The Sixth School Book II Ch. 023

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All Characters in the story are 18 years of age and above...

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Chapter Twenty Three: Starry Eyes...

Calyn, along with everyone else on deck, turned to find another Olivia standing next to her. Calyn couldn't help but shudder as she realized that she hadn't even been aware of her approaching. Once again, she became keenly aware of just how easy it would be for the woman to kill her should she want to. Barely a second after everyone's gaze had turned to this new clone, however, they snapped back to the fourth-tier mage as they felt a powerful pulse of mana coming from his direction. Calyn was seized by the fear that an attack had been thrown their way. Despite sending mana to both her gauntlets and circlet to activate the defensive enchantments on them, there had been very little hope in her that she would survive. This was, after all, a fourth-tier mage while she was only at the second tier. Much to her surprise and relief, however, the mana hadn't come from the lightning mage, but from a scroll that was quickly turning into motes of light in the hand of the dying clone.

"What... what was that?" The pirate captain demanded, anger in his voice. He tried his best to hide it but Calyn picked up on the subtle hint of fear in the man's voice. Calyn didn't know what the scroll had done but, for some reason, lightning was no longer sparking around the man and his voice was only loud enough to be heard by those on the deck.

"That was a tier-four mana sealing scroll," the clone that hadn't been skewered answered, taking a step forward. Calyn could feel her eyes going wide even as she immediately understood. "I expect that piracy doesn't make for the most educational lifestyle, so allow me to explain. Not only has all the mana inside your body been rendered inert, but for the next day or two, you'll be incapable of drawing in any new mana. In other words, for the next day or two, you're no different from a mundane human," she laid out.

"Lay a finger on me and you'll be begging for--"

Calyn wasn't sure if the man had been hoping to use the element of surprise to get away but right in the middle of delivering his threat, he turned around and shot off in a sprint for the railing to the deck probably hoping to jump over. He'd barely made two steps, however, when Olivia's form blurred as she crossed the distance between them. Calyn didn't know if it was ironic or just poetic justice when Olivia's bloody hand sprouted from the man's chest after going through his back. The pirate's hand feebly rose to grasp Olivia's bloody hand. Whether to try and pull himself off it or to do something else, Calyn didn't know as it fell back down seconds later as the man went limp.

"Two," Olivia, with the dead pirate captain still being held up in her hand, magically projected her voice to be heard by all. "You are now only allowed to take two ships with you when you leave, otherwise, this is the fate that awaits you," she stated menacingly.

That's when chaos broke out...

***

Once again, the lines of the room he was in were glowing and Greg had his eyes closed. In the beginning, he'd need to fall out of the airship and find someone experiencing strong desire in order to connect to the law behind it. Morpheus' space affinity had been rather useful in this as he could move them to the closest human settlement in the blink of an eye. Greg had experienced all manner of strong desires in the different places he'd visited, be it greed for money, lust for sex, desire for revenge, desire for release from pain, and so on. To him, they were just a roadmap to the principle hiding behind it. Before long, however, the intermediary step became unnecessary. After having connected to and died at the hands of the law of desire so many times, Greg found that he could connect to the greater law through simple meditation and focus. Which was exactly what he did.

At first, the anger had returned. When the insight that his deepest desire was to be free had hit him, it had also come with the keen awareness of just how many shackles were placed on him. Instinctively, he'd railed against them, trying to use his anger as fuel to fight off the repeated encroachment by the law of desire. More than a thousand deaths later, however, it was more than evident that anger was a poor glue to hold him together in the face of a law of the universe. Justified as it might have felt, anger was no substitute for willpower. Greg had thus once again given up on anger.

Closing his eyes, Greg took a deep breath before letting it out slowly, even as he reached for it. It was instinctive at first, but Greg was slowly learning how to connect to the deeper layers of reality. If Greg had to put words to the feeling, then the closest approximation for it was like slipping into a pool of water. The mundane was real, no doubt, but somehow, this new level of reality felt even more real than mundane reality. In the mundane world, a sword could cut you to pieces. At this level, the concept of a sword was enough to do the same. In fact, the sword wasn't even necessary, master the law of sharpness, and one could carve you up with nothing more than a blade of grass. Worse yet, it wasn't just your body that could be cut. With enough insight, one could bypass your body and cut at your very soul. They could even cut at things you wouldn't think capable of being cut. Things like your will to live, the passion you have for a certain activity, love for someone, and so on. Yes, the mundane world was real, but the waters he now swam in were where that mundane reality was given shape and substance.

