“Mana burn is what happens when you somehow manage to channel more power than your soul can handle,” Asteria began, looking down at him with such seriousness that he stilled. “The soul is usually very resilient and can withstand stress far beyond what the body can, but when a witch or mage becomes strong enough, their control over mana allows them to push beyond the natural limits.”

  Orion nodded to show he was following along.

  “Up to tier one spells, the strain on the soul is simply too minor. It can heal and endure almost anything, and you’ll just get too tired before causing any real damage. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be.” She sounded torn between disapproval and reluctant pride.

  Orion still had a lot of exp to gain before reaching tier two with his class, but his unique casting style gave him more control over his power output, and he used everything he could muster to summon that single ray of light.

  It hadn’t been anywhere near what even a fraction of a fraction of a gamma-ray burst was, but even such a shallow copy had shattered the limits of what a tier one mage like him should have been capable of.

  “When someone reaches tier two, however, they achieve maturity of the soul. It’s a concept that would have been explained to you in a few years, but I suppose I should have realized you were going to be ahead of schedule,” she murmured, reaching over and smoothing out his messy white curls.

  “At level fifty, you gain better control of your output. Mana becomes something tangible, which you can sense and touch much more easily. That results in increased spell efficiency and potency, but also brings some dangers, chiefly mana burn. Casting spells with too much mana for an extended period puts the soul under more and more stress, until it can no longer sustain contact with the atmospheric mana, and essentially shuts down the body. That you managed to reach such stress levels with a single spell is frankly astonishing.”

  Orion blinked and then shrugged, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  Ophelia snorted above him, shaking her head in amusement. “You really are crazy,” she laughed, gently helping him into a sitting position.

  His head still pounded, but the headache was slowly fading, and so Orion summoned the strength to focus on the nagging thought at the back of his mind, and a System window appeared before him.

  SYSTEM NOTIFICATION

  +2 to Attunement

  +1 to Mind

  +14.250 Exp

  Level up!

  Level up!

  Noticing his dazed expression, Asteria quickly got his attention again. “I imagine you must have gained quite a bit of experience from that.”

  Once he nodded, still surprised by the sudden jump in levels, she pursed her lips. “Your spell alone should account for a good portion of that, but as you might imagine, that’s not enough.”

  She then gradually looked away, and by following her gaze, Orion finally saw the consequences of his actions.

  His last moments before passing out were a frantic attempt to steer the laser away from the ship, and he’d done that successfully, but in the process, he apparently overcorrected and pointed too far in the opposite direction.

  Of the two pirate ships that had attacked them, one was bobbing in the water, scuffed but intact. But it was the other that drew his attention.

  Though it was still floating, and thank everything that was holy for that, a large part of the quarterdeck and the entire mizzen was simply gone.

  Not broken, not ruined. Gone.

  “How many did I kill?” Orion asked hesitantly, and after a brief pause, Asteria answered.

  “Most pirates had already boarded by then, so there weren't as many as it could have been.”

  He turned to face her, conveying with his eyes alone that it wasn’t enough. A sick feeling was rising in his stomach, and if Orion hadn’t already been sitting, he knew he would have collapsed.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Closing her eyes, Asteria told him, “Five. Five pirates were still there, organizing the boarding and blocking our retreat.”

  Orion nodded, thanked her, and promptly vomited.

  While he liked to think of himself as a man of pure logic, unburdened by emotions and petty concerns, Orion wasn’t as distant from his human side as he once believed.

  He became aware of this as his relationship with his mother improved and as he formed new friendships over the years.

  Those two were positives, despite what he might have initially thought. Unfortunately, becoming more in touch with his emotions also meant he was now feeling the full weight of his actions.

  Logically, he knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. The pirates had been more than willing to kill them to take their valuables, and beyond that, it had been an accident.

  If he were generous, he might even say that it was Unda’s fault, since she had been the one to push him so hard. But while that helped him to let go of the initial crushing weight of his guilt, he was still responsible for the death of five men, and worse, he had been rewarded for it.

  Not as much as he would have been if he had chosen a more combat-focused class, which was the one thing stopping him from curling up in self-disgust, but he was still trying to come to terms with it.

  He knew it would pass. He was very good at compartmentalizing emotional issues, and he could already feel himself rationalizing his actions, but it was something he would carry with him for a long time. Possibly forever.

  I don’t even know their names. What they look like. Looked like.

  That, perhaps, was the worst thing about it. The men he’d killed hadn’t even been on his radar. They were just a side effect of his actions, a footnote in a trip that was, by all rights, a major success.

