"Oh, a Tarnished? What a rare guest."
As Lloyd entered, a woman standing barefoot in the room turned to face him. She wore a long blue robe resembling a scholar's gown and had a strange mask on her head.
"My name is Sellen. As you can see, I'm a sorceress. So, what brings you here?"
A sorceress?
Hearing her words and glancing around the room, Lloyd was hit with a strange sense of déjà vu.
Wait a second… could it be...?
To test his hunch, he cautiously asked, "I want to learn magic."
"Oh? You want to learn Glintstone Sorcery?"
The sorceress named Sellen looked him over from head to toe, nodding slightly.
"You do seem to have the most basic aptitude."
But after a brief pause, she added, "Still, one must be careful in choosing a teacher. I was expelled from Raya Lucaria Academy. I'm known as a heretical witch, someone everyone avoids."
"Even so, you still want to become my apprentice?"
Lloyd flinched at her words, nearly triggering some PTSD.
A witch, a heretic, teaching magic—tough on the outside, but there was something soft buried beneath it all...
"I insist."
Lloyd met her gaze squarely, voice unwavering.
"I insist completely."
"…Ha, what a strange one you are."
Sellen sighed, then continued.
"Fine. I'll take you as my student and teach you Glintstone Sorcery. But let me be clear—I'm strict. I don't believe in gentle instruction, so don't regret this later."
Stop, just stop already. At least other magic mentors act tsundere for a bit. You're going full throttle from the start—any more of this, and I'm afraid you'll keel over in the next second.
Desperate to shut her up, