Blood Curse Academia - Orientation

CHAPTER XXIII (23)- Blood Magic

The first day of the second week started uneventfully. Kizu used his free time the night before to finally master the first step of elemental heating and cooling, so when they practiced during class, he was left just exercising the ability for the entire period. Freezing a cup of water required less than ten seconds, and boiling it just a bit longer than that. Despite his best efforts to showcase his skills, his professor wouldn’t hear about his requests for further exercises. The sapient turkey just waddled away, gobbling to himself about overeager students burning themselves out.

Not every class was quite so monotonous. When he arrived in Brewing S, he immediately noted differences from the prior lectures. The large cast iron cauldrons that had been scattered around in the previous classes were gone. In their place were the academy’s standard issue desks. Similarly to the cauldrons, Professor Knoff was nowhere to be found.

Instead of the manic brewing professor with the wild white hair, a portly professor warmly greeted them each as they entered the cave. His classmates took the change in stride, each taking a seat at a desk. Nobody sat next to him.

The lecture started without further ado, the portly professor jumping into an explanation of mosses found in northern tundra biomes and their various uses. He didn’t mention Professor Knoff’s name once, nor offer them an explanation as to why he now taught the class. Kizu found him a bit familiar, though. Eventually, after studying the man for a while (instead of reading his textbook) he realized he recognized the professor from his first day at the academy. This was the professor who he’d met on his way to the testing tower, the one who’d told him the haunted tree roots could be used in liquidization potions.

Halfway through the class, one of the students referred to the new professor as ‘Professor Knoff’ in a question directed at him. Instead of correcting the student, the professor just answered the question and continued on with the lecture. It happened again a few minutes later, baffling Kizu.

Despite the professor’s complete lack of similarity to Knoff, Kizu decided that this man must be a brother or some other kind of relative who was filling in for their normal professor’s absence. Knoff didn’t seem like a common enough family name for it to be pure coincidence.

The lecture itself was interesting, but mostly just a review going over magical creature properties that Kizu already knew about. Kizu was constantly impressed by Knoff’s knowledge as he went into detail about niche side effects that could occur. Despite the low-level curriculum offered by Shinzou Academy, their professor knew what he was talking about.

Kizu noticed Sene, who was sitting two seats in front of him, scribbling down extensive notes. She must have copied every word verbatim, judging by the sheer volume of sheets she carried out of class.

At lunch, an unfamiliar student sat down next to him. She had shoulder length brown hair and chestnut eyes. She was tall for a girl - even sitting down, she looked at least a couple centimeters taller than himself.

“Basil?” he guessed.

“Who else? Come on now, you’d have to be conceited beyond belief to think a woman as gorgeous as me would approach you otherwise. I’m far out of your league.”

Kizu couldn’t help but agree. Basil’s current look made more than one head swivel throughout the cafeteria.

“Please tell me you’ll be a little less conspicuous if we try your plan,” Kizu said.

“What? Do you expect me to make myself look ugly?” Basil sounded affronted by the suggestion.

“Ugly would stand out, too. Just look a bit more… bland. I don’t want people remembering distinctive features.”

“Why would it matter? I’ll just discard the look a few hours later. Problem solved.”

“Because you’ll bring attention to me as well. And it wouldn’t exactly be a great time for people to approach us.”

Basil grumbled to himself. “And you? Did you brew up a potion earlier to get you through the barrier? You had Knoff’s class today, right?”

“Actually,” Kizu said. “I don’t think I’m going to need to anymore. I still need to run a few more tests, but I think I have a safer way to access the dorms. When do you think would be the best time to act?”

“Oh, any day during dinner,” Basil answered. “The dorms are usually all but empty then, and most students go to the library after dinner for a while to study.”

“So tomorrow would be fine?”

“I see no problems.”

“Okay, I have one more test I want to try first. If it works, we won’t have to bother with this at all. I’ll use my scrying orb to let you know.” Then he hesitated. “But try to stay vague in messages. These are issued by the academy, after all.”

