Chương 19: 18. Incursion

Not for the first time in his life, Marcus wondered what chaos storms really were. They had been a fact of life for everyone on the planet for hundreds of years now, but he knew from historical records that it hadn't always been so, and he'd heard that other planets in the system did not have them. What event started the chaos storms, and why haven't they gone away after all this time? Whatever set this phenomenon into motion must have been absolutely titanic in scale.

One would think that such an event would be widely recorded in every historical record on the planet, but Marcus could never get a clear answer out of any of them. Everyone seemed to blame someone else for their origin. As his thoughts wandered along these lines, Marcus stared out through the window into the town outside. Glowing rivers of multicolored light were weaving their way in between the buildings, giving everything a dazzling gleam. An odd tinkling sound could be heard faintly through the window.

The chaos storm was raging unabated. Marcus and his students were trapped here for the moment. They were forced to take shelter in one of the coastal cities when they saw the storm coming, and thankfully had no issue in finding a local inn with enough free space to accommodate the ten of them. Marcus had been hoping that this surprise chaos storm would abate just as suddenly as it began, but unfortunately it seemed they would have to stay here over night. Thankfully, chaos storms rarely lasted more than a day.

"Still no sign of it weakening, eh?" a voice called out behind Marcus. He turned slightly, realizing it was the owner of the inn. He was an elderly man, with a thin figure and completely grey hair. He seemed to be a rather compassionate sort, as he had taken in a bunch of vagabonds and city homeless into the place when the storm started, even though they couldn't pay for the meals or a room for the night. Too cruel to let them die out there, he said.

"No, it seems we will have to wait for morning," Marcus said, shaking his head.

"Ha ha, don't be so glum about it!" the old man said, slapping his back for good measure. He didn't seem intimidated at all about Marcus clearly being some kind of mage.

"Stop worrying and go play a round of cards or two with your students. They all found ways to amuse themselves while we wait. You're the only one being so nervous about this. Just be thankful you weren't caught out in the wilderness while the evil storm rages about. Now that would be something to worry about…"

"I suppose you're right," Marcus conceded. It was indeed fortunate that they hadn't encountered the chaos storm while flying over open ocean, since there was little there to take shelter in. Marcus supposed he could have frozen some of the water and fashioned a shelter out of the ice, but he didn't have any convenient spells for shaping ice, so it would have been tricky. Not to mention that sitting in a block of ice in the middle of the ocean would be… unhealthy in a number of different ways.

He walked away from the window and went to one of the tables, where Regulus, Julia, and Cricket were sitting. His students were all over the place, some of them interacting with the other guests, and the others amusing themselves by playing dice, cards, or talking to each other. He sat down next to Regulus, who was reading a book he had brought along from Adria. Some kind of fictional adventure tale, Marcus thought based on the title. The boy put the book down the moment he noticed Marcus approaching.

"Feel free to keep reading," Marcus told him.

"There is no need to stop on account of me. I'm just here to rest my legs for a bit. It looks like we'll have to spend the night here."

"Actually, I was curious about something," Regulus said, looking a bit uncomfortable.

"Are you sure we are safe here? The doors and windows here seem a bit… ah, flimsy." Marcus chuckled at him.

"Don't worry. Chaos storms may seem like they're made out of ethereal and flowing material, but there is a certain cohesion and inertia in the streams of light. They don't just seep into any available crack they encounter, unlike water. An enclosed space with no obvious holes is enough to keep it out. This place is more than sturdy enough."

"This is common knowledge," Julia noted.

"Have you really never experienced a chaos storm?"

"I have lived in Adria my whole life," Regulus said.

"We… our city is protected by a massive shield that wards off chaos storms entirely. They never reach the buildings at all."

"That sounds really amazing," Cricket said. She looked at Marcus.

"Are we going to get something like that at our tower?"

"No," Marcus told her.

"I don't know how to do that. Magical barriers fare very poorly against chaos storms. It is the nature of raw chaos to erode at the boundaries and separations between all things, and it quickly dissipates magical defenses, or even ignores them entirely. Great Sea Academy has a special department in charge of the academy's main rune array that powers its defensive enchantments, and nobody who isn't a part of it is allowed to so much as look at it, let alone learn its secrets."

