Chapter 12 A new way
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Rild woke up in a very bad mood. He knew what he had to do this day and it filled him with utter disgust towards himself. Even if the young mage knew what he had to do for a long time, he still felt that is was not right. Nevertheless, he needed a body, which could at least let him open the gates of magic of every element till the 3rd gate. There was a reason why the mages who specialized in only one element were viewed as stupid or eccentric. Once one opened the third gate of any kind, one's body will be reformed by the elemental energy of the opened gate. Until that moment, one could use magic only externally since the body itself had no elemental affinity and the magic energy was stored in the soul and not the body. That changes after one opened the 3rd gate. The opening of the gate itself overcharges the body with the specific element which then flows through it in a wild manner. The problem was that when the mage opened the 4th gate of the said element, the elemental energy inside the body stops flowing and solidifies not only itself but also the body of the mage, which after that will remain solidified. This would complete the transformation ultimately. That means that after that change, one will not be able to overcharge and transform it again which in turn means one will not be able to open any more 3rd gates of magic. In fact it will be far more difficult to open even a 1st or 2nd gate of magic since the body was no longer non-elemental aligned and therefore it would be far more difficult to collect the needed elemental essence to open the gates, since the mage's own body will start to reject any element it was not aligned to. The only way for someone to practice multiple elements effectively was to first reach the 3rd gate of magic in all elements they were planning on progressing in. This was done to overload and change the body's affinity to the needed elements before it was impossible to do so. Even if one opened the 4th gate of an element and stabilizes the flowing magic energy of the opened element, the flowing energy of the other elements would still remain. Basically, the 3rd gate was the threshold where a mage had to decide if he wanted to train in multiple elements or to concentrate on only one.
For Rild it meant that he needed to reach the third gate of magic in all elements before he could open the fourth gate of any element which in turn meant he desperately needed a body which could do so. If not for this Rild would not even consider doing what he was about to.
After a while, the young worldmage was standing before the door to his teacher's room which was located on the second floor. After his teacher died on the bed inside the room, he had never entered it again. Rild slowly opened the door and stepped inside it. He did not forget to close the door behind him before he looked around. Everything was exactly as he remembered it. It seemed like Bez took good care of it.
On the rear wall was a big double bed which his teacher needed since he had the bad habit to roll around in his sleep and fall out. Next to the big bed was a wooden cabinet on which stood a lamp powered by a fire elemental magic crystal. On the wall to Rild's right were two wooden cabinets in which his teacher kept various things like seeds for his garden, magic crystals, and containers with various elixirs. To Rild's right was a door to the veranda which in itself was a little garden. Right next to the door was a closet with his teacher's robes and the staff he used when he was still an apprentice. He kept it for sentimental reasons like so many other things.
Rild walked straight to one of the cabinets and opened a specific drawer. Inside it was only one very badly made clay pot.
“He seriously kept the damned thing,” smiled Rild as he looked at the hideous pot. It was the very first thing he managed to produce with his earth magic, when he opened the first gate of magic.
The young mage carefully opened the lid of the pot and looked inside. In the pot, a completely translucent liquid was splashing around. Although there were no forces which acted on the liquid it still moved around.
Rild took the pot carefully out of the drawer and left the room. When he closed the door after himself a figure appeared in the room. It was the earth spirit Bez who just sighed as he closed the drawer which Rild let open. The figure once again disappeared.

“Reston could you roll two or three barrels from the back wall to this cauldron?” asked Rild the knight who immediately went to do as asked.
The group was once again in front of the big cauldron in the cellar of the mansion.
“What is inside it? Some kind of elixir?” asked Solana curiously. She noticed the barrels yesterday when she studied a few of the magic circles but did not touch them since she wasn't sure what was inside them. There were things which would lose their effectiveness if they got in contact with air and she assumed this was one of them.
“Just some magically enriched water nothing more,” answered Rild as he turned his attention to Fai. “Now then fire fairy. How hot can your flames become? We can make the fire hot enough by using a few fire elemental crystals located in the mansion. But I would rather not rip them out of the interior if I can avoid it.”