Basil agreed and slipped away to go flirt with an enamored student. Kizu ate the rest of his meal alone, studying his divination book.

Then the dreaded time came for History F. Kizu explained to Harvey when he entered that he didn’t want him getting on the professor’s bad side just by association with him. Harvey tried to hide it, but Kizu could tell his friend was relieved when he opted to sit in the back row next to Ione for the class. A relief, since Kizu had been worried about offending Harvey with the move.

Ione barely acknowledged him as he took the seat next to her. Kizu reflected that she had been a bit quiet earlier in their Elemental F class as well. By the end of the lecture, the girl was actually snoring softly, her arm leaning against the armrest to prop her head up. Kizu felt a bit envious of her. Today, Krimpit’s lesson was word for word out of the textbook. And the book wasn’t exactly a page turner. His cold, harsh tone was the only thing that seemed to keep the rest of the class engaged. That, and their obvious fear of him.

“Why do you even show up for class if you’re just going to sleep through it?” Kizu asked Ione as History F finished. “Or any of your classes for that matter? Isn’t your bed more comfortable?”

Ione yawned. “If you miss too many classes, Shinzou Academy sends a note to your parents as a small deterrent. But my parents take it a bit too seriously. They love rules, schedules, and discipline. I have a lot more freedom here than back home, so I try not to poke them. And besides, I don’t mind attending class. I like sleeping in new places.”

With classes completed for the day, Kizu went straight to his room and picked up both Mort and the letter left behind by his sister. Then, with Mort perched on his shoulder, he headed down to his little study area. He shuddered slightly when he looked at the heavy door that separated him from the tunnels under the academy. That creature from the previous day still bothered him. He hadn’t reported it for fear of Roba revoking their agreement, but it had been terrifying to witness. He did his best to put it out of his mind. Thankfully, the crone had exposed him to all sorts of heinous and horrible sights in his years with her, so he had plenty of practice compartmentalizing. He filed the previous day’s experience away in the back of his mind, right next to the time the crone’s best friend had shown Kizu her living shrunken head collection.

“Okay Mort,” he said to the monkey as they settled into his little nook behind the stairs. “Let’s give this a try.”

Kizu sketched out the required ritual patterns on the stone and set down the physical letter in the center of it. This time, unlike his previous attempts, he channeled the ritual through Mort. It seemed to enter the monkey like a stream and exit like a river. It was a struggle just to maintain control of the divination spell.

As he closed his eyes and focused, he emptied his mind of everything except his memories of his sister and focused on her hanko stamp’s imprint.

Again, like the rituals before, he received an impression of his sister. The divination for that much was clear. His sister was alive. He tried to focus further, seeking her actual location. He strained his mind, and then, miraculously, he could see it. He could see her, just for a moment - not as he remembered her, but as she must have been now. Though his vision remained a bit muddled and blurred, she looked gaunt and malnourished, with sunken eyes ringed by dark circles. Curled up in a ball with her hair pooling around her head, she seemed even smaller than he remembered her being before. Her black hair was a mess and looked to have been cut out in chunks in several places.

Abruptly, she lifted her eyes from the ground and cocked her head, as if sensing something. She slowly turned her head and looked in his direction. One of her eyes had been replaced, the iris scarlet where it should have been black. That scarlet eye pierced through Kizu, completely petrifying him. Then she raised her hand and everything went dark.

Kizu didn’t know how long he and Mort lay on the stones. It could have been minutes, or hours. Either way, he felt incredibly weak as he pushed himself into a sitting position. He scooped up Mort and set the monkey in his lap.

The spell was supposed to just be a tracking ritual. Nowhere in his book had it said anything about providing visions of the target. To make matters worse, he hadn’t even gotten a hint of his sister’s location when he saw her. The vision had only shown him a nondescript, dark and blurry background. And he also couldn’t be certain the image was even the present day. It hadn’t been clear, but his sister had looked younger than she should. It might be a divination vision from ten years ago for all he could tell. None of that made any sense.

Kizu sighed. Nothing could ever be easy.

