The Sixth School.

Chapter Sixteen: Preparations…

Greg calmly walked through the forest, his eyes pointed up at the sky. He was now roughly ten kilometers away from the town. A distance that had taken him two hours of walking to cover. He was now in the territory of the three tusk boars. Having left the town at dawn, the sun was currently just cresting over the trees. It was now a little past eight in Greg’s estimation. With no timekeeping devices, he could only roughly guess. Greg didn’t even know if time was kept the same way in this world as it was in his old world. Is there an am and pm? Is the concept of hours, minutes, and seconds even a thing in this world? Wait, is a day even twenty-four hours in this world?

These were the idle thoughts going through Greg’s mind. Looking at him, one could be forgiven for thinking that he was on a nature stroll. There was no speed in his steps and no alertness in his posture. Forget looking for the three tusk boars, he didn’t even seem to be checking his surroundings for any kind of dangers or threats. If anything the boy seemed more interested in the sky as opposed to what was on land, seeing as his eyes hadn’t left the sky all morning. Given how relaxed the boy seemed, one might be tempted to think that he would be an easy mark for an ambush. This, however, couldn’t be any further from the truth.

Planning for this hunt hadn’t been easy for Greg. He had planned to lure his uncle into making a move. This severely limited what he could get from the store. If Greg left the town armed to the teeth and looking like he was going to war, chances are that he would spook his uncle into inaction. He needed to prepare adequately, but in such a manner that his uncle would still be given a false sense of security. With that in mind, Greg consulted Olivia on what he should buy. Something that proved invaluable as half the things she suggested, Greg wouldn’t have even considered.

The first thing that Olivia had instructed him to buy was a storage ring. When Greg heard this, he’d assumed that it was meant to serve as a convenient way of carrying items around. The ring, however, proved to be much more than a convenient storage item. Greg had wanted to buy the best storage ring he could find, Olivia, however, had informed him that a basic one would do. When Greg asked her why, her reply had been simple but stern. “Always remember this master, treasure that you are not powerful enough to protect, is a tragedy waiting to happen,” She had said. “Unless you plan to stay in this town forever, you are going to have to leave at some point,” she had gone on to say. “The best ring you can buy in the shop currently is a tier three storage ring. Let’s say you leave this town after setting up your foundation and becoming a first-tier mage. If you come across a second or worse, a third-tier mage and they notice your storage ring and want it, you’d have just invited calamity on yourself. Either you willingly give it up, or they take it from your corpse,” She declared. “Some might kill you even after you willingly give up the ring,” She added. “Why attract trouble to yourself that you can easily avoid? “ The familiar had made her case.

When Greg had been about to ask his familiar to get the ring from the system, much to his surprise, a ball of light emerged from his glabella. Ever since the first night that Olivia had disappeared into his head, she hadn’t come out. So much so, that, Greg had become used to her being a disembodied voice in his head. Seeing her in the flesh once more, Greg couldn’t help but swallow hard, eyeing the familiar’s curves. Looking at her pink hair, golden eyes, full lips, and curvy body, Greg almost forgot what it was that he’d been planning to do and pounced on her. With a throat that suddenly felt dry, Greg had croaked. “Why’d you come out?” There was no reproach in his tone of voice. It was a question born purely out of curiosity.

“You were passed out the last time you bought something corporeal from the store,” She explained with a smile. Neither one of them needed to be reminded that Olivia was his first purchase of something tangible from the store. “It tends to cause a bit of a commotion, magically speaking,” She went on. “I came out to make sure that the magical aura of what you are about to do doesn’t leak out past this room,” She stated. “Unless. Of course, you have something else in mind that we could be doing,” The familiar suggested with a sly gleam in her eyes. 

Greg had been about to ask her to stop teasing him. However, at this point, something else had occurred to Greg. “Actually, there is,” Greg had answered her. A look of interest had crept onto Olivia’s face at this. “Given the nature of the system and how you seem to be intricately attached to it, am I right to assume that your abilities have something to do with lust?” Greg had asked.