Before Fai could answer Tyler interrupted the exchange between the two.
“Rild I have a favor to ask you. We are in front of the cauldron and, as I assume, Reston is getting water for it at the moment. You are asking Fai about the strength of her flames and your teacher's corpse is right next to it. Please, by the love of the goddess, tell me we are not doing what I think we are doing.”
“As much as I would love to annoy you and say that you are a moron for even thinking it, this time I have to say to my regret that it's even worse than what you imagine. Far worse.”
Tyler looked at Rild with absolute disgust. Every fiber of hid being was against what about to happen. When he wanted to protest and say something he noticed that Rild's face was as disturbed as Tyler himself felt. The priest understood that if there were even a possibility of not doing it and going another way, Rild would definitely go and do it the other way. Tyler overcame his disgust with a bit of difficulty but he was still shaken up.
“Do you need my help with it?” he asked Rild in hopes the young worldmage would say no.
“No, you can go.”
“Thank you. I'm sorry, but as a priest, I can not just sit here and watch what you are about to do with the corpse.”
“A priest with morals. How unexpected. But very well, I'll play along. Just wait upstairs. We will come up once we are done.”
Tyler wanted to retort, but in the end only shook his head as he headed upstairs. When Tyler turned around and left, Rild once again faced the fairy.
“So? How hot can you flames become?”
Fai's eyes glittered when she looked at him. Rild could see the confidence in her eyes and knew that she was proud of her darkfire and was eager to show it's capabilities.
“Really, really hot. You will need to cook the water? No problem.”
Rild sighed as he looked at coffin.
“No. Is it hot enough to dissolve a human body?”
The smile on Fai's face instantly froze.
“You are serious, aren't you?”
“Completely. Teacher reached the seventh gate of earth so his body is a bit more solid than the one of a normal human. This makes it harder to let it dissolve in the cooking water. I will need you to make the water so hot, that it completely destroys the body.”
“You are aware that the water will evaporate far faster than the body dissolves in it, aren't you?”
“Normally yes, but this is magic enriched water. It will not boil so easily.”
Solana who stood at the side took out a handkerchief and pressed it against her mouth and nose.
“Just imagining it makes me nauseous,” the old mage said.”Please tell me you don't need me.”
Rild looked at her with a bit of pity. Unfortunately, he could not absolve her from this.
“Sorry, but I need you for this. This cauldron is not magical or made from any special material. It was used only for minor things like basic healing potions or simple medicines. Neither me nor teacher were very adapt at alchemy. It will not survive the needed heat, so I need you to cast earth magic on it for the whole time in order to keep it together.”
“But I can't use magic outside my body here!”
“Bez! I have a complete understanding that you do not want to help me in this..., but could you...” shouted Rild into nothing. Before Rild could end his sentence the overabundant elemental essence of earth disappeared around them.
Reston who finally brought the third barrel to the cauldron sighed in relief.
“Goddess I did not know how much I did not like the feeling of overabundant energy of one element until it disappeared,” grumbled the knight in relief. “So, shall I pour the insides of the barrels into the cauldron? Goddess, these barrels are heavy!”
Rild looked at Reston and nodded before he turned around to face Fai once more.
“So back my question. Can you produce enough heat to do it?”
Fai was not so sure about it. Although she was very convinced about the power of her fire she could not be sure that it would be powerful enough to dissolve an enhanced human body. In fact, she never even heard about any instances of a human body dissolving instead of burning when it was bathed in fire.
“I can try. If it does not work, then we can still get the crystals, can't we?”
“In the beginning, yes, but in the second half, it will be very detrimental for me if the heat disappears. Like I will die if that happens. And then you will no be able to resurrect me anymore because... let's just say you won't be able to get a part of me to create a body from.”
The fairy nodded before she turned to the old mage who still had her handkerchief in front of her face.
“Say can't we try to resurrect this one too? Like you did with Rild? His body should still be able to open all the needed gates.”