It was clearly possible to create a magical barrier that protected against chaos storms, since every great academy had puzzled out a way to do so, but Marcus did not know how to make one. Every defensive spell he had was ineffective against them, except for the ones that made an actual physical barrier to block out the color streams. He suspected that all the known methods were extremely heavy on the mana consumption, because he had never seen those defenses employed outside of major magical sites.

"That said, I hope these unusual chaos storms stop happening soon," Marcus remarked.

"If they continue happening into the harvest season, the crops might get tainted by traces of raw chaos, and who knows what the consequences of that will be." Chaos storms usually occurred during winter months and the start of spring. Arguably the best possible time for them, at least for the inhabitants of the Silver League. There were places down in the south where the seasons were inverted, and the plants there were not safe to eat.

The chaos storms were not really dangerous for the plants themselves – in fact, they grew bigger and lusher under their influence – but it took time for them to absorb the chaotic energies they were infused with during the storms. If the intermittent chaos storms kept occurring well into autumn, things would get ugly very quickly… No doubt some people were already facing uncomfortable choices, given that some crops were harvested relatively early in the year.

"Teacher, can we talk about that rating device from the judging ceremony?" Julia suddenly asked. Marcus internally sighed. Iccius and his 'ancient artifact' were almost certainly sent to his judging ceremony to deliberately cause trouble. It was easy enough to see that, but Marcus hadn't cared much at the time. He assumed the point was to suggest to anyone watching that Marcus was not picking the best students, and maybe also to turn the entire event into something of a joke.

He successfully prevented the latter, and didn't care about the former. However, over the last couple of days, he realized he may have overlooked something. The whole rating thing wasn't just meant to cause reputational trouble for Marcus at the academy… but also to cause discord among his students, too.

"You really should just forget about that," Marcus told her.

"I just want to know if there is some truth to the scores it was giving, that's all," Julia insisted.

"And besides, Volesus has been insufferable ever since he found out he's the highest rated among us." Marcus had noticed that, yes. In general, if he'd had to guess who would be most affected by that sphere's scoring, he would have guessed it would be Cassia, Claudia, and Cricket, since they were scored the lowest. But none of those three seemed to care all that much. Still, both Cricket and Regulus seemed to lean in closer to Marcus to hear his answer better. So they at least cared a little bit…

"There is some truth in the numbers it was spitting out, yes," Marcus admitted. He couldn't figure out the exact mechanism by which the sphere was measuring people's traits, but by comparing his own results with the scores he was able to puzzle out what traits it was taking into account.

"It completely ignores elemental affinities, soul strength, and personality, and instead limits itself to measuring a person's mana-related traits. It essentially tells you how good you're likely to be at mana shaping and general spell casting." The sphere also likely didn't detect magical bloodlines and chaos mutations, though no one at the judging ceremony had either, so Marcus couldn't be sure.

"It doesn't measure elemental affinities at all?" Julia sounded both relieved and puzzled. She frowned.

"Wait. So the high score it gave to Regulus was…" Marcus laughed.

"Yes, Julia. That score completely ignored his high water resonance, as well as his unusual soul strength. Honestly I'd rate him much higher than the sphere did." Marcus knew this wasn't what the girl wanted to hear, but he also suspected she had already suspected as much. This was just confirming her suspicions. Regulus cleared his throat.

"There's no need to feel bad about this, Miss Argenta…" the boy began.

"I'm not jealous!" Julia immediately said.

"I didn't say you were," Regulus said, gesturing in a placating manner.

"You are so jealous," Cricket noted from the side. She turned to Marcus.

"But it's weird. Why would the sphere ignore elemental affinities? Isn't that important?"

"It's likely that whoever made the sphere couldn't give it the ability to detect elemental affinities," Marcus said.

"To do that, the sphere would need to have a comprehensive logos core capable of detecting multiple elements in people." The three said nothing to that. They probably lacked the context to understand just how difficult such a feat would be.

"Do you know why I could resonate with the Soul Tree Technique, but not any other foundational technique?" Regulus asked.

"What is so special about the technique you practice?"

"It's a very versatile foundational technique that can accommodate virtually any spell or element," Marcus said.

"But then again, so is the Elemental Star. So I'm not sure what to tell you." That said, it probably had something to do with the boy's soul. It felt… old. Ancient, even. His unusual soul strength didn't feel like some innate advantage, but instead a product of simple spiritual strengthening that came with the passage of time and witnessing many experiences. Yet there was no evidence that Regulus was older than he looked, nor that he had experienced a lot in his life.

