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    <12/23/1962 – 17:30 | Eldora Tower Fl. 950, Eldora City, Junon, Sprawn Valley>


    When Danton walked into the champion chambers, the situation was just as he hoped it would be. There, mage Sirus stood in the center of the room in silence to contemplate all that he revealed. Danton would now have the chance to find out more, while nobody else is here.


    It''s become clear enough, Danton thought. Leray magic is constantly converted by pure lunar energy, captured into special lunar crystals hooked up to a massive underground machine known only to the top officials as the crystal core. This machine then uses that power to simultaneously convert energy into Leray magic and generate a Leray field, a veil that coats this entire continent with its protective energy. But as a result, the inhabitants affected are also infused with a small amount of Leray energy, storing a small additional capacity of ME levels. When they practice this magic, those ME levels slowly rise over time as they become slightly more powerful. This also explains why Leray wielders end up using less MP energy for every spell each time they invoke it. MP is measured by proportion, though the spells all use the same exact ME points for every person. So it''s like leveling up in a video game. The cost never goes down, but the efficiency is still improved. One gets to use more spells per battle if they get good enough. But how high can a person''s ME reach?


    There were even bigger related questions bogging down Danton''s chain of thoughts. If anyone would contain the answers, it would be mage Sirus. His footsteps approaching the man echoed through the entire space, giving Sirus plenty of warning to his presence, but there was more than a single pair of footsteps clasping to the metallic floor. Walking besides Danton, Mainne kept her head level and her thoughts calm. She agreed to let Danton do all of the talking, but trusting mage Sirus was also a challenge on its own.


    "Ah, Danton. Mainne. Would you like to use the main chamber for your training exercise?"


    Danton nodded his head in opposition as he got much closer to Sirus, displaying his most serious expression yet. Though he planned to stop only two meters away from the guy, Sirus backed up a step, surprised by their synchronized actions. "No Sirus. I came to ask you a few more questions. There is more about dark magic and lunar magic that I want to learn about, and you''re the only guy who can explain it to us."


    "But..." Sirus didn''t have to point directly to Mainne. Danton knew she was standing right there! No, he couldn''t have! Danton told another member of Eldora Tower about lunar magic and the crystal core without even asking first for permission! "What''s wrong with you? You really think it''s safe to just go around telling all of your friends about this?" Danton was at first silent, but with Mainne staring at Sirus like that, it brought a vibe of immediate danger to Sirus''s nerves. What did Danton tell her? What was her reaction like?


    "Like I said earlier to all my staff," Danton proposed. "There will be a few changes to Eldora Tower and the way we are structured. No, I haven''t decided to just broadcast the truth, but I need to be able to trust my friends at such a critical moment."


    "You consider this moment critical? Oh, well..."


    At least he''s shutting up and calming down now. "I don''t know what Lawrence Citrin was doing when he was here, but I doubt it was anything noble."


    Sirus replied on behalf of Lawrence''s long-term bravery. "He kept our system going, while protecting the people of Sprawn Valley from the same truth that could be used to hurt millions of others around the world. Though I fear he had shut down from the inside for a long time as a result of the truth. It''s a breath of fresh air to have someone so willing and awake to the task."


    "So you''re just supposed to trust whatever champion walks up in here? What if their character is bad Sirus?"


    "Then we have to hold off and evaluate their character." A moment of silence passed. Danton was surprised to hear that explanation? He should know considering it happened a few weeks past. "You didn''t know? There is a reason why we have a structure here, an order to how we do things, and how long we wait to tell specific individuals the ways of pure magic. Kite Fargenst wasn''t in office long enough for a complete evaluation. And on top of that, his mind was so concentrated on becoming powerful enough to defeat you."


    He''s right. Danton held his teeth shut, trying not to seem like Sirus knew everything, but Kite''s behavior has always been designed to rival him. He didn''t care about being in charge; he just wanted to be better than Danton, but things are different now. "That''s not the point anymore Sirus. Mainne and I know the truth now, which is good, because I refuse to handle this all by myself. There is a reason why we came up here to pressure you a second time."


    "You wanted to know more about dark magic?" He said as much earlier, but this isn''t good. Danton should already know never to mess with that kind of power. People who get involved can often lose sight of what''s important. They see dark magic as more of a powerful force because it rejects the veil, and with regards to power level emissions, the force is three times more powerful than ordinary Leray magic. If Danton is being tempted with the lure of the power of dark magic, it will turn out to be terrible. The things he could do with a dark mind from the secrets he knows now, it would be a national tragedy!


    "You said before that it was easy for just anyone to invoke, but I want to know what you meant by that. Also, how powerful can that signature be in comparison to Leray magic?"


