The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 348

Chapter 348 Melee Enhancement Tactics

When I stepped back into the second level of the Relictombs, my limbs practically dragging behind me, a bespectacled clerk rushed up as his eyes darted across my bedraggled form.

“Sir?” he asked tentatively. “Are you all right? Where is your party?”

I shook my head and took a step past him. “Fine. Solo ascent.”

The man kept pace, his hands fidgeting with a scroll he was carrying carefully in front of him. “I see. Yes, solo ascending is notoriously difficult, sir. Name, so I can record your return? Any accolades to report?”

Still walking, I said, “Grey. Just Grey. And no.”

The clerk winced, making his glasses slip to the end of his nose. “Sorry to hear that, Ascender Grey. Might I scan—”

I stopped suddenly, forcing the man to jerk to a halt and turn back around to face me. Leveling an irritated glare in his direction, I said, “I am exhausted and would like to be on my way. Whatever you need, just do it.”

The clerk cleared his throat and fixed his glasses before pulling out some kind of wand. “If you’re carrying a dimensional storage artifact, please present it,” he said, somewhat stiffly.

I held out my hand, showing him the dimension ring. He waved the wand past it, then along the length of my body. He clicked his tongue. “No accolades, as you say.” Next, he turned his attention to a scroll he was carrying. “Ascender Grey…Ascender…Oh, a professor!.” He scribbled something, muttering under his breath. “My apologies. You’re so young, I didn’t realize…”

“Are we done?” I asked impatiently.

“Yes, sir, of course. Thank you for your patience.” He gave me a nod and started to turn away, then stopped.

Closing my eyes, I rubbed two fingers against my temple and down to my eye socket. “Yes?”

“Well,” he started tentatively, “I just thought you might want to know that classes at Central Academy began three days ago.” With an awkward smile, he returned to his post.

“Sh*t,” I grumbled, and began dragging my tired body across the second level toward the teleportation platforms.

***

From the hall outside my classroom, I could already hear the laughter and shouts of the unsupervised teenagers inside.

I caught snippets of conversation as I stepped through the door.

“—told me that the new professor isn’t even a named blood. Should be easy to—”

“—hear about the hot new assistant for Professor Aphelion?”

“—class is such a joke. I can’t believe Strikers have to waste our time with—”

“—kidding me? The rest of my classes are so freaking hard, I’m looking forward to doing nothing in here.”

I glanced quickly around as I descended the stairs. Two young women were sparring roughly in the dueling ring while another student goofed around with the controls. A couple others had pulled out sparring dummies and were punching them awkwardly. The rest of the students were lounging around doing nothing.

“The professor isn’t here again,” a bespectacled boy said without looking up from his book.

“He is the professor, Deacon,” another student said. It was the black-haired boy who had ordered the two bullies around in the library.

“You’re late,” his broad companion grumbled, crossing his thick arms over his chest.

“And you missed the first day,” their tall friend added, kicking his long legs up on the back of the chair in front of him.

“Very perceptive,” I said as I opened my office door and half stepped through it. “You all seem to have things under control for today. I’ll be in my office.” I closed the door before anyone could respond, cutting myself off from the prying eyes.

The classroom burst into chatter again the moment my door closed.

“Nice! Free day.”

“—be exactly like last season—”

“—stupid idea to train without mana anyway.”

Sighing, I tuned them out and sank into my office chair, leaning forward to rest my head against my forearms. Despite my exhaustion, though, I felt my face crack into a wide grin. You can find the rest of this content on the lightnovelpub.c?om platform.

I had actually done it.

My mind buzzed as I considered the results of my experiment in the Relictombs. I wanted to talk through it, but Regis seemed to be hibernating like he had while I trained with Three Steps in the peaks above her secluded village. I hoped that meant he would restore himself more quickly.

Withdrawing the puzzle toy Three Steps had given me, I tapped it against the table, listening to the seed within rattle. I hadn’t been able to replenish much aether on my journey through the second level of the Relictombs, and my core seemed to be strained to the edge of my endurance, but having something to occupy my hands would make it easier to think.

Turning my awareness inward, the first thing I noticed was my aether channels. The flood of pure aether from the obelisk had widened them and scoured the insides clean of imperfections.

There was a deep ache from my core as I manifested a claw and began to dig around inside the seedpod, but I focused on holding the shape. Although I didn’t have much aether to pull from, I found that the aether itself was moving along my channels more quickly, meaning I could manifest it to a specific point of my body almost instantly.

It still took time to condense the aether into a thin claw off my index finger, though, and my tired mind struggled to focus on the shape. Instead, I focused on my core.

The core itself was larger and more transparent. The reddish tint was entirely gone, and the aether within had resolved into a deep, rich violet hue. Focusing closely, I could see the clear delineation between two separate layers of my core: the original shell supporting and holding the pieces of my mana core, and a second, thicker layer.

I had first forged my aether core by pure intent and sheer will. At my weakest and most desperate point, I had turned total loss into an impossible victory, doing something perhaps no one in the history of this world had accomplished.

When my aether core began to crack, I realized that I had to move beyond my current limited perspective. I had followed the same path as a mana-wielding mage, expecting growth through use, meditation, and combat.