He wasn't a ghost possessing a foreign body, either – Marcus had planted a soul seed in him after the judging ceremony, just as he had in Agron and Diocles, and there had been no resistance to the procedure from Regulus. All in all, Marcus was at a loss as to what he was seeing. Perhaps once the connection between him and his soul seeds matured, he would be able to notice something that would explain the mystery. Seeing that nobody was saying anything more, Marcus rose from the seat.

"I should check up on the rest of my students," he told the three. He also suspected that they wouldn't be able to relax much with him being here.

"And don't worry about Volesus. If he doesn't come down to earth after we get back home, I'll start piling work and chores onto him until he calms down. Great talent comes along with great responsibilities, after all."

"That only applies to him, not to me, right?" Regulus said, smiling. Marcus smiled back.

"Err, teacher?" But Marcus had already walked away.

The rest of the journey was largely uneventful. Marcus landed the group a fair bit of distance from their home tower because he had spotted a group of travelers being attacked by dire wolves as they flew, and landed to help them chase the beasts away. After that, he decided to take the group the rest of the way on foot rather than take flight again. They were not far from their destination and it would be a nice change of pace.

As the tower came into view, his new students finally got a first look of the place where they would be staying at for the foreseeable future. Marcus was pleased to see that they didn't seem visibly disappointed.

"This doesn't look that bad," Marcus heard Agron tell the others in a low voice. He wasn't very good at keeping his voice down, unfortunately. Not that it would help him against Marcus, but still.

"I expected a complete wreck based on what you lot were telling me."

"That's because the six of us busted our asses to fix up the place," Volesus grumbled.

"Also, is it just me or am I carrying most of the bags for some reason?"

"It's just you," Julia told him. Marcus's attention drifted from the conversation, however, because he spotted Helvran waiting for them in front of the tower in the distance. They had left the death priest behind at the tower to guard it from looters and other bad actors – the place had already been stripped down of anything valuable once when it got abandoned, and Marcus would not put it past the locals to loot it again if they left it unguarded for a few days. Something was wrong.

Helvran usually had a serious, humorless attitude, but there was something particularly grim about his current posture and expression today. Also, his ever-present raven wasn't around.

"What happened?" Marcus immediately demanded when they got close. He gestured with his hand to the students trailing behind him, telling them to stop and be silent. He scanned the tower for signs of damage, but didn't see anything notable outside. Nothing that hadn't already been there by the time Marcus and his students moved in, in any case.

"I'm sorry," Helvran said. He seemed agitated, in his own stoic way.

"I tried to stop him, but I was no match for him."

"Start from the beginning, please," Marcus told him.

"A man came to see you yesterday," Helvran told him.

"He said you knew him, and ignored me when I said you were absent and that he would have to wait for you outside. He forced himself inside, and even barged into your office and raided our food stockpiles. I tried to stop him, but he completely disabled me with just a handful of spells. He didn't seem interested in hurting me, but-""Stay here," Marcus ordered. He turned towards his students gathered behind him.

"And you stay here with him. If you hear the sound of explosions and fighting, run into the forest and put as much distance between yourself and the tower as you can." Not waiting to hear their response, Marcus opened the tower's main door with an unnecessary amount of force and stormed inside, making sure his steps were very loud and obvious. Who the hell dared to break into his tower while he was gone!?

Whoever they were, they were completely shameless, because Marcus could hear the sound of talking and laughing up at his office at the top of his tower. The sounds of Marcus's very obvious entrance didn't seem to concern them. He was halfway up the staircase when he recognized the voice. His face immediately darkened. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I can't believe this," he said out loud, gritting his teeth.

"This guy…" He ascended the rest of the stairway and forcefully opened the door to his office. He was immediately greeted with the sight of Shamshir sitting in his chair, drinking his wine straight from his bottle and telling some kind of joke to the other occupant of the room. That other person was, of course, the strange elf girl who he had tried to pass off as Marcus's daughter back in Adria.

The elf girl seemed to have been ignoring Shamshir's antics until now, sitting in one of the guest chairs with her eyes closed and her hands in her lap, but the moment Marcus barged into the room she snapped into alertness, silently fixing him with her blood red eyes without saying anything. Shamshir, on the other hand, was a lot more vocal about his reaction.