The smile on Olivia’s face widened. “Something like that,” The familiar replied. “Some might even say that I am lust incarnate,” She added with a sly smile.

With a roll of his eyes, Greg ignored his familiar’s bragging before continuing. “Am I right in saying that if you wanted, you could overwhelm me with lust?” He posed.

“With less effort than it would take to blink,” Olivia answered without missing a beat. Her smile then widened. “Do you wish to try it out, master?” She asked in a tempting tone. “I promise the experience will be unforgettable,” She added.

Greg couldn’t stop himself from looking at the familiar’s salacious body one more time before turning his focus once more to her face. Not trusting himself to reply to her question, Greg went directly to what he wanted. “I want you to help me train my willpower,” He’d said. “Pain, pleasure, desire, deprivation,” He listed out. “Whatever it takes. I don’t wish to end up a puppet of someone else’s machinations simply because I didn’t have enough willpower to resist,” He explained.

“Seeing the effects of the title can be unnerving,” Olivia had replied, immediately seeing right to the heart of the matter.

Greg didn’t try to deny it. “You said that the people in this village haven’t trained their willpower in any way, which was why the women so easily fell victim to the title,” Greg stated. “I assume that I’m not any better than they are,” He added. Though it was a statement, Olivia nodded in agreement. “I have no desire to have things stay that way,” He declared.

“It won’t be pleasant,” Olivia had warned in an uncharacteristically serious tone of voice.

A weak smile had crossed Greg’s lips at this. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a bit scared at what he was setting himself up for. Still, he only said. “I didn’t expect it to be.”

“Fine then,” Olivia had assented. “Once you are done with this debacle,  I’ll train you every day right before you go to sleep,” she had declared. “Now, let’s get back to our preparations,” She had prompted. When Greg nodded in acknowledgment, the familiar snapped her fingers.

 Two things happened at the same time. The first was that, suddenly, Greg felt like he was somehow in a separate space from the rest of the world. Greg knew that this was a result of Olivia’s wards. As she had said, she had come out purposely to keep the magical disturbance of what he was about to do from being felt by those outside his room. The other thing that happened was that a prompt appeared from the system.

DO YOU WISH TO BUY THE LOW-GRADE TIER-ONE STORAGE RING FOR 1500 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

Greg was in his room, with no doors or windows open. Despite this, when he clicked on ‘YES’, a violent gust of wind suddenly filled the room. This violent wind converged on a single spot in front of Greg. Despite not having a core or mana pathways, after almost two weeks of being healed magically Greg could easily recognize the feeling of mana. It wasn’t wind that was being stirred up inside the room, but mana that was converging to a single point, A softly glowing ball of light started to form where all the mana was converging. Before long, a tacky, grey, iron ring fell out of the ball of light and onto Olivia’s palm who’d held out her hand to receive it. Looking at it, not even Greg would have believed that the ring bore any value.

Greg had asked what the system meant by low grade. As it turns out, even among items of the same tier, there were four different grades. They were low-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, and peak items. Just as the words suggested each of the four tiers represented a different level of power within the tier. Low-grade items offered the weakest power of that tier. Mid-grade items were a bit more powerful than low-grade items. They were decent as far as the given tier was concerned but weren’t the most powerful of the lot. High-grade items were items that really packed a punch and could really bring out the power of the given tier they were in. For a magical item to be considered a peak item, it usually meant that it touched the limits of what that tier could do. In the right hands, a peak item may even cross realms and demonstrate the power of a higher-tier item. Doing this too many times, however, will often shorten the life span of the item.

Greg wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he put on the ring. He, however, was disappointed when there was absolutely no reaction from the ring. “Is it broken?” He’d asked looking up at his familiar.

“You don’t have any mana, how exactly do you hope to operate a magical item?” Olivia replied with an amused look on her face.

