New Life As A Max Level Archmage
27 – Repairs

Vivi didn’t know how to feel about the story Saffra recounted to her. In an ironic twist, the very spells meant to protect her had been what put her in danger. Saffra wore an expression of guilt and muted defiance throughout her explanation, as if waiting for Vivi to insist that she should have stayed put.

Logically, she couldn’t blame anyone, as much as she wanted to fault Jasper for encouraging Saffra’s behavior. But what alternative had they had? Those aether-cannons had been crucial to their defense. A lot of people would have died if Saffra hadn’t risked herself. And thanks to Vivi’s spells, she had been invulnerable. Jasper had tested that as extensively as he could.

All of that said, why was Saffra willing to risk her life at the drop of a hat? This apprentice was going to be an absolute handful.

The burst of an aether cannon brought her back to the present moment. The swarming monsters had been discouraged by Vivi’s show of power, but monsters wouldn’t be monsters if they weren’t reckless with their lives. Every minute that ticked by, more were gathering the courage to charge again.

This problem was far from resolved, so Vivi refocused. Her eyes swept across the derailed length of the Convoy.

“What are we doing about this?” she asked Jasper.

“Basking under the benevolent shade of our savior until help arrives, I reckon.”

“How long will that take?”

“I know I look like the man with all the answers, but I only have most.” He added, “If you mean what else can you do, there’s still injured, and the engineers might want an escort back. Then again, maybe not. That’s an impressively guarded vault they’re huddled up in.”

“Injured?” Vivi was somewhat ashamed she hadn’t made that conclusion herself. “Where?”

“[Healer] too, are you?”

“It’s not my specialty, but yes.”

She couldn’t cast restoration spells even comparable to an equivalent level [Priestess], but an [Archmage] was defined by the breadth of her capability. There were few branches of magic she didn’t at least dabble in.

“Follow me, then,” Jasper said.

He led her to the train car the injured had taken shelter in. A handful of low-level [Healers] were working on caring for them. The four men and women looked utterly exhausted—they’d burned through their mana reserves a dozen patients ago, if Vivi had to guess.

All eyes turned to her when she walked in. Vivi squirmed internally at the attention.

She wasted no time in doing what she came for. She raised her staff and incanted:

“[Mass Greater Restoration].”

A green nova pulsed through the carriage. Broken arms snapped back into place; huge bloody gouges healed over; one unconscious man jolted awake with a gasp.

A few seconds passed as everyone checked their wounds, and then Vivi was really being stared at.

“Is anyone still hurt?” Vivi asked the carriage.

Nobody replied. She shifted awkwardly.

The healers wore complicated expressions. She supposed she had trivialized their efforts, strolling in and curing the entire carriage with a spell when they had been running themselves ragged.

When no one voiced any complaints, she nodded, turned, and left.

Behind her, she heard Jasper start to laugh, and Vivi’s cheeks would have turned pink in her past life. Thankfully, her body’s new stoicism saved her.

“You were a real people person back on the Sky-Pillar Range, weren’t you? Or is it dragon’s dragon?”

“I’ll grab the engineers now,” she told Saffra, ignoring him. For once, the girl wasn’t looking at her strangely after the display of powerful magic. Vivi supposed it paled in comparison to the previous. Or maybe her apprentice was getting used to the absurdity.

Saffra nodded, and Vivi took off. She flew over to the engine car and pointed her staff at the door.

“[Unlock].”

The spell resisted. Mana drained from her—more and more as she leaned heavily against some unidentified resistance. No doubt she was elbowing her way through a defensive enchantment or two, and a powerful one.

A mechanism clinked as it gave way, and a gesture of her staff had the door swinging open.

Inside were two men, and an interesting interior. The geometric arcane lines didn’t remind her of classical enchanting; they were something else. The glowing orbs radiated an impressive aura that she wasn’t familiar with. These must be the innovations that had lifted the world of Seven Cataclysms out of its previous technological era. She wondered how it worked.

“The [Ghul-Feather] is dead,” she told the two men. “I’m going to bring the engine car back to the Convoy and attempt repairs.”

The two men wore gobsmacked expressions. It was the shorter and hairier man who finally made his mouth work.

“The door! How did you—bypass the wards?”

Vivi met his gaze and didn’t offer an explanation. He shifted in place, then said, “Uh. Yes, Lady Adventurer. Lady Titled,” he hastily corrected. She was glad she wasn’t the only one who could be awkward, though this man’s was a little more forgivable than hers. “But…repair? What do you mean?”

“[Greater Reconstruction]. It may be possible. I’m not sure how it will interact with—all of this.” She waved at the interior of the engine car, the not-enchantments. “In any case, I’m going to put the Convoy upright again, and bring you over.”

“Upright?”

“Do you want to stay inside, or come with me?”

