Mage Academy 6: A LitRPG Magic Academy Light Novel (Imperial Summoner), page 23
With that, Danny selected a bagel, put a bit of fruit spread on it, and started on down. Tess joined him as he slipped out the main entrance, and the two of them began the long trek down into the dungeons. They had started to allow the students to come in a more relaxed manner, since it took so long to get everyone through.
Though there wasn't a set pecking order, the groups had a tendency to show up in more or less the same order each time, which made it easier for Danny to plan things.
"How do you think they're going to do on the new dungeon?" Tess asked.
"I don't know, honestly." Danny rubbed his jaw. "I want to say that I think they'll do well, but the reality is that it could go any way. I could see them really succeeding with it, and I could see a lot of people getting beaten up pretty badly."
"Getting their tails handed to them wouldn't be the end of the world." Tess shrugged. "We can all use a bit of humility every now and again."
Danny laughed at that. "Speak for yourself."
"And it's the people who don't think that they need it, who need it the most." Tess raised a warning finger.
"Oh, don't start on that with me." Danny sighed. "Right now, all I want to do is put together a solid Academy that lets us fight back against the evil in the world."
Even as he said it, his stomach twisted. There was a growing darkness in the world, and in many ways, he wished that he had started up the Academy several years earlier, so that when the darkened dungeons started to overflow, he would have students ready to face the threat.
Oh, well. He was just going to have to do whatever he could, given what he had.
It wasn't long after he and Tess arrived in the great chasm that the students began to show up. Just like clockwork, Henry, Rodney, Delilah, Sam, and an assortment of their friends were the first ones to show. Danny looked across them as they all came down and stood in formation, and he gave them a nod.
"Alright." He slowly walked up to the entrance of the dungeon as Tess took her place behind them.
"Everyone ready?"
They all nodded, and drew their swords or readied their bows. The group was really turning into a solid fighting unit, that was for sure, and Danny nodded.
"Then enter!"
He pressed his hand against the mana stone, and felt his mind drawn into the dungeon even as the group came racing past him. Into the darkness they went, and he found himself in the first chamber just as they arrived.
This dungeon was larger than the first one, though it had fewer rooms. The first chamber was almost twice the size of any of the subsequent chambers, and was mostly barren. After some debate, Tess and Danny had decided to start the students with a small boss battle.
As such, as the students came charging inside, ready for swarms of smaller monsters, the ground shook with the roar of a great beast. With a loud thunk, a stone golem dropped down from the ceiling and landed with a crash.
"Master Youngblood's favorite summon in the world." Rodney commented.
"And there's a reason for that!" Henry launched several bolts of lightning from the back of the formation. "They're tough to take down! Mages, focus your attacks on the head, let the soldiers get close!"
Danny felt a smile flicker across his face. Tess didn't have to say much of anything, she just stepped back and watched as the group spread out and began to attack. The mages hit the stone golem with everything they had, blinding it as the soldiers charged forward.
The swords of the soldiers blazed with mana as they activated small skills that they had picked up, and the stone golem was sent reeling backward. It took them only a few moments to cut it down to size, all in all, it hadn't really slowed them down at all.
"Excellent work!" Tess called out as the beast vanished. "Keep that focus as we delve deeper!"
Danny moved his mind to the second room, which was very long and winding, with a chasm off to one side that plunged down to a pool far below. The fall was survivable, and the water shallow enough that any of the students would be able to keep their footing, but he still had no plans on actually letting anyone take the plunge. As the crowd of students entered, Danny spawned in a handful of wyrms, and watched them closely.
The wyrms were functionally tiny dragons, each one about five feet in length, though they lacked any wings. They also lacked legs, and slithered rather like snakes. Each could breathe either fire or ice.
All in all, a single wyrm was a formidable foe, and when you had a whole room full of them, it was sure to prove to be quite a challenge.
Now, it was time to see what they were like in a pinch.
When the group entered, they began to scan the area. Tess called out several instructions, but Danny could tell that the students weren't really listening to her. Not that they were ignoring her, exactly, but they already knew what she would say and how they would implement it.
As the wyrms began to appear, slithering out of their holes and winding down toward the ground, one of the archers raised her bow.
"Let's see what they're made of!" Henry called out. The archer let fly, and the arrow caught fire. It exploded as it impacted, sending the wyrm tumbling down to land with a thwack on the floor below.
It twitched once or twice, then slowly raised itself up and hissed.
"So that didn't kill it." Rodney frowned. "Alright. Soldiers, forward! Lock shields, defend!"
"Watch the ceilings!" Henry called out. "Mages, focus upward!"
Blasts of lightning and fire exploded up through the ceiling, knocking the wyrms free. A few of them were killed as they fell, but the vast majority simply bounced off the ground and recovered. There, they met the blades of the soldiers, with mixed results once more.
The soldiers were strong, but so were the scales of the wyrms. As more and more of them began to appear, Henry called out loudly.
"Retreat!"
