The process of creating the Darkness crystal was not problematic, but even though it was going to be a small wound, Gilliam really disliked the anticipation before the pain.
Starting the process a small wound opened up on the top of his palm, it wasn’t more than a small cut you might get from playing with a cat, but it was enough to draw a few droplets of blood’s worth of red mist. It collected between his hands into a small flake no larger than a bead, or most letters on a standard computer keyboard. Stopping the process afterwards he caught the mini-crystal before it fell to the ground.

“Well, this became a very, very small one, proof of concept more than anything.” He handed it to Nolis who had the massive eyes of a child walking into a candy factory.

Nolis received the crystal and immediately seemed to forget that Gilliam was in the room. He walked over and sat down at his desk before taking notes, inspecting the crystal, drawing, creating some magical lights and investigating it even more.

Gilliam gave him the time he needed, but the man became obsessed about this as he did a lot of weird tests and checks with it.
“Can... can I use this?” he asked Gilliam hesitantly.
Gilliam shrugged and nodded, to him this was nothing special but it appeared to be very special to Nolis.

Nolis’ eyes lit up with a certain glee before he turned back to his research.

This process took a solid hour, Gilliam passed the time by continuing his own mini-research in his notebook, taking the ant out of the ring for testing reasons. The ant seemed completely fine and was eventually put back into the ring for further testing later.
Nolis was doing... things, to the crystal. He placed it in fancy special magic circles that Gilliam didn’t get the time to properly read into before it was activated and disappeared. It seems that it made a reaction of sorts, rather than using the crystal or doing anything to it, a pen came to life and started writing and drawing things on some papers that were placed on the edge of the circle before it activated.

This went on for a short while before he cast the creation circle, it was ever so slightly modified to use an external power source. When activated the crystal disappeared and a small bird flew out through a puff of smoke. It flew around the room in panic before settling on a shelf.
“This... this is amazing.” Nolis smiled widely. “The ability to make mana crystals is somewhat rare. Darkness mages are quite rare as well so... having one that can do both is quite out of the ordinary.”
Nolis had finally decided to share with the class, so to speak, and explained his reasoning to Gilliam. “The ability to make the crystals ahead of time, the ability to create something without paying the cost then and there.”

Gilliam nodded, this was the logic behind using any mana crystal, pre-paying for mana usage so you don’t need to spend the energy then and there was really a powerful thing.

“But, if you can drain others, and crystallise their energy, you can literally create anything at any time without paying the cost at all.”
He was calming down a little once he had explained the gist of it, the things he mentioned made a lot of sense.

At first Gilliam didn’t see why this was cause to react as he did, he looked almost like he looked in the face of God when he saw the crystal. But the more he thought about it the more it made sense. Nolis was without a doubt better than Gilliam at this, but considering the extreme cost of combat-worthy summonings, without healing or aid you would likely not survive combat. However if you could use a few weeks, months or whatever to pre-prepare the gems this could remove the only downside of creation magic. And if you could make the crystals from enemies.... It was starting to make a lot of sense.

“If you reacted that much to that little pebble, what about this, then?” Gilliam wanted to trigger Nolis a little. The proof of concept and information behind it was already shown, but he wanted to see the reaction of a professional when he showed the large gem.

Taking the almost fist-sized blood crystal from the ring, he held it in his hand for a moment.
Nolis used a brief few seconds to properly realise what this was, but when he did his eyes widened to the point of them almost popping out of his skull. Looking like a starving dog near fresh food he had an almost desperate feeling to him.
Though, suddenly the expression faded and he returned to his normal self.
“I... apologise... I let my greed take the better of me there...” He looked away a bit embarrassed at this exhibition of, as he said, greed.

“No worries.” Gilliam smiled as he put the crystal back in the ring, having Nolis’ left eye almost twitch a little. “It was quite the pain to make it, but it was almost worth it seeing your reaction.”
Gilliam’s smile grew to a shit-eating and somewhat schadenfreude inspired level. “Your explanation and reaction did give me a lot of information. I suppose parts of me didn’t see the value in this until now.”

