Chapter 16 (Part Two)
Elusive
It was finally within the next few days that Alex would turn three and all three of the adults begun to get excited.
Without knowing the exact time of his birth, they were quite unhappy with Anonym. But all she did was shrug and say that it was in the s.p.a.ce of three days, she had lost what time it was because of labour and exhaustion.
Knowing she had done it all by herself, Switch was able to let it go, but Timothy didn"t like it.
"How can you not know your own son"s birthday!?" He yelled at her.
Anonym narrowed her eyes at him, scaring him.
Going silent, he looked away.
"I was on my own, labour lasted many hours, then I had to do what needed to be done after he was born, and straight after...I fell asleep."
Timothy looked at her in surprise. She had been alone?
For a moment, he wondered what that may have been like, but had no idea. Then he looked at Switch, with a questionable gaze, why hadn"t he been there for her?
Switch glared at him. It wasn"t like he choose for her to leave him!
But, it was only another three hours before Alex suddenly fell into a deep sleep and Switch materialized a few objects.
Timothy shook his head in wonder at what Switch could do, and stayed in the room, just like Anonym.
First, a "Degree Magic Orb" floated above Alex. It was an empty, circular, see through orb that didn"t seem at all spectacular. But as it let out a small thread that linked itself onto Alex, it started to slowly light up.
These orbs were very popular and well used, they were easy to get and easy to find. They had a time limit of an hour, but that was all that was needed to find the degree of someone’s magic. Sadly, they were a onetime use, and could only be thrown away afterwards. It had always been like this, but at one time the orb was fixed to be used multiple times…But seeing the potential end of having no more orbs to sell, the maker destroyed it.
Anonym was fascinated to see the orb start to look shinier, and her wide, lively eyes looked particularly charming to Switch.
They waited for a whole hour for this...o...b..to release itself from Alex, as something strange had happened. But, it was obvious, before he was detached, that he held an amount that seemed to be relatively a medium amount. The strange thing was, when it slowed down and they thought it would detach itself, it stayed there. In another minute, a tiny amount was added to the orb, like it had just found another piece of magic.
What was even stranger, was that it looked like it stopped again, yet, after another minute, another tiny amount of magic was released...
"Switch?" Timothy said. "This...This is stating that his magic..."
Anonym looked from Timothy to Switch, "Stating what?"
Switch let out a chuckle, "Very rarely, a person will hold a magic that will slowly increase. Even so, these people would stop at some point, but it is still quite a rare factor and no one knows when it will stop."
When it happened another two times, the hour had finally been up and the orb stopped working.
"So...What does this mean?" Anonym asked curiously.
Switch looked at her, while taking out the "Base Reading Cards", "It means, currently, Alex has a medium degree of magic that could potentially go to a high degree of magic."
Blinking, Anonym shook her head, "Okay, whatever."
Timothy laughed, it seemed she didn"t understand. "They higher the degree of magic, the more powerful you are."
Nodding, with more enthusiasm, she looked at Alex, "Go higher!"
Chuckling again, Switch placed out three cards over the small boy’s stomach area. One was pa.s.sive, another was offensive and the last one was defensive. Instead of waiting for Anonym to ask, Switch said, "These are Base Reading Cards, with every magic, there could be one, two or all three of these. What it will do is attract the magic, making the magic in the cards move, talk, light up or something else. If the magic is attracted to the cards, it means they have that kind of magic."
Anonym frowned, it didn"t make any sense. Instead, she waited.
Upon ten minutes, they found out that only one card was lit up and shiny, just in case, they waited another five minutes but still nothing happened to the other two cards.
Removing the two cards, that didn"t change, Switch placed more of his own magic upon the pa.s.sive card, still upon the Alex’s stomach, to amplify it to see if they could find out what his magic was based on...
At first another card came from the original, flipping around and landing elsewhere.
Then two more cards flipped out from the card, then three and another three.
Pa.s.sive cards that were being copied, flew everywhere, multiplying quite a number of times!
Switch saw this and wondered if there was an end...Not stopping, he wanted to know how many times his son’s magic could copy this card in a row...
