Chapter 19. Why?
There was a certain satisfaction in it that Sael thought most people could relate to. That moment when events unfolded exactly as you'd expected, when your warnings proved accurate, when the people who'd dismissed your concerns were forced to confront the consequences of their skepticism.
You could say "I told you so" to anyone who hadn't believed you. And if you were vindictive and a bit petty—which Sael hoped he wasn't, but suspected he might be, at least a little—you could feel a small spark of joy watching their faces as they apologized and regretted not listening.
It was human.
But then there were the rare, unfortunate times when you'd pray with everything you had to be wrong about something you'd warned about. Times when being right meant everything being wrong. When the satisfaction of vindication turned to ash because the cost of accuracy was too high, and your correctness meant danger for everyone else.
Sael would have traded every "I told you so" in his life to be wrong right now.
Because Professor Edmund Carth's hand was glowing with gathered mana, and the spell forming between his fingers was absolutely, unmistakably a [Volcano Eruption]. Ninth circle. Destructive magic at a scale that had no business being cast indoors. The kind of spell you used on battlefields, against armies, when collateral damage was not just acceptable but expected.
The air around Carth's hand was already warping from the heat. Sael could see the spell matrix taking shape, layers upon layers of compressed fire and force building toward critical mass. In another second it would be complete. Then in less than one second it would detonate.
This whole building would be gone. Everyone in it would be dead.
And yet, that wasn't what made Sael's breath catch in his throat.
It was the energy itself, the mana Carth was channeling through his core.
The last time Sael had felt this particular energy had been four hundred years ago, at the Battle of Mount Yrsult, and he'd honestly believed—perhaps naively—that he'd never encounter it again.
Normal mana felt fresh. Electric, even, for lack of a better word. It jolted you awake when you channeled it, sharp and alive as it flowed through your body from your core. It was fast, too fast for most people to ever get comfortable with. Which explained why most people born with mana cores never became mages; the sensation was often too intense, too difficult to acclimate to.
Sadly, what Sael was sensing now was quite different.
This mana felt thick. Warm. It moved slowly through Carth's channels, almost languid, and there was something... inviting about it. It didn't jolt or spark or resist. It simply flowed where Carth directed it, obedient and eager, allowing him to cast a ninth circle spell with the sort of ease that should have required decades of discipline and mastery he clearly didn't possess.
You'd think the power was yours. That you'd finally achieved something through your own skill.
But you'd be wrong. You were only working with borrowed power, and the interest on that loan would come due eventually.
The shock of recognition hit him harder than he would have expected. Four centuries was a long time. Long enough that some part of him had started to believe this particular horror had been thoroughly eradicated.
But there it was, pulsing through Edmund Carth's mana channels as he prepared to incinerate a hall full of people.
This was, without the shadow of a doubt, Corrupted mana.
Sael felt... well, he wasn't quite sure, actually.
What am I feeling?
That was the first question. Identify the emotion. Name it. Only then could you begin to process it properly. Sael had spent lifetimes learning this particular skill, and it had become something of a habit, this constant internal monitoring of his own mental state. Some people might have called it overthinking, but he preferred to think of it as self-awareness, though he supposed the line between the two was blurry enough that the distinction hardly mattered.
Shock, perhaps? That numb sensation of reality refusing to match his expectations.
No, wait. Not shock. Shock implied surprise, and he wasn't truly surprised, was he? He'd suspected this. He'd warned people about it. So not shock.
Disbelief, then. The stubborn part of his mind that kept insisting this couldn't be happening. But no, that wasn't right either. He believed it. He could see it, sense it, feel it radiating from Carth's core. There was no question of belief. This was happening.
Disappointment? Bone-deep disappointment that people hadn't learned, that after four hundred years of peace, after everything they'd learned about Corruption and what it did to people, someone had looked at that history and decided it was worth the risk anyway.
Hmm, closer, but disappointment was passive. What he felt wasn't passive at all.
Fear? Dread at what Corruption's return would bring, at having to face this again after so long?
He considered that. But no, fear made you want to run, to hide, it made you want to protect yourself. What he felt made him want to move forward, not back.
This was anger.
Yes, that's what he was feeling.
Anger.
Sael's hand moved.
Fast enough that Carth's eyes barely had time to widen before Sael's fingers closed around his wrist and redirected the attack toward the ceiling. The [Volcano Eruption] was already half-formed. Sael could feel the heat of it scorching the air and see the spell reaching that critical threshold where it would either be released or tear Carth's hand apart from the inside.
He cast [Dispel].
This was a special circle spell. Unusual in that it worked on any type of magic, regardless of complexity, as long as you could pour in enough mana and maintain precise enough control to match what you were trying to unmake.
Any mage could do it, really. It was required knowledge even for canceling one's own spells mid-cast. The principle was straightforward: understand the target spell's structure well enough to reverse it, while matching or surpassing the mana the caster had invested.
The difficulty came from doing both simultaneously under pressure.
For a ninth circle [Volcano Eruption] that wasn't your own spell, it required twelfth circle execution: perfect structural analysis and overwhelming mana output, all in the fraction of a second before detonation.
