The Good Teacher

Al was pleasantly surprised by the satisfying squishiness of the red, doughnut-shaped units floating through the tunnel. Through some deductive reasoning, Al had realised that he was probably inside a blood vessel, and these red objects were the blood that flowed through them. Al had observed these cells, as Guy called them, on a few occasions during his past research work in medicinal alchemy. At that time, he had dismissed it as irrelevant as his work wasn't really focusing on microbiology.

With a mischievous chuckle, Al captured another cell and held it firmly in his hands. He then concentrated mana from his body and injected it into the cell. It was a pointless experiment from Al's perspective, but he was curious to know how these cells present inside Jean's cultivation would react.

As the mana entered the cell, it started to glow with a crimson hue. At one point, the mana injected reached a saturation point causing the healthy red colour to corrupt with a noxious blue tint. This was an expected reaction when foreign mana, which is attuned to another mage, is forcefully injected into a mortal non-magical's body. Unless the body is organically trained to withstand mana through cultivation or brute-force spell casting, the result is a phenomenon known as mana poisoning. Oftentimes, mortals can get mana poisoning by simply being in an area with an unusually high mana concentration.

Just when the sickly cell disintegrated, Al's instincts blared with a vehement warning. Ever since the debacle inside Markus' core, Al had focused his cultivation on augmenting his sense of danger. He had realised that over the years of being unopposed and hiding away behind the safety of the Academy's library had turned him rusty. Unfortunately, his preparations turned futile as before he could make a move, his exposed hand and face were attacked by a horde of blueish-white blobs that grabbed onto him tightly with their protuberances. These blobs were relentless in their assault. Al tried his hardest to pull himself out of their grasp, however, they simply started to absorb him inside their viscous body and pulled him further in.

Once again, Al was assaulted with a sense of powerlessness. But this time, it wasn't due to fear, rather it was because those darned blobs were subjecting him to a battery of toxins that had rendered his mana ineffective, his muscles unresponsive, and his mind sluggish. It was a frightful feeling.

"Please... not... again," Al evoked with a strained voice. He was now being forcefully sucked through the small aperture, to be absorbed completely.

Al's past mental trauma resurfaced once again with full force. Although, in reality, he wasn't as heavily suppressed as when under the influence of the black hole, he had subconsciously given up altogether.

"I guess... this is it..."

Al waited for the sweet release of death to save him from this embarrassing position. But it never came to fruition. Instead, he suddenly felt a forceful grasp and a hard yank on his back. With an audible whooshing sound, Al was pulled out of the aperture leading into Jean's cultivation and found himself back in the impeccably bright clean-room from before.

As seconds passed, Al slowly started to regain feeling in his appendages and found his mental capacity returning. When his senses cleared up, he realised that he was on his back, and staring right at him, was Guy with a face filled with confusion.

"I'm getting a strong sense of déjà vu," Guy chuckled.

"Don't joke!" Al snapped back. "I nearly died in there! What kind of students are you nurturing?"

Al rose unsteadily and added, "I'm leaving this place."

____

"Those cells that attacked you were probably the white blood cells, which are part of a human's immune system," Guy explained.

"What are they doing in there?" Al bellowed incredulously. "Why is this one's cultivation holding a space rending phenomenon that swallows you and disintegrates you, while this one's cultivation houses an unrelenting biological fiend that swallows you, pumps you up with toxic substances and then disintegrates you."

Guy smiled bitterly at Al's animated exclamation. He wasn't sure if there was even a valid response to alleviate the man's agitation.

"That's it!" Al concluded. "This is the last time I'm ever checking any of your students' cultivations. I've managed to survive for this long, and I hope to live for longer. I fear I've lost at least half a century's worth of my life just through the sheer stress brought upon me by your two students."

"Were you able to find anything of note, though?" Guy commented while trying to shift the conversation.

"Their cultivations are completely unrelated," Al shrugged. "I found no similarity between them. The dichotomy is present down to the nature of the cultivation itself."

