The Sixth School Book Ii Ch 008

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All Characters in the story are 18 years of age and above...

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Chapter Eight: Desperate Measures...

"What are you doing?"

Greg paused for a second at Olivia's question. His hands, however, resumed their motion as he reached forward and pulled the mana-draining ring off his teacher's finger. A part of him didn't want to answer the question. Not because he had anything against Olivia but simply because he was torn on what the correct approach was. Despite how peaceful his teacher looked, Greg had constantly been reminding himself that she was every bit as awake as if she had been sitting across from him. Short of visually seeing him, the healer could hear everything he said and feel everything he did. When you are a doctor working on a patient and something goes seriously wrong during the procedure, do you inform them out of an obligation to be fully transparent with them? Or do you lie in order to keep them calm and give them hope?

This was the dilemma that Greg was facing. After ten whole days of relentlessly trying to chip away at the final ten percent of the healer's mana pathways, Greg had barely even made a dent. Forget six months, at the current pace, he'd need years to fully destroy this last remaining bit. After just three days of doing this, it had already become abundantly clear that something needed to change, otherwise he'd fail at this task. The first option that had immediately come to mind was Morpheus. With how powerful the being was, it would be trivial for him to destroy his teacher's mana pathways.

Unexpectedly, however, Morpheus would hear nothing of it. Greg had used every argument he could come up with, to try and convince Morpheus to intervene in this for him. He'd been angry, sad, demanding, pleading, threatening, reasonable, unreasonable, and everything in between. Nothing he said would move the deity. "Mortals die Greg. That's just something you have to make peace with." These had been his final callous answer before Morpheus had gone silent and refused to say anything further. Some small part of Greg knew that he couldn't exactly blame Morpheus. To begin with, the logic behind his refusal was rock solid as far as Greg could tell. Greg didn't have an infinite lifespan. His longevity was a finite resource that was quickly running out. This limited resource was used up any time Greg allowed Morpheus to take over. If they weren't careful with it, then it would very quickly run out. Besides, if it dropped low enough, then just summoning Morpheus would be the thing that killed him as opposed to whatever threat they were facing at the time.

And if that wasn't argument enough, there was the simple fact that Morpheus wasn't in any way obligated to care about the healer especially if it would be to his detriment. Forget the healer, Greg knew that Morpheus barely cared about him. If not for the fact that he was in a vulnerable position, the deity wouldn't have even deigned to look his way. Their relationship was purely transactional. Morpheus would help keep Greg alive, and in return, when he was powerful enough, Greg would help him recreate a body that he could then use to disappear from his mother's radar. Much as he hated to admit it, Greg knew that he had no right to ask the deity to risk his future for the healer. Every bit of longevity that Greg lost reduced the amount of power that Morpheus could bring to bear when they were in a pinch. And given that Fate seemed to be out for his blood, to hold back was no different from gambling with his very life. A risk that Morpheus had plainly stated he wouldn't countenance

But while his logical mind understood why Morpheus had taken the stance that he had, Greg couldn't help the feeling of abandonment that he felt at being left to deal with this on his own. Every time he thought to himself that this wall which had stopped him cold was one that Morpheus wouldn't even notice if he chose to do something, it left him burning with resentment. It left him wanting to once again start arguing with the deity. Greg had to bite his tongue both figuratively and literally every time this happened to keep from rehashing arguments as there was nothing that could still be said that he hadn't already said.

Once it had become clear to Greg that he wouldn't be getting any help from Morpheus, he had begun considering other avenues. Naturally, the first option he thought of was Olivia, or at the very least her true self. Greg, however, couldn't help but hesitate. So far, of the major powers involved in his life, she was the one whose motives remained most obscure. The healer was driven by revenge. Morpheus was driven by a desire to regain a body and get away from his mother. Morpheus' mother was yet to reveal her motives as well, but by the same token, she also wasn't asking anything of him until Greg was at the seventh tier. This made it so that Greg wouldn't have to worry about her for a long time to come.