The army withdrew, where two soldiers locked their shields across the room's exit. Danny sent the wyrms into a standing pattern, which was a form that monsters in dungeons took when someone exited a room without clearing it. They didn't just return to their resting places, but neither did they remain active.
As he waited, Danny listened in vain for what their plan was. Finally, after a moment, they returned, and seemed ready.
This time, the mages went first, and as the monsters came swarming toward them, they launched their attacks, blasting the wyrms off the side of the chasm and down to the water below. Danny chuckled as he watched the countless beasts splattering into the pool, where they thrashed about and did their level best to try and escape.
Within only moments, the room was more or less cleared of the monsters, or, rather, all the beasts had been tossed down into the chasm.
With that, an ice mage launched a spear of ice that froze the water over, sealing all the wyrms in, and Danny nodded. That was the way to do it. Satisfied, the group pressed onward, and Danny despawned all the wyrms and prepared the next room.
It took almost forty-five minutes total before they emerged. Rock sprites and flame elementals, along with a few fire salamanders, had been among the beasts that they had been put up against, though the wyrms had by far been the most difficult. At the end of it, they were all staggering, and Danny nodded to them as they came out.
"Good work, all of you." He smiled. "That was some quick thinking down there, very quick thinking. That's the sort of behavior that keeps you alive in the dungeons. Go up and get some rest, you've earned it."
The group wearily began to plod back toward the stairs, while the next group came down. They looked with some concern at the bruises and heaving chests of the previous group, and Danny grinned.
"Ahh, don't worry! They're just making a big deal out of it."
The third group, about forty-five minutes later, was subsequently just as shocked as the second group had been, when the second group came out with just as many bumps and bruises as the first group. The pattern continued, except that by the early afternoon, the latest groups had been seeing new groups emerge from the dungeons all day, so that they were truly expecting something terrible.
The very last group of the day soon approached, at about four o'clock in the afternoon.
"Alright, you're the last ones?" Danny looked them over. The group was more soft-spoken than some of the others, hence why they were last. They were all quite competent, at least as far as Danny could tell, but they didn't tend to push themselves ahead of the others.
"Let's get this party started, shall we?"
They all nodded, and Tess led them inside. As Danny activated the first room, and the stone golem appeared, he watched as they began to do battle.
That first room wasn't a problem, really. They had fought against large summons many times up on the surface, and were able to take down the golem in only a few moments.
As they did so, though, something caught Danny's eye.
One of the students, a mage that he had seen around the Academy, was hanging back. He kept his hands raised, but as Danny watched him, he never once fired a single blast of magic.
"Now that's odd." He murmured.
As the group moved into the next room, he continued to keep an eye on the boy. The wyrms soon came swarming out, hissing and spitting flame and ice, and the group performed more or less the same way that all the others had done. First, they attempted to engage the monsters from a distance, then they withdrew, and then they did what they could to toss the wyrms into the pit.
One of the mages was a healer, and managed to buff the strength of the soldiers enough that they could chop through the necks of the wyrms, which allowed them to engage the beasts in a way that some of the other groups had been unable to do. It was impressive to see, but through it all, Danny kept watching that one boy at the back.
In the midst of combat, he was almost invisible, but there it was.
Danny was troubled by the time that the group came out of the dungeon. His stomach growled, and his hands burned from the extensive mana use, but he was satisfied to know that his students were getting a good education.
At least, most of them.
As they started up the stairs and away from the cave, Tess stepped up next to him and nodded.
"Well, we've got some things to work on, but I'd say that overall, things are going well. They're really learning how to work together well."
"I agree." Danny murmured.
Tess frowned and looked over at him.
"Troll drooling on you?"
"What?" Danny shook his head to snap out of his thoughts.
"What does that mean?"
"It's an expression we use in the Corps." She shrugged. "Just means that everything seems like it should be fine, but you're standing there like a troll is drooling on you. You're sad, just look icky."
Danny sighed, then pointed off at the retreating backs of the students. "Do you recognize that boy, right there at the back? Blue-grey robes?"
"Yeah, I've seen him around." Tess shrugged. "I mean, we only have a hundred and fifty students. I recognize everyone."
"Yeah, but what's his name?" Danny pressed.
"I ought to know, but I don't."
Tess frowned. "You know, now that you mention it, I don't rightly know. He's been in every mage class I've been in, but I don't know that I've ever seen him as anything more than stuck in the background."
"I was thinking the same thing." Danny murmured.
"And it's a mystery that I think I'm going to need to unravel."
Auto save - [Savefile: Information]
Health: 99%
Mana: 41%
Quest: Investigate the mystery student
Location: Training dungeon
Inventory: Ascended Mage Robes, Crystal Sword
Skills: Monster Summoner (Lv. 100), Flame Combat (Lv. 25), Wind Combat (Lv. 25), Ice Combat (Lv. 10)
Relationships: Friendly with Tess, Professional with [Assorted Students and Faculty]
Time of Day: 4:30 p.m.
Struggling Flame
Thankfully, it wasn't hard to learn the identity of the mage. Danny had only to go to the professors to ask a few questions, and they quickly answered.
