[I already have the scanners and the drones to carry them. We'll just need to finish enchanting this place a bit and we can deploy.]
As Dream overlooked the facility, his mana was still covering the area and enchanting everything. Sophia was applying stealth and reinforcent enchantnts, ensuring that nobody would be able to find this place.
Once she was done, she picked back up all the dirt and rock that had been removed and moved it back on top of the facility, She began to bury the area and pack in the dirt, making it look like this place never had a huge crater in it. One couldn't even see the gates of the facility.
"...What kind of scanners and drones are we using?"
Dream landed on the ground while Sophia pulled out the scanner.
[The scanner is just one big tal detector. Like what those people use at the beach, except thousands of tis more powerful. These were used back on earth and I haven't made many modifications since they're very effective. We'll have drones to fly them to different areas and scan. The scanning process will go on for about a day before we get results.]
"Alright. I have no problems."
[Deploying scanners...]
When she spoke, over two hundred scanners and drones were brought out and sent away. It wasn't long before they disappeared in the distance.
[We'll wait until we get results to deploy the mining teams. Until then, let's get so rest.]
"Agreed."
Dream nodded and turned in the direction of the Spire. It was already night, and he had to wake up for class tomorrow.
...............
........
The next day, Dream woke up and went to his sequencing class. Since he was now planning to test up, he just read through the whole book and practiced its concepts.
The class was just getting into two-layer circles, but Dream didn't pay any heed and practiced what he needed. During the class, he was pulling out two-layer circles left and right. He even made so of his own, but the others wouldn't know that just by looking.
Unfortunately the book didn't move on to three-layer circles, so he couldn't do much more than that.
Other than much of the class being stunned, nothing really happened and he moved on to the elental class.
In this class, it was much of the sa. He scanned through the book and imdiately grasped the concepts of controlling certain elents with the elental mana. The looks on everyone's faces when he practiced a two-layer water circle was priceless.
After the elental class he moved on to the practical class. In this, he was paired up again with Arrina during their workout. Her competitive nature showed even more as they had a small spar for the workout. But although she had the drive, Dream could see how her ability was lacking. So he actually stopped the spar halfway and decided to work with her.
"What are you doing?"
Arrina tilted her head in confusion after Dream suddenly stopped.
"You need to change the way you do things."
"What do you an?"
"I an your magic. Have you ever considered getting rid of your magic circles?"
Dream put up an illusion and sound barrier around them. Arrina didn't notice and was only confused about Dream's question.
"How can you get rid of using sequences? They're what gives us magic."
"Not true. Watch this."
"Whoah!"
After he spoke, Arrina suddenly felt the ground beneath her give way. Her feet sunk into the stone ground and were trapped. At the sa ti, Dream pulled water from the air with his bare hands and ford it into an ice lance. He shot the ice lance straight towards Arrina's face.
"Ahh!"
With how fast things happened, Arrina could only freeze up in panic. Dream obviously wasn't about to kill her and stopped the lance right in front of her face.
"You don't need magic circles to perform magic."
"H-how..."
"Simple. You control mana with your Will. After sparring for a while, I've co to notice peculiarities in how you control your mana, as well as how it saturates your body. And I think you might have a talent for manipulation."
As he spoke, he released Arrina's feet and evaporated the ice lance. He then walked up to her, taking out a small cube of tal.
"Take this and fill it with your mana."
"Wha..?"
Arrina was confused but still took the cube. It fit into the palm of her hand, and she attempted to fill it with her mana like Dream said.
Dream could see her weak stream of mana flow into the cube. When it was filled, he nodded.
"Good. Now make it hover above your hand. No magic circles."
"...How am I supposed to do that?"
"Use your mana as an extension of your mind. You controlled that mana to fill the cube. Now anchor it to the cube and lift the mana, thereby lifting the cube. In simpler terms, just lift the cube with your mind."
"...I'll try."
