⌈Well, it is time for you to go, kid. What I taught you should be enough to keep you moving forward during the six months I will not see you.⌋ Virgil said, his hair shifting color again as he spoke, the black fading back into its natural dark blue.
I genuinely had not expected the time to pass that fast. Two months in here, give or take. And it had felt like two months too, not in a dragging way but in the way time feels when you are always doing something.
Even if that something included getting beaten up like a child on a regular basis.
But in those two months I had learned a lot, even with Virgil deliberately leaving gaps in what he taught me. I had already decided that for the things he did not cover, especially regarding my other affinities, I would ask Alexandra to assign me proper teachers when I got back.
I looked up at him. "You are going to miss having me around, admit it."
Virgil's eyebrow twitched and then a slow smile came onto his face. ⌈Heh. You wish. You will be the one missing my greatness. It is not every day you get to stand beside a god.⌋
"Who would miss a god who sleeps more than he teaches?" I shook my head.
⌈Kid, I sleep because being this magnificent takes a toll. Unlike you, I have been carrying the weight of greatness for over a millennia. We are not the same.⌋ He walked over and placed a hand on my shoulder.
I just sighed. There was no winning that argument.
"Anyway. Thank you. Genuinely. I learned a lot here." I said, and I meant it.
The time I had spent in this space had taught me more than I could have gotten in years outside of it. I had a proper understanding of my powers now, how they worked, how to control them, and how to push them. Learning new spells would be far less painful going forward.
But there was one thing that stood out above everything else as the most valuable thing I had gained here.
Well, not gained exactly. I knew how to do it. I just could not do it yet.
Silent casting.
During the spell training, Virgil had explained that in order to silently cast, a person had to break through their own mental mana barrier. Every living being had one. It was the reason most mages went their entire lives without ever managing it.
When he first explained it I did not believe him at all.
A barrier in my own mind? I had never felt anything like that.
But then he told me to try casting without speaking the incantation. And when I did, I felt it. A wall somewhere inside my head, blocking me from forming the magic circle the moment I stopped using words to guide it. I was genuinely shocked and asked him what it was.
He told me that it came down to how connected a person was to the Will of Mana. When someone awakens, they form a connection to it, but that connection is never complete. Most people are working with far less than a full link, which means they cannot access everything mana is actually capable of.
To silent cast, a person needed to be at least forty percent connected. Not a hundred, just forty, but even that was not easy to reach.
And if someone ever reached a full hundred percent connection?
They would not just be able to silent cast. They would be able to absorb raw mana directly without poisoning themselves. Completely immune to mana poisoning, which meant they could go anywhere, including places saturated with corrupted or unstable mana that would kill anyone else outright. Places nobody had explored yet. Things nobody had found.
The thought alone made me restless.
But Virgil had refused to tell me how to reach a full connection. He said to focus on silent casting first, that I needed to understand mana at a deeper level to break the mental barrier, and that meeting the Will of Mana was something to worry about later.
I almost asked him a second time and stopped myself.
⌈Kid,⌋ Virgil pulled me out of my thoughts. ⌈I expect you to be at least second rank by the time we meet again.⌋
"Sure. I will get there."
I was not entirely sure how long that would take, but six months felt like enough time for the early stages. I would make it work.
Virgil nodded, satisfied. ⌈Stay safe. And I will be watching. If you slack off, a beating will be waiting.⌋
Yeah, no. I was very motivated to avoid that.
After we said our goodbyes, I was pulled back into my body.
***
Virgil watched Lucas disappear and let out a quiet sigh.
⌈Years of boredom ahead.⌋
Because of how time worked differently inside his dimensional space, six months in the outside world translated to years inside it. Which meant he would not see Lucas again for roughly five years from where he was standing.
He laid back in the garden, arms folded behind his head, eyes closing slowly.
He did not shift into his wolf form this time. Too much effort.
***
I opened my eyes slowly.
I expected to see the night sky above me.
Instead, a pale face was hovering inches from mine, staring directly at me with red eyes.
Ba-dum! Ba-dum!
My heart hammered so hard I genuinely thought something had gone wrong with it.
