Chapter 44: M.A.T

Star groaned as he stood up, and Druid rose to his feet as well.

"You are going to teach her, right?" Druid asked.

Star exhaled. Being around her now was honestly hard and somehow uncomfortable, but he shrugged anyway. "Yes. I sure need something to keep me distracted from the fact that my old friend who claimed to miss me just killed me."

Druid snorted. "Now that’s just cruel."

"Is it?"

Druid rubbed the back of his head. "Well, at least I know I can still beat your ass. Demon or not."

Star chuckled. "Ah, you’d be surprised." He turned and began walking towards the river after gently signalling Sarah to follow.

"Haaa!" Druid breathed. "Well, Jesper, what do you say we spar, then?"

Jesper’s breath caught. He stared at Druid for a moment, his expression caught somewhere between dread and desperate calculation. "I, uh... just remembered I haven’t meditated today."

Druid raised a brow.

"Y-yes, meditation." Jesper nodded a little too quickly. "It’s important for concentration, and I really need to find out if I can unlock my fourth Aspect." He took a hurried step backwards. "So, I’ll just... do that."

Before Druid could respond, Jesper had already turned and hurried away.

Druid turned to Little Jeremy, but before he could even ask him anything, the boy called out, "Wait up for me, brother!" and quickly chased after Jesper.

Druid breathed out, shaking his head. "Well, that definitely didn’t go well." He shrugged. "I’ll just ask Kezara, then."

...

At the riverbank, Sarah sat on the ground with her legs folded in front of her, her hands resting calmly on her lap and her eyes closed.

Star sat in the same position. Strangely, it felt like déjà vu, except that this time, he was sitting opposite Sarah as her instructor.

However, the thought that she was still scared of him lingered in Star’s mind. The memory of how she had flinched beneath his touch still stung, but he did his best to keep the hurt buried deep down, at least so it wouldn’t interfere with the exercise.

He studied her closely, and that was when he noticed how she leaned slightly to one side, as though sitting upright took more effort than she wanted to admit. Her skin had lost some of its usual colour, and the cuts across her palm were still open. ’I thought those should have healed by now.’

"Are you sure you’re really ready for this?" Star asked.

Sarah opened her eyes, her gaze immediately revealing how disappointed she was by the question.

"I mean, you haven’t fully recovered from last night."

She let out an incredulous snicker. "Seriously? You went toe to toe with Druid, and weren’t you injured last night, too? What makes my case any different?"

Star exhaled, the expression on his face making it clear that he was holding back a reply. "All right, then. Let’s do this."

Sarah searched his eyes, but when she realised he meant it, she nodded and closed them again.

"The first step is to understand the Mandate," Star began.

Sarah kept her eyes closed as she listened.

"At Noble I.V. Academy, we were taught that once you’re blessed by the Crimson Mandate, an ability begins to course through you. I like to think of that blessing as a unique ability. Your power might be similar to someone else’s, but the way it manifests and what you can do with it might be entirely different."

He cleared his throat.

"Now, the power you’re gifted with is your main ability. It’s called your Mandate, the very essence of your power. Yours is Hemomancy, which is an exceptionally rare ability."

Sarah calmly opened her palm. Blood slipped from the wound and rose slightly above her hand. It spread, then curled around itself until it formed the letters of Star’s name.

Star’s eyes narrowed as he simply stared at the floating blood.

The blood hovered above her palm for another second before slipping back into the wound. Sarah closed her hand and opened her eyes.

"I know that much."

"Good. Then you must know there’s more to blood manipulation than moving blood from one place to another."

Sarah frowned. "It’s just blood, Star. What else am I supposed to make it do, dance?"

Star closed his eyes briefly before opening them again. "Think of your ability as a tree. The trunk is your Mandate, which, in your case, is blood manipulation. The Aspects are the major branches, and the techniques are the individual expressions of those branches, like the fruits. Though, in some cases, an Aspect doesn’t branch out into separate techniques."

Sarah paid closer attention.

"Now, you already know what your main ability is, and you can at least control yours. That means you’ve already reached the Commoner rank."

Sarah couldn’t help it. She opened her eyes. "Commoner?"

"Uuh..." Star shut his eyes tiredly. "And you don’t know what a Commoner is?"

Sarah threw him a guilty look. "S-sorry?"

"Haaaaaaaa." Star threw his arms up before letting them fall back onto his lap. "Yeah, no need to be. I’ll just explain."

Sarah’s face flushed with embarrassment.

"Okay," Star began. "Once you’re blessed, you’re assigned a rank based on how far you’ve progressed in mastering your Mandate." He raised two fingers. "There are two lower ranks." Then he raised five fingers. "And five upper ranks. There’s also one other rank, but it doesn’t have a designation. Or perhaps it does, and I just don’t know it."

Sarah opened one eye. "Have you considered becoming an actual sensei?"

Star’s brows knitted together. "No..." He gave her a faint, incredulous sneer. "Even if I did, who would let a kid like me teach them?"

"I would," Sarah answered, almost cheerfully.

"Mm?" Star’s expression faltered.

Sarah immediately realised how weird her answer sounded. "I mean, you know, who wouldn’t want an honest teacher who admits when there’s something they don’t know?"

Star continued staring at her.

"I-I’m talking about the part where you didn’t know the... the designation of the last rank," she hurriedly clarified. "You know, some teachers wouldn’t admit there are things they don’t know."

Her face flushed an even deeper crimson beneath Star’s unrelenting gaze.

"Just continue," she mumbled, quickly lowering her head.

"Right." Star finally looked away, though the slight curve at the corner of his mouth suggested he was enjoying her nervousness a little more than he should have.

"Well," he continued, "as I was saying before the... uh..." He cleared his throat. "Whatever. The two lower ranks are Gifted and Commoner. The names should give you a general idea of what they mean."

Sarah merely nodded this time.

"Good. And the five upper ranks are Unsealed, Revenant, Master, Transcended, and Sovereign."

Sarah repeated the names calmly, and Star nodded in approval.

"But how do I know someone’s rank? I mean, is it even possible to tell? Well, unless the person tells me, of course."

Star nodded. "Aside from being told, you can identify the rank of an opponent or a friend." He raised a finger. "But first, you must have reached at least the Unsealed rank yourself."

Sarah nodded apprehensively.

"A High Mage once told me, however, that some people of a higher rank or greater mastery can conceal their rank from others."

Sarah’s eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, conceal it?"

"To identify someone’s rank, you have to look at their third eye." He pointed to the centre of his forehead. "Each rank has its own unique symbol. With enough concentration, you should be able to see that symbol imprinted on the person’s forehead. But if they’ve reached a high level of mastery, they can apparently prevent others from seeing it. I think."

"Wow," Sarah murmured with a shallow chuckle. "That’s... definitely a lot."

"Definitely," Star drawled, causing Sarah to laugh softly. "And don’t ask me why you can see someone’s rank on their forehead, because I have no idea."

Sarah laughed even harder, and Star soon joined her. Somehow, the shared laughter eased an invisible tension that had lingered between them since they sat down.

"But Druid might know," Star added. "That kid loves anything to do with power."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Sarah replied. But then her eyes narrowed meaningfully. "Speaking of Druid..." She squinted at Star. "His friend Jesper said something about unlocking his fourth Aspect. Wh-what does that mean? I thought that once you unlocked your Aspects, you had the whole thing at your disposal."

Star stared at her for a moment. Then, much to Sarah’s surprise, he burst out laughing.