Kizu snatched up Anna’s letter and stuffed it in his pocket. He wobbled to his feet and staggered up the stairs, not even bothering to gather up his things or clean up the chalk. The world was swimming when he reached the top of the stairs. He leaned up against the wall and closed his eyes. His head spun. When he cracked his eyes open, it was a struggle to focus on the hallway in front of him.

He felt so tired, fatigued beyond natural exhaustion. As he stepped forward, he missed the ground and his legs buckled underneath him.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself staring up at Professor Kateshi’s scowling face.

“Hello?” he said weakly. He blinked a few times, wondering if this was a dream. That notion disappeared when he felt a burning pain in his side.

He reached out with his bond and could feel Mort sleeping soundly on the other side of the room. He let out a breath of relief.

“Mr. Kaga. Do you have any idea what you did?”

“Just a divination spell,” he said dreamily. “The side effects made me so tired.”

“That would be because it wasn’t just a divination spell. It was a divination spell far beyond all of your limits.”

Kizu tried to clear his head. Everything felt so foggy. As he looked around, he realized this must have been the academy’s medical wing. Rows of white-sheeted beds were pressed up against the walls, and everything, the stone floor, looked perfectly sterile. A few older students rushed around in white outfits, assistants or apprentices of some kind in the service of the Rejuvenation and Restoration professor. He vaguely remembered seeing a few people dressed similarly at the combat amphitheater.

Only two other beds looked to be in use, but white curtains shielded their occupants from view.

“So, I overdid it and fainted?” Kizu asked.

“You lost almost half of all the blood in your body. You’re lucky a student stumbled onto you.”

“My blood?” Kizu asked. “I was bleeding out?” Why would a divination spell of all things cause an open wound?

Professor Kateshi looked irritated by his response. “No. You cast too many spells far too recently. You never allowed time for your body to recover. The blood cost went far beyond what the body could safely lose.”

“Wait, so my body exchanged my blood for magic?” Kizu felt lost and his head still refused to clear.

“Has no one taught you the bare basics of magic?” Kateshi snapped. Then softened slightly. “Oh, of course, that likely was included in the first year’s orientation. Which, of course, this academy failed to remember to include you in. How many students need to end up here before they finally get their act together? Yet another administrative failure. They need to hire Roba actual assistants, instead of using students. The same goes for all the staff. This system isn’t working.”

“I’m sorry?” Kizu tried.

Finally, Kateshi took a deep breath and appeared to cool off.

“Surely, at the very least, you are familiar with the phrase- ‘blood for life and life for magic?’”

Kizu nodded. The crone used to say that to him literally every single morning.

“Magic is the product of the mage’s blood. That’s the fuel for nearly every spell we know of. As you get more practice with specific fields of magic, your body will acclimatize to the spells. Your body learns to use the blood more efficiently in time.”

“So when I cast a spell, I lose a bit of my blood every time?” Kizu asked. That actually made a lot of sense. He knew blood was unique to the individual, and that curses using a person’s blood were uncannily powerful. Blood being the source of all magic filled in a little gap in his education that the crone had almost certainly left on purpose.

“Yes, and so if you spend all day casting spells, you slowly lose blood throughout the day.”

Which he had been doing all week. No wonder he always felt so tired. It went beyond his terrible sleep schedule. Still, the divination spell shouldn’t have been that taxing. It was listed under the basic divination section of the book.

“Were you able to patch me up?” Kizu asked.

“No. As you’ll learn next semester in my Rejuvenation and Restoration class, replacing the blood in someone else’s body is almost entirely impossible. Blood is one of the few things magic cannot create from nothing. In an emergency, we could perform a blood transfusion, but that would muddle your magic for the next few months. Your magic is unique to your blood. So, instead, you get the privilege of lying in bed for the next few days while your overburdened heart pumps new blood for you.”

Well, that sounded inconvenient. So much for breaking into the dorms tomorrow night. And all magical practice being put on a standstill hardly sounded appealing either. He’d already missed a day and a half of lectures due to his brush with the law. At this rate, he’d never manage to get out of the F classes.

