Tsaimath
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Chapter 1066
🕑 Added 2024-10-11 16:00:16 +0000 UTCDid stupidity warrant capital punishment?
It was a fairly ridiculous question on its face, one that screamed for context, though even with context, it didn’t make all that much sense when the values of the old world were applied to it. There, stupidity was essentially part of daily life and the stakes had generally been a lot lower, at least in the Western world. People rarely had to starve to death and mistakes could, most of the time, be rectified or insured against, making personal risk somewhat reduced. Sure, accidents could, and regularly did, happen but society had gone a long way to make the result of those unavoidable accidents as benign as possible.
Until the change had hit and everything went to crap, that is. Now, the stakes were as high as they could go, a single mistake could spell doom for a community, possibly causing them all to starve to death in the winter. Or, as was the case with my troublesome prisoners, there was always a bigger fish in the sea, just that size wasn’t necessarily indicative of strength, a lesson not everyone had learned just yet. Judging a book by its cover had been a common failure for a long time, but now, that failure could lead to serious consequences if the book took offence.
That was the big question I was pondering while watching my students go through one of the first lessons to get in touch with their own magic. I still wasn’t sure what I should do with the five idiots I had captured, possibly because I had captured them before they ever had the chance to act against me, leaving me a little at a loss about the appropriate punishment. The easiest way, and the one I was most likely to pursue, was to use them for testing until they either succumbed to a test or died of starvation. A simple, straight-forward way that was unlikely to give us further troubles down the road, as the five of them were fairly certain nobody actually knew where they had gone. The only downside I could see was the questionable morality it would teach my daughters, though that could easily be ameliorated by a few additional lessons and an explanation of my reasoning.
Another possible path was to keep them imprisoned until we decided to leave the area. It was, in my opinion, the worst possible path, as we’d need to feed and care for them until then, eating up our time and supplies without giving us any actual advantage. Plus, there was no guarantee that they’d actually be grateful and considerate after we set them free and not decide to spread lies about us or even try to pursue revenge outright. People could be quite dumb and these five had already demonstrated that they had the capability to make incredibly bad decisions.
Or we could let them go free right now, maybe with a bit of a painful or shameful punishment, though that would open us up to the same type of retribution as imprisoning them. They might smear us or try to get people to attack us, adding additional annoyance to the entire deal. Again, there was little benefit, as I wasn’t out to become some sort of just ruler, hel, I wasn’t even trying to rule anything beyond the quarry we were using as our base. Anything beyond those walls wasn’t my problem, I simply wanted to keep my family safe. And it looked like that required to kill the five idiots. Luckily, nothing of actual value would be lost with their death.
Shaking off these intrusive thoughts and looking at my students, I felt myself beam with pride. Sure, some of them had already been fairly accomplished before coming here, they had been forced to learn and adapt to survive, but I was quite happy that I was able to teach each of them some fundamental lessons.
Sure, a good chunk of those fundamental ideas came from my contact with the Grandmother and the grimoire she had given me while others came from lessons and explanations I had been given from Lady Hecate but that didn’t change the fact that I was the most accomplished Spellcaster around by a long shot. Adding my magical sight and my ability to perceive souls atop my already superior knowledge and I could easily demonstrate why I was the teacher and they the students, even if that one guy was at a fairly high level already.
Curiously, when it came to levels, Maggy was only somewhat above average, not at all special when considering that she held a legacy and had accomplished quite a lot during our time on Mundus. It, once again, made me wonder just who she had been on Mundus and what her speciality used to be. Some type of rogue, of that I was fairly confident, focused on operating within a civilised society, something the change had largely wiped away, leaving her with comparatively few skills to fall back upon. Knowing how to pick a lock, crack a safe or operate within a societal party without discovery were all useful skills, but only if there were locks, safes or parties to use them on, otherwise, they quickly fell to the wayside.
However, just because she was only level fifty-seven didn’t mean she was weak or incompetent. If anything, she was one of the more dangerous beings around thanks to her ability to conceal herself. Sure, I could detect her, at least when I was actively looking for her, but that didn’t mean all that much. At the end of the day, Darkness Magic was one of my strongest abilities and I had put a lot of effort into my ability to perceive things, so just because I could find her, didn’t mean she was bad at it. No, if anything, the fact that I had to actively look for her put her at the same level of concealment Lia had achieved, making it quite amusing to set up exercises between the pair. Neither of them could detect the other, making the game of tag I had them play a wonderful comedy show, at least for me who could detect both of them.
Plus, as they were trying to spot the other, both were actively improving their ability to conceal themself and their ability to spot hidden entities, elevating their already excellent abilities to a higher level. Granted, I regularly inserted myself into their exercise, to make sure I kept my skills superior to theirs, but they hadn’t caught onto that just yet. It was good training and served as a stark reminder to Lia that we should never let ourselves become complacent. There were capable beings out there and if we grew arrogant, we might end up with a knife jammed somewhere sensitive.
On the other hand, when it came to different ways to wield Darkness Magic, Maggy was a lot less competent. Curses, something I had only dabbled in, were foreign to her as was anything meta-magical, meaning anything using Darkness Magic to influence or disrupt other magical abilities. It was a curious blindspot, one I idly wondered about as I couldn’t believe that a rogue or thief wouldn’t look into ways to disrupt magical wards and crack magical locks but she didn’t seem to have those abilities. Not that I was teaching her everything I knew about them either, I had no desire to see a student of mine disrupt the protections I had placed on my tower, but I was planning to give her a good foundation by the end of winter. That way, she’d be able to learn on her own after we left the area and she wouldn’t be a problem for me. Though, even if she managed to crack the magical protections, I also had some physical protections that would need a competent and powerful Earth Mage to overcome. Somebody like Daniel, which made me realise I should increase the protections and have them branch out even further, to the point that even if all my students were working together, they wouldn’t be able to overcome them.
Amusingly, Lia was also somewhat fond of Maggy, often taking the time to work with her while Samantha, Lia’s own student, was busy with one of the exercises Lia gave her. The pair worked in different ways to kill people stealthily, trying to find ways that would allow them to engage in violence without breaking the concealment magic usually keeping them hidden. It was incredibly fiddly work and not something I had ever really looked into, mostly because I rarely used knives as they did, so if I wanted to engage in violence, I almost always used magic. That, sadly, shredded the cloak like nobody's business, forcing me to either recast the spell, which had limited results when your foes were already focused on you, or drop any attempts at stealth after that first strike.
Either way, it was a good thing to have these students, their presence, and the lessons I taught to them, forced me to question what I knew about magic and continue to further my own studies in its fundamental aspects. There’d always be more to learn and knowing that I was broadening my own path was a wonderful feeling.
