Chapter 143: Space To Improve
"That cannot be!" General Sreev declared for what felt like the millionth time.
"I assure you, it is," Kir said. "Space and time are the same thing, and since gravity affects space, it also affects time. We are moving marginally faster in time than an object farther from this world, and slightly faster still than an object outside the solar system, and still slightly faster than an object existing on its own, with no other object to be attracted to."
Kir was enjoying himself. It had taken all of two hours to reverse their dynamic once he’d made the first crack in Sreev’s frankly medieval notions. And all without doing any math whatsoever. The hours after that had flown by.
In that time, Sreev had managed to fill fourteen pages with facts that he needed to verify. Kir, of course, had provided him with a few experiments that would do just that. They were in a pause when Captain Litty interrupted them to deliver the day’s report.
"My apologies, young master, but there are matters of the army to deal with. I will need an hour to do so and devise ways to optimize your development," the General bowed sincerely.
"Take your time," Kir said, lifting a glass of unexpectedly delicious wine to his lips. Sreev had offered an Aytherian variety but Kir had wanted to try something from Hell. The distillation was primarily from something known as "pumice fruit," and he’d been surprised to find that it was subtly sweet and very fruity with a tang he didn’t recognize until learning it was, according to Sreev, "probably sulferberry."
Wines from Hell tended to have few primary ingredients and a wide array of added flavors depending on what was available with sunlight, water, and volcanic activity being highly variable. Sreev said he found the chaos enjoyable, and guessing the year of a wine by its ingredients was a pastime for Hell’s more historically inclined sommeliers.
Kir passed the hour thinking about what he’d revealed to Sreev and questioning himself on whether any of it was particularly deadly. In retrospect, the General had been rather skeptical, even after Kir managed to convince him of some truths, and even Kir had to admit that most of his knowledge dealt only with the physical realm.
Dungeons, for example, were at the very least spacetime anomalies. Once that caveat had been established, Kir finally knew why there was so much disconnect between him and his lessons at the Norneau Academy.
It wasn’t just that everything he’d learned there had been at least half-wrong on the sciences side, it was that he hadn’t had access to the more advanced bodily, mental, and soul studies; two fields that had been identified to him freely by the demonic General, if not in those terms.
Dividing the advancement of magics into physical, mental, and soul studies made the most sense to Kir. From what he’d learned, demon mage-apprentices learned a bit of all three, depending on their master. The last, however, was treated with the most caution, since it carried the highest risk of magic going awry in spectacular fashion. The goal of initial mage training was to bring an apprentice to a point where they connected with magic in their own way, which allowed them to emphasize some aspect of it.