Color had spread on Greg’s face as he found himself feeling like an idiot. “Ahem,” Greg had softly coughed looking to the side to allow the embarrassing moment to pass. “How exactly am I supposed to use it then?” He’d asked.

“That’s where I come in,” Olivia spoke up. “Given that I’m your familiar, any items I brand with my magic will also be accessible to you,” She had informed him, as she moved to stand before him. The familiar had stretched out a hand and tapped on the iron ring. Immediately, Greg had become aware of a separate space the size of a large trunk attached to the ring. The space wasn’t exactly inside the ring. It was more like, the ring held the coordinates for that space and acted as the doorway to access that space. If Greg wished to, he could use the ring to place items in that space. At the same time, using the ring, Greg could take items out of that space.

“Will it always cause such a commotion whenever I buy something from the system?” Greg asked. If the disturbance for a low-grade tier-one item was such that even he, someone who wasn’t even at tier one yet, could pick up on it, Greg could just imagine what disturbance higher-tiered items would cause.

“The system is literally conjuring items whole-cloth out of mana,” Olivia had answered. “There is no way something like that won’t cause a disturbance in the ambient mana,” She had informed him. “Luckily for you, the item doesn’t have to be summoned into the outside world,” She had gone on to say. A brow had arched on Greg’s face, the confusion clear to be seen on his face. Olivia’s gaze had dropped to the storage ring Greg had just bought. “There is a reason I had you buy the storage ring first,” She explained with a smile.

Greg’s eyes widened with comprehension as he looked down at the ring. There was a separate space inside the ring. As his familiar was implying, there was no reason why the system couldn’t conjure the items that Greg bought in this separate space. After all, both the ring and the system were his, to begin with. And while conjuring items in the outside world would disturb the ambient mana, it wasn’t actually using the mana on the outside. All the mana that the conjuring would require was already supplied by the magic points in the system. After all, magic points were just mana converted into a form that the system seemed to be able to store for the long term. As such, even if it was a separate space with no mana, this posed no problem to the system.

“You should always keep this in mind,” Olivia had said. “Unless you have no other choice, you should always have the items that you buy from the system appear inside a storage ring,” She informed him in a serious tone of voice. “Even if you’ll take them out immediately after,” she added. “You might think you know how miraculous a system that can conjure almost anything so long as enough mana is provided is. Trust me, however, when I tell you that you can not even begin to comprehend just what a treasure you have,” She explained. “If it was ever exposed that you have it, not even the gods would be able to protect you from the greed that such a thing would evoke in the magic world,” She warned in a tone that caused his heart to feel like it was encased in ice. Greg nodded in acknowledgment, committing to heart the familiar's warning.

DO YOU WISH TO BUY THE MID-GRADE TIER-ONE MOONLIGHT SILK ARMOR FOR 5000 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

DO YOU WISH TO BUY THE MID-GRADE TIER-ONE SUBTLETY PANTS FOR 6500 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

DO YOU WISH TO BUY THE MID-GRADE TIER-ONE SHOES OF HASTE FOR 4000 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

DO YOU WISH TO BUY 50 NORMAL ARROWS FOR 100 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

DO YOU WISH TO BUY 50 LOW-GRADE TIER-ONE POISON ARROWS FOR 500 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

DO YOU WISH TO BUY 50 LOW-GRADE TIER-ONE PARALYZING ARROWS FOR 500 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

DO YOU WISH TO BUY 50 LOW-GRADE TIER-ONE EXPLOSIVE ARROWS FOR 500 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

DO YOU WISH TO BUY THE MID-GRADE TIER-ONE FLOATING DAGGER SET FOR 1500 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

At the snap of Olivia’s fingers, a whole list of items appeared before Greg. A light armor that looked like a vest that could be worn under one’s clothes. On its own, it was strong enough to stop dead the full-force sword swing of a grown man. As was true with all armor, the impact force would still be transmitted into his body, the sword, however, wouldn’t be getting through the armor. And if this wasn’t good enough, when supplied with mana, the armor would deploy a mana shield around his whole body that could stop ten times the force it the armor could without mana. The shield would last as long as it was supplied with mana or until a more powerful force broke through it.

