The room for History and Ecology was dark and perpetually cool, the walls lined with crude, terrifying frescos depicting battles against monsters. The air tasted faintly of dust and forgotten ages. This class, Daemon quickly realized, was less about verifiable history and more about establishing the foundation for the Kingdom's current social contract: fear of the Demonic Spawns.
The instructor, an elderly, stoop-shouldered scholar named Master Eldrin, began the lecture in a hushed, reverent tone, as if speaking secrets.
"Long ago, the world was steeped in darkness," Eldrin whispered, clutching a thick, leather-bound tome. "The Great Demons ruled, their magic a sickness upon the land. Humanity was their slave, our energy their fuel, our lives their toys."
Daemon tuned out the moralizing and focused on the core data. Demons: a powerful, high-level magical species that possessed superior control over ambient energy. Slavery was likely an energy extraction method.
Eldrin continued, describing the eventual, desperate revolt—the era known as the Sundering—where humanity broke free through sheer magical force and unimaginable sacrifice. The powerful Demons were defeated, banished, or destroyed, but their essence remained.
"What remains," Eldrin said, tapping a bony finger against the fresco of a snarling, hulking creature, "are the lesser Demonic Spawns. The byproducts of that long-ago taint. The Goblins, the Trolls, the fierce Orcs, and the terrifying, skeletal Wendigos that plague the outer territories."
The noble students listened with rapt attention, their fear mixed with the pride of their ancestors who had fought in the rebellion. Daemon merely saw a list of biological threats with predictable weaknesses.
Eldrin then shifted his focus to the most dangerous and coveted Spawns: the great aerial threats. "And of course, the Dragons and the Wyverns. Though still of demonic lineage, their power is now harnessed. The Royal Family, the Ducal Houses—they maintain the great aerial beasts as symbols of unmatched power, for war and for travel. They are loyalty and destruction bound in scales."
Daemon's mind leaped forward, processing the implications. Aerial Supremacy. No modern air force existed; the power of flight belonged exclusively to the elite who could domesticate or purchase these creatures. This was a critical military advantage to be exploited later.
The final piece of lore was Eldrin's most cautionary. "Be warned. The demonic taint is insidious. It can enter any animal—a wolf, a bear, even a common field mouse—and turn it into a savage Demonic Beast. Magic corrupts the weak and the unprepared."
The class ended with a palpable sense of unease. The nobles looked disdainful; the commoners looked terrified.
Daemon, however, walked out with a profound sense of confirmation. The world was a chaotic ecosystem, ruled by a hierarchy of magical beings, and magic itself was a pervasive, potentially corrupting force. It wasn't spiritual; it was biological and transmutable.
Daemon's real education did not happen in the sterile, superstitious classrooms of the Academy. It happened late at night, in the deserted, forgotten spaces beneath the Commoners' Dormitory.
Since realizing that his conscious calculation interfered with channeling magic, Daemon had perfected the cold-switch method—forcing sensory deprivation to access his core. Now, he practiced constantly.
He had started with the Healing affinity. Its nature was self-repair, but he needed to isolate and control the energy flow itself. His experiments required subjects, and the perfect, expendable subjects were the fat, brazen rats and rodents that infested the sub-levels of the dilapidated old Academy wing.
He would hunt them in the dark, usually trapping them with a simple weight before starting his observation. His methods were utterly clinical, completely divorced from any sense of empathy or cruelty. He was merely observing physical law.
In the damp solitude, he would initiate the healing flow. He learned to isolate the green-tinged energy and direct it toward a rat with a broken limb or a deep cut. He found that by holding the concentration, he could force the energy to rapidly mend the bone or knit the tissue. The rat would cease its frantic struggling, its body responding to the accelerated repair.
He would then immediately switch affinities. With the rat still held, Daemon would focus the energy of Fire. Not a large blaze, but a minute, concentrated spark, directed internally. He learned to burn the internal organs, cleanly and silently, studying the time required to achieve cellular collapse versus the energy expended.
He learned to use Water as well, channeling the fluid energy to create dense, heavy spheres of water that he would use to crush the smaller mice, experimenting with the pressure required to break the skeleton.
Sometimes, he would heal them, release them, only to recapture them moments later to continue a different experiment. His goal was not pain, but data, and the rodents were simply biological models on which to test the efficiency and control of his Tria abilities.
It was during these brutal, silent experiments that Daemon made a critical discovery regarding his own growth.
The first time he practiced a complex sequence—healing a cut, switching to Fire to sterilize the healing site, and then using Water to quickly cool and stabilize the core—he found the effort left him drained and sweating. But the next night, the same sequence felt marginally easier. The energy flowed with less resistance.
He realized then that the mystical language of the priests was merely a veiled description of physical science. Magical talent was not merely a birthright, nor a spiritual gift. It was a biological capacity.
The core is a muscle, he concluded one night, watching a perfectly formed, controlled sphere of water hover over his palm. It must be stressed, torn down, and allowed to regenerate, just like the muscles Veridian teaches us to use. The constant practice—the demanding of higher output—is causing the capacity of the core to grow.
His three affinities—Healing, Fire, and Water—were not separate magical tricks; they were different manifestations of the same energy system. Healing was metabolic regulation; Fire was rapid thermal kinetic release; Water was fluid manipulation and energy stabilization. And all three, when practiced, increased the capacity of the central reservoir.
The realization brought a cold wave of exhilaration. The nobles, who practiced their single, inherited talent casually, would eventually hit a developmental plateau. Daemon, the Tria-Orphan, with his scientific method and amoral practice regimen—constantly tearing down and rebuilding his core—would grow exponentially faster.
He was not just practicing magic; he was optimizing his biology.
He extinguished the small flame he held, letting the cold darkness reclaim the subterranean space. He had to be cautious; excessive growth could draw the attention of the Arch-Magi, who might see his rapid development as proof of Demonic taint.
He wiped the last traces of his experiment clean and slipped back up to his dormitory, satisfied. He now possessed a five-times augmented physical body, three unique and controllable affinities, and the secret knowledge that the path to absolute magical power lay not in prayer or bloodline, but in constant, calculated, and often brutal scientific practice.