Chapter 4 | Leila, The Eternal Night

Theo held his chin and studied his surroundings. The silent walls of the cubic room beckoned him. One of them was an exit, that was certain.

Supposedly, he was a couple of mana injections away from leaving this room. However, he hadn’t forgotten about the purple-haired witch’s warning about venturing outside. If there were dangers there, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself.

Theo ruffled his hair in frustration. He was busy ruminating on what to do, but before he could come to a decision, he felt a prickle on his skin. Electricity ran through his body from head to toe. It made him shiver. His nascent mana sense was immediately flooded as if a flashbang had exploded right up in his face.

Crazed, confused, a muffled signature. It was like looking at a list of things that described a particular person. And look he did. He quickly recognized the owner of that mana. The woman was back. It was just that he could now sense her pink-purple mana. Even with his level one mana sense, he could understand what kind of mage she was.

An absolute monster.

As the woman approached, mana roiled. It was like watching a hundred-meter wall of a tsunami approaching, completely powerless. The mana blotted out the ever-present lines of flux surrounding him. Even though she wasn’t here yet, maybe not even close, the mana filled the atmosphere around him. Theo let go of his mana sense. Her cacophony was too strong to bear and drowned all his other senses. His eyes teared, his nose ran. His vision spun in an attempt to grasp the reality around him.

Is she doing this on purpose? To think my mana sense could be used against me…

“Fuck! He’s too strong! That bastard, I will skin him slowly and feed him to the broken ones. Then he will see what justice is! It won’t be long before he finds this place. I have to be quick.” The witch’s voice echoed from far away. Theo’s mind instinctively reeled from fear. She sounded angry and worried. Very much so. And her mana responded in kind. Another wave of dense, perfumy mana washed over Theo like a gust of hot air.

The walls of the cubic room melted and parted away into purple lights to reveal a battered figure. She was holding her arm; many parts of her body practically disintegrated. New flesh and bone formed visibly, her wounds scabbing in real time. Sinews giving way to muscle, a sickly vitality flourishing from her body.

“He will come ba- Oh?” She suddenly calmed down. Her expression shifted drastically. She approached Theo with derision and started inspecting him from different directions, occasionally tapping his body with her fingers. “I was pretty sure I would find you lying on the ground begging for water. But you seem to be doing well. Very well, in fact.”

Her gaze caused Theo’s hair to stand on end. He had to be honest. This woman was really attractive looks-wise. A cute button nose hung above cherry pink lips, purple brows on the slightly thicker side accentuating her shiny eyes with literal star shapes in them, and long, flowing hair added to that purple theme naturally. Overall, she was quite the exotic beauty. But she had something unsettling that made her impossible to approach. He couldn’t even look at her that way, as if she wasn’t quite human.

“Tell me, what did you do? Why is your mind palace so… humble?” she asked after finishing her inspection and patting his chest with her usable hand.

“I simply followed the book you gave me.” Humble was definitely a way to describe his mind palace. Not to mention, she could see inside?

“What book?” She gave him a questioning glare. A wave of pressure descended onto Theo like a torrent, causing him to fall to his knees.

Isn’t she supposed to be tired? She seemed like she was on the verge of death… Not to mention, she doesn’t remember the book? What did The Regressor do to her?

The pressure lessened, letting Theo take a breather. The witch appeared next to him and caressed his face gently, a gentle smile on her face.

One arm hanging limply, her body struggling to pull itself together, she still seemed graceful in some bizarre, fucked-up way.

“Well done, my pitiful disciple, Subject 1. You managed to manifest mana quite quickly. The other subjects are yet to. You are truly worthy of being the test subject of Leila The Eternal Night,” she said, then stopped to think for a second. Her eyes seemed to go empty, and then she came back, if that made sense.

So her name is Leila… The Eternal Night must be her title or something. Sounds grandiose.

“Anyway. I will just assume that you are talented and leave it at that. Your mana pool is quite small. Do keep practicing.”

She let go of Theo and turned around as if studying the room. She then turned back toward him and sighed. “I was going to teach you some spells, but you seem good enough. Figure it out on your own.”

“What? Why?”

Theo clenched his fists but didn’t betray an emotion on his face. It was starting to become quite irritating. The Regressor had refused to teach him spells, apparently because of his own instructions from the future. But why would Leila do the same?

“Hm…” Leila squinted her eyes. Theo worried for a second if he had offended her, but her face relaxed the next moment. “If I taught you magic right now, I could be stifling your growth. Do you know what every great true mage in history has in common?”

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“What is a true ma—” Theo was about to ask, but saw the corners of the woman’s lips fall. He gulped his question back down. “No, Master. I don’t know.”

“They all started by stumbling their way into magic. You can always use standardized spells, but you will never be able to have a pure approach to magic once you do. You will be following someone else’s path. Not yours. I will teach you magic once you put down a solid foundation,” she explained in one go, her arms crossed like that of a serious teacher. “I expect great things from you, my Sub. With that enhancement I put on you, you should be able to figure out some stuff.”

“Right… By the way, what was that purple thing? The one that Master injected me with.”

The image of that purple goop entering his body never went away. He knew it was still under his skin, doing something. He had just preferred to ignore it until now.

Leila placed her finger on her chin, rolled her eyes, and pursed her lips, as if she had forgotten and was trying to remember. By now, though, Theo was starting to understand her manners better than to think that.

“Secret.” Leila stuck her tongue out instead of answering. Theo raised a brow in confusion, but didn’t ask further. “Anyway. Spend some more time here. Once all three of the other subjects… adjust, I will let you four meet up.”

Theo nodded briefly and watched the woman leave the cubic room with a wry smile on his face.

Lying down on the floor, watching the ceiling, Theo couldn’t help but sigh. It had been God knows how long since the woman had left, and he was starting to get bored out of his mind.

He had spent a couple of hours searching through the inscriptions at random but found nothing useful. The smartest thing to do might have been to wait until the woman came back, but Theo wanted to figure out how to magic before then.

He swept his gaze over the cubic room and decided to ground himself a little bit.

So what do I know about magic so far? First, I know that it’s done using mana. Second, I know it can be done with the inscriptions.

Tapping his chin, Theo considered. He had technically cast ‘spells’ so far. As in, he had traced the inscriptions on the walls and that had resulted in him achieving something akin to magic.

“Mana and inscriptions…” He crossed his arms. “But Leila didn’t seem to use them when casting that mana hand…”

Theo sat in silence for a few seconds, then went into his mind palace. The building was the same, topped up on mana, ready to be used on whatever.

Surely this place isn’t just for mana, right? His body in the mindscape crossed its arms. What if I tried writing the inscriptions on these walls instead?