The pants that Olivia had him buy from the system didn’t look anything special. According to the system, however, the thing had two effects. The first was something called dainty steps. Apparently, it would help Greg move in a way that was most optimal for a given terrain. Be it, flat, hilly, sloping, uneven, or climbing up a cliff. The pants would exert a subtle influence that would allow Greg to save energy in his movement which would in turn allow him to stay on the move for far longer than he otherwise would have. To be honest, Greg didn’t think this ability to be that useful. After all, he was more interested in armor that would allow him to confront his uncle without taking much damage, and not moving around the forest. At the very least, Greg could see some utility in the second effect of the pants, quiet steps. As the name itself suggested, the pants would influence his movements such that, in whatever terrain he was on, he would make the minimum amount of noise possible. At the very least, Greg would be able to sneak up on and ambush his uncle if that chance ever availed itself. An unwritten bonus of the pants as far as Greg was concerned was that the pants didn’t require any mana for the two effects to work. They were both enchantments on the pants that would work regardless of who had them on.

There wasn’t much to say about the shoes of haste. The explanation was right there in the name. So long as they were supplied with mana, Greg could double, triple, and at the extreme, quadruple his speed. Although this last one would very quickly burn through mana and damage the enchantment on the shoes if it was maintained for long. Luckily for Greg, as a second-tier mage, Olivia wasn’t in danger of running out of mana from using tier-one items. Even if she kept them working at their limit throughout, the shoes would end up damaged long before she ran out of mana. 

Greg wasn’t too surprised by the arrows. After all, just two days prior, he’d bought the soul bow for five million lust points. It'd make no sense for him not to make use of it. Given that it was a weapon that would grow with him, chances are that it would be his main weapon in the future. It only made sense that he started making use of and growing familiar with it as soon as possible. But while the arrows weren’t surprising, the number that Olivia was having him buy was. “Will two hundred arrows really be necessary for one man?” Greg asked. While most people in the town preferred hunting with spears as opposed to bows and arrows, his father had been one of the few people that liked to mix in the use of a bow and arrow from time to time in his hunts. His father had introduced him to the weapon, and while Greg couldn’t exactly call himself an expert marksman, he could hit a target fifty meters out at least five out of ten times. With just ten arrows, Greg was certain he could take down his uncle. And even if worse comes to worst, Greg didn’t see how he would need more than fifty arrows just to take down one man.

A smile spread across Olivia’s lips almost as if Greg had made a mistake that she’d anticipated he would. “That’s another thing that you will need to guard against master,” She said, causing a brow to arch on Greg’s face. “Don’t allow the troubles that you encounter to narrow your vision,” She advised. “None of the items I’ve had you buy will cease to be useful even after you’ve dealt with your uncle,” She explained. “Even after your uncle is dead, an item that can provide you with a mana shield will still be useful. Same with the pants and the shoes,” she had explained. “Always maintain a long view of things in all situations regardless of what you encounter. The mages path isn’t a sprint, it’s an endless marathon,” She declared. “If you only buy items that will only be useful for the present situation and useless thereafter, you’ll waste a lot of magic points master, magic points that could mean the difference between life and death in other situations,” She cautioned.

Of course, Greg couldn’t argue. The familiar was right. Greg was indeed guilty of becoming shortsighted. Rather than thinking of what cane after he was done dealing with his uncle, he had let the man become his sole focus. But, even if he took out his uncle with just one arrow, it wasn’t like he would never use his bow again. Two hundred arrows were just a drop in the ocean when he considered the fact that he would be using the soul bow for a lifetime. With no further objections, Greg bought the arrows.

