Chapter 5

After sleeping and pushing Jamie at the back of her mind, Cilia made her way downstairs to get breakfast.

Surprisingly her father was already done making, eggs and beacon.

"Morning, you're up this early?" Cilia was surprised as it was 7 am and the only reason she was up was because her teacher had told her to come to her house at 8.

"Yes, I have a meeting later on. But its surprising, that our lazy lady was even able to wake up in time," her father teased.

The meeting he was talking about was to further enhance the plan of Euthoria, he was a participant as he was specialized in mobility. Things like where train tracks go through, how best to make ways for bicycles and similar things.

Cilia and her father enjoyed breakfast together, while her sister was still sleeping. Of course she would also get a bit to eat.

Cilia was the first to leave as she quickly made her way to her teacher's house.

Duo to the close proximity, Cilia walked most of the time as she only needed 5 minutes.

As Cilia arrived at her destination, the door sprang open before she could even knock. Being used to this she made her way to her teacher.

"Cilia you're on time, surprisingly." Lusha warmly replied as she hugged her.

Cilia was unable to refute her, as they made their way to the library.

"Cilia, today I'll teach you about the darkness and light elements respectively. Many people once and still do believe in gods, although they are a minority. Those delusional people often believe in one god and hail him as the herald of light. As such they condemn anyone using the darkness.

Some even exclude people with a darkness affinity and put them together with devils. As you know, most have already accepted that demons are peaceful in comparison.

However light and darkness are nothing but two more elements. They are enemies and allies at the same time. Darkness and light battle each other, but cannot exist without each other.

However you have to be careful....."

Cilia, who had already deeply immersed into the lesson of her teacher, wasn't able to notice the quick passing of time.

After her lesson, Cilia had a basic understanding of the two elements. Although it was easy for most to learn light or darkness magic, only a few had the ability to combine those two to further the power of their magic.

Unfortunately her teacher was not one of them, as she focused on the other elements.

Cilia chose to learn more about darkness elemental magic, as she had a higher affinity with darkness.

Weeks went by peacefully as she continued learning magic and trained everyday.

One day however an unexpected visitor appeared, Markus.

Cilia had a good relationship with him, as such she made her way over.

"Sorry to interrupt your training." Markus was well liked by most and was capable as a leader. He was similar to Jamie, both were in the council and learned both the same basics of swordmanship. They were similar but so different at the same time.

Markus was a gentle and just person, someone you would typically see in a Novel as the ML or MC.

Jamie however would rather be the Villain, obsessed with the FL.

"Should we spar a bit while talking, I don't wanna lose my motivation." Cilia threw a wooden sword over.

Catching it Markus pondered for a second, agreed however in the end.

"So what do you want to talk about?" Cilia started running to the side, shooting an arrow, aimed at Markus head.

Parrying it with ease, Markus dashed forward as he blocked the other incoming arrows, stopping however for a second, to fix his positioning after the 4th shot.

"Jamie, Darus and a few others are planning to make a move. They plan to make you take missions, I don't however know exactly what their plan is as they made sure not to include the people I'm close with."

"Shit will get annoying again, but why would they try again, they already failed 4 times." Cilia blocked the incoming sword with the body of her bow and dodged behind Markus to gain an advantage.

Already having predicted this, Markus quickly pushed his sword behind him, forcing Cilia to dodge again. "I wouldn't be so sure about that, they have apparently been planning this since a while now. You should be careful."

"Thank you, I will." Separating from each other, Cilia could only dejectedly admit her loss. "You have gotten better again, I still can't beat you."

Laughing Markus put down the training sword. "I think the moment you can beat me in such a spar, is the time I'll retire. I can't have a mage defeat me a swordsman in close combat now."

Having told Cilia the purpose of his visit, Markus quickly left and made his way back to his office as he had a ton of work to do.

Cilia was grateful, that he took his time informing her himself, even though he could have just send a subordinate.

However her thinking quickly drifted back to the words Markus said, she would lie if she said she wasn't concerned. Their attempts had gotten more brazen and dangerous each time. The first time was non-threatening as they only pestered her, appearing before her at least once every hour. Even when she was sleeping.

The second and third were petty tricks to trying to force her by pressuring her with economics and sometimes even assassination attempts. However the most dangerous was the 4th try. They tried to use a death row prisoner, who was imprisoned for multiple charges of rape to manipulate her mind.

Unfortunately for Cilia, she could neither kill them or run away, as she still had her family with her and humanity wouldn't survive if she got rid of the council.

However the real reason was that she was scared. She had never killed someone and although she didn't care about humanities survival, she didn't want it to be her fault.

She was scared that they might use even more dangerous methods or repeat the previous one successfully. She was however still adamant about her decision, ignoring her so called responsibilities she hadn't even asked for.

She knew that her life would only go downhill if she would listen to their orders, as such she could only prepare to the best of her ability's, stocking up different antidotes and learn anti-curse magic.

Unbeknownst to her, the fear she had would soon become reality.

Before that, Cilia decided to visit her teacher to learn more about mind manipulation ability's and corresponding curses as this was her main fear. She already knew that her enemies in the council wouldn't shy from using these ability's as seen by their previous attempts.

According to her teacher, mind manipulation was very rare. One needed to either have used one of their either 3 wishes, or 5 if one's vessel could take that many. Not few people had done this, most were however perverts and were quickly discovered and executed. Mind manipulation magic was even rarer, as one needed to fulfill countless criteria.

Even gods were only able to hope for enough luck, to fulfill certain conditions.

Mind manipulation had 2 types, the instantaneous, this would however only work on weak people.

As long as one was moderately strong or especially talented with mind defence not even the higher beings in this world were able to use this to their advantage. This part was mostly referred as hypnosis.

The second type was the continuously working one. Over the span of years or just months, depending on the level, the controller had to influence the manipulated constantly. This was possible only if the difference in strength was not great.

The drawback was, that the moment the manipulated realised they were being used commands on them wouldn't work as much anymore.

The stages of this ability were separated into 3 levels.

Level 1: The user slowly changes things like emotions, suppress memories or creates some. This is often used to make the manipulated a servant, transplanting the feeling of wanting to serve the user.

Level 2: The user will slowly suppress memories, till only a selected few are remaining. This is often used to create emotionless killing machines as their personality won't make it past this point most of the time.

Level 3: A level most don't even know about as it has a high possibility of failure and just creates a living corpse, only able to follow basic orders. The user eliminates all the previous suppressed memories and gets rid of all emotions. The manipulated turns braindead and won't be able to follow any complex orders.

Curses had a wider area of possibility's and as such were weaker in the specialisation. Although the stages were the same as the ability's most commonly known as traits, as long as one got near a talented mage, that had studied a bit into this subject and the mage would be ready to use a dispel magic spell the user would be freed.

However this was only possible if the manipulated was still in the early to mid levels of level 1. The moment the manipulated would reach the advanced level, the curse aura would start to be hidden in their body, as it would have almost entirely integrated itself into the body.

Only high level curse specialist could save the people in level 2.

Level 3 was with the current standard of the world incurable as the curse aura had already started to slowly eat away at the manipulated persons mind, turning them braindead.

After researching about this, Cilia felt a bit prepared for the upcoming challenge. She only needed to be careful. She was prepared if they wanted to ambush her, as they could only do it outside of the city as laws were still in place.