Nolis sat down on his chair.” I kind of hate you, you know? Or rather, it’s more of an envy-hate kind of thing. I have used so long to learn all this, and you just... get it... I’ll be happy having you as a long-term ally when I graduate but... I do hate you a little.”

There was a lot of honesty in that sentence. In his modern world life Gilliam had felt the same with several people, so he knew the idea behind it. And having been in that situation he couldn’t really comment on Nolis’ statement at all.

“Can the crystals be used for something nefarious against the owner of the life force?” Gilliam asked honestly. It was based on the user’s life force, after all.

“I don’t think so. Much like a mana crystal, when it’s condensed into a crystal, all personal ties disappear and it becomes almost primally neutral. The energy in a crystal is just that, energy. There is no bond to the original caster. How come?”
Nolis explained it well, but he seemed to wonder why Gilliam wanted to know.

“Make the tattoo amazing, teach me how to use an external source to make the crystals, and I’ll give you the one I just showed you.”
To Gilliam the crystal did indeed have value, but since he could also heal, not considering the dome, each crystal just cost ‘some pain’. And if he learned to use external sources, making more in the demon realm would not be an issue later. It felt like using this as the metaphorical carrot for Nolis, to get the absolute best result out of their trade, was absolutely worth it.

Nolis’ eyes again widened. There was a motivation behind him that wasn't there before. This just furthered Gilliam’s belief that it was a good trade.
“So, when do we start?” Gilliam asked, wondering if he needed to set some time off for this.

“Oh, don’t you worry. We start now. Take off your shirt and lie down.” Nolis commanded as he went through drawers, shelves and boxes, gathering tools and materials.

“But... There isn’t a bed or anyt-” Gilliam’s comment about a lacking place to lie down was instantly interrupted.

“Fuck that, get on the floor, we’re doing this now!” Nolis’ eagerness caught Gilliam off guard quite hard.

Gilliam couldn’t really complain, this would make things easier for him to get this done today rather than later.
Taking off his vest and shirt, he used that as a slight barrier against the stone floor. It was still cold but it became manageable with some cloth between.

Nolis didn’t take long to prepare, he had gathered books, papers, notes, tools and materials and was already starting by using his ink pen to draw on Gilliam’s body, starting over the chest and in the palm.

Seeing the tools, especially the needles and tattooing equipment which kind of looked like a bunch of super thin sewing needles bundled together on the end of a 90-degree bend on a stick, as well as a mini-mallet of sorts, he briefly remembered how they did tattoos back in the day before electric machinery...
This was going to be painful..

It all started with Nolis drawing some blood, he poured this blood into a vial with some other substance, explaining that the ink needed to be made from the receiver’s own blood, or healing magic could identify it as something external, and ‘heal the tattoo’. Doing it this way meant that it was kind of like injecting your own blood back into you, it wouldn’t register as anything negative and would not be destroyed that way.

When Nolis started the actual procedure, after he was done drawing on everything, Gilliam learned a strange new pain. It was deep enough to bleed slightly, but it also healed very fast, the pain was manageable but at the same time just painful enough to not be. It was honestly a very uncomfortable feeling. That was until he got over certain zones, the arm part was not that problematic, the chest was painful but when he got to the palm... that was legitimate torture. The palm is filled with an absurd amount of nerves, after all.
They had to take a lot of breaks between rounds when it came to his hands, though using a ghetto-anaesthetic method, Gilliam used water magic to create some ice, which he covered the areas of his hand that he was to tattoo, the cold would eventually numb the areas to make it... manageable... If nothing else, it helped a lot.

During tattooing, Nolis explained how to use the tattoo, how to make the zone larger or smaller, the mental aspect of the magic circle, basically. He also explained how the transferring of power works. There is a reason why the main circle is over the heart, and that’s because the heart is the source of life energy. This is why some darkness mages harvest hearts for... reasons... The circle will use his body as a very temporary storing of the life energy ‘above’ his normal body, because of this the creation circle will absorb from this source before using his own. Not only will this stop wounds from opening, as long as you have a strong enough source to draw from, the source itself will get these wounds, but it can be used to invigorate you substantially as you are flooding your body with extra life. It won’t heal wounds but it will give you something like an adrenaline kick.

