within sat a sphere that appeared like green acid, with its wet sheen clearly visible despite not being truly made from acid.
"I wanted to leave this somewhere nearby for them. I know Affinities don't spawn under the barrier, and that the clans have to raid the labyrinth for one. But they'd never keep one of these."
"Why would you give it to them?"
"Their first monster was a black salamander, and I want to see what happens when a Dungeon Nexus absorbs an Affinity."
While the lich was against the idea of giving anything to the candidates, he did eventually acquiesce under her curiosity. He had to admit that he felt much the same. He was a wizard at heart, and even in his immortality, he'd never seen a dungeon do anything but spawn an Affinity as a reward.
The lich nodded his permission, and the hydra's avatar vanished. He sent his information back to the true body.