Rild and Solana opened their mouths and looked flabbergasted at the young fairy. This was something they did not consider. Since it was normally impossible to resurrect someone if he was dead for longer than two days, they simply did not think about it. The old mages who resurrected Rild acted out of desperation and most of them did not really think that it would work. After it succeeded they saw a hope to save the world in Rild and forgot about everything else.
“C-Can you contact your mage families somehow? If the goddess sent me down here, she can surely send my teacher back!”
Out of the present people, Rild was the most ecstatic right now. If his teacher could be resurrected a lot of problems would be solved. The world would still be in danger, but it would have better chances of survival. There would be two worldmages instead of one and one of them would not be 'defect' and could open all the gates of magic.
Solana just shortly nodded and started to cram inside her robe. It took her only a few moments to find a folded piece of paper where a very complex magic circle was engraved.
“Whispering wind? Should do,” assessed Rild as he looked at it. “But for that thing to work, you'll need to leave the barrier since the earth element will just cancel out the wind element in the scroll. Hey Bez, you heard everything right? Could you...”
“I've already disabled the teleportation of the mansion,” said the spirit who appeared behind the people with a bright face. There was a sparkling of hope within his eyes as he glanced at the corpse of his master.
When Solana heard this she quickly trotted out of the cellar.
“Are you kidding me right now? Do you even know how hard it was to pull the damned barrels up this stupidly big cauldron in order to fill it up?” screamed the sweaty Reston at Rild.
The young worldmage looked at the empty barrels and then at the heavy breathing knight.
“Consider it an act of repentance for killing me and plunging the world into chaos,” he said as he clasped his hands together as if he was praying.
“F*ck you!”
Rild looked very offended as he looked back at Reston.
“Watch your mouth. There is a fair and frail maiden in our midst, who may faint if you use such vulgar and inappropriate language!”
Rild gestured to Fai who was looking at the exchange between the two with an amused smile. When she heard what Rild said she raised her eyebrows and looked down her outfit. She was still wearing her dirty old leather armor with patches and although she had no sword at the moment there was a well visible dagger on next to the empty scabbard. Absolutely nothing about her screamed the words 'fair and frail'. The young fairy looked up to Rild who still had his hands clasped and said in a very serious tone.
“No, I think he is right. You should f*ck yourself.”
In just a matter of moments, the gloomy atmosphere of needing to desecrate a corpse changed into a far more fun due to the new ray of hope they discovered.

The members of the mage families were scattered through their entire territory. Offices and enterprises which were nearly everywhere in their territory needed management and some critical production lines needed mages to enchant different items. The commoners of the west were used to seeing magic and mages since many of the commoners worked inside these enterprises as laborers. If the child of a commoner had enough magic talent it could even become an apprentice in such an enterprise and learn magic from one of the mages of the mage families. If the child had, on rare occasion, and extraordinary talent, they would be able to marry into one of the mage families. Many of the cities directly controlled by the mage families were open to all visitors not matter of status and wealth. Such behavior and made the mage families pretty popular in the eyes of the people. And then there was Relazak. It was a hidden city were the most important and critical members of the mage families congregated. Most of the people in the mage territories did not even know that it existed much less where exactly it was. The only people who knew exactly where it was located were the royal families of the territories controlled by the mage families. But this did not mean that they could enter the city if they wished. Relazak was completely off-limit for anyone who was not part of the mage families. There were tries to infiltrate the city but the mages always found out and their retaliation was always very heavy even if it was against a royal family. The entire city was protected by multiple ancient magic circles which would immediately alert the mages if someone who did not have the appropriate mark entered the city and only very few people were able to engrave the mark into one's blood. Not only was the technique a well-protected secret withing the mage families it was also extremely complicated to execute. Although the current mage families could not create any ancient magic circles they still had plenty of leftovers from the past, most of which were protective ones.