"Marcus, my friend," he said, the friendliness in his voice so pronounced a stranger might have been tricked into thinking it was genuine.

"You're here!"

"You bastard," Marcus responded.

"Why the hell did you come here? I said no." Idly, he noted that both of them had changed their clothes into something more local. They were wearing very drab, brown clothes that were likely bought for cheap somewhere in Adria. Perhaps the man really was on the run… but if so, why was he behaving like this? For a man that was being hunted, Shamshir sure loved being provocative in the extreme.

"No, I distinctly remember saying we had a deal and that I would drop by when things calmed down a little," Shamshir told him. He took another swig from the wine bottle after saying his piece, unconcerned with Marcus's anger.

"Anyway, I've brought Iris. You can check her for compatibility with your foundational technique if you want, but I'm sure she will do great."

"How can you be so sure?" Marcus asked him. Compatibility with a foundational technique could be quite unpredictable. Regulus was the prime example of that.

"Because she has both wood and fire affinity," Shamshir said, smiling widely at him.

"Hm," Marcus hummed thoughtfully. That still didn't guarantee things, but it would indeed be very unusual that someone with a wood affinity had no resonance with the Soul Tree Technique. Shamshir was also probably expecting him to be in complete awe of his elf not-daughter having two elemental affinities at the same time, but the world was big, and Marcus had actually once encountered a mage with three elemental affinities.

People with two or more elemental affinities were extremely rare, but they were not completely beyond Marcus's understanding. In fact, Sessa, the ancient founder of the Four Seasons Academy, was said to have four elemental affinities – air, earth, fire, and water – and this was apparently a big reason why he was the most powerful mage of his era.

"Out of curiosity, are you aware of the local situation in regards to wood element traditions?" Marcus asked. Shamshir's smile dropped.

"I… did some asking around after our talk. It appears wood affinities are relatively common, they just don't establish their own powerful traditions for some reason. That doesn't make much sense, unless…" Shamshir paused.

"In the distant past, someone hunted down all the wood element traditions in the planet and destroyed them," Marcus told him.

"And there is evidence that this suppression is still going on. Powerful adepts of the Great Tree Academy have a tendency to meet unfortunate ends very young." For the first time, Shamshir's carefree attitude seemed to deflate.

"I see," he said unhappily.

"What's more, it's not just wood element foundational techniques that were targeted, but also the spells too," Marcus told him.

"Although I am a spirit manifestation mage-""You liar," Shamshir said, visibly rolling his eyes at him.

"-I only know three wood element spells total," Marcus finished. He didn't deign to address the man's accusation at all. Shamshir was about to take another swig from the wine bottle he had looted from Marcus's stash, but he paused at the admission.

"Just three?" he asked disbelievingly. The elf girl also gave him a strange look, though she continued to stay silent.

"All three are very low level spells too," Marcus remarked. The first spell Marcus knew was Ironwood – a very simple spell that allowed the caster to strengthen wooden objects, making them sturdier. It was a spell Marcus had learned from the Great Tree Academy; the only wood spell they had in their archives. It had some uses when one was just a fledgling mage and real weapons and armor were expensive and hard to acquire, but it quickly became useless as one grew in power and ranks.

The second one was called Entangling Roots. It was a spell Marcus had found etched on a piece of tree bark in some forgotten ruin. It was actually a relatively good spell for immobilizing enemies at lower levels of power, but by the time Marcus had discovered it, he was already a spirit manifestation adept and the spell was too weak to be of use. He had more effective methods of immobilizing people, ones that didn't require him to be outdoors and in close proximity to a tree with an established root system.

Finally, the third spell was a bit unusual, called Exsanguinating Stake. It was an enchantment that could be cast on a previously prepared stake. Once such a stake was stabbed into a corpse or a dying opponent, it would forcibly absorb all their blood. This strange, off-putting spell was actually the most common wood spell on the planet – Marcus had found it in hundreds of places all over the world, in spell libraries big and small.

Apparently there was once a type of evil fiend that fed on people's blood and was very difficult to truly put down. One could strike them down, only for them to come back later, fully recovered. These fiends were such a potent and pervasive menace, that even after they were eradicated, people took steps to preserve various methods of dealing with them, just in case they ever came back. These preservation methods seem to have accidentally saved Exsanguinating Stake from the planet-wide wood spell purge.

