The headmaster was in the room, waiting to praise him for his deeds last night. He told the class about how Seth bravely took on the attackers and saved the teachers and the entire class. Seth felt that this was overkill, but he stayed quiet and let the headmaster praise him. After the headmaster droned on about what Seth had done for about 15 minutes, he started congratulating him for his eyes healing. When the headmaster mentioned that Seth had been blind the entire school year, everyone was incredulous. Seth had acted like he could see everything, and he could.
Seth blushed and looked down at his feet. Seeing Seth's odd actions, Spencer tapped him on the shoulder and asked him what he was doing. The tap caused Seth to look up and see countless faces looking at him with expressions of pity, anger, and disappointment. Seth looked around quizzically, only to be met by guards here to escort him from the premises. Seth had no idea what was going on. He had just heard the headmaster praise him, and now he was being sent away. Seeing Seth's dumbfounded look, Jack spoke up and explained that he was being suspended for harming teachers and was under suspicion of colluding with terrorists.
Seth's suspension was undetermined at the moment and it might lead to expulsion if they find any evidence of collusion. Seth felt like he had been betrayed, he had done so much for the school and saved all of the teachers and students. Yet, no matter how much he had done for the school, he was still being suspended. Seth said goodbye to his friends, completely forgot that Augie existed, and packed his bags. It didn't take long to stuff things in his inventory and spacial ring, so he was out in just a few minutes.
Seth was brought back home under careful watch by the guards surrounding him. They went through multiple waypoints that were seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Seth was awed by the grand monuments. The waypoints were huge structures with large claw-like boulders and floating rocks. After going through a few waypoints, Seth found himself in a familiar place. He was back at the first waypoint he had ever seen, he was just an hour away from his home. Seth sighed and looked to the guards, who had begun walking to a carriage that had been prepared beforehand.
The carriage ride was quiet, Seth just took out a book and read for the entire trip. The guards didn't say anything, not caring that he had a spatial treasure. Seth found it much easier to read with his eyes. He could read the actual ink rather than the elementals in it. Seth finished the book before he even got home. Seth picked a few more books to read and increased in pace. He ended up finishing all of the five books he had chosen before he reached his castle.
When the carriage stopped, Seth stepped out and saw his castle in all of its glory. Seth was brought in by the guards and met with his father, the guards talked to his father in hushed voices inside of a meeting room. When his father came out, he had a stern look on his face. He picked Seth's small body up by the arm and walked to his room. Seth was thrown inside and the door was locked three times. Seth felt that Arthur had become a completely different person for a second. Something felt wrong about the exchange.
Seth lay on his bed and looked at his unfamiliar ceiling. His form suddenly shot upright as he remembered the guy he had sent to the cave. He had forgotten about him, and now that man was probably going to die. Seth didn't feel sorry for the man, just disappointed that he didn't get the chance to interrogate him. Seth clearly remembered the man trying to attack him, he deserved the death. Seth quickly forgot about the man and laid back down. He took a book out of his inventory and began to read. He didn't feel anything about being locked in his room, he already spent most of his time reading in his room at school.
Seth read for a few hours before realizing that he had run out of books. Seth now had a large pile of books next to him. Although the pile wasn't nearly 1000 books, he had already read all of the books left in his inventory. Seth gave up on reading and instead took out the few magic and technique books that he had found. Seth began to practice all sorts of techniques and different ways of using magic. Seth had bookmarked a few pages that had techniques that had sounded strong or interesting. Seth started by forming a tiny version of himself with pure magic.
Seth's door burst open and Arthur walked through the frame. The books that had been laid around Seth instantly flew into a small bag that Arthur was holding. Once all of the books were gone, he drew something in the air with his hand and a small seal of light appeared. Arthur flicked the seal at Seth and left the room. The door flew back onto its hinges and locked itself, but Seth didn't notice that as he fell to the ground with a dull thud. Seth's unconscious body just lay on the ground.
When Seth woke up, he felt that something was wrong. He felt weaker than ever before. Seth felt as if he had been deflated. He checked his status to see what had happened to him.