All of this sounded like good info for Gilliam, even if he’s out of mana he had something he could use.
“What happens if I use this one on someone as I heal them, or use it on someone in the healing dome?” Gilliam didn’t have any sadistic or torture thoughts in mind, it was more a question to understand.

“Then they will most likely have wounds opening, then the healing closes them, for this to open new wounds and so on. It’s a horrible feeling. However, if you use it at its maximum power, it will have your target almost explode from within as their blood is pulled out at the same time. I’m told this feels... well... not good, but I suppose it’s faster?” He didn’t sound like he had done the latter personally, but it did sound like he had also tried being healed as he used darkness magic.

Gilliam could confirm his opening and closing wound statement personally.
“Well, given the amount of them there are over there, a large zone at maximum power is most likely going to be the way I go. It will be a dual offensive spell as I use that to Summon something.”

Nolis chuckled at the statement. Gilliam assumed it was to the murderous nature of his comment.
The darkness mage went on to explain how to ‘feel’ how much energy you needed to summon something. It was deceptively simple, rather than just casting the spell right away, think about it really hard but stop before the actual activation and rather ‘ask’ the circle. At the time you’re about to activate it the circle is connected to your mind, due to the nature of the mental component, you can get a rough sense of how much energy it needs at that time. There was no preset answer or ways to explain what the different feelings meant, he would just have to get used to it. But it would at least be very easy to distinguish if a blood crystal or absorbed energy was enough, or if he needed to supplement it.
This should stop him from suiciding in the battlefield, if nothing else.

The procedure took several hours, modern tattoos take a long time by itself and to get all of this done in a single day he needed to be there for a while. Toilet and snack breaks were mixed into the various pain-breaks he already needed, the rest of the time was passed by sharing of information; almost all of which was from Nolis to Gilliam.
He seemed very talkative when there was someone sharing his interests.


“There, it’s done!” Nolis said the magic words, metaphorically speaking, that Gilliam had been wanting to hear.

He had expected something like that since he could feel something different a short while ago, a kind of... reach... off sorts. When the magic circle was properly connected and ‘working’, he could feel that something was strange about it. It was a good kind of strange, kind of like if you imagine that you had a much longer reach than you normally had, that kind of feeling was just there permanently.
Sitting up he took a look at Nolis’ work. The tattoo was almost the same skin tone as his skin was, sure everything was red and swollen now but the ink itself at least. It looked like a professional tattoo, so Nolis clearly knew what he was doing.
“Thank you, man. I’m very happy to be able to piggyback on your years of studies for things like this.” Complimenting the darkness mage didn’t seem to do anything.

“Yes, yes. I’m awesome, sure. Now. your side of the bargain.” He didn’t sound as desperate as before, but he really did want to get started on... whatever he planned with this.

Gilliam chuckled and gave a little nod as he had the ring manifest the large blood crystal from its storage, handing it to his friend.
Nolis received it with both hands and was in an almost trance-like amazement. Instantly ignoring Gilliam he went back to his desk and started some research-looking things.

At this point Nolis instantly went into his work-mode, he stopped responding to Gilliam and any questions were just replied with some auto-pilot agreeing noise.
Gilliam took this as a good time to just see himself out.

As he left Nolis’ room, he started healing himself, focusing on his arm first as, if something were to happen, it would be the easiest to fix as it was mainly a line.
Nolis’ statement about the ink not being healed away seemed correct, the swelling and redness faded almost instantly, but the weak slightly off-hue skin tone remained. It looked almost like a scar, it had the rough same skin tone but slightly paler. Now that the test worked out he moved to his shirt, unbuttoning it to take a look and make sure something weird didn’t happen, and by the time he reached the door leading to the guard, the swelling and redness had faded, leaving only a slight scar-like tattoo there as well.