    "Dark magic is dangerous you two." Sirus knew he couldn''t sugar code this. The only way to dissuade them away from such temptation is through the use of fear. "Yes, it is far more powerful in scale comparison to Leray magic."


    "And it really can kill people, just like advertised?"


    "It''s far worse than that," Sirus claimed. "Yes, it can reject the rules of the veil and cause great harm to targets, but think about what that kind of freedom might do to a person''s mind."


    "Wait," Danton coughed. "Are you saying that dark magic has a way of luring people to use it?"


    "It''s all still psychological in nature. It''s not as if it would be impossible to drag someone so involved with it back to reality. Plus, using dark magic numerous times has proven in a few tests not to actually overshadow the psyche of other people during or after invocations. It''s all about personal character and mentality."


    "Oh." Danton felt underwhelmed. For a moment, it felt like Sirus was about to claim that dark magic has some invisible way of forcing people to this irreversible dark side of eternal evil mentality, but it''s just a cliché power struggle for the wrong kind of people.


    "Certain people for instance may want to take what they could learn from dark magic, and use it to harm other people, all in the name of becoming the top player, or perhaps using it to further some sort of crime spree. In one instance, we detained a Leray wielder for attempting to use dark magic in secret during an official battle with an elite."


    "And what was that like?"


    "The suspect had somehow brainwashed himself into believing that being much more powerful in that way was more important than how he was using his magic. He didn''t care who might get hurt in his career. Though, his radical shift still went unnoticed to the public, and we had to imprison him overseas. No matter what we did, trying to pull him back into believing that Leray magic is best used for the people for their best sport was not possible."


    "Yeah, but how would you even know the difference between each magic type?"


    "It''s not hard once you learn about it in the first place." Sirus knew that answering these questions could be used for such great harm, but he had no choice right now to give Danton the full truth of it. Still, why drag Mainne into this? "Invoking dark magic involves an extra step during spell invocations. It''s a kind of mental and emotional space in your mind that with practice can actually be controlled. Someone who experiences unimaginable rage or pain may subconsciously invoke a kind of mental focus during magic invocation, causing their casting energy to negate the veil. Though the signature has to be reversed too, almost like you simultaneously want to cause harm to another individual. Even then, something like that would be noticeable in public, mainly because that same person would appear to be having some kind of mental breakdown if it is their first use. All in all, it''s still incredibly rare for it to happen by accident. When you can learn to control this psyche, concentrating on building our spells using such emotion without ever needing to express it, that practice will further strengthen your ability to control dark magic."


    "So, if it''s rare, then there is nothing to worry about, right?"


    "That''s what I believe. With all of the sentries and monitors we put out there, I''d be more concerned if something happened to our internal chain of command. So we actually do personality checks and give plenty of our staff vacation days to make sure nothing like that ever happens."


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    What a charade, Danton thought. If anyone gets stressed out or mad enough, they may indirectly invoke dark magic and hurt someone, and by doing that, they could also learn how to control it and become worse. The whole dark magic lure makes sense, but it''s best to know about this ahead of time. "And when used, is there any other identifying factor to distinguish dark magic from Leray magic as it gets used?"


    "Of course there is. To most people, it''s hard to tell. Even to us experts, detecting the use of dark magic isn''t always easy. If someone were to use an unofficial Leray spell, something very specific only to dark magic, then it would be obvious."


    "There are spells specific to dark magic?"


    Mainne winced a little, finally speaking up since this was becoming more confusing. "Why? You thought differently?"


    Danton felt that he remembered Sirus explaining that dark magic spells are dressed up like ordinary Leray spells. But now there are also official dark magic spells?


    Sirus continued his explanations, hoping they would only help all three of them. "Luckily, such spells are so rare, nobody knows about them. So the use of them in the field would send off red flags everywhere. It''s the other method of dark magic we have to watch out for, people who take a well-known, ordinary Leray spell and shift its energy mid-invocation to negate the Leray veil. They take a spell that uses Leray magic, and power the spell with dark magic to increase its power level. Not every single official spell can be manipulated this way, but normally when it happens, there are a few giveaways."


    "Tell us what they are," Danton begged.


    "Well, you can tell if a target is hit with dark magic, mainly because in that moment, their body will suffer real time damage. When that happens, the energy scope is automatically programmed to report back that biometrical data to the user, and turn the energy scope red with a warning."


    "Don''t they turn red with a vital drain?"


    "They do, but vital drain is different than real time damage. The energy scopes are not intelligent enough systems to know whether the user is being attacked with dark magic, or if they''re scraping damage from something else. Since you''re still technically under the ordinary protection the veil provides, the only way the scope can report this to you is by turning red, and reporting the status of an unknown recovery error, in the form of a message that shows up in the energy scope. That message won''t go away until real time damage heals completely... But..."