"Markus' has to do with looking outside, into the world. While Jean's has more to do with looking inside, biologically," Al summarised. "Apart from that, I wasn't able to determine any connection to known cultivation methods. For all intents and purposes, their cultivation method is completely new and perfectly suited to them."

"That's unbelievable!" Jean exclaimed. As an heiress to a prominent Clan, she was knowledgeable about the difficulty of the feat Al had described.

According to her Uncle Jeeves, her cultivation method was customised to her specifically. This in and of itself was a monumental achievement that could only be achieved by mages at the peak of magic, the frontrunners, the veritable geniuses with godlike powers. One must have an immutable and irrefutable extent of knowledge of a field of magic, as well as a high level of familiarity with the subject to be able to devise a cultivation method for them. While the latter condition could be met fairly easily, the former was an incredible feat to achieve by a mage within one lifetime. Yet, Teacher Larks had done exactly this. At least that's what it appeared to be on paper. Jean was fairly certain that Teacher Larks' inheritance may also have played a key role here as it is a culmination of a peak-level mage's entire life. Maybe there were key knowledge fragments in it that might have assisted Jean in some way. But even her Senior Brother had a Specialised grade cultivation method, which also happened to have a nature contrasting her own. She had never heard of a mage being able to create two different, conflicting, Specialised cultivation methods. This suggested that the inheritance must've been from an unbelievably powerful mage - one with a vast repository of knowledge and experience in their repertoire.

Finally, the cherry on the cake that threw Jean for a loop was the fact that this entire time, Jean had been cultivating without even being aware of it! This achievement was a testament to Teacher Larks' skills in pedagogy. How great of a Teacher can one be if they can induce an advancement in their students without them being aware of it until the opportune moment of advancement presents itself?

The aforementioned conditions are incredible on their own. But combining these two independent, and equally improbable events produced this unicorn of an achievement. Although Jean's face didn't show it, she was immensely grateful to Teacher Larks for everything he'd done for her to date.

Till this year, Jean never held any hope of materialising her dream to become a healer. She had begrudgingly come to terms with her inadequacy. However, Teacher Larks had splashed her drab outlook with a beautiful and vibrant coat of paint, changing her life completely. Not only was she given a second chance to pursue her dreams, but she was also given new hope and goal to pursue. She was shown new possibilities and frontiers to reach for!

A congested feeling welled up in Jean's chest. It felt warm and melancholy at the same time. Jean tried to expel it from her body by vocalising her heartfelt thoughts, but she just couldn't do it. At this juncture, the voices in her head - that had been pleasantly silent for the entire day - burst through immediately and dissipated the warmth into nothingness. Thus, Jean shrunk back into her seat and began suppressing the voices through a light meditation.

"By the way," Al said. "What happened before at the village? You left the place so abruptly, and that too with a checked-out expression. Was there something on your mind that was troubling you?"

Guy sucked on his teeth as he pondered on how to approach the topic.

"Well... As I was helping Jean through her bottleneck, I was... how do I put it... shown a revelation of sorts. This revelation made me rethink my beliefs and actions till this point," Guy explained.

"That is common when using |Introspect|. A sentient being's soul is highly treacherous," Al responded. "It is commonly believed that the sentient will and the spiritual soul, although part of the same entity, are constantly fighting to gain control. For a mortal, it is the will that holds the reins, however as a mage advances and attempts to reach immortality, they need to slowly let the soul hold on to the reins as well until the will and the soul become one. In the early stages, when we let the soul take a grasp at the reins to cultivate spirituality, the rogue soul will do everything within its power to take full control and swallow the will. It is a brutal feeling for initiates, and one can easily lose themselves in this process. But it is also a revealing experience as it presents an unfiltered view of our true selves."

Guy nodded affirmatively with a contemplative expression. "As you said, it was a valuable learning experience for me. So, after spending some time to digest the observations, I have decided to take a drastic step forward."

Guy paused and then declared, "I am planning to take on more students, specifically to teach magic and cultivation!"