“Fortunately for you, there are some plants that have been proven to help with the heart’s recovery of blood reserves. My nurses will feed you a diet that should get you back on your feet sooner rather than later. You’ll likely be able to resume your classes at the end of the week. Which is good timing, because I have other engagements that I need to attend to this weekend. I can do your final checkup before I leave for Hon.”

Great. Just in time to get pummeled in the combat test two days later.

One of Kateshi’s assistants called her away to examine another patient, so she excused herself with a final warning that he was only to leave his bed if he had to use the lavatory. She closed his bed curtains before departing. Now alone, Kizu stared up at the ceiling and wondered how dull his next few days were going to be. Four days of staring at the ceiling. What an absolute drag. He might go mad from sheer boredom.

After a while, he poked his head out of his curtains to call over one of the students in a white uniform. He asked her if she’d be willing to go pick up a book for him at the library. Surprisingly, she readily agreed and asked him for the title. Apparently, that was a regular duty of the students assisting in the infirmary.

He pulled out his sister’s letter and asked her if she recognized the script, and whether or not she might be able to find a translation dictionary for him.

“Eh, no,” the student said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m not much of a linguist. If you want though, I can bring it with me to the library and see if one of the librarians recognizes it.”

Kizu was loath to part with the only physical connection he had with his sister. Even if it hadn’t been enough to cast the spell properly, he still wasn’t keen to let a stranger walk off with it. Instead, he copied the first two sentences onto a blank scrap of parchment and let the assistant use that as the example text.

It took several mind-numbingly monotonous hours before the assistant returned. She looked more haggard than when she had left, but she carried two thick tomes under her arm.

“We had to contact the head librarian,” she explained irritably. “Everyone who spoke this language died on Ilosin-Don a thousand years before the oozes even arrived on the continent. We barely had any written records. It’s a dead language on a continent that we can’t access anymore.”

“Oozes?” Kizu asked. Ilosin-Don sounded vaguely familiar. He thought maybe the crone had mentioned it in a story.

“You don’t know about the ooze conflict in the south? It’s been going on for the last decade.”

“Yes, of course I do. Anyway, never mind that,” Kizu said, abruptly changing the subject. He had no idea what was happening with oozes in Ilosin-Don, but he was eager to finally read what his sister had left him. “What did you find?”

She dropped the books on his nightstand with a solid thump.

“See for yourself,” she said with a huff.

Maybe he’d been a bit too abrupt.

Kizu put it out of his mind as he leafed through the tomes. One was a translation dictionary into the Universal Script from Gnomish. The other was a dictionary from the Gnomish to the mystery language used in the letter.

Kizu sighed. His sister really just couldn’t make it easy for him.

Kizu didn’t know a whole lot about gnomes beyond their natural talents for illusion magic. He also recalled that the crone had owned a few dusty books about the use of gnomes for specific brews, but Kizu had always avoided reading anything involving sentient humanoids as ingredients. As he thought about what the nurse’s assistant had said, he realized gnomes must have also been native to that southern continent. The same one as this new ooze conflict.

All of the other assistants looked a bit peeved with him for what he’d put their fellow student through, and barely said more than a few words to him for the rest of the day. However, he still managed to commandeer a piece of parchment from one as they were passing by.

After a lot of cross referencing, Kizu discovered the letter’s language to translate into ‘Beginnings’. That didn’t sound like any language he’d heard of, and he suspected it to be an off-translation.

It was extremely slow going. To make matters worse, his sister wrote in a fancy looping script almost entirely different from the actual language in the dictionary. It might have been pretty, if it wasn’t so frustrating. He already was attempting to read a completely foreign alphabet. Trying to decipher the discrepancies of the characters due to the lavish style added so much more work to the task.

He took a break to eat the lunch that a medical assistant brought him. Mort soon joined him to munch on a bit of sliced apple while he appraised Kizu’s work. Thankfully, the monkey looked fine, if a bit exhausted himself.

By the time night came, Kizu had finally translated two sentences, as well as a dozen repeat words later in the message. Though of course, several of those words had wildly different meanings based on their context.