Greg could feel the deeper truths from various laws brush up against his senses. Most of them only gave him very vague hints at what they governed. Like trying to see a distant image through translucent glass with raindrops on the other side. Others felt much closer to his path, like the laws of earth and life. Still, while they called to him, their pull was not that strong. Instead, he unerring reached out to the law that called out to him, that spoke to his very soul. Reaching out for it, Greg tapped into the law of desire and immediately started dying.

Greg was calm even as he felt his body come apart. For whatever reason, it always started with his physical body. More than once Greg had tried to open his eyes to see what it looked like to disintegrate as you were subsumed by a law. All the attempts, however, ended in failure as all he saw was blackness accompanied by a wet feeling on his cheeks. It wasn't until the fiftieth or so time that he tried this that Greg realized that it was actually his eyes that were flowing down his cheeks. That it had taken him so long was something that, for some macabre reason, he found really funny. It was a mercy that the whole disintegration process was quick and rather painless, otherwise Greg suspected his mind would have been broken long ago.

After so many deaths, Greg had gradually become detached from his physical existence. Every new iteration of him that was restored by the stasis formation felt like a garment he'd put on that he'd soon take off. This strange state of mind is what allowed Greg to detachedly analyze the process of his destruction even as it took place. Greg had found himself wondering why it always began from his physical body before going towards his mind. After all, if the law was seeking to destroy him wouldn't it make more sense to go after his mind or even his soul before his body? When Greg asked Morpheus to see if he would provide some insight into this issue, he gave a confusing answer.

"The law isn't destroying your physical body." That had been his strange reply. The confusion was evident in his expression as Greg sought an explanation from the deity. Morpheus, however, shook his head and countered. "If I hold your hand through this process, Greg, I'd be doing you a disservice. The more your understanding of the laws comes from you, the easier it'll be for you to progress on this path. If I color in with my understanding, you are very likely to deviate from your path and walk some amalgam of your path and mine," he cautioned.

"But what if I get something wrong? If I can never consult with anyone, how am I supposed to know what is true and what isn't?" He'd questioned.

An amused smile had crossed Morpheus' face at this. "The laws are a lot like those escape room games that were popular in your previous life. Unless you figure out the right way to move from one room to the next, you aren't going anywhere. In the case of laws, a correct understanding of the law and how to expand its domain is the key that gets you to the next stage, short of that you can forget about progressing. So, how do you know you are on the right track? You won't need to ask, your progress will tell you," he'd laid out.

Greg had been tempted to ask more questions of the deity. It felt like a needless complication to the whole process to have to ponder questions that others had already figured out the answers to. But by the same token, however, if what Morpheus was saying turned out to be true and him giving Greg all the answers ended up corrupting his path, who would he blame? Himself for asking, or Morpheus for answering? Despite feeling like a pot bubbling over with questions, Greg had chosen to remain quiet and try to see if he could figure out an answer by himself. It would be hundreds more deaths before Greg came up with a theory that both made sense to him and fit the hint that Morpheus gave him.

The answer, strangely enough, didn't come from watching his body get destroyed over and over again, rather, it came from the few moments in which Greg tried to connect to the deeper layers of reality. Connecting to the laws was a lot like slowly descending into a pool of water. It wasn't that the air that had been around you had been any less real than the water that now surrounded you. But if the two clashed there was no question about which would prevail. If one had an empty cup and tried to pour water into the cup, the air in the cup had zero hope of keeping the water out. Mundane reality was the air whereas the laws were the water. It wasn't that mundane reality didn't exist, but when the laws shifted, mundane reality had no choice but to adjust. With this in mind, the answer to his question became all too easy to figure out.

