The Dao of Magic

118 - Dissimilitudes

Rhea has a sullen look on her face. Her slumped shoulders, pouting lips and downcast eyes paint a picture of a demure beauty. The bunny lounging on top of her head gives it a slight comedic vibe. The ravaged and ruined landscape behind her give the scene an edge of intrigue and violence.

I take a mental snapshot and store it away, uploading it in high detail, safe in my soul.

"You made an impressive entrance, flapped your yap for a bit and then got the shit kicked out of you by a rabbit... The only thing you changed is that my school is now divided in four factions instead of three. Happy?"

And now she is glaring at me, the sullen look turned into true irritation and annoyance. Ah, why is true beauty such a short lived and fleeting phenomenon? She shifts her glare towards the moon overhead. It's half lit by the cluster of suns, one side bright white, the other dark blue with reflected light. I sense my qi clone communicating with her through a brief mental link.

"Let's go beat those mana mutants."

"Okay, let's." I smile at her while taking her hand. Looking around, I see a large audience peering at us. I glare at the onlookers, a colorful collection of humans and humanoids with animal traits. Each time one of them makes a move to bow down, my fierce scowl freezes them in place. Lola hops down to the ground and saunters back into the woods. A quarter of the spectators follow her.

Every single new student of my school is still in the qi gathering stage. Database is keeping a close eye on everyone so far, and the mix between braincores, heartcores and gutcores is pretty even. Heartcores are slightly overrepresented, but that is explained by the fact the both Bord and Lola, two main leading figures, are heartcore cultivators. I can't help but smile as I see that the gutcores are the fewest in number.

Database also informs me that none of the new batch have tried a different system. Well, that's an easy fix. I add a mission that automatically gives anyone who has reached the liquid qi stage in all three systems a large amount of points. I word it so that Database will not give any hints about dual or tripple core systems, I just want to encourage some people to try another cultivation system. Ket and Tess both perk up as they receive partial credit.

"Teach, I'll go ahead. Rhea, get this one some gear, here..." Tess hands Ferah over to Rhea. The small girl is still munching on popcorn while squirming in Tess's grasp. Rhea automatically takes the beastkin offered to her, only to put her down immediately. Tess then waves to Ket and disappears into the shadows.

I start pondering why a dragon has such a reflex. People usually automatically take whatever is handed them, why did she do the same, though? I barely notice Rhea start to fuss over Ferah and Ket sneak after Tess as I start formulating theories.

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Tess is floating through the shadows. No, not floating, she thinks. It's like gliding across a smooth surface. A surface that's not flat, but has three dimensions. And a fourth one where the shadows are thick. Like someone pasted paper across the world, allowing her to move across it like running ink. And the shadows are where the paper is thinnest, letting her squeeze through, back and forth between the real world and the shadow realm.

She pops her head out of a dim area, the light prevented from reaching the cobblestones by a large heap of rubble. Spotting and sensing nobody nearby, she jumps out entirely and crouches in the alley. She quickly writes the description she just came up with down on a piece of paper. Stuffing the charcoal pencil and paper back into her spatial ring, she walks out of the alley into the street.

Looking around at the large amount of damage still being repaired, she wanders through Tower City. Some buildings are missing, some are being repaired and some still bear the scars from hurricane-like wind and dragons' breath. The streets are clean for the most part, fused metal and rock visible between the cracks here and there.