Blood Curse Academia - Orientation

Chapter LXXX (80) - Physical Enhancements

“Physical enhancements are bricks within the foundation of magical combat,” Arclight instructed them. Her arms were crossed behind her back and she examined each of them with her single eye narrowed slightly, as if eyeing their base physical strength. “Alongside shields, enhancements will be vital to surviving combat with magical creatures and hostile spellcasters. Some of the best combat mages in the world focus entirely on this branch of combat.”

“Why not just use a potion to enhance your strength,” one of Kizu’s peers asked.

“An excellent question,” Arclight said. “Thankfully, we just so happen to have a brewing master in our class. Tell us, Kaga Kizu, what are the downsides of a muscle enhancement potion?”

Kizu gathered his thoughts, a bit off-balance from the sudden question. He weighed the pros and cons of a potion that expanded muscles. Then his mind wandered back to the other day when Anata had transformed herself into a fruit bat using a transfiguration potion she’d found in his bag.

“It could work fine, but it would require extensive training with the specific brew,” he said. “Transfiguration potions don’t come with an innate understanding of what you’re transforming into. Turning yourself into a bird doesn't teach you how to fly. It takes time to learn. It would be the same for suddenly gaining muscle or weight. You would be clumsy as your brain isn’t used to the body. Enhancements through spellcraft are probably more reliable and easier to reproduce for training.”

“A perfect answer!” Arclight beamed. “I couldn’t have said it better myself! Understanding your body is key in combat. Mages unfamiliar with their bodies tend to have short lifespans in a vanguard or delving unit. Enhancements are an expansion of your existing body, whereas most potions create a foreign addition. One that you have less direct control over.”

“But why worry about this at all?” another student asked. “Can’t we just throw a fireball at the mage and be done though? If a mage focuses on just making himself stronger, he probably won’t have great shields.”

“Another excellent point,” Arclight conceded. “However, what will you do when your hypothetical mage makes his skin fireproof? Or rapidly heals from any wound you inflict? Rejuvenation and restoration is a closely related branch of spellcraft to that of physical enhancements. While these mages often lack the finesse to heal complex wounds or heal another person, they’re usually more than capable of healing cuts and burns. And, more than that, they can enhance their bodies in a way that ignores pain.”

Kizu recalled his fight with Ulric, how the older student had been unrelenting despite having half his face burned off. And he also had declined care from the medics. While he still resented him, Kizu couldn’t help but feel a shred of respect for his talent with physical enhancements.

That shred expanded as Arclight put them to work. Each of them was set in front of a training dummy, painted a sickly green like a goblin. After punching the dummy, it would cackle and read off a number between one and one hundred. The goal was to first hit the thing unassisted by spellcraft and then try again after transforming his blood into expansions of his muscle.

At first, Kizu had been pleasantly surprised when the goblin dummy listed off nine as his base number. The highest in his class by two points. But he struggled to get it any higher. In fact, the more he punched it, the lower the number went. The only thing that kept him at it was the goblin’s constant high pitched cackle ringing in his ears.

“Move your foot back,” Arclight said as she approached Kizu. “Keep your legs the same distance apart as your shoulders. The arm itself is just the final boost. You must form a solid foundation or the entire attack crumbles. Save your energy until the split second before you move your arm. Then channel into the fiber of your muscle.”

Kizu repositioned himself, ignoring the strain on his bad leg. Just as he started to move into his next punch, he channeled into his arm. For the briefest moment, he felt his arm expand with enhanced muscles. The feeling reminded him of being exposed to Anata’s blood, but where that enhanced his senses, this instead increased something far more raw. The feeling vanished as his fist smashed into the dummy.

“Twenty-seven!” the goblin dummy cackled.

“Very good.” Arclight nodded her head in approval. “Now hit ten more above twenty. Then work on decreasing and managing your output so it stays between ten and nineteen.”

Her instructions, while simple, proved incredibly difficult to pull off. Kizu only managed to execute his channeling’s timing about a fifth of the time. And trying to control the power of the enhancement was like trying to catch a bucket’s worth of water in cupped hands. Arclight, now busy assisting other students, didn’t come over to help him again, so he was left to learn how to manage his strength through trial and error. With an emphasis on error.

He was drenched in sweat by the end of the class. His uniform’s enchantments, while able to adjust for heat, didn’t help much against physical exertion. Still, he couldn’t help smiling. He’d learned the basics of a new branch of magic.

It was understandable now why Harvey wore all those tattoos along his arms. Kizu figured they must serve as conduits to help him focus and maintain his enhancements for longer periods of time.

He wondered if he could enhance his bad leg to keep together in fights. If he could get over that one massive hurdle, he could actually start aspiring for the higher combat ranks.

While maintaining the enhancement spells was tricky, the blood cost actually wasn’t that bad. At least in comparison to other spellcraft.

After the bell dismissed the class, instead of heading straight to lunch alongside his peers, Kizu instead decided to head over to the room near the academy’s beacon. Recently, he had been forgoing his lunch period in favor of jumping experience. Since he now spent the majority of his time after classes with Anata, he rarely had any other opportunities to practice near the beacon.