He did his best to explain this to Shamshir, hoping that the man would give up on his ideas to fob off the elf girl on him once he realized Marcus was no wood magic adept. He may be practicing a wood element foundational technique, but he had no way to-"This doesn't matter," Shamshir suddenly said. Marcus frowned.

"What do you mean it doesn't matter? I'm telling you-""It doesn't matter because I'll give you some wood spells. Wait a moment." Shamshir materialized a large stack of books from some dimensional pocket on his person. They all dropped onto Marcus's table, which creaked ominously under the immense weight suddenly put upon it. The man then quickly searched the stack of books for something, rummaging through the pile while mumbling to himself in some language that Marcus did not understand…

which made him wonder how Shamshir spoke and understood the local language so well, given that he wasn't from Tasloa and seemed ignorant of a lot of obvious things about the cultures here. Was there some really easy way of learning the local language that Marcus didn't know about?

"Ah!" Shamshir said, triumphantly thrusting a book with a mossy green cover into Marcus's hands. The remaining stack of books quickly disappeared into Shamshir's dimensional storage while Marcus studied the book in his hands, leafing through it. True to Shamshir's claim, it was a spellbook. Some thirty wood element spells were recorded within, and while they were all relatively low-level…

"None of these are higher than 3 rd rank," Shamshir admitted.

"But that should be more than enough to give Iris something to work towards for a year or two, and by then I should be able to come back for her. Naturally, you can also learn any of them that strike your fancy, or even teach them to your other students. I don't mind, none of these are secret where I'm from."

"This is the first interesting part of your offer I've heard so far," Marcus admitted. He didn't care so much about these spells for himself – they were too weak to be of any use to him – but his new students… Julia, especially, could benefit a lot from having access to this.

"Ha ha, my dear friend, if I knew that securing your cooperation would be as simple as giving you a bunch of beginner wood spells, I would have started with that right away!" Shamshir said, trying to one more swig from the wine bottle, only to realize it was empty.

"Also, you need to buy more wine. You're all out." Marcus resisted the urge to start a fight. It was his own office that would get trashed if he started a battle.

"I haven't agreed to anything yet," Marcus pointed out.

"I just said you're finally on the right track. Bribe me more and I'll consider it."

"Marcus, my friend, me and Iris are fugitives," Shamshir said, looking very sad in an exaggerated manner.

"We were forced to flee our home with little but clothes on our backs and a few things we were able to hastily grab on our way out."

"Ingrate!" Marcus accused.

"You tried to ruin my reputation, bullied my teacher-priest, drank all my wine, and you can't even pay for your daughter's education. Aren't you ashamed for yourself?" There was no way Shamshir couldn't cough up more valuable stuff in exchange for this, Marcus wagered.

"I will pay you back for everything, with interest," Shamshir said, making a pleading gesture.

"I'm just in a bit of a bind at the moment. Surely you can extend a bit of credit on account of our friendship?" Marcus was about to continue putting pressure on him when something unexpected happened. For the first time, the elf girl brought along to become his student spoke up.

"I heard you are picking up orphans for your students," she said out loud. Her voice was soft, but surprisingly mundane for such a strange and mysterious figure. Marcus gave her a long stare, which she returned.

"Most of my students are orphans, yes," Marcus said.

"I am also an orphan," she told him, staring at him with those red, piercing eyes.

"Iris…" Shamshir complained, but she ignored him.

"My parents are both dead, my home lost to me," she said.

"I'm not asking for any special treatment, and my uncle will be gone from here soon and won't be able to bother you. Who knows if he'll even be alive in a year?"

"Sure, write my obituary already, why don't you," Shamshir grumbled.

"Please accept me as your student," Iris requested, ignoring him. Although she was technically pleading, there was some sort of innate pride in her demeanor that made Marcus think she was making a formal request instead.

"I will work hard and bring glory to your teachings. And I promise you that the last surviving scion of the Fire Orchid dynasty will never forget this kindness so long as she lives."

"Iris!" Shamshir hissed. His eyes furtively jumped between her and Marcus, torn between paying attention to both of their reactions.

"You can't say things like that openly! We agreed that-""Enough," she said. And Shamshir actually listened to her, too, instantly falling quiet.

"Your way wasn't working anyway." Marcus stared at the young girl in front of him for a few seconds, studying her in silence. She said nothing to try and convince him further.