The law of desire wasn't actually destroying his physical body just as Morpheus had said. Rather, once Greg comes in contact with it at the level of law and is subsumed, the physical has no choice but to reflect the same. Once the concept of 'Greg' is eliminated at the level of law, the physical can no longer exist. Greg had tried to take this conclusion apart in different ways but to the best of his knowledge, he couldn't see how it was flawed. But then if this was the case, the implications were twofold. The first was that he'd been wrong. It wasn't his physical body that was first destroyed. Whatever destruction his body experienced was a reflection of what had already taken place at the level of law. The second implication which flowed from the first was the fact that, just like he had a physical body and a soul, he also had a law version of himself.

Greg was brushing up against concepts that he didn't yet fully understand, but try as he would, he couldn't see how it could be otherwise. If all other things in existence were subject to and influenced by the laws that undergirded them, how could he be any different? He didn't know if his representation at the level of law was an amalgam of several different laws coming together or if all those things had merged into a new unique entity known as Greg. It was a parts vs whole argument. Was a bicycle a single entity in itself, or was it a collection of parts? Which was more bicycle, was it the wheels or the chain? The pedals or the handlebars?

Further reinforcing his idea that he had to have a 'law body', was the fact that the fourth rank of the demi tier involved substituting one's mortal body with one made of law. Didn't this mean that rather than being a reflection of what was happening at the level of law, one became the laws themselves given form? Rather than being an image of the moon on the water, one becomes the moon itself. But then, that left Greg with another question, what did it mean to become law? And even more fundamentally than that, what was law?

Greg died!

Not having tried to resist his imminent death and instead trying to understand it, Greg wasn't surprised when his eyes opened to find himself back in the stasis formation, his former body nowhere to be found. Having already gone through this a thousand times before, Greg wasn't at all bothered by having died once more. His, brow arched, in surprise, however, when he found that he was alone in the room. All through the time that Greg had been going through this process, Morpheus had always been sitting cross-legged opposite him, watching him. Had the deity finally grown bored? Or was there something else that had drawn him away? Greg was tempted to call out to him to get him to come back. But even if he did, what would that achieve? It wasn't like he was going to improve faster with the deity staring him down. With a sigh, Greg closed and once again reached out to connect to the law of desire...

***

Calyn raised her left hand to block the sword aimed at her neck. While Ardinium was an extremely tough metal, the blade didn't land on the gauntlet. Rather, sending mana into the runes of the little finger caused a mana shield to form on that side causing the sword to bounce away harmlessly. Not allowing the pirate any time to regain his footing, Calyn stepped forward and swung her gauntleted fist into the man's head causing his head to shatter like a watermelon. The circlet on her head flashed creating a visor-like shield across her face that kept the man's brains from splashing all over her face. In fights where a single second could mean the difference between life and death, being blinded, even for a moment, could seal your fate. This was why, apart from everything else it could do, the circlet was enchanted to keep any debris from landing on her face.

Even before the man's now twitching corpse had fallen to the floor, She had already moved on to the next target. Her hand shot out and wrapped itself around another pirate's neck. Rather than choking the man, however, the gauntlets acted like a multiplier for her already prodigious second-tier strength, allowing her to directly rip away almost half of the man's neck. Female pirates weren't that common, at least, Calyn hadn't encountered that many. A backhand from her, however, not only shattered the jaw of the first one she encountered but also sent her teeth flying across the deck. A chop to the back of her neck produced a satisfying crunch even as the female pirate fell limply to the floor like a puppet with their strings cut.

Calyn had noticed it the first time he'd watched Olivia and Roka train. Their fighting style was precise, calculated, and almost mechanical in execution. This isn't to say that they weren't lethal. As Olivia had just proven by killing almost a third of the pirate force arrayed against them, she more than excelled when it came to the reaping of lives. But while it worked for them, Calyn had a different approach to fighting. To her, it wasn't just throwing of fists and kicks. Instead, it was a primal dance of blood. A symphony of life and death that she couldn't help but lose herself to. It was a melody of violence that set her blood to boiling. There was lethality to Olivia's approach to fighting, but there was no battle lust there. Every move she made was aimed singularly at taking her enemy's life, the fight for her was just a means to an end. Calyn, on the other hand, reveled in it. A ribcage was caved in by her heel connecting with a pirate's sternum. A spine was shattered by another punch that had gone through someone's gut. With the gauntlets helping to stiffen her fingers, Calyn drove them into someone's chest from just below their solar plexus. A second later, a still-beating heart was pulled out into the sunlight.