The two men shared looks.

“Inside is fine,” he said slowly.

She left, closed the door, and picked up the hefty block of metal. Mana poured out of her as she fueled [Greater Telekinesis], but with a veritable ocean churning inside her, she was at no risk of running out—nor anywhere near her limit.

She flew back and positioned the engine car onto the tracks, then knocked on the door with her staff. The engineers opened it and peered around, once again adopting dumbstruck looks when they saw they’d been so easily carried over.

“Now the rest, then repairs. Stand by.”

Flying to the section of strained metal joints where the train went from upright to lying on its side, she gripped the interlocked structures and began leaning them up in sections, doing her best to not snap what had survived the impact.

[Greater Telekinesis] scaled, so far as she knew, with however much mana she threw at it. So the spell should be up to nearly any task.

When the many dozens of cars were standing properly, she flew into the air to get a bird’s eye view of the situation.

Her lips pursed.

Was an entire train too heavy?

Pointing her staff, she enveloped her mental grasp across the section of derailed Convoy—around half—then pulled. She lit up like a miniature sun as mana gushed through her magical conduits and expelled out in blinding torrents.

Delicately, she straightened the train out and put it back onto the rails.

Simple as that.

She checked on her mana, incredulously shaking her head at what she found. Even that hadn’t left a dent.

How was she supposed to come to terms with what she was now? She could do whatever she wanted. She was, using no false or melodramatic comparison, a small god. That was a bit terrifying.

She flew to the front of the train and worked from front to back, casting [Greater Reconstruction] on each carriage in order. Twisted metal bent back into shape; shards of glass flew from her surroundings to fuse into panes; even the chairs inside righted themselves.

When she finished, the Convoy was as good as new.

She set down and knocked on the engine car door. The engineers opened.

“Done. Did it work?”

Her biggest worry was that [Greater Reconstruction] couldn’t properly interact with whatever new technology governed the Convoy. Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be the case. After an analysis in which the bald, taller man squinted at one of the power cores, eyes flicking left and right, he said, with obvious shock, “All indicators are showing green.”

She assumed he saw something she couldn’t. A status screen, perhaps, or similar.

“Incredible,” the other engineer muttered. “You repaired everything? With magic?” He gave her a look out of the corner of his eye—considering her in a new light.

“The Convoy can move again?” Vivi asked.

“I…” He looked to his partner. “This is…against standard operating procedures. Normally we would wait for a rescue and repair car. But if we can continue, clearly we should. No point in staying.”

The shorter, hairier engineer scratched his beard with a frown. “Procedures don’t apply, I reckon. This is a first, so it’s hard to say.” He shook his head. “We should run down the length of the Convoy and double-check everything, at a minimum.”

“Do so.”

She flew off to find her apprentice.

The baffled look Saffra had briefly stopped giving her was back. Vivi guessed she wasn’t fully used to the insanity.

“You picked up the entire Convoy,” Saffra said dumbly.

“More like half,” Jasper corrected. “And anyone can pick up half a Convoy.”

“It should be fixed,” Vivi told Saffra. “The engineers think the Convoy can move again, but they’re double-checking that [Greater Reconstruction] didn’t mess with anything. We’re just waiting now.” She turned to Jasper. “Am I needed anywhere else?”

He considered. After a long moment, his expression turned grave. Her stomach sank.

“Do you have [Summon Alcohol]?” he asked.

Her expression was always flat, but she was certain it somehow got flatter.

“If you do, I’m considering marriage. How do dragons propose? Kidnapping a princess would be difficult, but not impossible.”

What was wrong with this man? “Are you incapable of taking something seriously?”

“No. But you wouldn’t want me to. Only happens when there’s way too much blood and screaming.”

It was clearly a joke—yet also not. Which disoriented her. She reminded herself that this was a man who’d reached orichalcum-rank as a career adventurer. His life had been so comically different from hers that she barely knew how to conceptualize it.

Since Jasper hadn’t given a real answer, she assumed she wasn’t needed anywhere else.

Stepping up to Saffra, she withdrew the rescued locket from her inventory.

Surprise followed by guilt flashed across her face. In the chaos, she’d clearly forgotten why Vivi had disappeared.

“If I hadn’t asked you to go get this, you would’ve been here from the start,” Saffra mumbled. “You might’ve saved some of them.”

Some of the ones who hadn’t made it during the initial crash. Vivi was still coming to terms with that. She had even less experience with death than Saffra, for all that no one here would assume it.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There was no way you could’ve predicted this, or I. And it was my decision to leave, not yours.”

She could’ve waited until the next stop to warp to Prismarche, but the possibility of a monster derailing the Convoy hadn’t so much as crossed her mind. And these trains were supposed to be absurdly tough—by far the safest way to travel between cities in this monster-infested world.