While both jumping and enhancement spells didn’t directly improve his placements in the academy’s rankings, he still decided to make time for them in his schedule. They were skills he wanted to continue to improve regardless. Jumping, because it was the field of magic that by far interested him the most, and enhancement because he was tired of running away and losing fights. He wanted to be certain to never land in another situation like his fight against Ulric.

Over the past week, he had almost completely mastered overriding the beacon while focused, but if he lost his concentration, he still slipped back into the room. It was frustrating, but the improvement was notable.

He rapidly jumped four times in a row, only slightly pulled off course in the third and fourth jump. While an improvement, not ending up exactly where he needed to be could still result in tragedy in the wrong situation.

“Kizu?” a quiet voice said behind him.

Kizu turned and saw Evie standing in the doorway. She looked nervous, staring down at his feet. As per usual, her face was covered in downward pointing quills, concealing most of her features. She held her gloved hands clasped in front of her, likely nursing her sore knuckles. Kizu couldn’t help but wonder what her score had been earlier in Combat F.

“Evie, everything okay?”

“Administrator Jackal wants to see you,” she said, barely more than a whisper. “She said I could likely find you here.”

Kizu blinked. It was a school day. He still had Enchanting C to attend. The only time Roba had previously summoned him on a school day had been his very first meeting with her and the constable.

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

He looked over at the entrance into the academy’s beacon room. He supposed it wasn’t going anywhere.

“Okay, sure.”

He let Evie guide him away. While they walked, he tried to strike up a conversation with her about her position as Roba’s assistant, but she only gave quiet, one-word responses. Even Anata usually gave him more to work with in a conversation. Eventually, he gave up and they walked in silence until reaching the office door. Evie knocked, barely hard enough to be audible.

“Enter,” Roba said from inside.

The room was back to its normal appearance. Roba stood to the side of her desk, looking through the glass walls at the marine creatures. She didn’t even turn towards them as they entered, instead entranced by a large white squid as it gently undulated its fins to remain stationary in the water.

“Miss Alito, you’re dismissed. I apologize for pulling you away. Go enjoy the remaining lunch break.”

Evie bowed and left without another word.

“An exemplary student,” Roba said, turning away from the sea creatures and nodding towards the door Evie had departed through. “But one plagued by uncertainty and held back by insecurities. Quite the opposite from you, who constantly blunders forward.”

“I’m sorry?” Kizu said, uncertain what exactly he was apologizing for.

“You’ve proven yourself unreliable for strictly scheduled chores. You even missed the planned tutoring sessions I scheduled.”

Kizu opened his mouth to protest but she continued before the words got out.

“Not our last meeting, I am well aware that the headmaster requested time with you instead. I was speaking of before that. Regardless, the headmaster requested that I continue your tutoring, so I rescheduled this week’s lesson to today. But I still want some recompense. I have special assignments for you to complete next semester for me. Unfortunately, you’re not ready for those. So for now I have two simple assignments for you in the meantime.

“The first of these assignments is that I require you to go to the other side of Shinzoushima and fetch me a creature. Or rather, Professor Knoff wants it fetched. I don’t particularly care, but he asked for a backup to attend the usual students he sends for this. I’m sure they will fill you in on the details by the end of the week.”

“You’re loaning me out to the other professors?” Kizu asked, a little annoyed.

“Yes. I am. Your inadequate performance recently makes me hesitant to give you meaningful work from my table.”

“Fine. What else do you want? Does another professor want something?” At least he liked Professor Knoff.

She frowned at his tone but answered him.

“It’s simple. I want you to help Miss Alito.”

“Helping Evie? Your assistant needs an assistant?”

“No. She is more than capable of completing everything I ask of her. I need someone to help her learn confidence. For some reason, she spoke highly of you when you came up in conversation last week. I harbor a small hope that your bullheadedness will rub off just a bit on her. And perhaps her excessively respectful nature on you.”

Kizu stared at Roba, trying to understand. “You want me to be friends with her?”

“If that is how you interpret my instructions, so be it. Though friendship tends to be more difficult to forge than this. I simply demand civility and consistent contact.”

“That’s fine,” Kizu said. “I like Evie. We already pair up in Combat F.”

“I am aware. Keep in touch during your school trip as well. Her extended family is from the Tross Tundra and I worry about her being so close to home. The academy has experienced…minor altercations with her specific tribe in the past.”

“She’s not in Astronomy E though. Why would she go with my class?”

“Astronomy F, E, and D will all be together for the school trip. Classes C, B, and A will depart next week. The lower classes depart on their school trip the week after. And the S class has a week of private tutoring following that.”

“Oh, I see. Yeah, I can keep an eye on her.” Kizu hadn’t realized the school trip was less than two weeks away. Professor Grove hadn’t mentioned it again since the class after midterms.

“Good. Try to accomplish this duty better than your previous assignments,” Roba said.

It didn’t make sense. Every time Kizu met with Roba, his rankings improved and he thought he did a great job in his tutoring sessions. But Roba’s opinion of him degraded with every meeting. He had made a few mistakes in the past, like accidentally releasing the bloodspawn into the town, but that was as much her fault as it was his. And he’d taken care of that and nobody had been hurt. If anything, she should have been more like this on her introduction to him by the constables and gradually improved. Not the other way around. It irked him, but he decided to ignore the jabs. She was his only viable resource for learning spatial spellcraft. He couldn’t chance burning that bridge.

