‘Supreme Dark Arts Technique: Embed’

Villin’s breathing quickened when he read the title. He had gotten the opportunity to learn dark arts but a few days prior but decided against it. A decision he didn’t regret. But this didn’t mean it wasn’t tempting.

Villin held the book in his hand and kept staring at the title. He wasn’t sure if there was a regular dark arts technique or if the ‘supreme’ was the norm. He also didn’t know how many sorts of techniques there were.

He thought about it for a moment and decided to read the book. Even if he didn’t intend to use dark arts due to their downside, knowing how they worked might be a good idea. Perhaps there was a weakness in it that would allow him to fight users of the technique with more ease, or it would help him in his studies of magic.

With a fast-beating heart, Villin opened the wooden book. Once opened it looked more like a textbook compared to anything else, there were fifty pages of text explaining the technique. Once Villin told everyone they decided he should study it first and then give a short explanation, then they could decide on another person to teach it.

Yet, to be honest, Villin was a little confused about something. He wasn’t sure what was stopping him from simply copying down the text and teaching it to everyone. This wasn’t possible with spells and so it made sense silver spell blueprints were extremely highly valued, it was near impossible to properly teach it to another magus without a spell blueprint, but what about these techniques?

Techniques were simply the comprehension of a certain something. It seemed similar to information given in textbooks. Villin decided to try and teach someone one of the techniques they had gotten once they got back to the academy, obviously he wouldn’t try it with the dark arts though.

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Amelia POV

Five days had passed since they had settled down in the hotel and things had been rather calm. Villin spent most of his time in the bathroom, privately reading and comprehending the book he had taken. As for the others, they had all worked on their magic.

“I’m going to go get food, Kayley, you coming with?” Amelia asked looking at the girl with crimson hair.

“Sure!” After replying Kayley reached into her interspacial bag and took out two things. First, she took out a hairnet and properly put it on. Then she took out a wig with long brown hair and put it on. Red hair was unseen of in the mortal world naturally, and those coloring their hair red were very few.

The group had decided never to go outside on their own, if someone wanted to go outside there had to be two of them at the very least.

“I’ll tail you guys just in case.” Rein chimed in. The two girls nodded, this was the second time they went outside and the previous time Rein had done the same thing. Tailing them from a distance making sure nobody else was following them.

Amelia made sure her hair was covering her missing eye before they all left the hotel. Amelia didn’t feel comfortable at all when they were outside. Turns out this is what happens when you realize you might get hunted down if people realize what you are.

Nonetheless, she didn’t let it show as she walked toward a nearby shopping street with Kayley. They had a few things they wanted to buy today. First of all, Amelia needed a pair of sunglasses that could somewhat hide her current condition. Other than this they also needed food and a map.

Knowing that Rein wasn’t far behind them Amelia allowed herself to relax a little and talk to Kayley about the mortal world. There were many things Kayley found weird and Amelia found it quite fun to talk about these things. The fact that mortals managed to make something like a car was extremely shocking for the girl.

About an hour later they had everything they needed. The sunglasses hid her would somewhat decently, but it was quite annoying to wear it over her regular glasses, she decided to look for lenses sometime soon.

They ended up deciding to buy an atlas instead of a map. The atlas held a multitude of maps of all of the countries on each of the continents. There were twelve in total and there were three countries on the central continent.

Currently, they were in Vermina, the middlemost country on the central continent.

Kayley looked rather surprised when she saw the world map. She, of course, knew there were three continents but she thought the mortal world would simply have three nations just like the magus. 

She was also surprised to see there were actually connections between the three continents.

To the very north, all of the continents were connected by ‘The Icelands’. Amelia explained to Kayley the map of that area was considered wildly inaccurate as anyone who ventures in there was known to die. There were rumors of terrible beasts residing there, and the temperature was so cold nobody could survive even when in the thickest of clothes.

The second connection was at the opposite end of the planet, there was ‘The Great Desert’. This massive patch of land that connected the three continents had no water or vegetation whatsoever, if you ventured in you would be boiled alive in no time.

Both of these areas were completely untraversable. After thinking for a bit Kayley actually recognized these areas, it was just that they had different names in magus society and she had never seen a map depicting them. These were the areas where magical beasts lived, most magus’ who ventured in never came out again, even if they were extremely powerful.

But every now and then a Magus would come out accompanied by a magical beast in human form. And soon after, their family would gain a bloodline, sometimes even noble status.

Seeing how Kayley had never seen a map of their world before Amelia felt a bit weird. She hadn’t really thought of it before but Magus really seemed to be lacking some basic knowledge. Even though Amelia agreed magic was more important than things like geography and math, she still felt the lack of knowledge was a bit much.

Perhaps it was something that got taught at the later grades of The Academy, but even then, Amelia found it a bit of a shame that generally Magus didn’t try to find a way to enhance magic with technology and vice versa. She even guessed it might be frowned upon or forbidden like gene solutions were. To her, the fact things such as gene solutions were forbidden was idiotic. Increased strength and speed could help mages of any kind, the fact that this practice was forbidden seemed extremely weird to her.

But well, if the enhancing of technology with magic was forbidden she still decided she would work on it in secret once she got a bit stronger. She didn’t see a reason why she had to listen to the idiotic rules of this continent, as long as she didn’t get caught she’d be fine.

She even considered trying to visit the eastern continent to see how their specializations worked but ended up deciding not to do this. There were simply too many things she had to study and improve in.

Thinking of this she sighed and thought of the boy that was studying in the hotel. She couldn’t study everything on her own but there were like-minded people out there. She decided to have a serious talk with him when they were alone, ask him why he studied gene solutions. If he was the same as her perhaps they could help each other out, and then help others in learning all useful skills instead of only those they were allowed to learn.