This was going perfectly, just like the tattoo on Nolis, it was clearly there, but hard to see if you didn’t know about it or looked carefully enough.
Walking through the guard-room, leaving up the stairs as he healed his hand, everything was as good as it could be by the time he was up in the main hall. Leaving for the Healing Dome he found that the group was no longer there. There were a few students doing some training and practising in the field but the girls or Kintas were nowhere to be seen. That’s right, he left suddenly and in a hurry so there wasn't any good time to plan where to go.
The first thing that came to mind when considering where to go was the mess hall, though the dome took care of you when in there, you were oddly hungry afterwards.

Passing by a lot of other students as he walked through the arches under the wings, he found himself entering the field-door for the mess hall, and as expected there they were. Angela and Petal were sitting at a table eating, Savia seemed to be there as well and was sitting on the table eating from her own tiny plate.
The room was full with other students, eating their own things, though both Angela and Petal were very easy to pick out from a crowd.

Before he had a chance to walk over to them, Savia seemed to notice him. And instead of taking flight and crash-landing in his face, she just manifested in front of him.
“Master!” She shouted with a happy expression. Though she didn’t crash into him before, she used her now shorter range to do her best, though she was caught in the air before she made her goal.

“Hah, caught you this time.” Gilliam exclaimed with a victorious tone.
Opening his hands and looking into them, there was a flustered harpy smiling back at him.

“Savia can teleport other people!” She explained the results of her training right away. “Angrylady also says that Savia has a big boundary!”
She sounded a little confused at her own latter statement, seems like she might not properly know what a boundary is.

GIlliam walked over to the other two at the table, letting Savia right herself and sit in his right hand palm instead of halfway upside down after being caught mid-flight.
“So, how did it go?” He asked the two, mainly to start the conversation more than anything.

“Kintas didn’t go easy on us, almost like he was making up for your creature.” Angela moped.
Petal didn’t say anything but her content smile wasn’t exactly present.

“Ah... Sorry?” He didn’t sound like he meant it, and honestly it wasn’t his fault even though it kind of, sort of was. Taking revenge on someone else is just petty, but it might also just have been him wanting to have some fun. That man really seemed to like fighting...

Angela looked at her hands as Gilliam replied, not seeming to really react to his apology. “Though, fighting someone that strong with my all has made me realise something. I think I understand what my father was telling me about fighting without restriction being the path to my enlightenment.”
She really did seem to have realised something, but at the same time it seemed like she wasn’t properly at her goal.

“What do you mean?” Gilliam asked, really wondering what all this meant. Enlightenment? Was this some martial arts cultivation thing?

“My father and some of his martial arts students have learned to use their inner energy. My father always managed to find out the way for each of his students to release it, but I was never able to. He told me that I needed to fight, giving my all. Though once I started getting stronger, giving my all became fatal, and I didn’t want to kill. But I think I’m starting to understand what he meant; If I don’t fight anyone stronger than me, I will never improve.”

Petal broke into the conversation. “She’ll be fighting Kintas a lot now.” She smiled oddly satisfied with that statement.

“Oh, and you’ll be joining me.” Angela commanded Petal. “You might get stronger... passively... But I won't, I need to figure this out.” She put a suggestive tone on the word ‘passively’, clearly indicating her point about wording it that way.
She also had a very goal-oriented energy about her, she seemed to have really found the answer to something she had been pondering about for quite some time, which was good.

“Well, I think I need to be making a lot of mana crystals for a while, so it seems we all have something to do.” He smiled. He needed to have enough to be sure in the Fractured Lands. And though he could theoretically draw life force into gems, he wanted to have some to start out with, so he needed to make a few of those as well.

“OH!” Savia broke into the conversation. “Angrylady said that Master needed to go to her classroom. Speak to portallady!” Like a reminder calendar she did, in fact, remind Gilliam that they made an appointment. She looked super happy about reminding him like this, like she had found another calling in life.

“Well, in that case I’ll eat something before we go.” Not waiting for anyone to confirm or comment he went over to get some food.

If all went well with their meeting, the counter-invasion should start soon!