Why in the world was the empress this close to my face?
I pulled my composure back together and stared back at her.
My gaze drifted across her features without meaning to. Her sharp jawline, her red lips, the line of her neck, and then further down than I intended.
Gods. She was too beautiful for anyone's good. If I had not spent so long getting used to her face by now I would probably have made a complete fool of myself already.
After a full minute of the two of us just staring at each other without a word, I decided to break it.
"What are you doing?"
Her lips parted. "Nothing. I was walking through the garden about an hour ago and found you asleep here. I called your name and you did not respond, so I assumed you had worn yourself out training and decided to wait."
The reason I had not responded was because my soul had not been in my body. I thought it quietly, knowing she would not hear it.
"So you decided to wait like this." I gestured downward.
She looked down. She was sitting on top of me, her weight settled comfortably on my stomach, warm through my clothes.
She tilted her head with a genuinely puzzled expression. "Is that a problem?"
This woman is insane.
If anyone walked by and saw us like this I would be in serious trouble, title or no title. The only reason it was not already a problem was that our relationship was a secret from everyone, including, I was fairly certain, Arthur.
As far as anyone else knew, I was a commoner orphan the empress had taken under her protection. Nobody questioned it openly because Alexandra herself had been a commoner once, and people were careful about how they spoke around her. Even when she had made me second prince of her empire, the complaints had stayed quiet. Unhappy faces behind closed doors. Londres included. But what could any of them actually do about it?
Nothing.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "You know nobody can see us like this, right?"
"Yes," she said. "That is why I put up a barrier."
Of course she did.
I looked at her eyes and found myself wondering, not for the first time, why she had bought me from the slave market specifically. Why me out of everyone.
I did not believe in coincidence. Nothing is a coincidence.
What had she seen in me? Had we met somewhere before somehow?
No. She was fifteen years older than me. It was not possible. So I genuinely did not understand it.
The darker possibility surfaced in my mind again and a wave of disgust came with it, tightening my expression.
No matter how beautiful a woman was, that did not make what she had done right. I had been a child. I had not had a choice in it. The kind of men who would call that lucky were the kind of men I had no interest in listening to.
But could I really hate her?
She had given me everything I had right now. Without her I would still be sick, still be suffering, or worse. For that I was genuinely grateful.
I did not like her. But I was not going to be stupid about it either. If she was using me then I was going to use the situation right back. Only an idiot would throw away every advantage she had handed him out of pride.
Alexandra looked at my eyes, which had gone cold without me meaning for them to.
She leaned in and kissed me before I could say anything, then pulled back just far enough to speak quietly near my ear. "I love when you go cold like that. It always means you will be rough with me."
My composure cracked and heat rushed to my face before I could stop it.
This woman only ever has one thing on her mind.
"Ahem." I cleared my throat and looked past her. "I need to go wash up and eat. I am starving."
Her expression shifted just slightly, a small flicker of disappointment crossing her face. Then she stood up and got off me.
I stood as well and looked up at her.
She really was tall. Nearly two meters.
Alexandra tilted her head. "Did you get taller?"
So she noticed.
The time in Virgil's space had apparently done something to my real body as well, same as before. A few more inches added while my soul was elsewhere training.
"I think so. Ever since I awakened my body has been changing on its own." I said.
There was absolutely no version of this conversation where I told her I had been secretly training inside a god's personal dimension.
"Is that so." She touched her chin, thoughtful for a moment, and then her gaze dropped and she pointed at my waist with one slender finger. "Does that mean you have also grown down—"
I grabbed my training sword off the ground and ran.
If I stayed even one more second she was going to finish that sentence and then act on it and I was not going to let that happen today.
My plan going forward was simple. Stay out of reach as much as possible until the military academy. Once I was there I would not see her for years and she would not be able to corner me in gardens at night.
Getting there without being caught in the meantime was not going to be easy.
But that was a problem for later.
Right now I had to keep running.
Alexandra stood alone in the garden watching my figure disappear into the dark. The disappointed look stayed on her face for a moment longer.
Then her figure flickered red and vanished from the spot.