She wasn't sure what Dream was blabbering about, but she understood trying to lift the cube with her mind. Concentrating on the mana within the cube, she began trying to lift it.
After a while, she was actually able to lift it above her palm a little over an inch. Though she clearly struggled. And eventually it fell back into her hand.
"...This is useless."
"Says the one who could've been killed by several tis over using that very technique. Look, I know a way that can help you train manipulation. I feel that it would suit you better than using these sequences. It would take a lot of effort, and you might lose progress before you gain it, but you have the drive and it's not like you're that far along with sequences anyway. No offense."
"..."
Arrina went quiet. She wanted to doubt this whole manipulation thing, but she clearly saw how Dream used it and how effective it was. Like he said, with a re thought he could've ended her. Using no magic circles either. And it all happened so quickly. He seed like so much more than he really was, and she wasn't in the position to doubt his abilities. But she still had questions.
"Why are you willing to teach sothing like this? If it really is as powerful as you're letting on."
"Well, honestly, the whole reason I'm even at this school is to make friends. And I guess I enjoy passing on knowledge to others. So what better way to make friends than helping soone? You seem like a good person, and I'm able to help you gain power. So why not?"
"...You're not looking to put in debt to you?"
"Not being insulting or anything, but I highly doubt you have sothing that interests . Look, I'm just trying to be helpful to soone. That seems to be a foreign concept to many people here."
"..."
Arrina went quiet once more. And sensing her continued doubt, Dream just put it simply.
"Look, I'm offering another way of doing things. It may help you, or I'm wrong and it won't. Either way, there's not really any risk to it. You can take my help or not. I don't mind either way."
"Alright."
Arrina gave her answer with a surprising amount of conviction.
"I've got nothing to lose. So why not. So? How are we gonna do this?"
"Oh, well when do you have free ti?"
"During lunch and after 4th class."
"Oh, sa. Then we can et up during lunch and after 4th period. Though healing is my 4th, and sotis we go to the hospital. Plus the class went for like 3 hours. So we'd need so place to et. What about the dorms?"
"Dorms?"
"Ya, that would probably work best. So let's see, we can stay with each other after this for lunch, and after 4th period, you can co over to my dorm. Sound good?"
"Uhh...ok. What's your dorm number?"
"420. I leave it unlocked, so if I'm not there when you show up then you can just show yourself in."
"You let people into your room without you there?"
"No, but it's not like I have anything valuable there. Sobody could steal everything and I wouldn't care. Anyway, lunch is coming up, and you need to rest. So we'll start tonight."
"...Ok"
Arrina nodded. If she was doing sothing new, she did want to be rested.
The class ended and lunch ca. Dream and Arrina went with each other to the cafeteria and ate before splitting off for their 4th period. Interesting thing was, Mara never showed. Though he figured since he never told her what he did during lunch, she wouldn't know where to find him.
Dream went to the healing class where they went to the hospital again. They did the sa things as last ti, separating into groups and going off to help patients. Dream t back up with rlin and Mara and followed them around. Mara also tried to teach him so things as they went around seeing a variety of injuries, but since she was still super shy and quiet, she found it difficult and rlin often chid in.
As they were helping a patient, Dream suddenly got a notification.
[Dream. We have our first confirmation of a dig site.]
'Oh? That was fast. Do we know what the material is?'
[From the readings, it's Iron. And lot's of it.]
'How much is a lot?'
[Hard to get an exact number, but from the area it covers, I'm guessing at least several hundred tons.]
'Nice. And we now have the proper facilities to make steel, giving us a supply of materials stronger than titanium.'
[I'm going to begin summoning the necessary equipnt. But since you've taken on the role of a sensei with Arrina, we'll have to launch the mining operation later tonight.]
'Not necessarily. I'll just take half an hour to fly over there really quick and set things up when my class ends. My new disciple can wait a bit.'
[Such a good teacher. But that's alright. It won't take much ti to set everything up. After tonight, we'll have a mine and a refinery. Maybe we'll be able to find so additional materials from the ore as well.]