Anonym watched as Switch continued, seeing that he wasn"t worried...But Timothy had wide eyes, that made him look somewhat scared.
This...This was not something he knew off! Replicating a card over and more than once and they weren’t an illusion…What kind of magic was this?
After another half an hour went by, they could reach fifty copies of the same original pa.s.sive base card, before Switch stopped.
Putting his hands down, Switch looked at the boy, quite uncertain. At this time, Alex’s magic would definitely not create fifty copies without Switch’s help, but after training and unlocking his magic, he would come close. It also depended on how much more his magic would grow…
"Well?" Anonym asked.
Looking up at her, he slightly shook his head and gave a small shrug, "I don"t know. Obviously, he is copying or replicating the card. The strange thing is...It"s not always just one, it continues to grow in numbers..."
Frowning, Switch looked at Timothy, "What do you say?"
Looking at Switch, he said, "I hadn"t seen this type of magic before at all."
"I will have to go and see if there"s anything about it in the Codex." Switch sighed.
He had a small hope that he could know what Alex’s magic was based on, so they could leave earlier, but it was obvious now that he would have to look around the wizard world of Bracabra and see if he could find something.
Even his previous life’s knowledge didn’t help him…Which Switch found completely strange. He had many types of magic’s previously, and one was even similar to this, but that was an offensive type, not a pa.s.sive. He’d also seen another that could copy but would only last a minute, more suited to teleporting a message and having it disappear afterwards. That type of magic was more common but Alex’s magic was still working. The copies were still scattered all over the floor…
It was strange…
***
For a week, Switch left and didn"t return. He had made Timothy to always be on guard if someone were to come, even though the black dragons were there.
Happily, nothing did happen. But in this time, with knowing that Alex had been able to confirm some things with magic, Anonym tried to see if cultivation worked with him too.
Cultivation on Roneglaise could be started as early as the age of two, with some genius children. But for many children, they started closer to four or five years of age.
The best and first thing fathers or mothers could try, to see if they could start cultivation, was that with the personal cultivation of Senses.
To make it out as a game, Anonym would, many times, blind fold Alex and get him to find her. Sadly, it was slow, but if they did it a hundred times, the child’s hearing should improve. Anonym would also blind fold Alex when he ate, many times, to see if his taste would improve as well.
But now, Anonym tried something different. There was a magical toy that Switch had introduced to her, and it was a battle orb that seemed to defend itself against attacks by moving.
Seeing his mother doing this, Alex got absolutely excited and wanted to do it as well!
And this was what made her realize that he was able to cultivate!
Through his training of the battle orb, he got better and faster! He became so efficient, that in a week, the battle orb was too easy for him and Alex demanded something better! Compared to Roneglaise, battling with a sword wasn"t something many did on Bracabra, and the battle orb was quite an inadequate quality in Anonym"s eyes. She could see many people on Roneglaise looking at it with scorn, saying that it was, indeed, pathetic!
Seeing a strange improvement upon the boy, it surprised Timothy, and he started to wonder what this ‘cultivation’ was…
Timothy also stated that there were higher battle orbs but Switch had never given them one before he had left.
Instead, Anonym shapeshifted to a little girl, so that she could battle with Alex herself!
Again, Alex didn’t think of this little girl as his mother, instead a little girl, just like the panther.
She was a ruthless mother, even with wooden swords! She would trip him, she would hurt him and she would make him expend so much energy, that he would fall to the fall in exhaustion!
She had to teach him how to adapt to his opponents moves, and that if someone were to move around a lot, that he should make the other do it instead!
But, it was starting to become absolutely clear that his endurance, meaning his own personal cultivation of Stamina, had exceeded that much, even Anonym was extremely satisfied!
After another week had gone, Anonym really wanted to know what Switch was up to. He had never said when he would return, but it had been nearly three weeks now and she knew that there were people after him.
He was powerful, but he had been taken prisoner before. Presley was safe with them, so he didn"t have problems there...But was he in trouble?
It was troublesome, once Anonym started to think about it, she couldn"t get it off her mind.
The next two following days, she started to spend time outside, while Alex was sleeping, keeping an eye out for Switch.
In those two days, she suddenly wondered if this is what he felt like, when she had left him...