After Lia and I theorised what might have happened with the wave, we did the only intelligent thing. First, I fed Lia, then we went to bed. The feeding was still a somewhat surreal experience, somewhere between what I imagined nursing a baby would feel like, feeding a pet and caring for a child, only that there were some rather disturbing sexual undertones as well. It was something I refused to think about, especially given that Lia still wanted to kneel before me when I fed her, something I had yet to break her of. Luckily, the feeding was the only act between us that carried uncomfortable sexual undertones, when hugging her or even letting her use me as a teddy bear at night, there was nothing of that sort. Just an almost childlike dependence, a desire for comfort and protection. Otherwise, I might have already fled, taking only Silva with me.

It felt a little weird, just going to bed while knowing there might be a crisis brewing nearby but there was really nothing we could do. With dawn almost upon us, we couldn’t head out thanks to our curse so we may as well be rested for the night and get something done then.

As I was sleeping, I could faintly hear something, it was almost akin to a song in a language I had long forgotten. And yet, despite there being no words I knew, sometimes no words at all, I was somewhat confident that there was a meaning to the sounds. Just what meaning, I wasn’t sure but I had a feeling I would eventually understand it.

Sadly, the dream didn’t make much more sense upon waking. Maybe I just couldn’t remember all of it, maybe there was something more hidden in the depths of my mind, but what I remembered just didn’t feel like it was all there was to it. As if I was watching a movie without sound, or experiencing music by only feeling the vibrations of a speaker with my hands, without it being transmitted through the air.

I gave myself until I was done with my breakfast to figure something out but afterwards, I wanted to do something productive. Namely, work in my ever-growing laboratory.

There, I was soon tinkering with some of the herbs we had found, trying to figure out that whole ‘Alchemy’ business. I tried to list the different substances I detected as magical and sort them by flavour and hue, using my magical senses. The idea was that similar flavours and hues would hopefully go together to strengthen each other, ultimately giving me something that would create that effect. So if I mixed berry juice, the extract of leaves and crushed grass, all of which smelled of warm, loamy earth to me and looked a rich, golden brown, then I would get the effect corresponding to that warm, loamy sensation. Hopefully, such an effect would be something positive that I could put into a bottle for use, possibly as fertiliser if that loamy sensation corresponded to fertility or nature magic, which my gut told me it did. If so, I might have taken the first step to create a magical fertiliser. While not necessarily what I would have thought of first when considering Alchemy, that was reserved for things like healing or mana-potions, the fertiliser might be the most useful in our situation. And given that I wasn’t sure Astral Power Potions, the logical equivalent to mana potions in the pre-change rpgs, were even possible, it would have to do.

Similarly, I wasn’t sure health potions would be possible, certainly not some sort of cure-all type thing that healed a body back to perfect health simply by drinking it. If there were such a thing, how would the medication know when to stop? Pure healing, pure tissue growth, could easily turn into pure, uncontrolled cancer, likely just as lethal as whatever wound the person had suffered before. Unless the potion wasn’t so much a healing tonic as a potion to restore the body to a previously held state. But even that had problems, namely how to differentiate between positive and negative changes? Memories were, at least partially, created and stored in the physical brain, which in turn was part of the body-mind-soul complex.

Not something I wanted to mess around with. Sure, I might be able to find some test-subjects out there, human or others, but for now, I didn’t want to overdo things.

I was just contemplating how to best test my new substance, likely by simply pouring it over a potted plant or something like that, when the sounds of barking intruded on my domain. Frowning, I decided to head upstairs to find out what was going on. Normally, Silva and her pack didn’t bark during the daytime, not even when there was trouble, as neither Lia nor I could really help them. At best, I could act as long-ranged support by launching magic from inside the house but even that had massive limitations. My Ice-Magic didn’t like to be in sunlight, to the point that anything but tightly woven Ice, like the Frozen Shuttle, could withstand it for long. If I just casually conjured an Icicle, chances were it would dissolve before getting anywhere.

Following the barking sounds, I moved to the backdoor and pulled it open, steadily stepping back to stay out of the light. Even the indirect sunlight was uncomfortable, making me wish for far more clouds in the sky. Alas, there were only a few, with a brilliantly blue sky everywhere else. Back before the change, I would have considered it a nearly perfect day but now, I could only hide enviously. Such was the nature of my curse.

Outside, there wasn’t just Silva, who I had expected, but she was with a few familiar faces, namely Aiko, the Flesh- and Nature-Mage and Ling, the Weather-Mage. Or whatever their classes were called now, I could easily feel that they had cracked level 10 but had yet to find out what class they had gained.

“Greetings, teacher,” the two greeted me, almost speaking in synch. “You are looking a little pale, is everything alright?” Ling added, sounding concerned.

“Greetings, students,” I returned the greeting, before stepping back even further, “Don’t worry about my pallor, everything is as it should be. You are welcome to enter if you seek further instruction. Let us share knowledge, to instruct and be instructed in turn.”

“We would be honoured. In addition, Mrs Wu asked us to tell you about recent events. She informed us that you predicted our plight, allowing her to make preparations and plan for the worst. It turned out, your predictions were remarkably correct,” Aiko told me, with Ling nodding along. For a moment, I wondered about that, normally I would have expected Ling, as the elder, to speak but it wasn’t truly important how the social norms were developing.

Curious but not important.

The two entered my domain and for a moment, I considered taking them down into the cellar but decided against it. Instead, I led them into the kitchen, quickly starting to make tea. It wasn’t just a polite gesture on my part, but a demonstration. First, I conjured the water with nothing but a wave of my hand, channelling the Water-Rune internally, allowing me to conjure water using Water-Magic without it being too inefficient. It was something I had done with Ice on occasion, but here, the water was the more important.

Next, I closed my eyes and turned my back to them, to conceal the use of Overflow, as my rudimentary fire magic heated the water to a boil. It was horribly inefficient, but it was a worthwhile use of my magic, especially when I turned around, casually stirring the boiling water with my water magic as I added the tea leaves. Those were of my personal stock, carefully liberated from a rather expensive shop after the change and not something I used casually, as I doubted that I’d get more, at least not easily.

“Please, tell me about your experiences during the night,” I asked, setting the tea between us to let it steep. “Yesterday’s earthquake was strong enough to wake the dead, I presume?”

“That is one way to put it, yes,” Ling nodded, sounding a little strained, “Let me tell you what happened to us, as we enjoy the tea. It already smells delicious and I certainly could use some good tea, after the night we had,” she admitted with a wry smile, before launching into a story of a midnight escape, guided by magical lights and fighting against ever-growing groups of undead. It was quite the tale, especially when she began to describe the combined groups of Shattered and Undead, which was something I hadn’t foreseen.

But ultimately, the dead rising only meant that there were more bodies for me to destroy, more EXP to be harvested.

I only had to wait until the harvest was ripe, so I could gain a decent amount of EXP. And before that, I could keep training my students, it had been a good source of EXP and new ideas and skills for my magic.