Calyn had no way of knowing seeing as she couldn't stop the fight to ask, but she suspected that these pirates were the ones that served under the lightning captain that Olivia had killed. Much as they were on the same side, Calyn wasn't naïve enough to believe that the pirates were perfectly united. None of the pirate captains would have wanted their airship to be the vanguard that kicked off this fight. Their desire to protect their power base would have inadvertently protected those below them. As soon as one of the captains met their end, however, those under him were thrown to the wolves to act as the tip of the spear. Contrary to what they feared, however, Olivia asked the captain through a communication crystal not to activate any of the ship's defenses. When the captain had demanded why, she'd simply replied that they wouldn't need it.

Using ropes, and short-distance flight treasures, the pirates had flooded the deck, meanwhile the other pirate ships were linking themselves to the first one, each ship acting like a link in a chain leading to them. Despite the flood of invaders that kept jumping aboard their airship, however, Calyn couldn't help but notice that they were all lower-tier mages, most at the first and a few at the second tier. Calyn didn't expect any honor from the pirates, so it didn't at all surprise her that their strongest fighters were hanging back, probably trying to gauge the true strength of their foe. Arrogant as he was, the lightning element captain was still a fourth-tier mage. To have him die like he was little more than a dog had clearly unsettled the other captains as they were hanging back and watching to see if Olivia would use any more scrolls. Calyn too had been worried, but unlike them, she'd been worried that Olivia had no more. Tier-four scrolls, after all, weren't just pebbles that one could find by the side of the road. When she asked about it, however, Olivia just smiled. "Let's just say that the airship isn't the only thing that I got from Mage Hira and Grenad. They could have ten times the number and it still wouldn't have been enough to save them," she'd declared, her tone glacial despite the smile on her lips.

A cry of pain was torn from Calyn's lips as a slender sword snaked its way through the gaps in her defense. If Calyn hadn't pivoted at the very last moment, the sword would have probably severed her spine. Gritting her teeth through the pain, Calyn struck out with her hard kick to the man's side. Unwilling to give up the hard-earned advantage, the man raised a hand to block the attack. The weight of the liquid metal plus the force she put into the kick would have been enough to shatter the man's arm. Calyn, however, was feeling vindictive. With a thought, the liquid metal took the shape of a curved blade arching from her shin to just before where her toes began. Rather than just breaking her attacker's arm and perhaps a few ribs, her foot cut through the man's arm and through half of the pirate's chest, coming to a stop only after cutting through half his sternum. The force of the kick sent the soon-to-be-dead man flying off even as the guards closed ranks around her.

Gritting her teeth, Calyn gripped the hilt of the sword impaling her and pulled it out in one quick motion. In any other situation, she would have had a weeping flower tincture in her other hand, ready to drink it down and heal the damage immediately. Barely a second after the blade was out of her, however, a wave of life mana washed over her causing the wound in her abdomen to start closing at a visible pace. Before long, not even a scar was left behind to tell of what had happened. Turning to Healer Alena, Calyn offered a nod of acknowledgment. "Thanks," she offered between gasps, before turning back to rejoin the fight.

It went without saying that no second-tier healer could cast healing spells as powerful as the ones the increasingly mysterious woman behind her was casting. Being a clan of body enhancers, the Sydrak clan had no shortage of healers, both those adopted by the clan and those who exchanged their services for coin. Calyn had seen the work of healers belonging to different tiers, starting from the first tier to the one time she got to see a fifth-tier healer work. A second-tier healer would have needed several hours to restore the wound fully without further complications. And at the end of it all, she'd have been sporting a scar from the injury. To heal so completely with a simple spell rivaled what Calyn had seen the fifth-tier healer do. Even more amazing was the fact that it wasn't just their wounds that she was patching up. All the strain and fatigue that she'd accrued in battle faded from her body like ice melting under the noonday sun.