The city itself was also constructed to please the mages living within. Normally a mage preferred to live near his strongest element since the magical energy of said element would be the strongest there. This was made possible by the location of the city. At the west end of the continent was a small mountain range which went along the coast for quite a while and at the westernmost end of the said mountain range was a semi-active volcano. Relazak was built by the ocean and right next to this volcano. In this position, the city could offer houses and rooms of any element to the residing mages. There were small houses at the water for the beginner water mages and underwater houses for the advanced ones. There were rooms carved inside the volcano for housing fire mages who would live closer the magma the stronger they got. The mountains itself were used by three kinds of mages. The air mages lived on top of the mountains, the earth mages beneath and those who specialized in darkness lived even further beneath. There were no candles or other light sources in their halls. Extremely tall towers were built in the city itself. Most of them had a glass roof to let the light of both the sun and the stars shine through. These towers were used by the beginner light mages. Then there were the towers with roofs made out of a special crystal, which helped to bundle and concentrate the light into the inside of the rooms at the top of the towers, for the advanced light mages.
Because most mages lived in these special habitats most of the normal houses in the city were pretty empty and were only used as a gathering point for a short time by the families they belonged to.
In the center of the city was a very big circular dome with a glass roof which housed the library of the city which was understandably the most important building in the entire city. The survived culmination of the knowledge collected by the mage families was stored inside it. The floors above the ground were accessible to the major public, while the underground floors required more and more permissions in order to be entered as they housed more secret and more pivotal information and techniques of the families.
At the lowest floor, Neln was looking trough the book cabinets as he searched for books pertaining methods of opening the sixth gate of magic. Every time he found one he pulled it out and read a few short passages from it before he did one of two things. He either threw it behind to the side and shredded it with air magic before it even reached the ground, or put them into the wagon he pulled with him.
“Hmm... This one could serve as an example of someone who looked in the right direction. This one is also acceptable. The person had a completely wrong theory, but he made his arguments in a very calm and logical manner. Can still serve as an inspiration for the youth as a dedicated researcher. This is one is just an arrogant moron...” murmured Neln as he destroyed another book. The old mage did not need to do this kind of sorting but he needed a distraction from training. Since it was extremely painful to open the sixth gate of magic he took every day an hour of time off to unwind. This in itself was pretty impressive since the other mages who started to purify their magi essence did it the other way around. They would only train one hour before the pain made them give up for the day.
Suddenly the gray mage stopped in his tracks. He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them in a panic.
“Oh no, no, no. The wards of the library are interfering. Need to get out.”
It took him less than a moment to activate the air magic in his body and starting to run. Since the stairwell connecting the floors was circular he started to jump up floors through the hole in the middle. It took him mere seconds to get from the lowest floor up to the ground floor and another one to get out.
“Ok, I hear you,” directed Neln his thought's at the magic sensation in his head.
“Good. How are things home?” asked Solana's voice in his head.
“The construction of the fleet had started.”
“Already? How did you archive this?”
“I got my ways.”
“Don't want to tell me?”
“You wouldn't believe it.”
“Suit yourself you old sack of bones. But we have another situation in our hands.”
“You didn't manage to find him? Don't give up it's been only a few days.”
“Oh no I found him. On the first day, I arrived in Sandaras. With pure luck, I ended up in the same inn as him and walked right into him insulting Tyler.”
“Tyler? Why would he insult Tyler?”
“Do you remember his opinion on the church? It turns out he REALLY hates them. In all honesty, the petty insults got annoying really quick.”
“So what is the problem?”
“It's not exactly a problem. More like a possible solution. Do you remember the greatest flaw in our little resurrection of Rild?”
“He could not use void and space elements and this body did not collect magic as fast as his old?”
“Exactly, nut I'm referring to the missing elements at the moment.”
“But didn't he wanted to use his teacher's corpse to rebuild his body? I don't remember what he told us to be honest.”
“Yes, that is exactly right. At the moment we have the perfectly preserved corpse of his teacher.”
“Then what is the problem? Do you need help with something? If so then... Did you just say perfectly preserved?”
“You caught up on the idea faster than I did. Well, I didn't actually. Fai did.”
