The next morning, Sabrina, Lia and I were watching the survivors that had occupied the community centre start their trip to the farm. A part of me wanted to laugh at the awkwardness of it all but I managed to stop myself. It would have been unkind. A few of these people had barely left the building for two months and it showed, there were moments when they stopped in their tracks, looking around and blinking, like some sort of marmot or groundhog, peeking out of their burrow and looking for threats.

Not all of them were like that, a few seemed to be accustomed to the outdoors, but none of them would be able to protect their group. Luckily, the group Mark had sent was prepared for that, having taken up positions around the area to make sure nothing would get to the survivors. Hopefully, at least.

Sadly, while that group was necessary to protect the people, their presence wasn’t without its troubles. The strange magical guy I had noticed the day before had, upon realising that Sabrina wasn’t planning to join the group heading to Apple Gate Farm, protested that she’d be staying around. His companions, especially Kenji, had quickly reacted and I had tasted the distinct scent of Wind Magic in the air just after the guy’s voice wasn’t audible any longer, so I wasn’t sure what had been said. A part of me had been curious but my interest was more towards ways of disabling or circumventing the magical silence Kenji set up than it was in the guy’s protests. I had, covertly, checked his level and he wouldn’t be a threat for a long time, his level barely above twenty. It wasn’t bad, one might even call it excellent when compared to the survivors they were rescuing, but it was far from my own power.

Their intervention made sure I didn’t have to listen to some sort of rant and while I didn’t like the look he gave me, that was true for a lot of looks I got. Almost everyone I met had either some sort of negative emotion visible in their eyes or their eyes gave away nothing, hiding their feelings inside. I wasn’t about to judge somebody by their initial reactions, I was self-aware enough to know people felt intimidated by my power and were fearful of the unknown, as represented by my inhumane skin colour and magical hair. I was clearly something other than human, the differences much more distinct than those of Cassie.

“What are we going to do now?” Lia quietly asked as the people started moving away from the building. She was a little behind Sabrina and me, making sure to stay out of any stray sun rays that might make it through the relatively thin cloud cover, but watching their exodus just the same.

“Some more training, I’ve got a few ideas for some experiments and things I want to try out,” I admitted, looking between the other two. “In addition, we might have to start Sabrina with a more direct training regime, have her take down a few Undead or something like that. We don’t want to have her harmed by gaining too many levels too fast. I have no idea if it can harm her permanently, beyond the possibility of a worse class, but I’m not too keen to test it out,” I added, getting a brave nod from Sabrina. We had talked about the need to hunt and kill before, though I wasn’t sure whether she truly understood. I doubted it, which made a careful program of desensitization a necessity, even beyond the need to keep her experience intake low.

“Why don’t we try to see if you can get any element for you to work? We’ve only checked whether you’ve got any affinity traits but we never tried to have you manipulate Astral Power. It might help you a little, maybe you even get some real magic out of it, we’ll have to see,” I asked Sabrina. She immediately nodded along happily, remembering the lessons I had given her on elemental theory. I hadn’t done this before, simply because I didn’t want people to think I could easily help them gain any elemental magic they wanted, but I wanted to make the effort for my munchkin.

“And for you, Lia, I’ve got an idea for a challenge,” I grinned, “You remember how I managed to travel through the shadows, how I can merge myself into the Darkness and hide that way?”

“Yes, Mother, I know what you mean?” Lia replied, though her uncertainty was clearly audible. She didn’t know what I had in mind, which wasn’t a real surprise.

“Well, Daughter, the challenge is that I want you to accomplish the same, at least on a small scale. Take a small, contained shadow, let’s say the darkness within a bag, and put your hand inside, hide it inside. If you make progress, I’ll have a special snack for you later,” I explained, getting a thoughtful nod. I doubted she was already able to fully merge herself with the shadows, to say nothing about travelling through them but reaching into the shadows might be possible.

It was also part of another idea I had, using the shadows to store things. I wasn’t sure how I could do it, if it was even possible, but I thought that it might be. I already knew that things could be taken in the shadows, otherwise, I’d be naked every time I travelled through them, naked and without all my gear, but I wasn’t. So, there had to be a way for things, non-living physical objects, to be put into the shadows and taken back out. Now, the question was, could I let go of items within the shadows? If yes, could I take them back out? And what were the rules for that? Did I have to be in the same position, or did I only need access to the shadow I had put something in? Did I even need any sort of physical relation to the place I had put something in from, or could I theoretically take anything I knew to be in the shadows back out of them, at any distance? As long as I could magically find it within the realm?

The place was a realm of willpower and magic, not a real, physical place, so the rules might be completely different than I imagined and having Lia as a research partner would be invaluable. Because this idea might be the most valuable and important just yet, at least in the context of humanity as a whole. If my idea was even remotely possible, I might be able to create an approximation of the magic bags used on Mundus, by making sure that there was a light-less area at the bottom of a bag and using that lightless, darkness, as a storage space. There would certainly be challenges, even now I could imagine countless problems that could pop up, but just the possibility was enough to warrant thorough investigation.

But now, I had to get some work done with Sabrina. Similarly to the way I had introduced lightning magic to Kenji, I started by conjuring small amounts of the respective elements into my palm, carefully controlling them. Once they were there, Sabrina, and Lia for that matter, got to try manipulating them on their own, simply to see which they got along with best.

It was quite fascinating to experience, to see the looks of concentration and feel their Astral Power reach for mine. Looking at it with my magical sight, I realised that I needed an incredibly light touch to help Sabrina, simply because she was so weak in comparison to me. Granted, that was mainly because she was only level two, having gained a level during my lessons to my surprise, but that didn’t change the contrast. My Astral Power could easily swallow up the probes she sent, leaving her with nothing, which obviously wasn’t the idea behind the exercise.

With a lot of patience and care on my part, we managed to cycle through the elements I had control over. The results we got were fairly unspectacular but not unexpected. Sabrina’s best element was water, though it was only a minor affinity, with a smattering of Darkness thrown in. She lacked the affinity to specialise in magic, but I felt that just having the skills and a bit of training would help a great deal. If only to make sure she always had something to drink, while Darkness Magic would hopefully help her with concealment in the future.

Lia, on the other hand, only had the elements we already knew before. With a bit of training, she might gain more Elemental Magic skills but I doubted it and she had declared that she’d continue to focus on what she already could do magically, plus her physical skills. Those were her primary focus, a focus she intended to keep.

Finally, Sabrina was finished with this part of her training and I sent off my two children, so they could get some physical work done. In the meantime, I wanted to experiment with Darkness Magic.