Chapter 164: A ntor’s Greatest Dream
The foundation of magic in this world, Cecilia was learning, was built on a simple, elegant duality. Baswara, in his brusque, professorial way, laid it out as they stood in his salle.
The core of Vision Magic was conjuration, bringing forth sothing that didn’t exist from the well of the soul. Illusions, psychic constructs, elental manifestations born of pure will. Its output was external, like a painting, and the canvas was reality.
The core of Force Magic was augntation, strengthening the vessel itself. It was kinetic energy, physical enhancent, the magic turned inward to forge the body into a weapon or a tool. Its output was internal, a change to the self.
Eastiel’s signature magic was a rare fusion. He used Force principles to elentalize and fortify his own body, then Vision principles to project that fortified power outward as lightning, fla, or concussive force. He was a closed circuit of imnse power.
But the source of the power was the critical divide. Vision sprang from the soul, a product of ditation, imagination, spiritual depth. Force was born of the body, forged through physical training, endurance, and somatic control.
Eastiel was ’Unique’ not because his magic was alien, but because he drew from both wells simultaneously. His soul and body sang the sa destructive hymn at the sa ti.
Cecilia, as Baswara imdiately discerned, was the true outlier. The complete opposite.
"Have they diagnosed where the mana you controlled ca from?" Baswara asked. Every mage could produce mana. Vision Mages from their souls. Force Mages from their bodies. Even most Unique mages skewed one way or the other, using their primary source to fuel their peculiar effects.
Cecilia’s answer was simple, and it explained everything. "I... cannot produce mana, Professor. I use either the natural mana this world already produced or discarded mana in this world."
She was a filter. A conduit. Not a source. Even in this fabricated reality, her core magical identity spoke of the truth of her existence. She didn’t generate power, but redirected, repurposed, and utilized what already was.
A fake Saintess who used deduction and existing resources, not divine power.
Baswara nodded slowly, a spark of interest igniting in his eyes. "A freak."
A being whose magic operated on a fundantally different principle.
Most telekinetics still used self-generated mana because it was familiar, easier to imprint their will upon. Relying entirely on ambient mana was like trying to sculpt with soone else’s clay, in the dark, while the clay was still moving.
"So, the reason your specialty is telekinesis," he deduced, "is because rather than changing the form of mana, you’d rather just use it in the purest form?"
Telekinesis was the brute-force application of will upon matter. It didn’t transform mana. It simply moved. It was the most fundantal, and in many ways the most difficult, application of control.
"I don’t think I’d be able to access ’specialty’ and ’intention’ to manifest even a fireball," Cecilia confird. "Mana’s purest form, unchanging, is the only thing I can control."
She had built her entire thodology around her limitation, honing it into a razor’s edge.
Baswara stared at her for a long mont, then a slow, incredulous grin spread across his face. "Who said you can’t cast a fireball without ’specialty’ and ’intention’?"
Cecilia blinked. The question was so obvious, yet it had never been posed to her, or at least, to this version of her. "Excuse ?"
In that mont, Baswara understood the tragic, self-imposed box she, or rather, the narrative construct of her, had lived in. The hyper-focus, the relentless specialization. It wasn’t just diligence. It was a cage built around a perceived deficiency.
"Did none of your earlier initiators tell you that you can make sothing manually?"
Manually. Cecilia’s mind, a repository of strategy and deduction, latched onto it. She didn’t have the mories of those past initiations. This was a romance trope world, and she was playing a role with incomplete data. "Make... sothing manually?"
"Manually," Baswara repeated, his voice taking on the cadence of a master unveiling a secret. "Like to make a fire, you need heat, fuel, and oxygen. To make heat you need friction. The fuel is mana itself. And you can push oxygen around with mana. Even with just moving your mana around you can conjure fire."
Wait. That was a good advice she could also use outside of this wo—
The explanation was so brutally, elegantly logical it felt like a key turning in a lock she hadn’t known was there.
Her thoughts were cut off by Baswara’s booming voice. "Fine. We can do your initiation remotely. Go attend school or whatever," the old man declared, a grin of excitent on his face. He saw the light of understanding in her eyes, the sudden expansion of possibility. "I see that inspiration has struck your brain."
"Yes," Cecilia said, a genuine and gentle smile touching her lips. "I think I can mimic what Vision Mages and Force Mages are able to do now."