The floating dagger set was comprised of three daggers that closely resembled the kunai blades from his former world. The blades didn’t need any mana to be supplied for them to float. Their speed, while faster than what any normal human could visually track, was fixed. No matter how much mana one supplied them, there was no way to get them to move faster. Also, the limit of their range was a hundred meters around their owner. What made these weapons so deadly, however, was that once branded, they could be controlled with just a thought. Greg didn’t have to practice knife-throwing skills. With just a thought, Greg could have the daggers hit dead center on a target a hundred meters away. Unlike throwing daggers, the floating daggers weren’t just limited to hitting a target. Even after they’d hit their target, Greg could control them to have them dig deeper. If his target didn’t manage to get them out in time, Greg could carve them up from the inside.

After the armor and weapons were out of the way, Olivia had Greg buy several potions. Some were healing potions of different potencies. Others were potions that would dispel some possible negative effects like being paralyzed, being drunk, being confounded, and so on. Others among the potions were weapons like, alchemical bombs, potions that could eat through armor like wet tissue, to say nothing of human flesh, potions that were capable of causing some to feel excruciating, almost debilitating pain on any part of one’s body that it came in contact with. Olivia also had him buy many different poisons that Greg could dip the flying daggers in. The final class of potions that Greg bought were utility potions. Potions that served supportive roles, like allowing him to go invisible for a short while, potions that could completely erase his scent, making him invisible to any beasts that used scent to track their prey, and so on.

In fact, one of these utility potions was the reason that Greg was currently walking with his gaze fixed on the sky. Heightened sense potion. That’s what the system had called it. It was supposed to sharpen his senses and make him able to pick up sights, sounds, and smells that he otherwise would have been unable to detect. Given that it was a tier-one item, Greg hadn’t thought much of it. When he got close to the three tusk boar’s territory, he had taken a vial of the stuff. The closest approximation of the effect was that, Greg felt like a camera that had zoomed out to cover a wider area. Before he took it, his senses could only monitor what was going on immediately around him. After taking it, everything within five hundred meters of him was within the range of his senses. And ‘everything' here wasn’t just a figure of speech. From each individual bird chirping in the trees, to the bugs creeping on the ground. The smell of every particular flower, to the smell of each boar  in the group of three tusk boars three hundred meters away to the northeast, to the smell of the bark of the trees in the area around. A gap of an inch between two trees a hundred meters away would have been impossible to see before Greg took the potion. After he’d taken it, Greg could spot a dragonfly through such a gap. The color of everything seemed to have intensified and the clarity turned up to eleven.

As amazing as the feeling had been, it was less than a minute before Greg began to feel a migraine coming on due to sensory overload. As it turns out, he just wasn’t built to handle such a volume of sensory input. At this point, Olivia had advised him to look up at the sky. Greg wasn’t sure why this would help, but having no better ideas, he had chosen to follow her advice. Much to Greg’s surprise, looking up at the clear blue sky had helped a lot. A second before, Greg had felt like he was drowning in sensory information, in the next, that overload was slashed by almost three-quarters. Greg couldn’t help but ask the familiar why this was. “Unlike beasts, you humans don’t have as sharp a sense of smell or hearing,” She had replied. “Your over-reliance on sight means that it is the one that affects you most when you take that potion,” She explained. “Your hearing and sense of smell might have gotten a lot sharper, but your brain doesn’t recognize ninety percent of what you are hearing or smelling, as such, it’s just noise to it. With your sight, that would be different. Your brain would be working overtime trying to make sense of everything you are seeing, that’s the main reason why the potion can be a bit overwhelming for first-time takers,” She relayed.

Greg didn’t need further explanation to understand. Looking up at the sky reduced the amount of input from everything in the forest to just the blue color of the clear sky and the occasional bird that flew by or the clouds that drifted by. Although he could see both in much greater detail now, it wasn’t in any way overwhelming to his brain. But while Greg wasn’t looking around, there wasn’t anything in his surroundings that he wasn’t aware of. It had taken a while to get the hang of it, but as things stood, so long as something made the slightest sound, or had even the vaguest of scents, if it came within half a kilometer of him, Greg would become aware of it. His uncle would literally have to become a ghost if he hoped to have even the slightest chance of ambushing him. This was why Greg looked so relaxed, almost to the point of being oblivious to what was going on around him. He had chosen to capitalize on his heightened senses to pretend that he didn’t have his guard up. Anyone that looked at him as he casually moved through the forest would have no way of knowing that he was closely monitoring everything within a half-kilometer radius of himself looking for any traces of his uncle.