---
Seth Berner
Peak Mortal
(ascended strength soul)
(magic sealed)
total: 903,807,418
Units [1,000]
Intelligence [376]
Body Strength [5,283]
Vitality [790]
Soul Strength [772,756]
Luck [7]
Magic [529]
Magic Regeneration [527]
[skills]
[shop]
---
Seth wasn't surprised that he was sealed, but he was surprised that it did so much to him. Seth felt glad that he hadn't gone all the way with the magic body formation, if he had then all of his power would be magic. If all of his power was magic then everything he had would be sealed just from a single seal like this. Seth felt that just being sealed might not even be the end of it, there might be even worse consequences down the line. Seth crawled onto his bed and wondered about what he was going to do. He had no books to read, no magic to practice, and no places to go.
Seth decided to just practice his control over elementals. Although he couldn't do that much without magic, he still had a lot of control over them because of his All Affinities Mastery skill. He played around with various elementals around his room. This time, his father didn't come to stop him. Seth had a feeling that his father wasn't very good at magic or using elementals. Seth remembered a story from one of the first books he had read in the Library of Peace. It was a story about an underdog prince that wanted to be a knight, he had no control over elementals and had very weak magical abilities. He ended up marrying a beautiful elemental wizard and becoming king at the end of the book. Considering the rest of the stories that had appeared in the library, it was probably fiction, but it still reminded Seth of his parents.
Seth sat on his bed and practiced for what felt like days, he had nothing to do and he was getting really bored. Although this was nowhere near the level of boredom he had reached during his master's second test, he still felt that he had to do something drastic. Seth hopped off of his bed and stretched his stiff joints. He felt for his magic power but was still unable to move it in the slightest. He looked around his body for anything out of the ordinary, finding something in just a few minutes. Seth found a shining seal that seemed to have been intricately crafted from pure magic power.
With just his body's strength, Seth couldn't do anything to the seal. He would have been helpless under the suppression and would have had to stay in his room for who knows how long. Seth moved thousands of elementals into his body and directed them to the seal. The thousands of elementals were still barely visible under the light of the seal. He knew he had to amass many times what he had. Seth pulled elementals from hundreds of meters in all directions, his distance of control had greatly increased from his practice.
Seth swallowed all of the elementals that come to him, bringing them to the seal and compressing them into a dense spear. Eventually, Seth gathered all of the elementals he needed, causing the entire castle to seem to have a gray dimness hover over it. Seth had quite literally sucked the life from the castle. Seth didn't care about the castle though, he only cared about removing the seal from his magic. He steadied his thoughts and got ready to break the seal. He breathed heavily and exercised his discipline by not moving a millimeter throughout the whole process.
Seth willed the spear of elementals to stab into the seal and disrupt its flow. What Seth was doing was equivalent to cutting the wire of an electrical circuit. Just as you would cut or unplug the wire connected to the power supply, Seth had cut the strand of magic connecting the power supply to the rest of the seal. He cut the flow of magic power off from the part of the seal that gathered magic and thus caused the self-sustaining magic seal to stop due to lack of energy. The seal shattered into harmless shards of magic that fizzled into gaseous magic power.
Seth let the elementals go and stretched, he felt a massive amount of power return to his body and he automatically started using his body strengthening and magic body formation techniques. Seth felt complete again. Seth looked around warily and saw that nothing had changed from before he had broken the seal. Seth decided not to practice using his magic until Arthur allowed him to as he didn't want to alarm him. Seth knew that Elizabeth would know about the event though, as she was even more elementally inclined than he was.
Seth felt that his mother would be better though, as his father had seemingly gone crazy. Seth had a feeling that Arthur's craziness had something to do with the Library of Peace. The headmaster of the school had said that he was suspected of colluding with cults and both his father and the headmaster had Libraries of Peace. Based on all the information he had on them, Seth assumed that they were a part of a large, powerful cult. They had information about all of the cults and countries since it seemed like countries even existed. The encyclopedia that Seth had read had countless extinct species listed in the back pages, ones that had been extinct for millennia.
Seth heard a light knock on his door, it was very unlike how Arthur had broken down his door so he knew it would probably be his mother. Seth made the elementals in the locks move and unlock the door. Elizabeth tentatively walked into his room with an inquisitive look on her face. Seth looked up at her, he didn't say a word. The two stared each other in the eyes for a few seconds before Elizabeth sat on his bed next to him. The two sat in silence for a few more seconds. Seth opened his mouth to speak, only to close it again as he didn't know what to say.
Seth had never been the most outgoing or extroverted person, he had always been uncomfortable when he was around people. This had been further reinforced by staying alone for the last year of his past life and yet another full year during his master's tests. Seeing her son like this, Elizabeth's motherly instincts took over and she just pulled him in close and hugged him. The two sat like that until Seth eventually dozed off.