The Dao of Magic

40 - Talk

Long story short, I jumped inside the necklace while Lola kept it safe for me. I then stood in the middle of the clearing for a few hours, moving my entire body in horizontal circles. I will talk about that later because I asked Lola to let me know when the group reached the tenth floor. The incessant squeaking I now hear coming from the Tree should be her.

I cast a last glance around the pocket dimension. I spot my white-faced qi clone in the corner of the field. I need to do something about that soon, it is slowly disintegrating now that the constant stream of my signature qi has stopped coming in from the Tower.

I appear above Lola, who immediately jumps away from under my feet. Animals with qi are not really smart, but I swear they can read my mind if I think and talk at them clearly enough. Their instinct gets a massive boost through qi, giving them supernaturally good senses. Lola will understand me if I talk to her while showing everything on my face. Complex stuff will not get through though, so I won't bother with math lessons for the bunny. I unwind the necklace from her body and put it back on.

I take stock of my environment and see the small room I remember from the tenth level. Two doors, one with stairs going down and one with a dark swirl, fill the back wall. The dark rock walls are smooth with rounded ceilings, just like the rest of this level. The room itself is the size of a bedroom, a little over five meter wide and long, so thirty square meters. Big enough for a little break.

My students look horrible. I see burn marks all over them; the flaming dog must have given them trouble. Ket is smiling, the metal affinity spider must have been easy for him. Or maybe the dungeon switched things up since I went through here? It's irrelevant though, so I stop thinking about the subject.

I switch my focus to my student's bodies. They are still running on qi fumes, a close up internal inspection shows me torn muscle fibres and a general lack of stored energy in all of their bodies. Bord is in the best shape, and I did not expect anything else. He is not showing any signs of slimming down though, his mental image of himself must be a fatty.

I take a moment to search through my spatial ring and pull out an entire dining set a second later. A thick and sturdy Shining Moonwood table with complimentary chairs, big enough to seat ten appears in the room. I sit down at the head of the table as I pull out some food.

"Have a seat."

They each find a chair and start sitting down. Lola hops on my lap but I put her on the table. The first thing I do is pull out some qi loaded grasses for her to munch on.

I will give the rest enough food to refill their energy levels, but rationing the amount of qi inside the food will be crucial here. I want to feed them barely enough qi to completely repair their bodies. This will allow their subconscious to fine tune things on a cellular level and fix any chemical imbalances. I will make them repeat this until no more changes are being made, this being an indicator of a fully optimised physique.

I place wooden plates and cutlery in front of each participant, pulling each item from my ring. They all sit down, looking at me expectantly. I look through my ring, pondering on what food to serve. They need high calorie and low qi food at the moment, so I pull out a lot of snack food. Mundane animal sausages with a few percent high-level beast meat inside, various kinds of vegetable tempura and a few jugs of light fruit juice. The feast starts the moment I make the food appear, I think that this battle is even fiercer than the one they had previously.

I sit back and enjoy the show. Bord is punching at any techniques coming his way, Selis guides a large portion of the fruit juice directly into her mouth and Ket is surrounding his food with high-speed projectiles. It is a good thing the table is stronger than steel, even I am currently not capable of leaving a scratch on the thing. A minute later they are all eyeing each other suspiciously while zealously guarding their own foods and munching furiously.