Hey guys! Sorry Valentines plans...

Here you go!

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We walked back to Entropy and told him about what happened.

“Let me see,” he said as he went towards me. He laid his large stony hand on my head and let it sit there for some time.

“Interesting,” he said after some time and he let his hand go away.

“What’s interesting?” I asked.

He tapped his chin for a bit before saying, “You have a power that bypasses the gathering and conversion of mana. You would make an excellent mage if your body did not reject it.”

“Reject? But I don’t feel any pain.”

“For now,” he said ominously, “your body is capable of doing magic, as all demons are. But each demon has a limit. I’d wager that you can only learn three more spells of different elements. double that if you use Dynamic magic. But even then, I might be wrong. Learn spells with my presence so that I can monitor your condition.”

I nodded and asked, “What’s Dynamic magic?”

“Dynamic magic is a combination of different elements,” said Arc. “It’s similar to that Shadowlock earlier. That was a combination of Dark and Wind.”

“Arc is right, you are capable of learning more magic of the Dark and Wind systems,” said Entropy.

We spent the next few hours deciding which magic I should learn. Since I already knew “Soar”, a pseudo flying spell as it just let me go forward into the air for a bit and then it would slowly glide me down, I was taught “Dark Wings”. “Dark Wings” was a spell that did not allow flight but allowed to float. Coupled with “Soar” I would be able to fly as if I had used the “Flight” spell. In addition to this combination, “Dark Wings” also increased my power by a factor according to the number of wings. The spell was a little bit different the more it is mastered. In the beginning there are only two wings but at mastery there will be ten. Being as strong as it is, it also has a drawback. It causes the user to not be able to use any other magic once “Dark Wings” is used. Because of this reason, most mages do not attempt to master this spell, only mage knights do but even then it is a small fraction.

Another spell I learned was “Descending Shadow”. This was a strange spell in that it could ultimately be used at all times. After using, my body would gain in strength slowly until my body could no longer be improved. I would then have to use it again and my body will gain in strength again. This was a common spell for users of dark magic as it made them stronger without any effort. The drawback was that at mastery, the user would develop demonic traits. As such humans stop before the last usage to prevent being confused as a demon. Demons that learn this spell are unaffected by the mastery effect.

The last spell I learned was “Reflection”. This was a spell that would hide my “Dark Wings”. It worked on the principle of bending light around an object to hide it from sight. At least that’s what Entropy said. They both say the strangest things but for some reason I can understand what they’re saying.

We spent the next few months doing the same thing over and over. I learned the culture of all the races as well as the proper etiquette. I also learned Arithmetic, Science and Anatomy. The information was in my head but it was still good to practice it. My Forced Recollection was just about over and the last thing I was taught about was Runes.

Runes were interesting things that worked similarly to spells but had to be first written down. Most runes were lost in one of the wars of the past known as the War of the Lions. There are only a few runes to be studied and the rest are derived or discovered again. All in all, it's an unpopular subject for mages to study. But with Entropy, I learned them all. It had no effect on me as a demon as the mana was not gathered by me but by the rune. The lines generate an absorption quality once they are all connected. Then it would convert the mana into what the rune was written for and then execute the command of the rune. It was similar to coding in Earth.

Earth, I thought, I feel like I know that place. But isn’t Earth just an element, how can it be a place?

I dismissed the thought and continued listening to Entropy.

One of the runes I learned was the Rune of Blood. I have it on my clothes now and it makes my control over blood not deteriorate and even further enhances it. My control can still be resisted though so I can’t exactly use it for battle. Whenever we try to control blood, we can’t move as we are using everything to concentrate on the control. I can move slightly but even then it is problematic.

“You have done well,” said Entropy one day before starting our usual lessons.

It was just days before I no longer had Forced Recollection and Arc and I were talking about things.

“Before you lose Forced Recollection, there is only one thing left to teach you,” he said as he tossed me a large blade.

Its width was a foot long, the height five feet. Its edges were dull and it seemed to be made for blunt force rather than slashing. I grabbed it and it shrunk in front of my eyes. It become about a half foot wide, and the height three feet. It was the perfect size for my five foot eight inch height. The blade still remained dull and blunt while the grip fit my hand just perfectly.

“Defend yourself!” shouted Entropy as a flying ball of fire flew towards me.

I reflexively blocked with the sword and immediately the ball of fire was absorbed by the blade.

I was stunned at what happened and lowered my sword, much to my dismay as more fireballs came towards me.

I suddenly knew that I couldn’t block this wave and dived forward into a roll. As I got up, I was about to be surrounded by more fireballs, eight in total. I swung the blade around and each time it passed by a fireball, the blade seemed to absorb it.

“Good, you are understanding the blade well. That is a Runeblade, a sword that absorbs mana and uses it to power its own runes. But be warned, it can only store so much mana before it stops doing so.”

I absorbed another fireball and as I looked up there was a giant ten foot wide fireball headed straight towards me.

“Your Runeblade can no longer absorb mana. What will you do?”

I had merely seconds to figure out how to escape. Flying wouldn’t work as I would still be caught in the blast and be flung away. I couldn’t block with the blade as it wasn’t wide enough. Then a sudden flash of inspiration came over me and I stabbed the blade onto the ground. I wrote on the flat edge facing me a rune. As most runes, it started off with a circle. Then I drew an upside down triangle inside. At the sections, separated by the triangle, I drew swirls swirling inwards, all three heading in the same direction. Within the triangle, I drew a diamond using the bottom vertex of the triangle as another point for the diamond. At the center of the diamond I drew lines heading to the vertices of the triangle. In the end, I pressed my whole palm on the rune to engrave it.

I had only one second left after engraving and used the rune that I had just finished writing, the rune of raging winds, “Tornadus”. With the center of the fireball as the center, the fireball was ripped apart by the winds, scattering the fragments everywhere. Among the runes I learned, this was one of the most powerful and hardest to use. It required a huge amount of mana that would normally take ten day’s worth of absorbing when written anywhere else. The fact that I was able to use the rune after absorbing mana from nine fireballs.

“Well done, although don’t expect to be using that rune quite so soon. My fireballs were stronger than usual fireballs. It is equivalent to a level 9’s fireball at full power, although mine was only at 10% of my own power.”

“Now then, Arc. Would you care to enlighten Gale here on how to properly use a sword?”