Benjamin lay in bed, feeling pain all over his body and tempted to use a Healing Water Sphere.
But the Church was still too close. He didn't dare take that risk.
Remembering the morning's training, he shuddered. Dean hadn't used much force while demonstrating the combat techniques, but even so, it had been a considerable ordeal for Benjamin.
And that was nothing compared to the recruits who came after him.
He hadn't just been a punching bag. Throughout the training, he'd been allowed to fight back and practice the various techniques Dean taught them. But he was still starting from a weak foundation, and even against a bunch of recruits, he was no match for them.
It would probably take ten days or half a month for all these bruises to fade.
Still, looking on the bright side, he'd gotten the most practice.
Didn't everyone say that if you wanted to learn how to hit people, you first had to learn how to get hit? There wasn't much else Benjamin could do but comfort himself with those words.
People grew little by little through experiences like this.
Thinking that, he walked over to the mirror and looked at himself. The face in the glass was battered and bruised, but it was already completely different from the Benjamin he'd first seen. It was still the same face, with the same features, but his whole bearing had changed.
He was no longer that teenager who looked like he was suffering from kidney deficiency. There was more confidence and determination between his brows, and if you looked closely, a hint of slyness, too. Everything he'd been through these past few days had changed him quite a bit.
Come to think of it, he was pretty handsome! He couldn't help thinking a little narcissistically.
But... the longer Benjamin looked, the more something seemed off.
He looked way too much like Grant.
It hadn't been obvious when he'd looked so weak, but now that he looked again, if he got rid of all those bruises and styled his hair like Grant's, people would probably think they were twin brothers if they went out together.
It felt a little uncanny.
But the more he thought about it, the more Benjamin realized he could make use of this.
With a little effort, he could disguise himself as Grant, and it would be hard for anyone to recognize him. Given Grant's reputation and standing among the nobles of the Royal Capital, he could actually get a lot done. After all, Grant was a genius who'd been surrounded by light from birth and was hailed as the Pope's most promising successor.
Seriously, how had he never noticed before that he and Grant looked so much alike?
No wonder Michelle had kidnapped the wrong person back then.
The accidental discovery of another advantage he could use put Benjamin in a much better mood. He couldn't think of a way to use it just yet, but it would surely come in handy someday.
After calming down and getting used to the pain all over his body, Benjamin drew the curtains and prepared to start that day's magic lessons.
He took out the Introduction to Magic he'd hidden the day before.
He'd wanted to read the book for a long time, but he'd never found the chance. Now, though, it was time for him to study magic. At last, he could learn what the people at the Silent Academy had discovered about magic.
However, as he flipped through the pages, he quickly grew disappointed.
"This book... isn't very good."
Compared to Introduction to Divine Arts, Introduction to Magic was far inferior. It didn't offer any fundamental explanation of magic, and much of it was vague. It did discuss all kinds of magical elements, but defined them as "the power that drifted through the world after Cain's death," claiming that mages borrowed Cain's power to use magic.
As a good young man who'd grown up with atheism, Benjamin thought that was absurd.
Just how powerful was Cain, if he could leave behind so much power after dying that mages had been using it for thousands of years?
Besides, he and the system had already confirmed that magic and divine arts were actually the same thing. Did that mean priests and pastors were also borrowing Cain's power when they used divine arts? What nonsense.
Under the Church's suppression, magic had fallen far behind divine arts in its development.
The rest of the book was no better. It simply listed spells one by one, and most of them had appeared in the Bible anyway. They were of no use to Benjamin.
After reading through the whole book, Benjamin found only three sections that were useful to him:
The basics of enchantment, the basics of curses, and the creation and use of magical artifacts.
Still, if he didn't get too greedy, it was an acceptable haul.
So, after skimming through the book, Benjamin immediately turned to the section on curses and began reading it word by word, completely absorbed.
Are you kidding? If he could learn how to lift curses, why would he have to worry about Michelle? Without the curse, Michelle would have to think twice before showing herself in front of him again.
According to the book, a curse was a special kind of magic technique in which a mage used certain methods to plant magic inside another person, weakening or controlling them. There were all sorts of curses, and countless ways to cast them, but every kind relied on one crucial thing:
The curse's medium.
A mage had to use some specific object and special techniques to condense magic inside it before it could become a curse. The object could be food, a weapon, water, or even air. But according to the book, using air or water as a medium required an extremely high level of skill in curses. What's more, they could hold much less magic than ordinary solid media.
As for how to lift a curse...
There were two ways to do it. One was to use overwhelming mental strength to force the curse out, requiring a much higher level of skill than the caster's. The other was to use a magic spell of the opposite element, with the same medium the caster had used, and plant a new curse in yourself. You could fight poison with poison, making the two curses collide and cancel each other out.
Benjamin figured he'd have a hard time reaching the level needed for the first method, so he had no choice but to go with the second.
"Do you remember what happened when Michelle cursed me? Go over it again," he asked the system.
He needed to figure out what medium and what magic Michelle had used.
Please, let it be fire magic. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to use a spell of the opposite element himself.
"Of course. She recited a pretty complicated incantation, and a dark red light suddenly flew into your chest," the system replied.
"You've already told me that. I want more details," Benjamin pressed. "What element was her magic? Did you detect any fire elements gathering? How did that light fly into my chest? Did she use anything as a medium?"
"Oh, I see. Wait a moment while I analyze it," the system replied.
Then it fell silent, and no matter how Benjamin called out to it, there was no response.
Again?
There was nothing Benjamin could do but wait anxiously.
One minute, two minutes... He felt as if he were watching a download progress bar stuck at 99.9 percent. He couldn't focus on anything else; he just wanted the download to finish. But it remained stuck at that last little bit, refusing to complete.
The one thing he could be thankful for was that the system couldn't crash.
...It couldn't crash, could it?
Finally, after who knew how long, the system spoke again:
"According to the system's analysis, fire elements gathered when Michelle cast the curse. There's a 98 percent chance she used fire magic. Also, she was holding a leaf between her fingers at the time. It was very likely the curse's medium. A comparison against all the trees in Benjamin's memory did not identify the type of leaf."
As it spoke, an image appeared in front of Benjamin, like a picture preview on a computer.
The image showed an enlarged view of the leaf Michelle had held between her fingers:
It was a deep green leaf, yellowing in places and slightly curled. It was fan-shaped and quite pretty, like a delicate little natural fan.
Benjamin froze the moment he saw it.
"What the hell... isn't that a ginkgo leaf?"
Before you continue