Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Chapter 68: Progress

"Precision, hold, dead calm" Milo chanted words, just normal words, and yet, the improvements were visible.

His mana bullets weren’t going nearly as haywire as before, for starters, the mana was being kept together much better, he was actually firing mana bullets rather than a chaotic mess, the aim still wasn’t going great, the spell flickered and weaved on its own still.

But after a few weeks of constant training, when the progress in his best categories started to gradually slow down, his control was able to start catching up, and he began to actually hit the target without it being a stroke of luck, as Helena had stated, his aim had been on point since the beginning.

Ever since he began actually having control on his spells, his success rate grew.

"Alright, let’s try and drop the chanting entirely now" Helena hadn’t expected him to take so long, the increase in certain aspects of his mana had been much larger and much more lengthy than it should have normally been.

But as she thought about it, it actually made sense, it was simply that she was been taught all of this from the regular perspective, which is that the person being evaluated had been actively circulating their mana and practising since a young age, in her case, she had always been doing so subconsciously, so the aspects of her mana were already set at their expected rates.

Milo’s mana had been left to stand still for his whole life, much like a muscle that wasn’t exercised, its development was stunted, the instant he began getting it moving, it resumed its growth into what it always should have been.

This made Helena wonder just how many impressively talented mages just never got to learn how good they were due to the same circumstances, Milo was way above average in multiple categories.

Doing the same thing without actively chanting was a bit harder, but as instructed, he had paid attention to how his mana had been behaving, and always knowing that Helena would make him stop incantations, the shift wasn’t difficult and he soon reached the appropriate amount of control over the mana bullet.

He wasn’t quite done with it however, his teacher wasn’t going to let him persevere without truly mastering the most basic spell of all.

But first, she had to congratulate him.

"Mimi, you are officially an apprentice mage now!" she exclaimed, spreading her arms open and catching him into an embrace.

"Oh!" Milo didn’t see this coming, instinctively stiffening up as he felt the twin peaks he looked so fondly upon pressing up against his chest, his chin stuck against her shoulder and his face in her hair.

’Damn, that smells good-’ his surprise at the fragrance of a woman was short-lived as he was reminded that he was being tightly hugged by a real girl of the farm.

"Hele-Helena?" this was a bearhug, this was an actual killing move right there.

"Ah, my bad" she let go of him.

"What the hell were you fed in your youth? No one should just have that sort of strength for a casual hug…"

"I don’t know what you’re talking about, I am a sweet girl mage" she waved him off with a smile.

"We’ll go over a few more basic spells and mana usage, then we’ll move right on to transmutation, I am quite curious what that element of yours really is" she said as Milo stretched his previously compressed shoulders.

He nodded his head and was about to respond.

"Huh?" they both made a small noise.

The feeble wooden structure around the target finally completely collapsed, falling apart like a card castle.

Helena quickly lifted everything off the ground with a spell, throwing everything away from sight.

"Don’t worry, only the target is necessary anyways" she quickly moved away, it was already the end of the day, it was time to go back and rest.

______________________

The months slowly went by, many machinations progressed without halt.

Milo and Helena simply kept at it until time to leave for the academy she spoke of came, time went by peacefully for them, both of them still remembered David’s demise vividly, but they kept each other’s company, together, the two of them were, and would be fine.

Agilulf Wanneck was hard at preparations as well, he had decided to fully believe Quideos Audit’s horrifying prediction, his well-honed instincts, with which he had grown so wealthy that he was able to crown himself king, told him that the raving prophet wasn’t preaching of one of his delusions.

He put his two closest men to work, and his mages were busy preparing a summoning ritual, a specific spell to summon an unwanted presence, one that was largely frowned upon, not because it was seen as unethical or problematic, but simply because it had the tendency of costing much more than it was worth.

Unwanteds were generally not any greater than anyone else, but had the advantage of always having something special about them, summoning one was like gambling in a sense, you either got a meatshield or a good meatshield, with how rich Tamaris was, he could afford to summon a ton of them.

He also got busy getting in touch with the other surrounding kingdoms, whilst they had seemingly all dismissed Quideos previously, they had to hear the roitelet out, even if his status as a king wasn’t seen in a great light, they had held big commercials ties with him, he could force them to at least pretend to try and do something about the harrowing future.

Deep below the earth, encased between thick metal walls and guarded by countless living armours, Loimos and Slotriig continued on sparring without any stop, the two undeads never stopping in all of those months.

Faraday looked on, restoring any damage done to make sure no time was wasted doing nothing.

The ancient metallic undead could witness firsthand just how versatile and powerful the primeval rot could truly be, it was still not much of what he envisioned, but it was nothing like when Loimos had first gotten there.

The progress was great, so great that Slotriig picked his sword back up.