With Olivia's true self, however, besides leaving him with an avatar, she had chosen to remain entirely in the background. Greg had gotten a hint of what she was after when she and Morpheus had argued over her attempt to tamper with his eyes. Apotheosis, that's what Morpheus had called it. Olivia's true self had reached the limit of her current life order and was seeking some way to rise from just being an Ascended to a Deity like Morpheus. What that entailed, however, Greg didn't know. How the system played into this goal? He also didn't know.

It was this ignorance, however, that left Greg uncertain whether Olivia's true self could even be trusted. Perhaps inviting her original here would lead to even more trouble than he was already in. It wasn't like Greg could do anything to her once she was here. If he invited Olivia's true self here and she chose to do something he didn't like, he would be powerless to stop her. It was as a saying he'd once heard in his previous life said, jumping on a tiger's back is easy, it's getting off it that is the real trial. It would be all too easy to get himself into a dangerous situation with the Primordial, getting himself out of it would be the real trial.

Besides, all this was to say nothing of the fact that Morpheus had promised the Primordial that Greg would remember nothing of her. If Greg suddenly began calling on her, it would call into question Morpheus' trustworthiness. And if she began to doubt the things that Morpheus had said, then he'd have opened a can of worms that he wasn't anywhere close to being powerful enough to close. The worst part was that even if he did summon her, he couldn't be sure that she would agree to help. If he could at least be certain of that, then Greg might have been willing to risk it. But then, with the capricious nature of such a powerful being, he'd be entirely at the mercy of whatever the Primordial thought up at the time. If she instead decided to take the healer hostage to indirectly get Morpheus to do something for her, the situation would only grow that much more complicated

But then, with Morpheus having flatly refused to help, and Olivia's true self not being a viable option if he hoped to keep his head, Greg was left with no one to call to. This time, there wouldn't be any last-minute intervention from someone more powerful than he was. His system was also not going to bail him out this time. Despite being full of tier-one to tier-three items, they wouldn't be able to bridge the gap between someone with second-tier mana and the mana pathways of a seventh-tier mage.

That's why Greg was conflicted about answering Olivia. What he was about to do was less a well-thought-out plan and more a move of desperation. His teacher was already in pain and powerless to move, should he really add panic to that by sharing his harebrained plan? At the same time, however, his teacher had fully entrusted herself to Greg. Shouldn't he reciprocate that trust by being open with what he was doing? It was his teacher's life and future that was at stake after all, she should at least know what he was planning to do and why. Pressing his lips together, hoping he was doing the right thing, Greg answered.

"I've hit a wall. Most of her mana pathways were dead and were easy to dissolve. Of what remained, the majority were only partially functional. Those took about twenty-five days of unrelenting effort to fully dissolve. The last remaining section of her mana pathways is fully intact. Despite her weakened state, she still has the mana pathways of a seventh-tier mage, despite putting in every bit of effort that I can muster, I haven't been able to make any headway in dissolving them--"

"What about the being that helped us with the abyssal creature? Why not seek his help?" Olivia cut in.

Greg couldn't stop the sigh that left him. "I already did. He refused. His exact words to me were, "Mortals die, Roka, that's just something I'm going to have to make peace with," he quoted, switching out his real name. Greg couldn't help but notice the slight bit of disappointment from Olivia. Her true self was probably very interested in Morpheus and would have loved any chance to learn something more about him, even if indirectly. Whether this was purely out of curiosity or some other nefarious motive, Greg didn't know. But while there was disappointment in her expression, there was zero surprise. To beings like them, mortal lives probably did not mean all that much. The fact that another was about to drop dead was just the natural order of things and nothing to get worked up over.

Greg had to press his lips together to keep from giving voice to the anger that suddenly flared up within him. Here he was, fighting for someone who meant a lot to him, and the very people who were supposed to be his allies, at least on paper, were just standing idly by, not caring in the least. Despite his best attempt to keep his tone level, he was a little more curt as he continued to explain what he hoped to do. "Using my mana, I won't be able to breach her intact mana pathways. I've thrown everything I can at it over the past ten days and I've barely scratched it. There's simply too big a gap in power between us. I need to come at this differently if I hope to break down her pathways, which is what I'm doing," Greg said looking down at the mana-draining ring he'd just taken off the healer's finger.