"Yeah, I know who you're talking about." Killian nodded. "He's called James. James, oh, what's his last name? Woodhall? Yeah, James Woodhall."
"How is he in class?" Danny asked, crossing his arms.
"Quiet, reserved." Killian shrugged. "His grades are alright, I guess. Nothing spectacular, but he's not failing out, either. Why, is there a problem with him?"
"I don't know." Danny mused. "Maybe. Can you send him up to my office, when you see him next?"
"Yeah, I can do that." Killian nodded.
"Hope everything is alright."
Two days later, it was nearing lunchtime, and Danny was frantically putting together a report when he heard a knock on his door.
"Come in!" He called out.
The door swung open, and James poked his head through. He looked more than a little nervous, and Danny put down his pen and waved for him to come over.
"Welcome, welcome, come in!" He stood and motioned toward a nearby chair, and James slowly walked forward and sat down. He seemed almost to shrink and fade into the chair, and Danny sighed and sat back down across from him.
"Thank you for coming."
"Thank you for having me." James murmured. "I hope I'm not in trouble."
"No, no trouble at all." Danny folded his hands and leaned forward onto his desk. "I was just hoping that I could get to know you a little better."
James looked up in surprise.
"What do you mean?"
"Tell me about yourself." Danny shrugged. "I make it my business to get to know my students, and I'm afraid that by the nature of it, the troublemakers have a tendency to get more of my attention than the people sitting quietly in the back of class. Tell me about yourself. Where do you come from, what brought you here?"
James blinked a few times, then seemed to shake himself out of it. "I come from Woodhall. It's a little town west of the Capital, about two days' ride. My family was once a noble family, you can tell from our last name being the same as the name of the settlement. It was a huge estate in the middle of the forest."
"But the family isn't considered noble anymore?" Danny asked.
"Nah. We're poor now." James shrugged. "The way they tell it, the family started to grow. Most noble families will keep the wealth in the main family line, and as you get more distant, you just get less and less money until you get booted from the family altogether."
"The Woodhalls all stayed together, and as time went on, they just became a full town instead of a family, and they shared their wealth, until everyone was just as poor as everyone else."
"Well, I'm sorry your family lost their status, but there are far worse fates than having a close family." Danny smiled. "That's the sort of legacy you can be proud of."
"I know, sir." James nodded. "And I am. Very proud of it. There have been a lot of Woodhalls, both in the Corps and in the mages. A lot of us go off when we're of age, and enter the service of the Empire for a few years, and then go back home to protect the city."
"And that's what happened with you?" Danny asked.
"Yeah." James nodded. "I went off to the Capital to join the mages. I didn't want to join the Corps, not really. When I got to the Capital, there were rumors of a new Academy starting up, one that was way better and way more intense."
"I just thought if I was there, I could help my family, in a way that I'd never be able to back home, or in the Capital."
"And how are you liking it here?" Danny asked quietly.
"I've liked it." James nodded. "I mean, when I said yes, I got to meet the Emperor. I don't think anyone in my family has met one of the Emperors in generations."
"So you do like it here?" Danny asked.
"Yes, I do." James bit his lip.
"Sir, is there a reason you called me here?"
Danny paused, then nodded. "Yes. I wasn't lying when I said that I wanted to meet with you, to get to know you, but I'll admit to an ulterior motive. When you were in the dungeons a few days ago, I noticed that you were hanging back, not really doing much."
"As I've thought through it, I don't know that I've seen you standing out in many of the assorted trials and challenges that we've prepared here. Your professors all say that you're hanging on in classes, but not doing all that well, either. I was just hoping that I could get to the bottom of it."
"Why?" James asked, plainly.
"Because I didn't come out here, to the mountains in the middle of nowhere, just so I could play at being a headmaster." Danny shrugged. "I'm here to help the next generation of mages and soldiers be as good as they can be. So, I'll ask you again. What's holding you back?"
He paused. "What can we do to help you push yourself better?"
James seemed surprised at that answer. "You mean, you really—"
"This isn't the Academy back in the Capital." Danny shrugged. "Back there, you either sank or swam, and that was the end of the story. Don't misunderstand me, if I feel like you can't hold your own in the dungeons, I won't graduate you, but I also want to help. I want to know if I'm doing something wrong, or if there's something that we can work with you on."
James bit his lip and didn't say anything for a long moment.
Finally, he sighed and nodded.
"I don't know. I don't mean to stand back there and not do anything, but my magic is really weak, and I can't ever hit anything, and everyone else is just so fast and so much better than I am."
Danny thought for a long moment. "I see. What's your mana reserve at?"
"Twenty."
Danny winced inwardly. It had taken him some time to build up a solid mana reserve, but that had also been a problem. When he had started in the Academy, most of his classmates had been able to produce far greater volumes of magic. The only reason he had been able to succeed was because he had been a summoner.
Had he been a normal mage, it was entirely likely that he would have flunked out, or simply vanished among the crowd.