"Give me your hand," Marcus ordered. She did so, and Marcus summoned his spirit oak behind him as he began assessing her spiritual and mana-related traits. The first thing Marcus noticed, of course, was that she had two elemental affinities. Wood and fire, just like Shamshir said. She also had some kind of magical bloodline, which was amplified by her two affinities… No. Not amplified. It required those two elemental affinities to work.

A person without wood and fire affinities would be a carrier of the bloodline, but it would be entirely dormant within them. What brutal requirements. People with two elemental affinities were extremely rare. Requiring two specific elemental affinities just for a bloodline to manifest itself was ridiculously specific. Did Iris's lineage have some way to force elemental affinities on their descendants?

From what Marcus understood, elemental affinities were only weakly heritable – there was no way to absolutely guarantee that a child would have, say, a wood affinity, even if two people with a wood affinity had a child together. Reliably passing on two elemental affinities was bound to be even more difficult. And that was without even getting into the question of whether every child inherited the magical bloodline itself.

Most bloodlines were not reliably heritable either, and would start to weaken if they remained dormant for too many generations. No matter. Bloodline lineages were notoriously secretive about their abilities, so he wouldn't pry. He focused on the rest of her traits. Her mana sensitivity and shaping potential was… good. Better than Volesus, but amusingly, worse than Regulus. Considering how Shamshir spoke about her, Marcus expected her general magical aptitude to be out of this world.

Her soul, though, was absolutely blazing. Powerful and vibrant like nothing Marcus had ever seen from a young beginner that had yet to begin their adept path. It was stronger than that of Regulus by far, but it didn't feel as old. Such a powerful soul would not provide the girl with any immediate benefits, but would become more and more prominent an advantage as she rose in ranks. Soul power got increasingly important as an adept got more powerful. Marcus let go of her hand.

"Alright," he said.

"One last thing left to do. Repeat after me…" He took a deep breath and slowly went through the Soul Tree Technique, observing her reaction.

"I plant in my soul the seed of a mighty tree. Its roots stabilize the earth. Its branches reach out towards the heavens. From soil, it draws strength. In the endless sky, it finds purpose. Its roots entwine my fears. Its leaves drink in the sun…" Her resonance with the Soul Tree Technique was really good. It was roughly the same reaction as Julia's, which made Marcus think that her wood affinity was entirely responsible for it. There was a reason why Great Tree Academy valued wood affinity candidates so highly.

"Amazing, isn't she?" Shamshir commented when he was done.

"I bet you've never seen anyone more talented than this, right?"

"She's alright, I guess," Marcus told him. He focused back on the elf girl.

"I accept you as my student." He fished out a whalebone amulet from one of his pockets and handed it to her. Thankfully, he had made a number of extras while he was testing some things. She hesitantly accepted the medallion, turning it over in her hands a few times, and then hung it around her neck.

"It will be a bit of a bother to explain why I have an elven student," Marcus told her.

"But we'll figure something out, I suppose."

"Do humans and elves hate each other here?" she asked.

"No. We just have barely any contact with each other," Marcus told her.

"The elves live on their own set of large islands to the west of here, and rarely trade with us or visit human cities. Having you here will be very unusual." Not to mention her eyes. Even if she always wore a hat or a bandana or something, her eyes would still be incredibly eye-catching and attract unwanted attention. Oh well.

Since he had committed himself to taking her in, he would just have to deal with it the way he usually did with troublesome things: by taking things in stride and tackling problems one at a time. Maybe he could tell others she was from some secret elven enclave in the Eastern Lands. They were really far away, and subject to all sorts of wild rumors. What's one more? Not like he was going to meet someone from there who could call him out on his ridiculous tale anyway.

After some more talk, Shamshir shared a few private words with Iris and then left the tower… and he did it by walking off into the distance. Marcus was a bit surprised, since he had expected Shamshir to leave in a very flashy manner, but apparently not. Marcus then introduced Iris to the rest of his students, telling them they had a surprise addition to the group. This kicked off a storm of speculation and whispering, but thankfully none seemed to be hostile or outraged by the elf girl's presence. A week passed.

Marcus made sure to keep everyone busy with training and tower renovation efforts. Since there were ten students now, and only three rooms, the conditions inside the tower were more cramped than they were initially. Also problematic in a number of other ways. The addition of Iris mucked things up in a numerical sense, since Marcus couldn't just assign three people per room like he intended to, but also there was an issue that boys and girls didn't want to mix with each other.

