“You were her mentor?” Lucina exclaimed in shock.

  “You got it! She’s one of the 3 apprentices I trained in my long, long time at the Commission.”

  “It was also me who recommended her for sagehood.” Mr Tona replied, sipping his apple juice with a frown.

  “I swear this apple juice tastes funny. Did you poison me or something, my dear apprentice?” He questioned, with his ‘innocent’ eyes sparkling up at the sage.

  “No.” She replied curtly, taking a mouthful of noodles into her mouth.

  “You’ve gotten crankier with age.” The man muttered, taking a spoonful of his rice.

  “Anyways, I had a senior position in The Commission and here comes this muscle bound prodigy of a mage, mastering 2 layers of water elemental magic within 5 years of commission work. And the Board just decided to appoint me as her bloody mentor on a whim!”

  “It’s not as if I had a lot of free time at the time. In fact, I was in charge of the city of Atlan then. You won’t believe how insufferable those Corvallians are. I needed to deploy people every damn day to take care of pirates off our coast!”

  “But I immediately changed when she showed me her capabilities. Her physical applications of the water elemental magic was and still is probably unbeatable. She does lack the brains to grasp the concepts of the abstract applications, but her physical application still managed to get her to the level of a sage!” He finished.

  “You weren’t much of a help in that aspect, old man. It’s not like you’re particularly good at it.” The sage retorted.

  “Nope, too old to bother learning too! I’d much like to take The Commission’s paycheck and live the good retired life with my lovely wife!” He said contently.

  With rolling eyes, Sage Yeltz dropped a casual bombshell.

  “So much for the accolades of good old Sage Tona.”

  This seemingly innocent comment sent Aurelius choking on his food.

  “Koff-W-Koff-Wh-Koff-What was that? Koff-” He managed, holding back the food that threatened to regurgitate out of his nose.

  “Oh, did he not say? He used to be a Commission Sage before his retirement, like 10 years back.” Sage Yeltz commented.

  All three students scrutinised the grey-haired pensioner with disbelieving eyes. There was absolutely no way that a sage of the commission could be as unimpressive as this scruffy old man!

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Although, Sage Yeltz’s personality isn’t particularly great either… Aurelius thought to himself.

  As if reading his mind, Sage Yeltz whipped her head around to face Aurelius.

  “Damnnit kid, as much as I suck at abstract magic, I didn’t become a 3 layered mage at the level of sagehood without having a basic grasp of the topic.” She started exasperatedly.

  “I do have personal contracts with spirits, and I am more than capable of sensing the sentiments of thoughts. And unlike this bum next to me, I don’t take kindly to insults.”

  Aurelius felt his face lose its lustre as he forced every bit of emotion into the recesses of his brain, attempting to emulate how Tiberius went about his day. He was absolutely mortified at the existence of these gods-forsaken mind readers.

  First Dr. Varian, then Quetzalcoatl, now this irrita-I mean, pleasant woman! He cursed.

  “The cafeteria food is indeed as good as they said! Seems my trainees were right about this little tidbit!” The retired sage said, saving Aurelius from the threatening glare from Ms.Yeltz. He clapped his hands together in delight, as he fished for an after meal cigarette.

  “How does mind magic work exactly, Ms. Yeltz?” Tiberius asked, completely unbothered by the increasingly deep hole Aurelius was digging for himself.

  Much to Aurelius’s irritation, the sage actually responded very kindly to this question, without the looks of annoyance that she kept shooting him.

  “Hmmm, I see that you’re a user of the wind elemental, so you would be unaware of the nature of the water elemental. They are completely incongruous with each other, after all.”

  “The fundamental soul-shape of water elemental magic involves the realm of the mind. The physical aspect of our magic is, of course, about manipulating the mana present in water.”

  “But it also allows for the manipulation of information. We call this application of water magic, Dream Weaving. We are able to affect the perception and understand the information from the minds of others using the spirit realm as a conduit. What we are essentially doing is processing information from the spirit realm through our soul-shapes.”

  “As your friend here should know, divinations are the basic application of such magic, allowing for foresight through the processing of information. They’re able to make potential predictions from the mixed data points that are present within the spirit realm.”

  “Mind magic is the highest level of the application of this abstract magic, Dream Weaving. Sage level spirits or mages can completely parse through large quantities of data, parsing through them accurately at scale, allowing one to pinpoint the specific information that one wants to find.”

  “We can also provide information to the spirit realm, targeting persons can affect the minds of others entirely, creating higher level illusions in the mind so real that distinguishing reality becomes impossible. The illusions at this level integrate into the mind of the affected person, meaning that no more magic is actually required to continue to keep up these illusions.”

  “This is also how high level spirits are sealed. Through the collaboration with a sage level water and wind mage, one can bind a realistic illusion into an object, creating a trap for spirits.”

  “But, at higher levels of 3 dimensional soul-shapes like ours, the ‘area’ that we can effectively carve our magic becomes limited. And as sages, both my mentor and I have opted for the physical application as a priority, meaning we both lag behind in what Houses like House Caelestis are able to do in terms of divination and mind magic.”

  “Mind magic is still hard to come by in even House Caelestis given the challenges of sagehood, and sages of pure water elemental magic who pursued the abstract application as a priority are few and far in between. After all, mixed elemental souls are the preferred shapes for the most influential Magical Houses with knowledge.”

  “The Commission makes up for the shortage with our spirit contracts, with people like me enlisting the help of my spirit contracts to increase the quality of my illusions and sealing magic.” She finished.

  The 3 students at the table had become entranced in such a detailed and considerate explanation, with the foul-mouthed image of the sage almost fading from Aurelius’s mind.

  How was this sage so… knowledgeable? She looks so… unstudious… Aurelius thought.

  Then, a delighted shriek caused all of them to turn simultaneously.

  https://ko-fi.com/madmarble!!!