"Part of the precaution we've been taking throughout this process is to feed her potions that will hinder her body's natural mana absorption in conjunction with this ring to drain away any residual mana that might still be absorbed despite the potion. About ninety percent of her mana pathways have been dissolved though. I suspect... and hope, that what remains won't be able to support that much mana," he said.

"You hope to use her mana against her," Olivia stated as she finally caught on to what he was planning.

Greg quietly nodded. "With regular doses of the potion that inhibits her ability to absorb mana, the speed of mana accumulation in her core will be slow. That will allow us to keep it at just the right threshold to do damage to what remains of her mana pathways. What we want is a gradual destruction, not an immediate implosion of either her core or mana pathways. If the mana starts to be too much, we put the ring back on her and allow it to drain away the excess mana," Greg voiced his tentative plan, his hands clammy and his heart beating hard in his chest with nervousness. Even without looking up to see the skeptical look on Olivia's face, Greg could see all the holes in his plan.

To begin with, what remained of his teacher's mana pathways, were fully intact. In other words, they were the very pathways most fully capable of handling the kind of mana he was hoping would destroy them. Chances are that they would just ferry the mana and be no worse for wear than they were before. Secondly, and even worse, the remaining mana pathways were all open-ended pipes leading out of the central reservoir that was her mana core. The healer had once before explained that mana was a lot like blood or air. While mana was inside your mana pathways, it didn't harm the body. Just like blood inside your blood vessels or air in your lungs was a good thing. If on the other hand, blood started flowing outside your blood vessels, you'd be suffering from internal bleeding and you wouldn't be far from death if it wasn't somehow fixed, the same way that air in your blood vessels would be dangerous for you. Likewise, if mana left your mana pathways and started flowing within your body, it would damage your body. At least, this was the case with those that had a closed mana circulation system. This was part of what was so revolutionary about the open mana circulation system that his teacher had come up with. Rather than destroy the body around the mana pathways, mana in this new system reinforces it.

As things currently stood, if Greg wasn't careful in closely monitoring the mana as it flowed through what remained of his teacher's mana pathways, he could very easily end up poisoning her with her own mana. What was even more scary, was the fact that this wasn't even the biggest danger in what stood before them. The third and biggest danger that Greg could see in what he was planning, had to do with the fragile state of his teacher's mana core. While what remained of her mana pathways were the ones that were still fully intact, this wasn't true of her mana core. There were deep cracks in her mana core which left Greg feeling very uneasy. If pushed too far, her mana core was likely to shatter, and somehow, Greg doubted that pruning one's mana pathways would keep an exploded core from being fatal. His plan succeeding depended entirely on the hope that her mana core, fragile as it was, would still be able to handle more mana than her intact mana pathways. If this failed to be the case, then any mana gathered would pose more danger to her core than her mana pathways.

In short, Greg knew that this was a farfetched idea with a higher likelihood of failing than it had succeeding. He, however, was out of options. It was either this or giving up on his teacher, and Greg had no plans of giving up on her, no matter what!

***

"Roka," there was a note of pleasant surprise in his mother's tone of voice when he stepped out of the room he'd been inside for the past month.

Greg had carefully monitored his teacher for an hour after taking off the mana-draining ring. Either the potion they fed his teacher to inhibit any absorption of mana was more effective than he'd given it credit for. Or mana pathways played a greater role in mana absorption than Greg knew. Greg had no idea which was the case. Either way, with ninety percent of her mana pathways gone and the potion inside her, barely a trickle of mana had entered her mana core in that time. From what he could see, it'd take a few hours before she had anywhere near enough mana for Greg to work with. It was enough time for Greg to take a short break. He could step out, catch a breath of fresh air, check up on his family, and take a moment to calm his nerves in preparation for the delicate process that still lay ahead of him.