What he currently had was - Little brother, I hope this message finds you well. I have spent the last six years honing my divination in an attempt to break the barrier between us.

The irony of their role reversal wasn’t lost on Kizu.

“What’s that you got there?” an assistant asked.

Kizu looked at the Tainted boy. The bronze scales across his cheeks looked dull and muted in the low light. He was the only one on night duty and he looked incredibly bored by the task.

“I’m trying to translate a message someone left for me, but it’s taking a while. She wrote it in a dead language.”

The assistant leaned over, glancing over the dozen sheets of parchment strewn across his bed.

“So, this is what bent Raygen out of shape?”

“I’m not sure,” Kizu said. He assumed the Tainted boy was talking about the medical assistant who’d fetched him the dictionaries. “She seemed a bit touchy.”

“Yeah, she complained to everyone how ungrateful you were. Wouldn’t stop whining about how hard the task you gave her was - as if it wasn’t her job.”

Kizu thought back and grimaced. He had just been excited to finally have a lead. It added another layer to his mental exhaustion. He thought he understood most social customs. In theory, at least. He had spent many an evening eavesdropping on the crone’s conversations with different acquaintances of hers from all over Hon. And even more time looking over her shoulder as she surveyed people through her scrying bowl. But he felt he had no knack for talking. Watching people interact was a far cry from doing it himself. Unless he kept his guard up, he tended to slip up and flounder.

“I’ll apologize tomorrow,” he said. “I guess I was a bit brusque. I didn’t intend to sound ungrateful to her - I just wanted to get into the research as quickly as possible.”

“Hey now, don’t go apologizing! She needed to get knocked down a few pegs. Ever since we broke up, she’s been far too high and mighty. Flirts with every boy who looks in her general direction.”

“I’m sorry?” Kizu said. He really didn’t want to get involved.

“No, I really don’t care.” He really seemed like he did. “Not like you probably think, anyway. It’s just annoying. You know, I am the one who originally convinced Kateshi to let her here to begin with. Honestly, she doesn’t have the aptitude for rejuvenation and restoration. Just last week she almost melted a patient’s fingernails off with a misused spell. She’s only really useful when running errands like she did today. You put her to good use.”

Kizu said nothing, just shuffled a few of his notes around.

“It’s Primordial,” the assistant said. “She wanted to withhold that information as payback for not thanking her, but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about it. Blabbed to everyone about how difficult finding a Primordial dictionary was. Apparently, barely anyone spoke it even way back in the day. The nation that created it only allowed the nobility and their priesthood to learn it.”

“So, it was a religious language,” Kizu mused.

“Hardly. Sounded more like an elitist language from how I understand it. I’d ask Krimpit if you want to know more about it.”

Kizu winced. “I think I’ll stick to my own personal studies for now.”

The older boy shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Knowing where the language came from and the class of people who’d spoken it didn’t help him understand it any better. All it did was raise the question of where Anna might have learned it. It hardly seemed like something they taught in the general classes.

The assistant kept talking to him for a long while after, complaining to him all about his breakup with Raygen and how nobody had taken his side in it. In his ramblings, Kizu gleaned that his name was Edgar. He was apparently a fifth year student, and he’d dumped Raygen because he believed she was distracting him from his studies. He also insisted that she’d intended to hold him back from higher education and force him to settle down after graduation.

“If I’d known what a storm she’d kick up afterwards, I wouldn’t have bothered breaking up with her. It’s more distracting than dating her ever was. And I know for a fact she specifically complains about me to Kateshi in the hopes of costing me my letter of recommendation.”

Kizu struggled to empathize. He wanted Edgar to stop talking and allow him to return to his translating. Still, he kept nodding. He’d already unintentionally offended one person by being too terse. Besides, he needed more practice listening to people. Even when he really wasn’t all that interested. This breakup was obviously something Edgar cared a lot about, even if he insisted otherwise.

Mort, however, felt his impatience. The little monkey slipped away without Edgar noticing. A few minutes later, one of the other students stuck in the infirmary woke up with a yelp.