Healer Alena was singlehandedly the reason why they hadn't yet been pushed below deck. Her powerful healing spells allowed the guards to be even bolder in their attacks, despite the superior numbers arrayed against them. At the same time, it kept them from flagging due to fatigue. Being a body enhancer, Calyn could have gone on fighting for several more hours before she was tapped out. The same, however, wasn't necessarily true of the guards around her. And without them, she wouldn't have been able to stem the tide by herself. How Alena was managing all this, Calyn couldn't even begin to guess. But even as her knuckles pulverized another pirate's ribcage, Calyn couldn't help but thank her lucky stars that the woman was on their side...

***

Scar could feel his jaws grinding against each other as he looked on at the pathetic display before him. Sure, they were pirates, not soldiers, so he didn't exactly expect an ethos of self-sacrifice from his men. If anything, a pirate not stabbing you in the back counted as a good day to anyone familiar with the lot. But what he was watching was not only pathetic, it was handing victory over to their foes on a silver platter. He'd be the first to admit that he'd been caught off guard by how Rathen had met his end. His most recent captain had always had more pride than sense, but given his almost untouchable speed, he was rarely made to pay for it. Scar had been annoyed when the dolt had chosen to attack directly at the clone's taunting. Even then, however, he'd fully expected Rathen to be able to withdraw should the clone or her allies try anything. The scroll of sealing had caught them all off guard and exposed a weakness that they hadn't factored in. They had been so caught up in asking if the airship had powerhouses on it, that they hadn't paused to wonder what had given them the confidence to sail without one.

His other captains had chosen to hang back and let those in the lower tier attack to see if more scrolls would be deployed. This was a sound strategy, but only if their front forces were doing enough damage and they leveraged their strength from the back. However, not only were the forces at the front being decimated, they hadn't even killed a single guard. A healer in their midst kept healing any serious damage their fighters incurred keeping them in the fight far longer than should have been possible. What was even worse was the fact that his captains were yet to make a move. Seeing one of their own killed so ignominiously had painfully reminded them of their mortality. Each feared that another scroll was hidden and would be deployed the moment they made their move.

What they failed to notice, however, was that their cowardice had spread down the chain. Their third-tier mages had been deployed but were hanging in the back of the attacking mass. A few second tiers had been pushed to the front, but for the most part, they stayed in the middle of the pack, the bulk of those pushed to the front were their first-tier forces, and they were being ground to nothing by a few guards who were constantly being healed of any damage they suffered while they massacred their men. It would have been comical if not for the fact that they were on the verge of losing what should have been an easy fight.

Do not fear having a dragon for an enemy, fear having a pig for an ally!

That was the thought going through his head as he turned away from the table where the scenes of the battle were playing out. What little crew there was still left to operate the ship made sure to stay clear of him as he made his way up the ship toward the deck. As soon as he stepped onto the deck, the flames that he had been suppressing burst out of him. Given that they were made of wood, the first thing most airships were warded against was fire. Despite the robust enchantments on his airship, however, the wood around him started to slowly char owing to the aspect of heat that infused his flames. Rising into the air as a result of the enchanted ring of flight on his left little finger, Scar shot toward the group of now six men who were supposed to be his captains.

"Captain!" Bloodhound, his first mate, called out, a subtle tension in his voice. While they hadn't outright disobeyed him, they all recognized that they weren't executing the task given to them.

Scar glared at each of them, his burning gaze forcing them to lower their heads before him. "Pathetic," he spat, floating past them as he turned his attention toward the lone airship that had turned out to be a much tougher nut to crack than he'd been expecting. Lifting his hands, with his palms facing each other, Scar called on his mana, infusing it with as much of his aspect as he possibly could. A white ball of flame formed between the palms of his hands, slowly growing from the size of a small seed to about the size of a grown man's head. It would do some damage to the ship, but at the very least, would clear the deck and allow them to get a foothold. Offering no warning even to those ostensibly on his side, he thrust both his hands forward sending the furious ball of flame shooting forward at a blinding speed.

The fact that there were no screams of agony from the airship didn't at all surprise him. These were the flames of a fifth-tier mage with insight into the aspect of heat, anyone caught in its blast radius, both friend and foe, had probably been turned to ash. If anything, the screams came from his men who were at the edge of the blast radius and had the heat wash over them, burning some badly. Not even remotely bothered by this, Scar flew forward towards the airship ready to put an end to this farce. He, however, didn't get that far as once the smoke and flames cleared up a bit, a blue dome of mana was revealed on the deck with all three women and the guards under it. The wood around the dome was charred and burning, but everyone under the dome remained perfectly unharmed. Well, that is, until the guards from the airship descended upon the few pirates who had been lucky enough to find themselves covered by the mana shield.

