(AS) B2 - Lesson 65: "It's Called A Tactical Retreat!"

My editing software has been giving me some trouble the last few days, but I've ran this one through three times already today.

If anything is still funky, please point it out!

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Despite the inferno of flames surrounding her, flames that had slowly shifted from dark blue to an almost white as the fight raged on, each breath that Maggy drew was colder than the darkest abditus blizzard. Her heavy breaths came out as white clouds and frost crawled up her arm from the blue orb floating over her hand.

Maggy’s face pinched in concentration as she struggled to push more mana through the orb. Her cry turned into a scream as intense cold rippled from the artifact. The orb glowed a bright white, and three more flame spears erupted from its twisting surface. They screeched through the air and slammed into the Kigendoro, leaving large patches of dried, scorched mud.

She could still remember when her teacher first showed her the strange device;

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“What is it, Teacher?” she asked.

“I’m not completely sure,” he answered. “It was found deep within a recently discovered Old Ruin.”

A young Maggy stared at the orb in amazement. The artifacts extracted from the Old Ruins were always as strange as they were powerful and so very unlike anything else found in the world they called home. Theories of their origins abounded, but nothing could ever be confirmed.

Her teacher placed the orb above a small metal disk on his desk. The orb snapped into place and floated above the disk without the slightest fluxation of mana. He turned back to Maggy and folded his hands. “According to the records found with the artifact, the builders of the Old Ruins called it a ‘Thermal Flux Regulator.’ What that means exactly, we are still working to understand.”

“Fascinating…” Maggy whispered as she stared at the artifact, eyes wide and unblinking.

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A few weeks later, Maggy and her teacher stood on a scorched training field,

Her teacher raised his gloved hand, palm up, and a strange blue orb appeared in his storage ring. With a mana pulse, the orb floated off the man’s palm and slowly spun in place. Maggy grinned and clapped. “You did it!” she cheered.

He grinned down at her and smiled. “I couldn’t have done so without your help, my apprentice. Reverse arcanizing the containment disk was a quite the challenge.”

“Do we know what the orb does now?” She asked.

Her teacher only grinned and fed fire mana into the orb. It lit up with a bright blue light. Maggy stared on, almost giddy with excitement. Then the temperature plummeted.

“Wha—?” Maggy furrowed her brow.

“Wait for it…” her teacher said.

The next instant, a vortex of fire-aligned Spirit Energy from the surrounding area rushed toward them and sunk into the orb like water down the drain. Frost formed on her teacher’s gloved hand, and Maggy shivered as the temperature dropped even further.

With a final flash of light, a massive beam of pure fire mana erupted from the orb and streaked across the field, turning the reinforced targets into ash and straining the massive safety shield around the area to the point Maggy feared it would shatter. Such a shield should have withstood even a full-force attack from a [Soul Fusion] Cultivator or an [11th Circle] Mage.

Being a [9th Circle] Mage — the equivalent of an [Elemental Dominance] Cultivator — Maggy’s teacher was one of the strongest Mages in Halirosa. Yet even he shouldn’t have been able to scratch the safety shield.

“Teacher… that —” Maggy’s words were cut off as she turned away from the deep, glowing trench carved into the training field toward her teacher. “TEACHER!” Maggy cried as she rushed to the man’s side.

Her teacher had collapsed to his knees, panting and shivering. Maggy attempted to summon several [Micro Stars] but found the environmental energy had been almost depleted, forcing her to draw from her own furnace. That would somewhat put her personal progression back, but she worried more about her teacher. A dozen tiny red stars materialized in the surrounding air, and the temperature slowly rose to a more comfortable range. After a moment, her teacher stopped shivering and, with her help, stood.

“Thank you, my dear,” the man said. “It seems I overdid it slightly. Or I’m just getting old," he burst into laughter, which softened into a grin as Maggy glared up at him. Well, what did you think?" he asked with a single raised brow.

Maggy glared at the man for a moment longer before turning back to devastation. “I… don’t understand. It seems like some kind of amplifier, but I’ve never seen one so powerful…” her eyes shifted to the thin layer of frost slowly steaming under the heat of her stars, “… or so dangerous.”

Her teacher smiled and asked, “How do you think it works?”

Maggy paused before responding. “I don’t know. It seemed to absorb environmental Spirit Energy similar to a Mage’s mana furnace, but the rate it did so was absolutely insane.”

Her teacher nodded, stroking his beard with his free hand while flicking his gloved one. The orb vanished into his storage ring. “That it is. As far as we can determine, the artifact can synchronize with an energy source and then attract and absorb matching energy within a set area. It is then set to expel that energy after reaching a certain threshold. I could not say for what purpose, but those I have shown the artifact to do not believe it is intended as a weapon.”

Maggy frowned. “Because of the side effects?” she asked.

Again, her teacher nodded. “Partly. A proper artifact like this should have a safety feature to shield its user from such adverse effects. But it’s more than that. The expunged energy is… chaotic. Directionless. It’s as if the entire purpose of the artifact is to simply absorb and expel energy.”  