“Now, let’s review your current studies. I will be busy assisting with the school trip preparations, so I won’t be seeing you again for a few weeks. I assume you’ll be competing again in another combat contest this weekend?”

“Can you help me with the gate spell?” Kizu interrupted. If Roba thought him rude, he might as well just match the expectation instead of tiptoeing around. “I already have plans to get better in my other classes, I want to focus on spatial spellcraft with you.”

“Hm? This again?”

“I need it for my enchanting final. If this is my last meeting with you for a few weeks, I really need to devote it to gate creation. My group is counting on me to get it right.”

She considered him with a deepening frown. Then she clapped her hands together. As they split from one another, a rift appeared between them. It flickered as the crack widened, warping the air around it. Finally, Roba stopped expanding it and let it hang in the air.

“This is far beyond what you’re capable of,” Roba said.

She reached an arm into the rift. As she did so, Kizu felt something jab his shoulder. He whirled around to see a mirror rift behind him with an arm protruding from it.

“However,” Roba continued, withdrawing her arm. “With the proper glyph warding scheme, I believe you might possibly be able to create a stabilized passage for the gate spell.”

“Thank you!” Kizu said, ecstatic.

“You will be skipping several crucial steps of spatial magic. Including long distance jumps. You will need to step back after your final project,” Roba warned.

Kizu nodded his agreement.

“Very well.” Roba’s gate collapsed with a crisp pop. “Now then, lesson one- what would have happened if my arm had still been inside that gate when I released it?”

“It would have been severed,” Kizu answered, recalling the fact from his readings.

“Good. You know that much, at least. And what would happen if you created a gate on top of another living creature?”

“It pushes it away with an invisible force.”

“Correct. While jumping endangers those around you, gates tend to be far more dangerous to the caster. It’s not rare for spatial mages to horribly mutilate themselves or lose their lives when they break concentration while crossing their gate.”

“But I will be tying it to an enchantment,” Kizu said. “Afterwards, I won’t be able to lose concentration. There’s no risk, right?”

“‘No risk’ is a stupid assumption and an even more stupid statement to verbalize. But, yes, the risk will be minimalized when connected to a proper warding schem. Otherwise, I would not be willing to touch this subject.”

Kizu relaxed. Roba then immediately launched into complex spellcraft theory. The ratios of distance and the intricate warding used in gate enchantments. By the end of the lecture, Kizu’s brain felt fried as he struggled to retain everything taught.

He completely missed his lunch period and barely flopped down in his seat at Enchanting C before the bell announced the start of class. Instead of focusing on Kateshi’s review about the difficulties and benefits of coordinated enchanting teams, he scribbled down notes for their final project. He needed to get the ideas down while still fresh in his mind from Roba’s lesson.

“What do you have there?” Basil asked, sliding into the seat beside him as the groups converged to work on their projects. Today, he wore the skin of a bulky, short-haired man and smelled like lemons drenched in pickle juice.

“An outline of what I need to do to get the gate working properly.”

Basil whistled. “You’re already that deep into the research? I haven’t even looked at my section yet.”

Kizu glanced up at him, to his surprise, Finn stood beside Basil, looking as outraged as Kizu was exasperated.

“You haven’t studied anything?” Finn said. “Like, not even cracked open a book? Are you dimwitted? This is our final!”

“Finals for this sort of stuff don’t really matter anyway,” Basil said, dismissively. “They’ll just rank us based off of our blood tests either way.”

“That’s not even remotely true. Future employers have access to all the records of our finals. And this is an experience supervised by one of the greatest enchanters in the known world. When we apply for future careers, her notes and grades matter,” Finn said through gritted teeth. “You have the easiest part of the project. Figure it out.”

“Which is exactly why I shouldn’t need to stress. The two great Kaga brothers will carry me through this.”

“Also, you smell like troll dung.” Finn stormed off and sat down at a desk a stone's throw away before taking out a quill and parchment and scribbling madly on it.

Basil looked pensive. “Do I really smell like troll dung?”

“How should I know?” Kizu answered. “And my brother is rude and antisocial, but he does have a point. We’re in a group project. Activation commands shouldn’t be too tricky.”

Kizu was hesitant to offer help with his already busy schedule, but he did want this portal to actively function. He was borderline ready to offer more of his time to get a working prototype.

“I know, I know. I’ll get to it. I just need to set up a warding scheme on specific books to trigger the gate in the bookshelf. As was just stated clearly to me, it is the easiest of the three assignments.” Basil paused. “Okay, so you see, I designed this perfume hoping to develop a scent that attracts trolls. It’s a recent hurdle I’ve been wanting to get past. I’m going to test it out at an upcoming party. But I don’t want to come off as excrement. What do you think about it? You’re a decent brewer, any suggestions? I suppose it’s a positive sign that Finn at least connected it to the species I’m going for.”

“Basil, I’m sorry, but I do not care.”