Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«His sudden growth in skill?» guessed Zorian. He was actually surprised she hadn’t questioned him about that sooner. Almost everyone else did. Of course, she would get the same shameless lie that he fed to everyone who questioned him about it. «I have no idea how that happened, but I can tell you it’s real and not some kind of a trick like many people have been suggesting. He has been tutoring me in combat magic for a while now, and he really knows his stuff.»

«Yeah, I heard you were doing that,» Ibery said, causing Zorian to frown. Being associated with Zach had made people disturbingly interested in his activities, no matter how mundane or irrelevant they may be. Having people scrutinize his every action like they had been doing for this past month was a novel experience. Novel and unwelcome. «Kyron has been kind of impressed with your growth, you know?»

Yeah… at least until he found out that Zach was involved, at which point it simply became one more thing that made Zach such a mystery, rather than a product of Zorian’s own talent. Obviously Zach had some kind of secret teaching technique on top of everything else. Obviously.

But it’s not like he was still bitter or anything!

«Impressed, right,» said Zorian sourly. «So what do you think is behind Zach’s amazingness?»

«Err, well… it’s kind of silly,» Ibery said.

Zorian gestured for her to go on. He always loved to hear the explanation people thought up to explain the mystery that was Zach. Much of the speculation wasn’t serious, so much as attempts to think up the most imaginative (or the funniest) solution to the problem, so he doubted Ibery’s explanation was any sillier than some of the stuff he had been hearing all month long. His personal favorite was that Zach performed an ancient ritual where you eat another person’s brain in order to get their knowledge.

«Time dilation,» Ibery said after a brief moment of hesitation.

Zorian blinked. Oh Ibery… So close, and yet so far away…

«I don’t think any hasting spell is that effective, to be honest,» said Zorian. «Zach isn’t just a little better than he was — I’d personally put him around 3rd circle at least. I actually don’t think he has any reason to attend the classes anymore, except that he finds it amusing to do so and flaunt his knowledge to everybody.»

«I kind of noticed that,» Ibery said, glancing momentarily to the small group of people surrounding Zach. «But I wasn’t thinking of hasting magic. Do you know what the Black Rooms are?» Zorian shook his head in negative. «There are rumors that powerful nations like ours have special training facilities that use extreme levels of time dilation. You go inside the facility, spend a couple of months, or even years inside, and when you get out only a day or two have passed outside.»

Zorian’s eyebrows rose at the description. If one of the major powers had something like that, why weren’t the effects more keenly felt? None of the Successor States were shy about using their power, and would have surely used such a tool to churn out trained mages on a mass scale by now.

«It’s just a rumor,» Ibery quickly added. «Something between a conspiracy theory and an urban legend. I only know about it because one of my friends loves those kinds of things and she keeps insisting there is one such facility in the tunnels beneath the city. Supposedly they consume massive amounts of mana, so they must be located at mana wells.»

«And the Hole is the biggest mana well there is,» Zorian noted. «What’s the explanation for such secrecy surrounding them? You’d think they’d be using it pretty intensively.»

«They can’t,» Ibery said. «Or at least that’s how the story goes. They have some kind of severe limitations on their use. Exactly how countries pick who gets to use the Black Rooms is where the ‘conspiracy theory’ part comes in. The more conventional theories suggest they’re simply fancy facilities for training Black Ops super-agents. The wilder ones are… well, wild.»

«It’s a neat theory,» Zorian hummed speculatively. Far closer to reality than anything else he’d heard, though he’d never say that aloud, even as a joke. If she could take such a farfetched rumor seriously, there was a good chance she might actually believe him upon hearing the truth, and that would be very awkward at the moment. Maybe he should try to convince her in one of the next restarts? Something to think about, at least. «But if Zach had spent years in one of those Black Rooms, why hasn’t he visibly aged? And why exactly would they let Zach use one of those?»

«Well, he didn’t have to literally spend years,» Ibery said. «It’s not that anything he’s done is that advanced. A couple of months of intense tutoring could probably produce the effects we’re looking at. And even if he spent years, there are potions that can halt your aging for a year or two. They actually work better on young people.»