The air around Scar started to turn wavy from the heat coming off him even as his anger shot through the roof. Not only had his attack been ineffective, but even worse, he might have just killed more of his own men than any of the guards that they'd just been fighting. Scar wouldn't have cared if it eliminated the defenders on deck, but now, he could only watch them leisurely descend below deck. They would be certain to hide it if he turned around, but he could feel the mocking gazes of his subordinate captains burning into his back. Not only had he achieved nothing, but he'd even proven them right to be cautious as their foe had even more powerful scrolls. Scar was sorely tempted to just order his people aboard the airship to blow it to pieces. If he did so, however, then this whole mission would have been a complete loss. He was still powerful enough to put down a mutiny of one bubbled up, but there's no denying that his regard in the eyes of his men would fall precipitously. Not only had they taken significant losses in this ordeal, but they also gained no benefit from it. Gritting his teeth and suppressing his rage, he continued his flight forward toward the airship.

A charred corpse crumbled into ash as his boots landed on it aboard the deck of the airship where the dome of the mana shield still protected access to the stairs that led below deck. Scar, however, didn't care, his gaze fixed on the clone who was the only one still standing on deck. "Surrender now, and I promise to show mercy," he spoke, his voice cold as the heart of a glacier. "Refuse, and I turn this whole ship into a flying pyre!" He went on to say.

He didn't try to break through the shield or attack her directly, Rather, he went for their biggest weakness and the one thing they couldn't afford to lose. The airship itself. Even if killing them had proven to be a challenge, the airship itself wouldn't remain in the air for long if a fifth-tier fire mage was constantly attacking it, defenses or not. Of course, both halves of his threat were false. To begin with, whatever else he chose to do with the rest of the people on board, whoever the original to this clone was, they'd wish they'd never been born. Secondly, Scar had zero desire to leave this debacle empty-handed. This ship would be his, one way or the other.

The smile on the woman's lips faded even as her gaze turned murderous. She opened her mouth, probably ready to promise death to them all. Her words, however, were interrupted by the sound of something knocking against the floor. In the tense situation that they were in, such an inconsequential sound should have faded into the background. But for whatever reason, the gazes of everyone on deck turned toward the opening leading below deck. In no apparent hurry, an old man with more wrinkles than Scar had ever seen on anyone ambled forward out of the door. Bent over with age, the man used a staff to support himself as he moved which was what produced the sound of something knocking against the wooden floor. Scar was tempted to think that some senile old man had lost his way and managed to find his way onto the deck at the most inopportune of times. The reaction from the clone, however, put him on guard.

It wasn't the gasp that left the woman or the way she straightened up at the sight of him. It was the genuine fear that Scar caught in the woman's eyes a moment before she bowed to the old man. He was at the fifth tier and yet the woman hadn't been cowed by him in the least. If anything, she'd looked at him like he was some nuisance she was forced to deal with. Whoever this old man was, the woman truly feared him as was evidenced by her shaking voice when she spoke. "Elder. It is to my eternal shame that we have bothered you," she declared, not daring to look up at the figure.

Not answering her or even acknowledging her existence, the old man continued to dodder along past the bowing woman. Scar couldn't help but tilt his head slightly, his guard up as he closely watched the old man who seemed to be moving in his direction. With the shield still in place and the old man's eyes barely open, Scar had been expecting the old man to stop before the shield, or perhaps comically run face-first into it. The hairs on the back of his neck, however, stood on ends, when the old man walked right through it as if it was thin air. While it wasn't the limit of his power, Scar had thrown a decent attack at the shield and had been repelled by it, and yet, to this old man, it might as well not exist.

Scar turned around, ready to run. Screw the airships and his crew. In the face of death, only fools would care about their image or what possessions they might be losing. What would any of those things do for him if he was dead? So long as he managed to keep his life, he would count today as a win. The fire mage, however, could feel ice creep down his back when he turned around to find the old man staring at him with eyes that reminded Scar of the night sky...

***

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