Mana cores lightened in color as they became purer. This was a purely biological mechanism, natural to its function. Although it required intentional meditation to make the most of it, even someone who never focused on refining their mana core would see it slowly progress through use, like the strengthening of a muscle.

But my aether core wasn’t natural.There was no set biological progression.

Through significant effort, and the knowledge born of my time both as a white core mage and a ki user, I had been able to remove many of the impurities and imperfections within it. Although this had allowed me to more easily absorb aether, and in greater quantities, it had not brought about significant stages of progression like advancing through the orange, yellow, and silver stages.

I realized that I needed to be more intentional. If my aether core wouldn’t evolve on its own, I had to find some way to force it.

Utilizing the vast reservoir of aether from the obelisk trap, I had formed a second layer around my core—very slowly, and very painfully.

Unfortunately, the process had required nearly all of the aether channeled into the obelisk, so that by the time I was done there was none left to absorb for myself, leaving my body weak and aching.

Now that I had done it, I couldn’t help but wonder: Could I do it again? With enough aether, could I continue to add layers to my core, growing exponentially more powerful with each one?

It was possible. The biggest hurdle was finding a source of aether strong enough to forge the layer in a single sitting, almost the reverse of holding enough aether in my core to imbue into Sylvie’s stone and break through a layer.

In my moment of necessity, when I had no choice but to do something drastic or risk crippling my aether core, it was exactly that thought that had given me inspiration. The way Sylvie’s stone, or egg, utilized multiple layers to capture and hold aether had served as the foundation of my own attempt.

Thanks, Sylv, I thought. Even asleep in your egg, you keep finding ways to keep me going.

There was a knock at the door. I ignored it.

Another knock. “Professor Grey?”

I sighed and released the aether claw. “In.”

The door opened, and a familiar face peered around the frame. Seth, the boy from the library, was pale and sweaty, and his uniform was sticking to his chest and arms. “Sir, are you going to be teaching the class today?”

My surprise at seeing the boy lasted for about a second before I waved him away. “Haven’t you heard? This isn’t a real class.”

“But you told me to learn to defend myself,” Seth said quietly. “I thought you meant—that you wanted me to…”

“You thought I was going to teach you?” I raised a brow. “You’re a highblood, right? You’d be better off hiring a private tutor.”

A chorus of laughter came from the classroom, and Seth, looking crestfallen, stared down at his feet as he slowly closed the office door, but I only activated the aether claw and tried again.

“Don’t worry, we can help teach you a thing or two,” someone jeered.

There was a thump and a pained grunt from just outside the door.

The aetheric claw on my finger faded in and out as I struggled to ignore the distraction. Without realizing it, I had pulled the seed into the round opening and held it there, balanced perfectly within the stem hole, for thirty seconds or more. I closed my eyes and refocused on the claw, pulling steadily while holding the aether’s form. Follow new episodes on the lightnovelpub.com platform.

“No, not like that, orphan. When you curl up, you lose sight of your opponent and”—there was another, sharper thump—“leave yourself open to blows to your head.”

The edges of the hole buckled slightly and the claw slipped, but I was able to adjust my grip and maintain my hold on the seed. So close, I thought. Just a bit more…

A series of sharp, heavy knocks at the door broke my concentration, and I heard the seed clatter back to the bottom of the pod.

Standing, I quickly crossed the office and jerked the door open. “What?”

The uniformed man on the other side of the door wrinkled his nose and pinned me with a disapproving frown. “Professor Grey, yes?”

“That’s me. Can I help you?” I asked with a slight tilt of my head.

“We haven’t had an opportunity to meet yet. My name is Rafferty.” The man was middle-aged, with gray hair at his temples and wrinkles starting to appear around his eyes. He was wearing a black and azure suit and a look that told me he wasn’t exactly glad to meet me. “I, in case you did not know, am the head of your department.”

He held out a scroll. “This is an updated class list, which you need because several students have already dropped this course.”

I took the scroll and tossed it on my desk. “I see. Well, is there anything else I can do for you?”

The department head glowered. “Yes, as a matter of fact, you can. Looking at your qualifications and recommendations, I am not entirely certain how you came to be employed here at Central Academy, young man, but I will not accept anything less than maximum effort from the professors in this department. Please ensure that you attend classes on time in the future, and that you adhere to the academy-provided training regimen.”

His tone should have bothered me, considering my situation, but I was too caught between exhaustion and excitement to worry about this thin Alacryan’s threats.

Forcing a contrite frown, I bowed shallowly. “I apologize, there was a mix-up in the Relictombs. I don’t plan on missing class again.”

His frown smoothed somewhat. “See that you don’t. We don’t need any more trouble like that in the High Hall, Professor Grey.”

Spinning on his heel, Rafferty swept out the open door. On the other side, my dozen students were all motionless, obviously having heard every word of my chastisement.

Wordlessly, I shut the door and returned to my mess of a desk. I hadn’t bothered to look over the class roster I’d received in my original paperwork, so I pulled the new scroll open and scanned the—much shorter—list.

I didn’t recognize most of the names: Brion of Named Blood Bloodworth, Deacon of Blood Favager, Enola of Highblood Frost…blah blah blah…Mayla of Blood Fairweather, Pascal of Blood Bancroft, Portrel of Highblood Gladwyn, Remy of Highblood Seabrook…blah blah…Seth of Highblood Milview…