Chapter 7 - Progress

 

Escape Time Limit ETA: 1 Week and 4 Days.

 

After 3 days had passed since Newt’s near liquidation, Cynthia was pressing her palms once again against Newt’s back.

 

“Focus Kid, we don’t want a repeat of last time do we?” Cynthia said, however against her intentions, Newt immediately faltered after recalling the trauma.

“What did I just say?!” Cynthia pulls the Mana that had drifted out of Newt’s control towards his back and pulled it into her body, converting it.

 

“You brought up a horrific trauma! Of course It’s going to shake my concentration!” Newt argues, focusing back on the Mana stored inside his Heart, willing it to the edges of his heart. Desperately holding it in place as he starts to sweat profusely and small drops of blood starts to leak through his pores.

 

“Pouring water on your head and back, brace for it and make sure not to lose your concentration.” Cynthia confirms a nod and takes her hands off Newt’s back and begins casting a simple water spell creating a small ball of water above Newt.

 

Damn, not enough Mana. Cynthia thinks pulling the water she created into a small water sack and then switches her focus on a more advanced water spell to pull moisture from the air to form more water.

 

Just enough. “Water in 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Pouring…” Cynthia warns Newt and begins pouring the water onto him, it quickly heats up on his body and becomes steam seconds after covering him.

 

“I’m out of Mana kid, this is all up to you, once you hit your limit gather the mana back into your Heart.” Getting a nod, Cynthia takes a seat and breathes a sigh of relief.

 

Cynthia falls into thought watching Newt start to leak blood before stopping shortly after.

 

After Giving a couple minutes to catch both herself and Newt, Cynthia reaches over putting her palm on Newt’s back, “I’m going to do a quick progress check, if that’s alright kid?” Cynthia asks Newt, who hides his surprised face and replies, “S-sure.”

 

Sending a pulse of Mana into his body revealed better than expected progress.

 

7/10ths of a Mana Heart in only a couple days? Kid’s a goddamn Prodigy! Cynthia exclaims internally, hiding her shock from the boy.

 

“Good job kid, you’re doing pretty good. You’ve reached past the goal of half a Mana Heart straight to 70 percent.” Cynthia explains to the exhausted teenager.

 

“Does…Hahh…Th-at mean I can…?” Newt squeezing out a question between his deep breaths.

 

“Yes kiddo, you’re learning Magic tomorrow.” Cynthia already knowing what he was going to ask next adds on, “No both you and I have exhausted our Mana and it’s getting late.”

 

Cynthia gestures through one of the many cracks in the nearest wall, Newt glancing in the direction of her gesture noticing it’s already night.

 

“Are you going out tonight?” Newt questions, already having noticed a pattern.

 

“No. I’m exhausted and there is no obvious changes that have occurred, the chances of something drastic occurring on the one night I don’t is astronomical. Though I will tomorrow night.” Cynthia replies whilst gathering moisture from the air again and dunking Newt in a bucket full of water.

 

“What was that for?!” Newt yells, having the mixture of cold water with a cool night breeze sending a shiver up his spine.

 

“You smell like garbage kiddo, not to mention blood, don’t want the guards noticing something off, do we?” Cynthia smugly asks rhetorically.

 

Whilst what she said was true, it was mostly to mess with Newt and get him to cool down.

 

Sadly this instead caused Newt to be mad, his head heating up as he racks his brain to come up with a rebuttal.

 

“Well won’t the use of Magic attract the church?! You shouldn’t do that otherwise we’ll be caught!” He triumphantly exclaims with a grin stretching across his face.

 

Cynthia pauses and a faux shocked expression covers her face. “Th-that’s right! It could attract the church! Sadly looks like we can’t practice any Magic for the foreseeable future.” She says while wiping imaginary tears.

 

Understanding dawns on Newt as he realises he made a huge mistake.

 

“I mean luckily they haven’t yet and so probably won’t detect any further either! It’s fine!” He desperately tries to convince Cynthia.

 

“But we need to be careful…If even a small amount of action and paranoia can reduce casualties, then it’s worth it.” Cynthia turns away from Newt with a thinking posture, covering her grin.

 

“That’s not! Um, it would be better long term to teach me magic as soon as possible! For the escape y-“

 

Snap.

 

Cynthia covers Newt’s mouth with he hand and takes out a bottle of wine, pouring a quarter on her body and drinking a third of it.

 

“Play along, also sorry.” Cynthia whispers to Newt who was stopped from questioning what she meant by her backhanding him across the face.

 

Slap.