    "But what?"


    "It''s not the best way to find out if someone is using dark magic. By the time they''re hit, too much physical damage could have already been done. It''s as I said. The invisible digital matrix system flowing through the veil still isn''t as intelligent as we want it to be. Sometimes even after taking real time damage, the energy scope won''t register what is going on, and the warning won''t appear until the second or third time they are hit with dark magic. On top of that, they have to take damage in the first place to be aware. So it''s inefficient. We instead prefer to use our eyes."


    "So there is a visual difference," Danton guessed. There would have to be. If not, then this is already too dangerous.


    "Yes. Most spells that have official projectiles of magic, or some kind of effect in which a spell creates an attack aura moving from point A to point B have a generally assigned color to them. Just like how a Fire Bolt looks like a ball of fire, and has this orange-yellow glow of fiery essence. Or like how a Lightning Strike sends a blue arc of electric energy that simulates the same visual effect as you would see with a real thunder storm. Even non-elemental bolts of energy have a cyan glow to their lighting effect. But when you turn those same spells into versions that invoke dark magic, their lights all change to contain this red radiance of light instead. The color of a blood red aura will take over the original color of the spell instead. When shooting a bolt of ice using dark magic, the bolt is red in color as it travels. When shooting an arc of electricity using the same dark magic, the color of the arc is completely red. Even those pure white lines of Splice generated by the magic of a sword would seem darker and redder in comparison."


    "That''s actually convenient." Mainne had to admit, it sounds like a great way of distinguishing the difference.


    "The veil was created with such rules to change the visual effects of all dark magic. The creators of the crystal core knew what they were doing, and they installed this automatic system into magic projection as an intentional way of making those who would dare use dark magic stand out easier."


    We may have been worrying for nothing. If you can tell who is using dark magic with simple colors, then anyone would always stand out.


    "But they also have another easy tell. The mages who installed that rule also knew that a few rare spells based on the Leray magic system actually looked too much like dark magic, even though they weren''t spells that used dark magic. So on top of spells changing their auric color to a deep red, so would the user’s eyes change in response to negating the effects of the veil during spell invocation."


    "Their eyes?"


    "Yes," Sirus agreed. "You''ve surely noticed before how a person''s eyes, their corneas change color temporarily to a bright cyan glow during magical invocation. It only happens to those invoking a ton of energy based on their maximum proportion. So stronger warriors like yourselves probably don''t have that happening to you anymore. Anyway, regardless of energy proportions, the slightest invocation of dark magic will cause your eye color to change to the same red color with a glow effect. If you see someone with glowing red eyes, and it seems to be glimmering with a normally impossible contrast, then they would be invoking dark magic. It won''t matter if their spell uses up no energy. The slightest invocation of dark magic will cause this effect one hundred percent of the time. So anyone trying to use dark magic cannot just get away with it unnoticed. They would be discovered fairly quickly."


    "But if the veil can naturally detect the use of dark magic, so can other electronic equipment, right?"


    "Um... I suppose it might be possible. Oh, right." Sirus didn''t understand the sudden attitude shift until he was reminded before. "You want to increase the security of Eldora Tower while changing its infrastructure. I never got to ask why you were too interested in redesigning Eldora Tower."


    "Just saying," Danton crossed his arms. "An automatic dark magic detection system that constantly runs inside of Eldora Tower wouldn''t hurt. I know we haven''t had a problem worse before, but we should be making the security of the crystal core our top priority."


    "I''ll look into it for you," Sirus decided. "I''ll have to admit though. At first I was worried that you might be trying to involve yourself with dark magic."


    "Of course not. I would never do something like that!"


    "I know you wouldn''t Danton."


    "We just need to know how dangerous this really is. And that''s why I have one more question for you."


    "Another? Okay, but one more. I don''t like talking about this in the open."


    "No one can hear us. I''ve made sure to cut all feed to this room, and all while making sure the security teams don''t freak out over it. As long as I''m conscious and don''t press this safety button on my belt, nobody will be allowed to come up here, unless they''re authorized."


    "Get to the point," Sirus begged.


    "Lunar magic. You said that nobody could use it. If they try, it would involve bypassing the veil entirely, and their attempt would destroy their own life."


    "I did say that."


    "But why is it toxic for humans to try and use lunar magic? You said something about our ME levels being far too low to successfully use lunar magic."


    "I said that as well. There is no need to worry. The estimated ME level a person would need to have is so far off the chart of growth possibility, I don''t even think about it anymore."


    "But hear me out." Danton pressed on with his potential what-if scenarios. "If a person well-trained with Leray magic trained for long and hard enough—"


    "It can''t happen," Sirus repeated. Somehow, Mainne looked more comfortable knowing this information too. "The highest ME level we''ve ever recorded in a single individual with such practice came to a level around 70,000 points."