'It'll be a good harvest.'
Dream smiled as he thought about gaining so resources. He didn't know everything that he would use it on, but it was nice not having to go and buy it from people. Not to ntion the fact that running a little mining operation was pretty cool.
As the healing class ca to an end, rlin pulled them aside a bit early and talked about their little pairing.
"So Mara, did you go and find Dream at lunch?"
"N-no. I didn't know where he was."
"She has different classes and I didn't know where she was either."
"I see. Then Dream, where do you go at lunch?"
"Usually the cafeteria."
"Where in the cafeteria?"
"I'm usually by myself in the back corner."
"Then that's where you can find each other. Ok Mara?"
"O-ok."
"..."
Dream just shrugged his shoulders at this super awkward pairing. He didn't know why rlin wanted them to hangout so badly, but he didn't have a reason why not. He just went with it.
After that conversation, Mara stayed back as Dream left the hospital. He headed straight for the gates to leave the city.
After he went through and started flying to the facility, he received a call on his bracelet. It was Riddick.
"Hello?"
"It's ."
"Hello."
"Hi. So I talked to rlin."
"And?"
"First off, if he wasn't 100% sure that we were connected, then he is now. But other than that, that disciple of his has an interesting story."
"What story might that be? Is she a genius or sothing?"
"Well, dically yes. That's what happens when you've been raised by a dical prodigy like him for nearly 20 years."
"So he's been teaching her since she was a child?"
"He's been more like her father. Not long after I disappeared, he took on an assignnt to help out at a nearby small kingdom with so other mages. A section of it had been decimated by so monsters that were being manipulated by criminals. Long story short, a few thousand died and this girls' parents were among them. While he was going through the area, he saw this girl attempting to heal her dead parents with so pseudo-restoration magic. She was only 4 at the ti, and he was impressed, so he took her in. The rest is as you can guess."
"...Shit that's dark. He told you all of that?"
"Of course. We're good friends and it's nothing that he needs to hide. Especially now that he knows you're connected to . He also told about him trying to pair you two up so she can teach you."
"His attempt at getting her to make a friend."
"And it would be a good friend to make. He told how shy she was, and it's obviously due to that trauma from many years ago."
"She rembers that?"
"In full detail. It's one of the things he found while teaching her. Her mory is apparently unparalleled, and she learns extrely fast. If that's the case, she would be a good friend for you, once you get past her shyness of course."
"Huh. I an, I'm not going to make a friend just because she can be useful. I'm not a psychopath."
"I'm not saying you should, and it's nice to hear that you think that way. I'm just saying that a friendship with her has a high chance of lasting. It's hard to be friends with soone who's weak, you'll only split apart over ti. But if it's soone powerful, then they can keep up with you."
"...Right."
"Well, that's all I really had to say. In a couple days, I'll get Amitel to ready your advancent test."
"Ok."
"Then I'll talk to you later."
They hung up and Dream went into thought. He hadn't thought about friends and whether they could keep up with him in terms of power. He couldn't argue that they would split apart. It was highly likely. They would go off to do different things. Not to ntion lifespan. Soone who's class 4 would far outlive a class 1 or 2. He didn't know by how much, but it could be thousands of years vs hundreds.
He had never considered it, and it was a new concept. One that he now had to consider. Not that he would avoid making friends because they were weak, but it couldn't be entirely left out. Mindsets change. Even on Earth, people got rich while others didn't. And sotis that led to people splitting apart, whether it was because of ti or jobs. Like if your friend suddenly beca your boss. Things might get weird, especially if that sa friend ever had to fire you. Not exactly the sa situation, but it paints a picture.
Eventually, Dream just dropped the subject. He would cross that bridge when he ca to it.
[We're here.]
Soon, Sophia called out. He looked down and could see nothing but hills of dirt and rock, but he knew what lay under it, and soon he would be putting it to use.
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