***

Unbeknownst to Greg, however, despite his best efforts, he had already come into the sights of his foe.

In a hidden cave a mile away from where Greg was moving, a man with deep lines on his face, and a mouth that seemed permanently set in a scowl was standing before a basin of water. Rather than the clear surface of the water, the basin was filled with an image of Greg as he moved through the forest. In a forest full of beasts, there was no reason the boy would pay particular attention to a small bird perched on a tree a few meters away from him. It was this bird’s vision that was being projected to the basin of water before the man Greg would have recognized as his uncle.

The scowl on the older man’s face was reflected in the young man standing beside him. With how much the two looked alike, one wouldn’t even have to know them to figure out the fact that they were father and son. They had been quietly watching Greg in the scrying pool for half an hour before the younger man let out a snort. “It seems that he's forgotten even how to hunt,” The younger man spoke.  “Let me go after him,” He requested.

The older man turned his gaze towards his son. Although there was no overt threat in the man’s gaze, his son couldn’t help but shrink a bit in the face of his father’s stare. Anyone with any insight into psychology would see that this wasn’t a momentary fear, but one that had been cultivated from years of abuse. “What’s the first lesson that I taught you about hunting?” the father quietly asked his son.

Despite his fear, the boy knew better than to delay in answering his father. “Respect your prey, no matter how strong or weak!” the young man answered with a glance at his father. The boy’s gaze shifted to the staff in the man’s hand, the light of greed burning in his eyes for a second before he turned back to the scrying pool.

His father had found this cave and that mysterious staff on one of his hunts. He had brought the staff home as he thought that given the ornate carvings throughout the staff, not to mention the large jewel at its head, it had to be worth a lot. When the next morning, he had woken up saying that he had communed with some hidden deity, the young man had been sure that his father had lost his mind. Years of abuse, however, made it so that the young man wasn’t willing to garner his father’s ire, as such, he hadn’t said anything. When a few weeks later his father brought him to this cave and showed him all the abilities that the entity had granted him, he was left with no choice but to believe his father. The young man had, of course, also noticed the gradual deterioration of his father’s health. The lines on his father’s face had grown deeper, his hair had started greying with some of it falling off. The robust frame of his father had started to wither away and morph into the thin one he now had. The failed ritual that killed his father’s brother and almost did the same to the son of his father’s brother had only made things far worse for his father, giving him the haggard look he now had. The young man, however, didn’t care in the least. The man might have been his father, but all love for the man had long since been beaten out of him. The only thing that had been on the young man’s mind was this new power that his father seemed to have gained access to. Whatever it took, the young man planned to gain the same for himself as well.

The older man hadn’t missed the greed in his son’s eyes when he looked at the staff in his hands. He, however, said nothing. The boy was weak, he’d always been weak. He would pose no threat to him, and as such, the man didn’t care what designs his son had. The same, however, was not true when it came to the one in the scrying pool. The man was not sure what it was that had changed with the boy, but a very real sense of lethal danger filled him whenever he thought of making a move on him. Looking at him, the man couldn’t blame his son for thinking that his brother’s son had forgotten how to hunt. The boy was moving through the forest like he didn’t have a care in the world. When the man looked at his late brother’s son inside the pool, however, he couldn’t help but feel like he was looking at a predator slowly stalking its prey. There was something about the calm way that the boy was moving that left him feeling like he was a coiled viper that could strike at any time. It left his back feeling cold.

“Patience,” The older man declared. “For now, we watch and prepare. When we strike, he won’t be able to escape our grasp…”