Maggy threw up her arms. “That doesn’t make any sense! Why waste the time and energy like that?!”

Her teacher laughed and patted the fuming girl’s shoulder. “It does seem strange, doesn’t it? But then, many aspects of the Old Ruins seem to make little sense to us. That’s what makes them so very fascinating. Now, for your next assignment, I want you to perform a tier five aura scan on the artifact and write me a thesis on the —”

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Several years later, shortly before leaving on the expedition, Maggy stood in her teacher’s office, staring down at the same artifact hovering over its containment disk on her teacher’s desk.

“Sir, I don’t understand. Why now?” an older and more mature Maggy asked the man behind the desk.

She frowned. “For everything we’ve learned about the Thermal Flux Regulator over the years, it’s still dangerous. Even the improved containment glove hasn’t proven strong enough to completely shield its user.”

Her teacher nodded and smiled warmly at her. “That’s true. But there is only so much we can learn in these kinds of controlled environments. I have told you before that part of being a Mage is being willing to take chances and experiment. You’ll never grow if you’re stuck in the lab or library all your life.”

Maggy clenched her teeth and looked away. He had nagged her into accepting the expedition invitation, telling her it would be good for her in the end, and now he was trying to get her to take this dangerous thing with her.

Seeing her hesitation, her teacher sighed. “Think of it as a precaution, if nothing else.”

Maggy turned back to her teacher and narrowed her eyes. “You think something will happen with the expedition?”

Her teacher had always been a rather sly and sharp man, with his finger on the pulse of Halirosa and beyond. Did he know something she didn’t? Why was he so insistent she go if he thought something could go wrong?

The man simply leaned back and shrugged. “Anything can happen in kinds of situations. Everyone needs a hidden dagger up their sleeve. The artifact is dangerous for certain, but it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it yet not have it.”

Maggy glared at her teacher for a long moment, the old man grinning back before finally sighing. “Fine. I’ll take it. Don’t expect me to use the thing if I can help it, though.” She reached forward and waved her hand over the orb. It, the containment disk, and the glove all vanished into her storage ring. She then turned and headed toward the office door.

Her teacher grinned wider but leaned forward, his face suddenly serious. “I pray to the Celestials you never have to. But if you do, keep in mind your limits. Few victories are worth following your enemy to the grave.”

Maggy paused at the door and nodded before walking through on her way to meet the rest of the expedition party.

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Maggy’s eyes swam as the memories flooded back, and she wobbled in the air before slowly sinking to the ground. The Thermal Flux Regulator slipped from her hand as she fell to her knees and rolled away. Soon, even her arms failed, and Maggy curled into a ball.

“I’m sorry... teacher,” she muttered as she shivered, desperately trying to regain warmth. Her lips felt cracked, and her limbs were as cold as ice. She was certain her gloved hand was severely frostbitten at this point as well. She couldn’t even circulate the mana to fight off the effects. The effort of controlling and converting so much environmental mana at once had nearly burst her mana furnace, and her mana channels felt like icy slush was pulsing through them with each beat of her heart.

With what little strength left she could muster, she lifted her head and stared toward the Kigendoro, and her heart dropped. Even throwing her most powerful spells at the beast, channeled through an artifact that had nearly killed her, she had barely scratched it. Even now, the dried, caked mud was slowly replaced by more thick black sludge.

Yet… even with that failure, Maggy felt a smile creep on her lips. Despite the devastation the battle had wrought, one thing she didn’t see was bodies. She might not have been able to hurt the Kigendoro, but she and the others had kept the creature preoccupied enough for everyone to escape. Even now, the creature seemed to be in such a mindless rage at the insects pecking at it that it didn’t even think to chase those who had fled.

Maggy exhaled, and the tension drained from her body. That would have to be enough. She only hoped that her teacher could forgive her. She was so tired… she just wanted to sleep. Just a little rest was all she needed. Slowly, Maggy’s eyes slid shut.

“EEEKKK!”

Only for them to immediately shoot open as she was lifted into the air. Her heart nearly leaped into her chest as she feared the Kigendoro had taken advantage of her moment of weakness to finish her.

Yet, it wasn’t raging earth that lifted her, but large, armored arms.

Robert came back for me! Maggy instantly thought.

Though her mind felt hazy and her vision swam at the moment, she turned her head and grinned up at the person carrying her, only to freeze.

Boarslayer stared down at her with a frown, one brow raised. “What’s with the look, girl? You get in the wine before the drake?”

Maggy’s eyes glazed over, and her grin slipped from her face. She turned her head away and muttered something Boarslayer couldn’t make out. As she did, Maggy caught a glimpse of Robert fleeing deeper into the woods, along with a group of strangely armored goblins. Behind them, Bert distracted the Kigendoro. A sharp pain shot through Maggy’s chest, but she quickly ignored it.

Instead, she quietly asked Boarslayer, “What’s happening? Are we running away?”

Boarslayer turned and followed the group, Maggy safely nestled in her arms. “No, we’re not running,” she said. “It’s called a tactical retreat!”