When Edgar went to check on the disturbance and help the student, Mort climbed back on the bed to watch Kizu get back to work on the translation.

At some point towards the end of the night he must have dozed off. Professor Kateshi woke him up in the morning and ran a few tests on him. When she finished, she announced him fortunate and strong enough to attend classes for the day, with the added caveat that he didn’t participate in any magical activities. Then, because she evidently didn’t trust him to follow directions, she snapped an antimagic bracelet around his wrist and explained it would pop off on its own once his blood was sufficiently replenished. She also made him promise to return that night for another checkup before sending him on his way.

The silver bracelet felt cold pressed against his bare skin. It pressed against his wrist and restricted his hand’s mobility. When he arrived at Combat F, he was scowling at the thing. Kateshi could have at least given him a slightly larger size.

Arclight, having apparently heard the news of his condition from the administration, sat him on the sidelines for the entire class. So Kizu got to watch as his class ran laps for over an hour straight. He felt a measure of gratitude that he didn’t have to join them. As much as he had enjoyed running through the jungle, going in the same loop over dry and unchanging ground got pretty old after the third or fourth class of it.

He found his mind wandering to each of the students in his class. None of them had competed during the weekend. He wondered how bad they all really were if they were somehow worse than the last few competitors. Though, he supposed the same could be said for himself.

“I don’t understand why you don’t focus more on magical combat for a combat class at a magic academy,” Kizu said when Arclight walked over to check on him.

Arclight positively beamed at his assessment, as if he had offered her a compliment rather than a sullen criticism. “And why are you on the sidelines today, Mr. Kaga?”

Kizu blinked at the abrupt change in subject. “Because I overdid it with my magic and passed out from blood loss.”

“Exactly! And what do you think we’re doing in this very class?”

“Running in circles?” Kizu said.

“And what does that accomplish?”

“It makes your muscles stronger?”

“Exactly! But one muscle in particular. The most important muscle for every mage.”

“The…heart?” Kizu guessed.

“The heart! The stronger your heart, the stronger your magic. The heart distributes blood throughout your body, and the same goes for spellcraft. We all channel through the heart!”

Kizu thought about that. “So if I’m better at running, my heart becomes stronger,” he mused. “And that will reduce recovery time. It means I’ll get my blood back faster.”

“Physical health is everything! So often, modern mages rely solely on their arcane abilities for everything, and end up fat and lazy. Their hearts are overexerted and weak. Then they suffer from heart failure and die. Shameful! That is exactly the opposite of what we want from our graduates!” Arclight sounded excited, despite the morbid topic. “But you’re also wrong. You never get your blood back in your body. Spent blood never returns. Your marrow produces new blood and your heart pumps the replacement to the rest of your body.”

“Sorry, I know that. I misspoke.” Honestly, Kizu hadn’t actually known that, but he’d assumed as much.

“Diet also plays a key role in your body’s production of blood!” Arclight continued with fervor. “For years I have been advocating getting rid of all foods in the academy’s cafeteria that clot or otherwise prohibit healthy blood flow.”

“And you’ve been unsuccessful,” Kizu guessed. He thought back with guilt to the ungodly amount of sweets he had eaten since arriving here. Somehow, he doubted those were good for his heart.

“It’s been a battle, to be sure,” Arclight admitted solemnly. “But in case you haven’t noticed, I am a battle mage!” Then she bellowed a laugh that shook the ground around them, causing several of the students running to stumble.

After that proclamation, Arclight decided it would be the perfect opportunity to explain to him in detail her idea of a balanced diet. As efficient as it sounded, he felt his heart sink at the sheer amount of vegetables listed. He was secretly very grateful she hadn’t won her war against the campus chefs.

When Arclight departed to go check on a collapsed student, Kizu reevaluated his training. Healthier blood meant stronger magic. So, there were actually two ways in which he could enhance his magic. Magic exercises, like he had been doing, and physical exercises. With that in mind, if he split his training time between the two, he likely wouldn’t find himself passed out in a random corridor again anytime soon.

Even still, he was grateful to not be running in circles like his peers.