He couldn't let himself sleep though. After more than a month of keeping himself awake and functioning using the endless vigor potion, Greg knew that he'd probably be out like a light for a week or more if he allowed himself to drift off even for a moment. During the first few days, it had been easy to ignore. The longer he went without sleep, however, the more he felt it. The closest approximation of the feeling was like standing under a glass dome at the bottom of a lake. The fatigue wasn't being eliminated, like the waters of the lake, it was just being held at bay by the endless vigor potion. The moment he stopped taking the potion the glass would shatter and he'd be swept away by the fatigue. This was why Greg had taken a sip of the potion before stepping out of the room and would do so again when he returned.

A smile automatically graced his lips even as he turned to his mother. All the while, the guilt he was feeling was like an acid that was eating away at his insides. Not only had he uprooted their whole lives and forced them to go on the run with him, but he'd then come to this place, left them in Lothar's care, and disappeared for a whole month! He was a terrible son and brother to his mother and sister. They deserved so much better than this and Greg could only silently promise to make this up to them.

"Mother," Greg called out walking up to the woman with a smile.

Greg leaned down to let her kiss him on the forehead as she usually did in greeting. Greg, however, was surprised when he felt her palms cup the sides of his face as she studied him with a look of concern on her face. Before Greg could question her, he felt himself pulled into a hug by his mother. "It's going to be okay," she said softly.

This was a case where a sledgehammer couldn't have broken the wall but a feather landing on it caused it to tip over. His teacher's life and future had been placed in his hands and the weight of such a responsibility had been crushing him. What was even worse was that Greg felt that there was a higher likelihood of him failing as opposed to succeeding given the way things were going. Greg didn't know if he would be able to handle it if he ended up killing his teacher. Even worse, he wouldn't be able to look her in the eye if he ended up crippling her. So far, Greg had been bearing up under it by simply not thinking about it. Keeping his mind on the current task as opposed to what was coming next had allowed him to keep forging ahead. At his mother's soft words, however, all the fear and worry that he'd been holding in just slammed into him with the force of a truck and Greg found himself clinging to the woman like one in danger of drowning clings to a floating log for dear life.

"She... she placed her life in my hands and I don't know if I can do it," Greg spoke in a hoarse whisper, trying to speak around the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat.

"She believes in you Roka, and so do I," His mother answered him, her voice full of warmth and support.

"But what if I fail," Greg couldn't help but give voice to his fears. It was pointless, it was stupid. There was nothing that his mother could do about the situation with the healer. And yet, her softly muttered words of support and encouragement felt like they were pillars of strength that were holding up a building that was about to crumble. They were new life breathed into a tree that was withering.

Greg didn't know how long he stood in his mother's embrace, but it still felt far too soon when they finally pulled apart. He couldn't help some slight shame at how he'd broken down and looked off to the side unable to meet his mother's eyes. A smack to the back of his head, however, got him to look back at her. There was no real force behind her hand, but the admonishing look in her eyes told Greg that she could read him like an open book. "Ancestors, you're so like your father," she muttered with half fond reminiscence, half exasperation.

"Your father was a good hunter. There were, however, times when the hunt would go poorly, sometimes even for a week or longer. Your father would get the same look you walked out of that room with," she said with a bittersweet smile. "He never wanted us to worry and so he'd always try to hide it by getting some meat from other hunters that he promised to pay back. He'd come home acting like everything was right with the world, but I could always tell that something was weighing on him. I kept telling him that he didn't have to hide it from me when things weren't okay, but the stubborn man that he was, he never listened. At first, I just assumed that it was his pride that wouldn't let him admit that he wasn't able to hunt something for us. After many cycles with him, however, I came to understand that it wasn't his pride but rather his care for us. Just as you care for your teacher, your father cared so much for us that causing us to worry was a far worse feeling for him than just keeping it to himself. He preferred to bear all the worries by himself and keep us happy rather than have us share in his burdens. The problem with that is no one can bear all the burdens of the world by themselves. Try to do that Roka, and it's not a question of if but when will you break under the weight," she cautioned.