The next day was an off day from the line, and an off day from classes as well, which left everyone a bit confused as to what they should be doing.
Both Tessa and Lotus were assigned to Karl’s team and not to the healers’ corps like the other clerics were, so they didn’t have duties, and that was a new feeling for them all.
It was a bit like being back in the hospital, sitting around and waiting for something to happen, with nothing actually happening to keep you entertained. Very dull for someone used to being constantly active.
Instead, they all spent most of the morning in meditation, while Karl worked to push the energy level in the focuses back to peak, so he could spread another layer over the spaces.
The progress was going much more smoothly than it had the first few times that he had done this, and the extra practice was likely going to save him days per cycle once he had it fully mastered.
Every little bit was an improvement on his growth speed, and Karl was feeling optimistic that this time might be the one that was going to yield actual results for him.
He managed to finish the layer just after lunch, and stabilize the new focuses before dinner.
The first sign that things were going right was Remi’s change of habits. She made herself a cleansing scrub out of coarse sand and bits of the crystalline plants from her space, then soaked in a bath of monster blood, which was normal for Rae, but out of character for the cleanliness obsessed snake.
The blood softened her outer skin, and a few minutes of rolling around in the cleansing scrub had it all peeled off and her new skin nice and shiny.
Then, she began to expand, the same way that Hawk had when he ate all the magical resources as a juvenile.
Remi had been living on that level of resources so far, as everything that the others had collected was a valuable resource in its own right. But until now, there had been no large changes, and she had just slowly progressed from a tiny snake to a small snake.
Energy was surging around Remi, and Karl noticed a sudden imbalance in the space as the other beasts began to push more energy into her portion of the mental construct, flooding the excited Spirit Snake, and allowing her body to continue to grow as she eyed a morsel that she had been saving.
Someone had given her the heart of the Royal Rank Frost Giant, and while the organ resembled a blue crystal, it seemed to be flexible enough that Remi could squish it into a tube with her coils so that she could eat it whole.
It would have been easier to cut it into chunks for her, but it seemed important to her that it was intact, and her body began to swell as the lump moved down her throat and began to rapidly deflate, being digested in a matter of minutes.
Remi still looked like Remi, but her power level was certainly at the Commander Rank now, and she had grown so much that Karl wasn’t certain anyone else would recognize her immediately.
She certainly wasn’t going to fit in Lotus’ pocket anymore, and Karl wasn’t certain the dainty Nature Cleric would even be able to carry her anymore.
Remi might only weigh twenty kilos, but she was three metres of solid muscle now, and as thick as a baseball bat.
Karl got the feeling that she was still far from fully grown, and that she would keep increasing in size, but she didn’t show any signs of evolving into a Naga, and remained as the same blue and gold Spirit Snake that she had always been.
But some things had changed. For example, she was now playing with ice balls in the air above her head, blowing them around with controlled gusts from [Blizzard] while the crystal trees in her swamp glowed with power.
It became obvious that she was working on something when she brought out her totems to cast fireballs over the surface of the swamp, keeping the water warm.
At first, Karl thought that she was trying to create a new skill by combining Fireball with Blizzard, but what she was actually working on was much different.
The totems expired, and Remi made a new set, this time three instead of the two that she could create before, and with two Lamia back to back, looking around and firing in different directions.
That was an impressive increase in the effectiveness of her totems, but it was a side effect of reaching the Commander Rank and not the actual goal of her experiment.
It was the fog at the boundary that she was trying to create, the melted snow and ice from the blizzard, infused with all of the water magic, but none of the cold. Then, she began to cast chain lightning into the fog.
It wasn’t doing anything much at the start, or even for the next few hours before Karl began to get ready for bed.
But when she did finally make it work in her space, Remi had proudly created a brand-new skill for herself.
[Thunderstorm] would dump magical rain that ate through everything that it landed on, using water magic to penetrate and tear it apart, while random lightning bolts descended from the cloud.
Hawk was not impressed.
[Why more water?] He demanded, certain that she had been planning to make a proper firestorm out of her Blizzard.
[Water makes the lightning happy. Look how well it spreads over the wet things.] Remi replied, wishing that there was somewhere that she could test this properly.
But nothing had attacked them in the past few days, and it would just seem silly to be creating a storm cloud in the middle of nowhere.
So, she contented herself with making it rain in her space for a while. All night, in fact, while she practised changing the temperature of the water, so it could be an ice bath or a comfortable shower.
The next morning was very similar, other than the fact that they had a shift on the line. They were still meditating and working on stabilizing their power, only now, they did it in a nice grassy spot, where everyone could lean against Thor.
Technically, they were still in position, as the Cerro and the Clerics were in the middle of their formation, so nobody gave them any trouble about it while Hawk was circling in the sky to see where all the Hill Giants had gone.
Karl had ordered him not to lose sight of their group, so he couldn’t go too far, and there were no Hill Giants anywhere in his visual range, other than the ones that were attacking dozens of kilometres down the line.
He could go help, but they wouldn’t know who he was, and the Academy wouldn’t let Karl move thirty kilometres or more just to join another military unit’s fight. So, he had to content himself with sightseeing, and stealing the occasional rodent as a snack when he saw them on the move.
Remi finally got to try out her new spell that evening. Minus the Lightning. It was an exceptionally hot day, and a few of the water mages had set up a sprinkler for the off-duty students and teachers to cool off.
That seemed like an invitation to her, so Remi exited her space, startling Morgana with her size as she landed on the Witch Doctor’s shoulders.
“You’ve gotten big. Is this a Commander Rank Remi that I am seeing?” The Witch Doctor asked.
Remi nodded happily, and then cast her new [Thunderstorm] spell, with the lightning suppressed, to create a rain cloud fifty metres in the air, which dumped rain over the small area where everyone was playing in the sprinkler.
The students laughed as the event turned into a full-fledged shower, and one of the Earth Mages quickly turned the area into a stone pool with a sand bottom, approximating a beach.
With the way that it was raining in Remi’s spell, even suppressed as it was so it didn’t hurt anyone, the pool would quickly fill, and then they would have somewhere to relax out of the heat.
Morgana was just about to join them, not afraid of getting wet, when a high-pitched, girlish scream nearly shattered her eardrums.
“Snake!” The boy shouted.
[Hey, it’s the ‘afraid of snakes’ guy. I think he peed.] Remi informed Karl, too amused to be disgusted by the display of terror.
[Don’t scare him too badly, they still need him to work.]
Morgana stroked Remi under her chin as the snake extended forward to get a better look at the boy, who was again cowering in terror.
He froze in panic, and then Remi darted forward to bump her head against his nose, before retreating to Morgana’s embrace.
[I tried giving him a friendly boop, but I don’t think it worked.]
