I was tailing Doradrea's patroll when a jolt of pain ran up my arm.
The ring!
Its glowing yellow!
Wait who was yellow again?
Ah yes Theodore.
I instantly void step to his location.
Only to see him getting up with a groan.
"What happened?" I ask.
He jumped in shock, not sensing me, before relaxing.
"Oh, it's you. Someone knocked me out with a strike to my head." He replies.
"Someone knocked you out?"
"Yeah, it had to be a powerful augmenter."
"I see."
Awkward silence follows.
"I apologize for what I said during the meeting." He suddenly blurts out.
Huh? What does he-oh that.
"Eh, its alright. You're entitled to your own opinion, as am I."
He nods in acceptance.
Just then we hear footsteps coming our way.
Two sets of them.
A few seconds later Curtis and Doradrea come into view.
"Are you alright, Theodore?" Curtis asks.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I was just taken by surprise."
And then he explained to them ehat happened.
"It's certainly concerning..." Curtis mumbles.
"Its possibly someone with those blood-runes."
"Blood-runes?" Curtis asks.
"Yeah, better than calling them runes in their spine written in blood." I reply.
"An apt name." Theodore comments.
And then another set of footsteps approaches.
This one has a familiar mana signature.
"Are you alright? What happened?" Arthur speaks.
And, here we go again.
After explaining it to Arthur, he asks, "Do you think it was one of their friends?"
"It wasn't!" Theodore snaps, "A normal student won't be able to knock me out with just one hit!"
"I think it would be logical to assume its a senior year student or someone bearing 'blood-runes'"
Arthur nods in acceptance.
"Were you able to get any sort of visual of your attacker?" Curtis places an arm over Theodore's shoulder.
"I might have grazed him before blacking out." Theodore replied.
Doradrea starts mocking him, while Arthur looks down, thinking about something.
He knows something.
Silently I walk over to him, "What is it?"
"I saw Kai with a slightly bloodied bandage over his arms." He whispers.
"What?!" I whisper back, "Are you sure?"
"Yes, I-"
He was interrupted by Theodore, "Anyways, what were you doing coming from Kai's area Arthur?"
"Nothing much..."
So he's not going to tell them?
Yeah, the last thing we need now is strife between ourselves, Kai has been a part of the Dc for far longer than us so they might not believe him.
We'll need more proof before accusing anyone.
"Look, I know it looks like Kai doesn't do much, but you can trust him to carry his own weight."
"Yeah, despite his sneaky looks he's pretty dependable for a human." Doradrea adds.
I hope you are wrong about this brother.
________________________________________________________________________________
In the next few days Nathan got better, until he was back to 100%.
So I decide to ask him about it.
"What-what do you mean?"
"Come on, I'm not that dumb. I noticed you looking dead on your feet a few days ago."
"Damn and here I thought I was hiding it well enough." He mutters to himself
"You were, I'm certain only a few noticed." I reply.
He sighs, running a hand across his hair.
"I get these mild attacks once every few months. A disadvantage of my two legacy magic traits." He begins
"That didn't look mild to me,"
"It was, it only made me extremely weak for a few days, it's nothing life threatening but it is annoying." He continues.
"'Nothing life threatening', yeah tell me that when it happens during a fight to the death." I retort
"It hasn't happened yet, besides it's not like I get into too many fights." He shrugs.
"Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it never will. If it happens while you're fighting a mana beast or something, you're dead meat."
"I never said I wanted to be a fighter. Why do you think I applied as a scholar mage? I want to study new types of magic, like you're black ice thing that you used against me that day."
"Huh?"
"You really think I would forget something like that? It's not everyday someone encounters something that can swallow your spell and throws an enhanced version back at you, which is for some reason black." He stares at me suspiciously.
"Hey, we all have our secrets."
"Aw come on! I revealed my legacy magic didn't I? At least give me a hint!" He whines.
"Fine, it's not just mana that it uses." Chuckling I reply.
"...That isn't really helpful you know?! There has been no documented cases of anything other than mana that can be used for spells!"
"Oh? Then tell me, do teleportation gates and dimension rings use mana?" I reply.
"No, they are things left behind by the ancient mages." He answers me.
"Doesn't really answer the question."
"No, it doesn't I guess," He scratches the back of his head, "Mana doesn't have any attribute that can do that. It is rumored that they used something else, something different than mana, I believe it was called something like..." He racks his brain for the answer.
Huh? Could it be ki?
No, that's absurd.
Ki was inferior to even mana, and this, whatever it is, is something potentially stronger than mana.
"Ether!" Nathan blurts out. (A/N : Yeah, yeah I know it's called aether and not ether, but they don't know that.)
"Eh?"
"It was called ether, or something close to it. Its true name could be lost in translation." He elaborates.
"How do you know of this? I've never seen it being mentioned anywhere." I ask.
"Well it is a myth so it's probably not put in any book discussing mana theories and spells,"
"I see. anything else you know of this 'ether'?"
"Only one thing. Apparently it had 3 'branches' unlike mana which has 4."
"Hmmm it's certainly interesting." I mumble.
3 branches huh?
What else could be considered an element apart from the 10 we have.
Healing arts like the one mother uses? Or like [Tartarean Vitality]?
The diviner magic elder Rinia used to try and look into my fate and saying it was 'shrouded in the deepest darkness'?
Maybe my [Void Step] and Arthur's [Static Void] uses it as well.
"Crap," Nathans exclaims, derailing my line of thought.
"We're gonna be late for class!"
"Shit! We better run!"
________________________________________________________________________________
Authors note :
Nothing much this chapter.
Nathan is out of the woods, for now.
And don't worry, his condition won't stop a certain asshole king to draft him for the war.
See you guy's tomorrow then.