 

“Dunt tawk tuh mee dis wayy, fukin discrase!” Cynthia drunkenly yells and stumbles out of the small hut-like house, ‘tripping’ over her own leg, abusing her to stumble and fall, in the direction of a snapped stick.

 

Getting up and slowly shaking her head while subtly scanning the environment, noticing a outline on a nearby shack, she ‘stumbles’ back into the hut Mumbling aloud, “fergot me wine!”

 

Eventually inside and still stumbling she gestures for Newt to close the door.

 

Leaning closely to the now sitting Newt, she whispers in his ear, “Continue the act for the night. We may be getting observed.”

 

Newt’s confusion getting replaced by resolve he nods and begins to shiver and shuffling back, as if he was scared of her.

 

Soon they headed to sleep, Newt using the rags he used to wear as blankets, whilst Cynthia slept in a bedroll.

 

———

 

Cynthia awoke early in the morning quickly checks on Newt noticing he was relatively fine and still sleeping, then she grabs the wine bottle and drinks a quarter of it and wanders around the slums for a couple of hours pretending to be drunk.

 

Looking for any sign of being followed or anyone staking out their house, finding nothing, Either a coincidence or they were tricked by our acting. Cynthia deduces, heading inside noticing Newt was awake.

 

Beginning to cook a simple breakfast with the limited cooking tools she had, Cynthia checks up on Newt.

 

“Morning kiddo, sleep wasn’t too bad I hope?” Cynthia asks.

 

“It wasn’t horrible, could have been better though.”

 

“That’s good, though, I am surprised you’re not that excited?”

 

Confusion obvious on Newt’s face as he asks, “Excited about what?”

 

“Learning Magic of course?” Cynthia replies as if it was obvious.

 

“Really?! I thought you said we can’t use Magic because we would be alerting the church?”

 

Cynthia pauses, trying to process where he got such a stupid idea.

 

“No? I mean, someone with Drana would know if someone had a different energy like Mana when meeting in person, and those truly skilled with Drana may be able to detect Mages who aren’t skilled enough for a distance, but what nobody of that level should be in this city.”

 

“What if a Devoted was in town? Would they be able to tell from long distances?”

 

Cynthia places her hand on her chin and thinks for a moment, “I luckily haven’t had the pleasure of facing against any Devoted, so on that front, not sure. On the other hand would a Devoted even be in this city? Unlikely.”

 

Newt gets a dubious look on his face and challenges her deduction. “But there was important documents here that revealed a global conspiracy, which needed to be guarded or destroyed, they didn’t destroy it, and you clearly stole it. So why wouldn’t they be here, or at least travelling here once it got out that they were stolen?”

 

“Have you heard the saying, hidden in plain sight? If the documents were guarded by multiple Devoted then the information must be important, and would attract a lot of attention, hell the only reason I knew about these.” She takes out the documents and continues. “Was because a acquaintance of mine was looking into something called ‘Solomon’s Records’, which speaking of…” Cynthia trails off as she brings the rest of the records and scrolls out and begins searching for any mention of the supposed records.

 

“Can you at least put some sound barrier or something? Didn’t you say there was someone watching us last night? What if they are listening in right now?!” Newt frantically proclaims to Cynthia.

 

Cynthia stops, looks at him and responds, “If I do, we will have to delay you learning the basics of Magic. Are you willing to do so?” She questions.

 

“For safety? Of course! If it takes a small amount of effort and paranoia to avoid death then it’s worth it!” Newt immediately replies.

 

Cynthia raises an eyebrow and smirks, “Good job disciple, you’re truly a worthy successor.” Glad he was starting to think like her.

 

“A test?” Newt replies in exasperation, earning a chuckle from his master.

 

“And you passed, once again congratulations. I’ll teach you a spell later.”

 

While Newt’s eyes were shimmering in delight and was thinking about what kind of spell she will teach him.

 

Cynthia was spending a couple minutes taking out 4 small identical devices and placing them in the 4 furthest corners away from each other and beginning to cast a sound barrier spell.

 

———

 

A man dusts off his clothes as he finishes a spar with a group of trainee clerics and knights.

 

All of them scattered across the training grounds with cuts and bruises, with the man in a white, red and yellow light-weight armour that covered his torso and legs, with short sleeve clothing for more flexibility but no protection for his shoulders and arms.

 

With a disappointed look in his eyes as he stares at the recruits who couldn’t even put up a fight, he sighs and begins walking away to look for more skilled warriors to fight.

 

However he stops, feeling something was off, he turns and looks in the direction of the slums.

 

Suddenly he hears a noise.

 

Ding~!

 

A maniacal grin spreading across his face as he stares into the sky, looking at something only a select few could see.