There was no easy way of dividing five girls and five boys into only three rooms. At the moment, all the boys were crammed into one room, while the other two were divided among the girls. A situation that was causing some… discontent. He would have to do something about that, so he had scheduled another meeting with that builder who had helped him construct a dwelling for Helvran next to the tower.

His current plan was to make ten little houses for his students outside the tower and just repurpose their current room inside the tower into something else. Guest rooms, maybe. He also intended to clean up the underground facilities beneath the tower, just in case the tower came under siege and he had to house everyone inside for prolonged periods of time. At the moment, though, they would have to bear with the situation.

Marcus made sure they were as busy as humanly possible so they had less time to worry about small luxuries like that. The new additions were all interesting in their own way. Agron, for instance, was a passionate archer. He had brought along his bow with him when they had left Adria, and would diligently train his archery on the edge of the forest whenever he had some free time.

With that kind of dedication, Marcus was surprised he hadn't gone for a warrior path instead, or maybe a hunter, but since Agron didn't skip on any of his magical training in favor of archery, he didn't care to question him much about it. Marcus even helped Agron construct a small archery range, putting up some wooden targets for him to practice. He had plans to eventually buy some crossbows and teach his other students how to use them, anyway, so it wasn't wasted effort in the long run.

Regulus was a lot less prideful than Marcus feared he would be, and didn't try to hold himself apart from the rest of the group. Unfortunately, he was also completely inept at navigating his way through the forest, and seemed to fear the wilds around them. Marcus wasn't sure, but he thought that maybe the dire wolf attack they had encountered when they first arrived near the tower might have spooked him.

Marcus had thought little of the incident, thinking it just a minor danger, but Regulus had already mentioned it three times around Marcus. He hoped the boy would get over that soon. Diocles was a child of a relatively unknown family that had only recently moved to Adria.

Marcus knew that choosing him as his student probably ruffled some feathers, as he was neither greatly talented – he was roughly equal to Julia, Renatus, and Agron, but with nothing truly special going for him – nor did he have a prestigious background. However, seeing how those same people had probably sent Iccius to try and ruin the event for him, he didn't care much about their feelings. In any case, Diocles was a serious and industrious boy who took every task Marcus gave him seriously.

He seemed to honestly enjoy the various chores assigned to him, or at least did them with such zeal that Marcus couldn't tell the difference. He also worked on his training really hard, which was what Marcus had hoped to see when he picked him. As for Iris, she was obviously very talented when it came to practicing the Soul Tree Technique, but also in very poor physical shape. She was short and very slight of build, with almost no muscles.

She got tired very quickly, and much like Regulus she knew nothing of surviving in the forest – but was at least less afraid of it. Marcus was going to have a long road ahead of him if he wanted to bring her into good physical shape. He also made all four of them pick a personal tree for themselves. Agron picked pine – apparently because it was the most common tree on the mountain slopes of his home mountain.

Regulus picked the olive tree, even though a willow would have probably been a more appropriate choice given his high water element resonance. He claimed the olive spoke to him on a personal level and, well, who was Marcus to argue? Diocles was less unusual, and simply picked oak. And curiously, so did Iris. Marcus thought her choice would be really exotic and unusual. Perhaps some alien tree that he had never heard of?

Though that would come with issues, since she would need to gain access to that tree to resonate with its logos… but still, he somehow didn't expect her to simply pick oak as her tree. There was no hesitation in her about her choice, either.

"I don't have any strong feelings either way," she told him.

"If you say the usual choice is oak, I pick oak."

"Aren't you a scion of a wood element magical tradition?" he asked.

"Surely you have some preferences."

"No, not really. I know it's called a wood element, but that's just a limitation of human language. In reality, the element encompasses the entire realm of plant-life… and my lineage is associated with flowers instead of trees," Iris said.

"So oak it is." Something about that explanation really bugged Marcus. It made sense, but it somehow felt like an excuse rather than the real reason. For all that Shamshir insisted that Iris needed to use a wood element foundational technique to bring out her full talents, she seemed strangely ambivalent about the foundational technique she was learning. Something was off about that. All in all, things were progressing just fine.

There were minor issues here and there, but he was sure that would work itself out in time. Thus, at the end of the week, he called over all of his students for a surprise announcement. It was time for them to meet Celer and pick their caterpillar.