“Where are you? I'm bringing a light mage over immediately!”
“Green 'L' shaped mansion in the outskirts west of Sandaras. Has a pretty big flowery garden.”
“I'll be as quick as I can. Which will probably be... in three days.”
“That fast? Don't you need to bring another person with you? You shouldn't be able to use your full speed since... Oh right. Light mage. Alright, in that case we are waiting for you in three days.”
The connection between the two of them broke off and Neln immediately started running towards the light mage towers.

A day passed and everybody was waiting for Neln's arrival in their own ways. Solana borrowed herself a book from Rild's room, and Reston and Fai were beating each other with wooden swords in one of the underground training rooms. These rooms were made in order to let Rild experiment with magic when he was young so they were spacious enough for the two of them to jump around and try to smack each others heads. The last two, Rild and Tyler were meditating in their respective rooms. Nobody has seen Bez so nobody knew what the earth spirit was up to.
In his room, Rild stopped meditating.
“Dammit. I can't properly concentrate. I'm too excited about the possibility of my teacher living once again,” he murmured to himself. “It was not that long ago since I saw him in paradise, but still... And then there is the question of what I will do next.”
Rild was thinking about what he would do after his teacher returned while he was laying on his bed. He still needed to return his body to his former peak, but at first, neither he nor his teacher would be able to do much about it since his teacher also needed to start from zero.
“At the very least his body is in perfect shape to practice. It has undergone the transformation of all eight elements. I wonder if it makes a difference if you start training with such a body. But if this succeeds. Then what are my plans?”
Rild did not know what exactly to do once his teacher was resurrected. Rild had no other possibility to recreate his body. At least not in the near future. Once his teacher opened his gates of magic again it wouldn't be much of a problem, but this would take a lot of time. Then there is the little problem of the invading eaters. Would there even be time and resources to help Rild reconstruct his body? Rild knew that his teacher had a different philosophy on how to protect the world. While Rild was ready to sacrifice anyone and anything in order to protect it, his teacher would save anyone he could. That in itself was going to cost a lot of resources.
“I should not be hoping to be able to reconstruct my body. In this case, I don't need to split my soul once again. I'll just dump water and light magic and start opening the gates of the other available elements. This would disqualify me from being a worldmage, but it does not matter that much. As long as I hold that title I will do my best in order to protect this world, so I have to bring some sacrifices. After the world is saved, teacher will have to search for another apprentice and I will lay down the title for good.”
Rild was wondering if he once again took the 'easy' if he did as he just planned. His doubts lasted only for a few moments.
“No. I have to do whatever I can to save the world and there is no possibility for me to rebuild my body, so in the end, I won't be able to use space and void magic. This alone makes me unworthy to be a worldmage but nevertheless, I will do as much as I can,” Rild thought for himself.
“Bez! Could you prepare some travel provisions?” he shouted into the empty room.
Right next to him on the bed the childlike spirit appeared. He looked at Rild with a questioning expression.
“Why so soon? Master will need a few days to recover before he will be able to travel. If he will travel at all that is. He could just stay here and train until he is strong enough to travel to the mountain of oaths.”
Rild shook his head when he heard Bez's question.
“I'll be leaving the day after teacher comes back. I'm going to the front lines,” explained Rild.
“You do what?!? Are you insane? You-You, do not even have a gate of magic opened! What are hoping to do there?” screamed Bez at the young mage.
“I'll open one while I will be traveling there and then I will be enchanting the blades of soldiers. Well basically just injecting magic into them, so the can slice eaters better.”
“Already opening a gate of magic? What the hell are you even talking about?!? Have you forgotten the requirement of a worldmage? Listen I don't know what in the goddess name you are thinking right now, but... Shit! Intruders. I'll be right back!”
Bez suddenly disappeared.
“Well, some bandits or curios travelers. Looks like I need to make the rations myself. Where the hell did he even get the food he served us while we were here?...”, muttered Rild as he walked to the kitchen of the mansion.

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