Greg had to school his features so as not to show any panic. This question was coming a little too close to his secrets for his comfort. There was no way of telling the truth without revealing that he had a separate space in his mind that only he could access. Still, knowing that he wasn't anywhere near smart enough to deceive the two before him, he didn't try to come up with some elaborate lie. Instead, he stuck as close to the truth as possible. Allowing a look of incomprehension to show on his face, Greg just shrugged his shoulders and said. "I don't know. While I was in the illusion, I was fully in it. I was the beast and the beast was me. But once it ended, I... I just came back to myself," he said.
The answer was unsatisfactory, and Greg could see it in both their expressions. But given that he was still a novice in the magic world and all that it entailed, neither one of them seemed too surprised that he didn't have an explanation for what they themselves couldn't explain. In the end, it was his familiar that was first to move on. "Just a word of warning," She began. "All through your recounting of the illusion, you kept saying 'I' as if you were talking about yourself. You have to remember that these are not your memories Roka, they were foisted on you from an external source," Olivia cautioned.
"That's just the thing," He said in answer. "I'm clear on the fact that they aren't my memories, but that doesn't change the fact that I experienced every single one of them firsthand. I wasn't being told about it. I wasn't watching it from the perspective of a bystander or third-person observer. I was right at the center of each of these memories. In a way it even transcended memories as I wasn't even just remembering, I was experiencing it. I wasn't remembering the cave, I was inside it. I wasn't remembering fights, I actually fought," Greg tried to capture in words just how real the experience had been while he was inside the illusion.
"I'm just trying to caution you that you should not lose the distinction between which part is you and which part is the memories, " She offered conciliatorily.
"I can't be too sure given that we are in unexplored territory," The healer quietly cut in at this point, a contemplative look on her face. "But I suspect that the loss of distinction between him and the beast is the main catalyst for his improved affinity for magic. Think about it. You weren't shown how the beast casts any of its spells in a demonstration. You weren't even given a step-by-step explanation of how to do any of what the beast could do. Instead, you were allowed to see, experience, and learn it all firsthand the same way that the beast did. Even more than just a simple illusion, this was a direct, soul to soul, transfer of knowledge."
"That's the only thing I can think of that can explain what happened. After all, if knowledge alone was enough to affect one's mana pathways, every mage out there would have a perfect affinity for the school of their choice. No. Whatever happened inside that illusion, it had to have happened at a deep enough level that your spirit-body where all your mana pathways are would also be affected. By going through the illusion, not just as an observer but as the primary actor, you learned not only how the beast set up its foundation, but also how it moved its mana around to do all that it did. This, I suspect, was then mapped onto your mana pathways through your soul," She laid out.
There was a stretch of silence as they all considered the healer's words trying to see if there was any flaw in the reasoning. Or at least, that was probably what Olivia and the healer herself were doing. Greg was just stuck on one thing. "Are you saying that I now have the same mana pathways as the Obsidian earthmover we killed?" He asked, not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, he had gotten to live through its life, and in a way, it felt like they were just as much his own mana pathways as they were the beast's. On the other hand, Greg couldn't help but feel like they were desecrating what little was left of the obsidian earthmover. Not only had they tortured the poor thing but even after it was dead, they had gone ahead and taken what little remained of it.
"In this particular case, yes," The healer replied. Something about the way she answered him told Greg that the healer had more to say on the subject so he turned his attention fully to her. "I'm going to test something to see if what I'm thinking is correct," the healer informed him. "I have a few tier-three beast-cores of the earth element in my possession. I'm going to take them out of my storage space. Please do your best not to try and snatch them from me," She cautioned him.
"What are you doing? " Olivia asked with clear displeasure in her voice. She clearly didn't want a repeat of what they'd just gone through. Greg may have pulled through fine the first time, but there was no need to tempt fate.
"Just trust me," The healer replied enigmatically.
Greg wasn't looking to be away from his family any longer than he already had been. As such, even without her saying so, he would have done his best to resist the temptation. Much to his shock, however, when his teacher caused seven different beast-cores of varying shades of brown to appear before him, none of them even remotely drew him in the same way that the obsidian earthmover's beast-core had the first time he saw it. If anything, two among the seven caused a feeling of revulsion to well up within him. Greg, who had been bracing himself to resist the desire for the cores, was left confused. "I don't desire any of these," He reported, his voice reflecting his confusion.
But while he was confused about it, a small smile appeared on the healer's lips as if this was the exact result she had been expecting. "And how about this one," She asked before Greg could say anything. The eighth beast-core didn't appear in the line before him but in the healer's hand. This was a good thing as all Greg could remember seeing was something crystalline and amber in color. He didn't even catch its shape before his hand shot forward fast as lightning. There was no doubt in Greg that he would have forcefully snatched that core from the healer. Luckily for him, the healer was faster than him and had already sent the beast-core back into her storage before Greg could take it from her.
With the disappearance of the core, his rationality returned and Greg couldn't help but look to the healer for answers. "It's rather simple if you think about it," The healer didn't make him first have to ask before answering. "The clue is in the very fact that your affinity has improved, Before you copied the obsidian earthmover's mana pathways, your affinity for the earth element was extremely low. I suspect that, at that time, all these cores would have been attractive to you. You, however, have just gone from having a very low affinity for the earth element to having an average one. All these beast-cores before you are from other tier-three beasts with similarly average affinities for the earth element. Two among them are even from beasts with a poor affinity for the earth element," She revealed. While he didn't voice it, Greg immediately knew which two those were.
"In other words, you have very little to gain from any of these cores, two of them would even be downgrades of what you currently have. That's why they hold no allure for you. We had part of the picture when we figured out that you are drawn to cores of the earth element. However, it's now clear that even more than the fact that it was a core for the earth element, the fact that it could improve your affinity to the element is what drew you to the obsidian earthmover's beast-core. I suspect that even if we got another obsidian earthmover's beast-core for you, it wouldn't elicit that much of a reaction from you," She said.
"All this still leaves one core question unanswered. And that's why? You said it yourself that this hasn't ever happened with any other mage before. Why am I in particular able to improve my affinity using beast-cores when no other mage is capable of doing the same?" Greg asked.
There was some silence as they all considered the question. In the end, it was the healer who came up with a tentative answer. "I'll only be able to test this out once I have an army of other mages awakened through this process. But as I said, and you reminded me when coming up with your theory of affinity, mana affects the mage just as much as the mage affects the mana around him. Perhaps the fact that your mana pathways were entirely made by allowing mana to flow through you and not through your conscious manipulation has made it that they are malleable to a certain degree. Perhaps your naturally formed mana pathways will always be inclined to find better and better ways of conducting the particular type of mana it has the highest affinity with," She hypothesized.
