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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 78
🕑 Added 2024-04-01 06:41:01 +0000 UTCProfessor Sageira Drackot, or at least that was the name she was currently known by, was making her way to her class from one of her favorite places, the library.
She internally grumbled as she walked to class, she would have liked to stay in the ever-growing library of the Royal Academy, but she made a deal to at least teach one class, and she did not break deals. So after sifting through the extensive list of subjects, she decided on night class for Languages of Power due to it having more mature students on average.
When she entered the class, she did what she did with every new batch of students, she took a look at her new students, or more specifically, their souls.
There was a lot one could learn from observing a soul, unlike the fleshy disguise that every mortal wore and presented to the world around them, the soul bore no such deception, and she could see their true selves.
This was one of the reasons Professor Sageira Drackot took the form of a short and hunched old lady. The idealized form of the human body she used for her previous aliases brought out the darker sides of the souls of both men and women, lust, envy, greed, and sometimes, outright hostility. That's why she chose her current form, besides madmen, who would show such dark emotions towards a kindly old lady.
As she scanned the room, there was an abnormality that caught her eyes, two actually. First was a young boy in a night class taking such a dry subject as Languages of Power, the second was the mark on that boy’s soul, it was the stigma of one who has experienced death, and there was only one type of being that she has ever seen the stigma of death on, the undead.
She quickly averted her gaze to not give herself away, but from the way the boy tensed up, she knew he noticed something, so she exuded her soul energy to soothe her target’s soul and he mellowed out.
She then took attendance, found the boy’s name was Luke Ironcrest, and took a mental note to investigate the Ironcrest family after this.
As she proceeded with her lesson, she kept an eye on how Luke was acting, and by all accounts, she had him captivated with the lesson, ‘It is either this undead is actually enjoying the lesson, or the necromancer is extremely skilled at making infiltrator type undead that is able to act very well.’
The moment the class ended, Professor Sageira Drackot silently conjured a mental illusion spell and cast it through her feet, cloaked the spell with earth mana to send it through the stone of the room’s floor, making it indistinguishable from the passive magic that fills the building, and into every student but Luke.
When the spell took effect, it caused them confusion and brought up a random task from their subconscious that prompted priority in completing it.
As all the students left the room, she flexed her soul’s strength to dominate Luke’s, stopping him in place, “Luke Ironcrest, would you mind staying back for a while? I need to have a word with you.”
Once it was only the two of them in the classroom, she cast the spell, Sealed Space, and beckoned him over to her, “Now, would you do this old lady a favor and come over here, let me take a good look at you.”
***
Once I was standing in front of Professor Sageira, she started levitating and circled around me, observing me like a prime piece of meat, then she grabbed my wrist and I felt a foreign mana scour every millimeter of my body before my wrist was released.
“Your master has made something interesting. Such a young body, but much more magically developed than most adults, and also capable of manifesting aura. Tell me, what kind of undead are you? You are the first living undead I have ever seen or heard of.”
After a few seconds of me doing some confused internal screaming, she said, “Oh, how rude of me, you can’t move at the moment, let me fix that for you.”
The moment I felt my head could move, I let out a terrified and not so manly scream, followed by, “Professor, why are you doing this?! What are you talking about?!”
The next moment, I once again found myself unable to move or speak, “Interesting, you being able to act on your own instead of reverting to a feral state despite being in my Sealed Space spell and cut off from your master means you are capable of independent thought, making you a higher form of undead.
But do you have a sense of self-preservation? If you do, I highly recommend you answer my questions honestly. Why have you infiltrated the Royal Academy and who is your master?”
I once again felt my head released from whatever force was holding it in place, “I did not infiltrate anything! I am here legitimately, I have no master! And why are you calling me an undead?! Do I look rotten to you?” I replied with a mix of fear and anger, but mostly fear.
Professor Sageira stared at me for a second, then she blinked, her eyes changed to that of a reptile’s with a slitted pupil and yellowish golden sclera, and overflowing with power. This time, I froze out of fear instead of the weird force that paralyzed me.
After staring at me with those golden eyes and tilting her head from side to side, she said, “You seem to be telling the truth… could it be brainwashing?... There are ways to get around that, and the fact that you are alive and have a functioning brain makes it easier, a few pokes of mana to your brain here and there, and we can bypass all that pesky brainwashing and get right to your memories, all we need to do is take off the top of your skull.”
She then floated a bit higher in front of me as I saw the fingernail of her right index finger grow a few centimeters and started glowing with power, “Hold still, this might hurt.”