"Mimic?" Baswara scoffed, but it was a fond, challenging sound. "Is it mimicry or just a completely different kind of control mastery?" He leaned forward, jabbing a finger at her.
"It’s just exploring everything your magic can do. Don’t be confined to just what you see Vision and Force Mages can do. Make it yours. It’s yours."
A permission slip. A validation. This man...
And sohow, it didn’t feel just for ’Cecilia Araceli, Top Telekinetic,’ but for Cecilia, the woman who had always had to use the pieces others left behind to build her own power.
Her smile didn’t change, her eyes ward, softening with a depth of gratitude that seed to belong to soone much older. She looked at the gruff, brilliant old man, and her gaze held a ’wise beyond her years holy woman stare’ that made him suddenly very awkward.
"Cough, why are you looking at
like that?" The formidable Professor Baswara actually shuffled his feet, a blush creeping up his neck.
"I am glad my friend has you as a ntor, Professor," Cecilia answered. "You are wise and very intelligent."
"Don’t think you can get my certificate just by kissing my ass!" Baswara barked, his face now fully red, full of embarrassnt and pleasure. The gruff exterior was a sham, and they both knew it.
Cecilia chuckled, playing along. "It seems I failed."
"I’ve prepared the task for you! I won’t change a single thing just because you want to do it remotely! I will use my wandering crystal to follow you and see the progress myself!!!" he thundered.
The anger and sha on his face couldn’t quite mask the strange, bubbling joy beneath.
To have a student. Not just any student. A student like this, one who was a ’freak’ of magic, a freak of intellect and will, who listened, who understood, whose very limitations were a playground for ingenuity...
It was a ntor’s greatest dream. It was a gift more precious than any certificate he could ever bestow.
But of course, Baswara’s brilliant, ntorly mind, for all its insight into magical theory, could not fathom the true purpose behind Cecilia’s logistical demands. He only saw a driven, unorthodox student maximizing her ti and challenging convention.
The reason Cecilia had insisted on maintaining her school attendance, on planning to use the expensive, mana-intensive teleportation gates daily to bounce between the remote initiation site and the Athenaeum, had nothing to do with credits or perfect attendance records.
It was for Oathran.
He was the fixed point in her investigation, the living mystery at the heart of this scenario. Every piece of intelligence, his blank past, his connection to Baswara, only deepened the imperative.
She couldn’t afford to be sequestered away for two weeks. She needed to be there. In the classroom. In the halls. Watching the subtle shifts in his deanor, the quiet signs of whatever endga was approaching.
Even as she investigated the source, she could not let the subject out of her sight.
But today’s visit to the professor’s secluded residence served a dual purpose. The initiation was the cover, the legitimate reason for her presence. The real mission began the mont Baswara, flustered and pleased, turned his back to fetch his ’wandering crystal.’
As the old man bustled about, Cecilia’s external focus remained politely on him. Inwardly, she shifted gears. She didn’t need to move from her spot. She closed her eyes for a brief, barely perceptible mont, centering herself.
Then, she let her will unfurl.
She used the ambient mana that swirled in the old residence, thick with the residues of a lifeti of powerful magic, scholarly obsession, and pipe smoke. She sent her consciousness riding on its currents, thin as a molecule of scent, vast as the room itself.
Mana spread. It flowed over the worn floorboards, seeping into the grain. It brushed against the spines of countless books, tasting the leather and ancient paper. It glided over the odd geological specins on their shelves, the dusty alembics, the frad picture on the desk.
It mapped the contours of every chair, every rug, every crack in the plaster ceiling. A scan, making the very air and substance of the residence as familiar to her as the back of her own hand.
Anything.
She was searching for anything. A hidden docunt. A warded drawer. A journal entry. A magical signature that didn’t belong. A clue, however faint, that would explain ’Oathran’. That would explain why Oathran Alicei even was.
This technique was of course not sothing she’d learned in this world’s libraries or from its telekinesis masters.
It was the first and only technique Oathran had ever taught her.
The real Oathran.
As Baswara turned back, crystal in hand, chattering about baseline assessnts, Cecilia’s mana finished its silent, comprehensive sweep.
And she found sothing. Faint. Old. A trace of magic that felt... constrained. Deliberately sealed. It ca from a small, innocuous wooden chest on a high shelf, tucked behind a treatise on oceanic ley lines.
Found you.
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