    "That''s so high!"


    "Yes, but the estimated level needed to generate the complete use of lunar magic is somewhere around 120,000 points. And I emphasize estimated only because even at this level, the user would still suffer catastrophic side effects per use of the lowest level of pure lunar invocation. We''ve never tested these claims because the experiments would both be highly illegal or immoral. The only reason mages of the past could invoke any lunar magic was from the special arrangements and use of lunar crystals, which can only store enough for a single invocation per ability, something we''ve also confiscated long ago."


    "But, what if someone were to try experimenting on ways to improve their ME levels unnaturally?"


    "You''re what-ifs are getting exhausting. But I''ll put your fears of this to rest once and for all. We''ve determined that the process of forcing your ME levels to go higher using technology or other infusion tactics would in theory kill the very target in question. It''s the same tactic or process we discussed before, part of the very first experiments on lunar magic, where subjects were forced to take in a ton of pure lunar energy. It did increase their ME outright to a small degree, but the shock to their system also caused their organs to immediately shut down, or seizers to occur followed by multiple aneurisms. You can''t force anyone''s ME levels to go up without causing problems. And even if you could, bringing them all the way up to a level that might support any safer usage of lunar magic would indefinitely kill the subject just by having too much magical essence introduced into their system. Creating a stable support system for lunar energy control within a human is physically impossible. So all you really have to worry about is everything I told you while we were stuck in that room for half an hour."


    "That''s good news." Mainne finally let herself sigh, which also brought visual comfort to Sirus. "If both dark magic and lunar magic can''t be used without some kind of problem for each subject, then no random person is just going to try it. If they did, they would either get themself killed, or caught by the surveillance."


    "That''s what I was trying to express to Danton earlier, but I guess knowing more about this situation may help you both understand why we keep this information secret. As I said before, we shouldn''t have anything to worry about. I''d rather not give any bad guys any ideas to try experimenting given the secrets of our crystal core. If they invent a new veil in another part of the world, it would be bad news."


    Danton still felt uneasy about all of this, but knowing that it can''t be possible to stabilize lunar magic, or to hide the more accessible dark magic brought further peace to his mind. So all there is left to do is help lead Sprawn Valley. That means examining documents and signing paperwork to make sure all of the infrastructure runs correctly, and all while practicing how to properly use Leray magic to defend his own title from some sleaze head. Nobody else can take this kind of secret and be okay with it.


    "I''m glad I was able to help. Sir Danton?" As Sirus brought to himself Danton''s attention, he thought of something that would help keep his mind away from such dark thoughts. "I don''t need to remind you that normal Eldora Tower functions will resume in only one day. Then, you and all of your elites will be challenged by various Leray wielders who all want a taste of being the strongest Leray wielder."


    "They don''t even know what they''re getting themselves into." Even Mainne didn''t argue that it wasn''t true, but Danton looked back to her side, sensing that she was still as eager as ever to get her practice in battling styles down for such fights. Even with all of this going on, she still loves Leray magic so much. It''s more than fun for her; it''s a life style that she wants to share with other people. This means shutting down the veil, the source of all magic isn''t a good idea after all. "But now we have to fight a bunch of amateurs while making sure this tower is kept safe at all times."


    "Why so dramatic," Sirus interrupted. "Our security teams are very dedicated to the task. When your updates come into play, I''ll actually feel safer knowing that Eldora Tower won''t ever be able to hide any dark magic users, and I get to experience a long needed remodeling."


    "You want to practice more with me?" Mainne awaited an answer, staring into Danton''s silver eyes while his expression became lighter from the lifted load of stress.


    Danton hesitated in his answer, mostly out of inner surprise. Training with Mainne would be an excellent opportunity to master her battling style of speed and reflex... But there was something about the way she was standing there asking him. Danton felt like it would hurt to even consider declining the offer, and with a sudden loss of words and nervousness that only lasted for a second, Danton tried to clear his throat and sound as normal as possible. "It will allow me to pick up on your speed. But afterwards, I''m going to practice more with Gleeon and Vanoss. Even if I did overtake them now, it''s never too late to learn something new."


    Sirus saw them both off, as they were both heading down the lift going down to the fourth arena room. Mainne must be taking him back to her official arena spot for practice. At least they''re behaving and following the rules as they need to be. Danton needs as much physical practice as he can get. Plus, doing these normal things will bring him to good health, all while preventing anyone from getting suspicious. After all, Danton wasn''t the first person this week to ask about dark magic the way he did. If people suspect that there is a secret in this tower, and should they seek out the crystal core, everything could collapse and fall apart.