The spell matrix around Carth's hand simply stopped being.
One moment there was a [Volcano Eruption] gathering itself for release. The next moment there was just mana, stripped of all molding and intent, returned to its original ambient form.
The waveshock hit the whole Hall.
Sael had braced for it, but most of the room hadn't. People recoiled violently, some falling off their benches, others crying out as the sudden unraveling of ninth circle magic sent ripples of force through the hall.
Sael held Carth's arm steady through it all.
The professor was staring at him with wide, shocked eyes. His mouth had fallen open slightly. The hand that had been preparing to kill everyone in the room was trembling now, fingers twitching like he couldn't quite believe they were still attached.
The floor beneath Sael's feet began to tremble.
It started as a subtle vibration, one you might dismiss as your imagination or perhaps something happening in a distant part of the building. But Sael noticed it immediately, and with that noticing came the understanding of what was happening.
Mages manipulated mana. That was the fundamental truth of magic, the basic principle upon which all spellcasting rested. Mana existed as an ambient energy throughout the world, invisible and intangible but present in every space, saturating reality the way water saturated a sponge.
Mages learned to sense this mana, to draw it into their bodies through their mana channels, to store it in their core where it could be shaped and directed. And when a mage actively molded and manipulated that mana—applied intent and structure and purpose to raw energy—the result was called a spell.
For most mages, this process was entirely voluntary. But at a certain threshold of power, the rules changed. When a mage became sufficiently strong, when their core grew large enough and their connection to ambient mana deep enough, their emotional state began to affect the mana around them involuntarily.
The mechanism was well understood, if difficult to explain to those who hadn't experienced it directly.
A powerful mage's presence warped the ambient mana field, and when their emotions became intense enough to dominate their conscious thoughts, that emotional state impressed itself upon the surrounding mana. The mana responded to the pattern being projected at it, shaped itself according to the dominant emotional frequency it was receiving.
Joy created light. Grief summoned rain. Fear dropped temperatures and made shadows deepen. And whatever a mage of Sael's caliber was feeling right now, would be nothing short of a cataclysm.
The tremor came again, stronger this time. Around the Great Hall, people began to notice. Conversations that had been starting to resume after the shock of the dispelled [Volcano Eruption] faltered and died. Heads turned, looking for the source of the disturbance. Someone's quill rolled off a table and clattered to the floor, the small sound unnaturally loud in the growing silence.
More tremor, and then again, rhythmic now like a heartbeat, steady and relentless, making the stone floor crack and the support pillars grind against their foundations.
Sael tried to breathe and apply the techniques he'd spent lifetimes perfecting. Observe the emotion without judgment. Note its presence. Acknowledge its validity. Then let it pass through you like water through a sieve, recognized but not retained.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
But whatever he was feeling wouldn't pass through. It wouldn't dissipate under analytical scrutiny the way emotions usually did when you examined them closely enough.
The tremors intensified. Cracks appeared in the floor, thin hairline fractures spreading outward from where Sael stood. One of the support pillars made a grinding sound, stone shifting against stone as the building itself began to express the force of what Sael had identified as anger.
More gasps echoed through the hall, people starting to panic despite their training, their survival instincts overriding their discipline as reality itself started to lose coherence around them. The mana in the hall was responding now, pulled into turbulent motion. Candles flickered and went out. The temperature dropped several degrees in the space of a heartbeat, then spiked up again, then dropped once more.
"Everyone remain calm!" Headmaster Koleen's voice cut through the rising panic. "Stay where you are. Do not flee. Do not cast defensive magic in a disturbed mana field. Your stillness serves us far better than your panic."
He was on his feet now, staff raised, his presence alone enough to draw attention and hold it and his eyes fixed on Sael. This was a man who knew exactly what was happening and exactly how dangerous it was.
"Master Sael, if you are able, I ask that you steady yourself," Koleen continued, his voice pitched for Sael's ears specifically now, though likely half the hall could hear him in the unnatural quiet. "We remain under your protection, but only so long as you maintain control. I beseech you: recall your discipline. Recall your purpose. We have need of your strength, not your wrath."
Sael heard and understood him. In fact, he even agreed with him. But understanding what you should do and actually doing it were not the same thing, particularly when the emotion was still building despite his best efforts to contain it. Every attempt to dampen it seemed to make it burn hotter, as if the very act of trying to suppress it was fuel for its growth.
The building shook violently enough that several people lost their footing entirely. Benches toppled. Tables cracked down their centers. The great doors at the entrance rattled in their frame, the sound like thunder confined to a small space, and somewhere in the back of the hall glass shattered as one of the ornamental windows gave way under the stress.
Sael looked at the source of his building anger.
He activated [Third Eye], letting his vision shift to see past the physical and into the fundamental nature of what he was observing.
Professor Edmund Carth was Level 875.
"Why?"
The word came out quiet and disappointed. The tone you'd use with a student who'd turned in work you knew they were capable of doing better.
Carth's mouth moved but no sound came out.