Saffra took the locket and looked down at it. A weight seemed to slide off her shoulders.

***

Saffra looked at Vivi, and the guilt she’d been keeping at bay finally became too much. Maybe she could try to hide what she’d done, but she couldn’t stand not knowing. She would rather it be out in the open, and accept her fate, whatever it might be.

“How valuable was that potion?” she mumbled, fiddling with the necklace. “The healing one.”

Vivi tilted her head. “I expect very. Why?”

Saffra winced. Vivi had thought nothing of buying Lounge tickets. Two mithril made for pocket change for this woman. To an adventurer that could erase Titled-rank monsters with a wave of her staff, even orichalcum might flow like silver. Yet even she acknowledged that the potion was ‘very valuable’.

How furious was she going to be that Saffra had used up almost the entire thing? Liquid star metal poured down the drain.

Except it hadn’t been a waste. The potion had saved lives.

Still, it hadn’t been hers to give away.

She wilted into herself.

She felt more than saw Vivi frown. “What is it?” she asked, concerned. “What happened?” After a second, she interpreted what her hunched shoulders meant. “You needed to use it?”

Saffra nodded mutely.

“You were hurt? How? I put enough warding spells on you that nothing short of—” She cut herself off. “How?” she repeated.

“I wasn’t hurt,” Saffra mumbled.

Vivi’s sudden tenseness drained to confusion. “Explain?” she asked, in a gentler tone than Saffra had expected. Which just made her feel worse.

“There weren’t any healers strong enough to help some of the people who were hurt. And I had that potion with me…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “So I used it. I’m sorry.”

Several agonizing seconds dragged by as Saffra awaited her sentence. The condemnation. Or worse. She kept her eyes squeezed firmly shut. She knew it was coming. Maybe not what exactly, but surely—

Something impacted her on the top of her head, gently but with enough force to startle.

Her eyes popped open, and she saw Vivi’s staff hovering over her.

Vivi had…smacked her on the skull?

“You broke the only rule I gave you.” Vivi didn’t look or sound angry, somehow, which baffled Saffra.

She wracked her brain. What rule?

After the incident with the Caldimores, she remembered, Vivi had told her not to apologize for things that weren’t her fault.

“But this is my fault,” she protested instantly.

An arched eyebrow—more expressive than what usually showed on the woman’s face. “You derailed the Convoy? You hurt those people?”

“Well, n-no, but it wasn’t mine to give away,” she said, bewildered that she needed to explain why Vivi should be mad. “It was for me, wasn’t it?”

She shrugged. “If you needed to use it to help someone, that’s fine.” She studied Saffra. “You thought I would be upset?”

Saffra didn’t know how to respond. Her mouth opened and closed uselessly.

Jasper did so for her. “Most people would be furious their newly claimed apprentice wasted an artifact worth a small castle,” he said cheerfully. “Lives are cheap. Relic-class potions aren’t.”

Vivi looked at him, and she almost seemed to grow angry—something twice as terrifying as it should be, because of how normally inexpressive she was. She shook her head in disgust, then turned and studied Saffra again.

She sighed, and Saffra became the recipient of a second, lighter bonk on the head. Baffled, Saffra rubbed the spot, her cat ears flattening down.

“That you used the potion, especially when you thought I’d be upset, is the reason I’m teaching you, Saffra.”

She stared, uncomprehending, at the demon. What did that mean?

“You’re not mad?” She hated how childish the question sounded, but she needed confirmation.

Vivi held her hand up, and to Saffra’s utter shock, a potion identical to the first appeared in it.

She had a second of those relics?!

And was giving it to her?!

Saffra took the item numbly.

“I’ll get you normal potions when I can. And no, I’m only mad at the situation in general.” Her eyes turned to Jasper. “I suppose I should thank you for watching over her. You handled the situation the best you could, given the circumstances.”

Jasper shrugged. “Just doing my duty to humanity,” he said. “I’m accepting any and all riches you deem to bestow for my selfless service, Great Serpent Queen.”

He had definitely been joking, but Vivi pulled out another of the health potions and tossed it to him.

Jasper caught the item, seeming stunned—even he had his limits. He stared at the flask of red liquid, mouth working and no sound coming out.

“Huh,” he said. “Not very stingy with your hoard. Maybe you aren’t a dragon after all.”

Vivi ignored him. Saffra wished she wouldn’t. She really wanted a hint as to whether Jasper’s joke-that-might-not-be-a-joke was true or not, but Vivi kept stonewalling him.

“What now?” Vivi asked.

Jasper tucked the potion into his inventory and considered her. His eyes swept across the Emberblade Fields.

“I wonder how much the loot from hundreds of mithril and orichalcum-rank monsters is worth?” he mused. “Probably shouldn’t let it go to waste, at least.”