  The noise of the crew celebrating above the deck filtered through the wooden boards, and Orion was briefly tempted to cast a silence ward but ultimately decided not to, mostly because he still felt a phantom ache that told him casting any magic would be idiotic.

  We only lost a few men. To the crew, this was the best possible outcome. It’s only right that they celebrate.

  “It’s going to pass,” a soft voice murmured, and Orion looked over to where Ophelia was curled up on her cot.

  She was turned away from him, her hair back to its original black, but he could feel her focus on him like a heavy weight.

  Amid the chaos of the fight and its aftermath, he had completely forgotten that this whole thing only happened because someone was desperate to kidnap her.

  I should probably feel angry. Without her, I would never have had to kill anyone. But I can’t seem to muster anything but pity.

  Orion and his mother weren’t exactly fleeing from anyone, but staying inside the Sanctum wasn’t an option for now, so they weren’t that far off.

  Ophelia fleeing across half of Cyril, yet still being chased by assassins who were so far ahead she couldn’t hope to defend herself… She was just doing whatever was necessary to survive.

  There was no way he could be angry at her for that.

  “How do you know?” He asked. While he wasn’t mad, he still felt like she couldn’t understand him. Maybe she wasn’t the sheltered princess she appeared to be, not if she had the grit to keep going after everything that happened. But that didn’t mean she knew what he was going through.

  “It’s just how it is. People kill for many reasons, most of them stupid, but protecting yourself and the ones you love is probably the best one of the lot. I know your Moon Mother preaches love and understanding, so you shouldn’t worry too much about having sinned.”

  Despite the overall gloomy mood and the complicated feelings he was experiencing, Orion couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing, genuinely surprised that that was where she had gone.

  It took him a good couple of minutes to calm down, and chuckles still shook him occasionally.

  “Are you done?” She asked waspishly.

  Biting his lips to hold himself back from starting again, Orion nodded. “Sorry. It’s just. That’s really not what I’m concerned about.”

  Ophelia turned around, raising an eyebrow as she looked at him. “Then what is it? I’m pretty sure you are about to summon a rain cloud with how low your mood has been.”

  Sighing, Orion leaned back on the cot, trying to gather his thoughts. It wasn’t easy, given the tangled mass of emotions and contradictions he could feel muddying everything, but he kept at it. “I’ve always been good with magic. I started casting when I was very young, long before I got my first true class, and always saw it as a tool that obeyed me. Something to put into practice my superior understanding of the world.”

  He wasn’t sure if it made much sense to her, but since she was letting him speak, he kept going, feeling the need to get this off his chest.

  “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required,” he muttered, feeling oddly that a Bible verse summed up everything he wanted to say.

  Ophelia looked at him suspiciously, as if wondering why he was quoting what was clearly a religious text. Luckily, she didn’t seem to realize it had nothing to do with the Moon Mother.

  “I wielded power with the naivety of a child. I studied it, yes, I pushed beyond what many considered to be hard boundaries. But I never wondered what it meant for me as a person. Magic always just felt like a puzzle.”

  Once again, he realized he wasn’t making much sense. He’d never run out of words easily, but this time he struggled to verbalize what he was feeling.

  “I fought more than once, with my life on the line. I killed a vampire, and now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I cut off the arm of one of the men who attacked the carriage. But somehow, it’s only now that I’ve realized what it means to wield this power—what the consequences are, whether I intend to harm or not.”

  That’s not quite what I wanted to say, but it gets the point across. I’m not going to explain my actual circumstances here.

  Ophelia sat up, looking at him seriously. After a long pause, she nodded to herself. “I was going to scold you for feeling guilty about the death of those pirates, but I can see that’s not the main issue."

  Before she could continue, the cabin’s door was suddenly thrown open, and Asteria stepped inside with a tight smile. “Gather your things, Valderun’s walls have been sighted in the distance.”

  What followed was more of a scramble than anything graceful, but within a few minutes, Orion had everything he’d brought in a sack, and he and Ophelia walked up to the main deck, where the sailors had paused their merriment to prepare the Blessed Lady for docking.

  Orion still had to wait a few more minutes for the ship to fully reorient, but once the chaos had settled, he was finally rewarded with the sight of the nation’s capital.

  He wasn’t quite sure what he had expected. Although he had read extensively about the institutions that held seats there and Cyril’s strongest faction, the Arcane Collegium, he hadn’t dedicated much time to examining maps or visual representations.

  And yet, as he took in the sight, he couldn’t help but feel that even if he had, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

  The massive, white, and blue walls enclosed an area at least ten times larger than Silverpeak Town. Tall enough to seem like monuments themselves, they were still overshadowed by the enormous crystal towers that soared high into the sky.

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