When I woke up the next morning, I found a bundle of silver hair nested comfortably on my chest and my arms were locking a young man to my body, feeding on his warmth and not even thinking about the concept of releasing him.
I also felt extremely comfortable with that arrangement, so I just kept pretending I was sleeping, but the man didn't wanna hear it.
"I know you're awake. Free me."
I tightened my arms and smooched the crown of his head, it was really a good feeling.
"Five more minutes…"
However, it seemed Cael really couldn't bear my touch anymore, he flared his mana gathering wind around his body until the cold forced me to free the red faced young man that quite literally flew to the bathroom.
"So much for the fierce strongest of the bunch."
Since I was awake and the bathroom was unavailable at the moment, I decided to start practicing my mana control while waiting for Cael to finish getting ready.
In one hand I spun a thread of mana, in the other I used it to knit a simple veil and that on its own was really hard. Especially since the smallest loss of focus simply made everything vanish.
When Cael came out of the bathroom with still damp silver hair it was already 5.30 am, I only had 30 minutes to get ready.
And I still didn't have a tracksuit for training.
I guess I'll keep using the butler's suit.
______________________
"Today we will start with weapon mastery after stretching and a slight warm up. Since basically everyone of you uses a different weapon and we lack instructors, it will be a long and tedious session."
I was already groaning at the simple thought of passing an entire day doing nothing but fighting.
Luckily, some of my doppelgängers were already in the family library soaking up knowledge like it was their last occasion in life.
"Also, since it seems two of you have not strengthened their runes yet, you to can do that while the sword users are on break."
Everyone looked at me and Cael with questioning looks and I honestly didn't know what fiction they were creating in their mind, but I knew the Heir of Storm wouldn't appreciate rumors.
"Look, I don't know what you are thinking, but I honestly passed the entire night crafting mirrors, he just wanted to chat and we fell asleep without realising."
Cael with pink ears nodded and confirmed everything, but I could see that Seraph and Rovan weren't convinced in the slightest, I was curious about what didn't convince them, but I didn't want to undermine Cael's reputation so I naturally ignored everyone and started running.
There was no need to dwell on such things, especially since nothing really happened.
While running, Rovan easily caught up with me and looked at me intensely.
I directly ignored everything and everyone wishing for the run to come to an end as soon as possible.
Of course, just like at the academy, we run for 2 hours straight in complete silence.
"Eira with me, Aurelia, with Morvane's instructor. Crow and Caelum, please go consume the runic marbles at opposite ends of the hall."
We all did as we were told and stumbled to our destination, not before I could hear Rovan talk to Cael in a failed hush voice.
"Did you really just chat and sleep, his scent is all over your body, it feel like he devoured you."
"IT'S THE BODY WASH!"
Rovan dropped the argument and I felt a small smile appear on my face without reason.
_____________________
Once in the corner of the training hall, I took out the runic marbles and just threw them down me throat. There was no real need to hesitate at that point since I didn't know what to expect and just went with it.
What happened next was hard to describe.
The marbles didn't even reach my stomach before completely dissolving and expanding throughout my whole body. The power trapped inside them was nourishing my mana and moved towards what I thought was my first spark, the counterpart to the sea of consciousness everyone had.
There, my rune of [illusion] was greedily taking in that same energy, corrupting it, converting it into its food and the pleasure I was thinking was absurd.
After all the suffering for upgrades I'd been used to, I was sure that this process would be painful as well.
But that was not happening and a sense of fullness was steadily growing inside me.
I tried to memorise the way my rune was moving and changing that energy, how it consumed it refining itself anew and when I was confident I understood the process, I tried to manipulate it with my mana.
I started corrupting what I assumed was the energy of correction with my error mana before it even reached the rune and that was another step in the right direction, because when the erratic energy reached the rune, instead of wasting it into corrupting it, the energy was simply consumed.
This way, even before the three marbles were completely consumed, the refining process ended leaving me with half a marble of energy reaching for the other runes.
Energy that they divided equally without any kind of input from me.
Can I not decide or was it because I had already made all the energy erratic?
I didnt know, what I knew was that the system was promoting me to open my eyes and read the new informations.
[congratulation, your rune of illusion as gone through its first evolution.
Rune of Illusion -> Rune of Deceit.
All prior spells and enchantments will be strengthened considerably.
With the rune of Deceit is now possible to grant false self-awareness to illusions and even instilling fake memories to someone whit a lesser mental power than you.]
This was ground breaking.
With the ability to create a false self-awareness to illusions, my pranking days just became a whole lot more fun. Of course even the ability to alter memories of people weaker than me was good and all, but I doubted I could use it as carelessly as my illusions.
"Fuck I need to study even more advanced psychology…"
I should also probably study Aurelia's cultivation method and how she uses her rune, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with memories, at least her resonance does.
Once my thoughts were processed and my mind clear of thoughts, I stood up and noticed that nobody was looking at me, they were all focused on Cael whose body was completely run by thunder.
My heart made a leap, but when I noticed how nobody was worried, I tried to calm down, uselessly.
My body moved before I could make it stop and in a few seconds I was with the others looking at how pained Cael's face was. He was full on trembling trying to keep himself from screaming and my hand stretched forward.
"[Faker's serenity]"
My deep green mana enveloped Cael from head to toe, his trembling didn't stop. I couldn't cancel the effect of his resonance, nor temper with the nourishment, but I could trick his brain in not receiving the pain.
"What have you done? Are you trying to make him fail his rune's evolution?" -Marin
"What? I'm not capable of such things. I'm just tricking his brain so that he can't feel the pain and focus on the process!"
That effectively silenced everyone who was ready to reprimand me. To cut out the pain was a big advantage, he could focus on the flow of the energy and understand better how to circulate it in the future so that his cultivation would be much more successful.
"Fuck, is this how you finished so fast? Even my healing couldn't keep up with the pain." -Auriel
"Next time I'm definitively doing this with you brother!" - Yom
The others also expressed their discontent with my obvious favouritism, which I didn't really get, since for me, the process was not painful at all and this was my first time seeing how it worked for others.
The training continued while Cael was now working with much less problems on the energy circulation and only opened his eyes after another hour.
"Why can't I move my body?"
"Oh, I cut down your pain, but your body did receive the full blow of I don't know how many lightnings…"
"Well, now I'm done, you can remove your spell."
I looked at him a little conflicted, on one hand he didn't even thank me so the fallout of his body would be a good lesson for him, on the other, there was no way he could tolerate such burns…
"Maybe we should have you healed before…"
"Just remove the spell Crow, I'm not a baby."
Is that so?
My gaze sharpened a little, but my eyes soon curled up in amusement.
"Suit yourself."
I snapped my fingers and in the same moment a shriek comparable to a hoard of banshees erupted in the room.
I didn't even turn back to look in what state the man was and simply took out my jian.
Now that my rune had evolved, it was time to start on that erratic body thingy.