"Again," the boy-in-black replied. "You relied too much on the fury-enchantment that time."
Gian stared just at him, using every bit of his willpower not to punch him right that instant. Normally he wouldn't have minded all that much, but the angry warmth in his manacore urged him — begged him— to seek violence, to hit anything. Even if it was a god-level mage wearing his skin.
"Tsk," the boy-in-black spat in annoyance. "We're out of time."
He grabbed the collar of Gian's robes. "Don't get into stupid fights until you can control the fury-enchantment," he warned. "You go around murdering people with blue flames as a student, the other candidates will sniff you out."
"Now go. Ponder, research, then come back here to experiment and practice," he added, pushing Gian back.
With that, Gian lost his footing, and the world around him dissipated to a sea of black smoke.
*
He awoke with his face planted nose to the ground, his arse sticking in the air. "I have to stop going into the mainframe while standing," he groaned, picking himself up.
The burning anger he had been feeling before had completely left him. And with it, his deepened connection to fire vanished as well.
'What exactly is the fury-enchantment?' he thought as he rubbed his face. He knew what it did; it seemed to make fire spells more powerful, and cast automatically, almost as if the mana in his core grew a mind of its own. But he didn't understand why it did that.
'What did he say it was again?' he pondered, trying to remember the exact wordings.' The fire arcana is the fury and wrath of magical nature.'
'Then arcana is probably the orbs the system makes me select... I'm guessing its the same thing as the quarks Kate told me about earlier,' he surmised. However it didn't help much.
How could an element be the wrath of magical nature? What in the heavens evenwas magical nature?
The magic system of Enquath never personified magic by giving it emotions like wrath and fury, and concepts like magical nature just sounded outright wrong. Magic was already part of nature, present in all things, alive, dead or inanimate. He made it sound like they were two different concepts.
'But that guy wouldn't just say things for the sake of it,' Gian thought, calming down. 'There's something I can learn from this.'
Though clearly he wouldn't learn it right now. He'd either need to collect more coins, or somehow trigger the fury-enchantment again.
The warning the boy had given him made him suspect it could be activated under emotional stress, perhaps if he felt angry. Or maybe if he was involved in acts of violence. Regardless, the boy had warned him not to get into fights, but that was exactly what he had to do to learn faster.
"But it's not like I could right now even if I wanted to," he sighed, feeling the side of his ribs where his injury had been.
'Huh?'
His ribs were... healed?
He quickly unwrapped the makeshift bandaging, revealing smooth, pale skin. Not even a scar remained.
"Did he heal me?" Gian whispered thoughtfully. "No, that bastard isn't that kind," he quickly concluded.
Then what else could it have been? Unless...
'Does the mainframe heal my body every time I visit it?'
If it did, then it was a gradual process as he still had his injury, the first time he had come back from there.
'Or was it the fury-enchantment? Does it have healing properties?'
The more he thought about the enchantment, the more he realized how much more he needed to study it. After thinking things over for a moment, he came to a decision; "I need to catch up with the others."
Even if they wouldn't let him kill anyone, it would be worth it if he could gather more data about the enchantment. He hadn't managed to learn a whole lot, since it had completely overwhelmed him the first time.
"But I don't have mana vision for another hour and a half," he thought, pulling up the augmentation shop.
'No, I'll move slowly for now. I'll check if they defeated anyone so far, and only join the fights once I can use mana-eyes again.'
『The Messiah System has detected a side quest string.』
Gian smiled as he heard the notification chime.
『Quest: 'Deliberate Planner'... invoke quest name for more information.』
He excitedly invoked the quest name, and a window popped up.
━━━━⊱༒︎ 『Deliberate Planner』 ༒︎⊰━━━━
Quest difficulty: Low
Description: The Messiah candidate has shown planned restraint in his thoughts. Careful consideration is an important aspect of the Messiah's role.
Completion Criteria: Do not engage in acts of violence until [Mana-eyes] is off cooldown.
Rewards: 1 Augmentation Store Point
━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
The rewards didn't give much, but it still offered a step forward. He had no idea what the next Augmentation Store item 'Mana-heart' did, but if it was anything like mana-eyes, it would be well worth the wait.
He quickly cleaned his wand off the last chunks of flesh still stuck to it, and made his way to the next cabin.
*
The next few cabins didn't have any frozen attacker's in them. Just the usual student corpses, and broken glass and shattered wood.
Gian was starting to grow impatient, he wanted to return to the mainframe as soon as possible. However, he found appreciation in the fact he was getting another coin too quickly. He realized he was slowly growing complacent, whereas he would've sold his soul for an opportunity like this just a day ago, with so much potential power to be gained it was becoming difficult to stay humble.
'I shouldn't even be wasting time complaining,' he thought, as he stepped into yet another coinless cabin. 'There are still several things that don't make sense about this whole attacker situation.'
'First of all, how did wands that can break the laws of magic make it into the train?'
He hadn't seen any security when he got to the train station, but he had assumed that the conductors had some sort of spell, or augmentation that allowed them to sniff out potential threats.
'After all, I'm sure the kids of very important mages come to this academy.'
Though only explanation to this was that the conductors or whoever should've been on security had purposefully allowed them through.
'If the mastermind behind this had used children, then this must've been at least a little well thought out.'
That was why it made even less sense, that the attackers seemed to be of average dueling skill. 'Now that I think about it, they didn't even use their other spells. They've only ever used the wands in our encounters.'
He wasn't exactly sure where he was going with all this, but he could sense he was close to discovering something.
Just then, the entire train shook, and he was tossed to the ground.
He quickly recovered, staring at the door to the next cabin expectantly. However nothing came.
"What was that?" he whispered.
A bright light shone from the window, almost as if the sun had come out. 'It shouldn't be day for another few hours,' he thought, carefully making his way to the window.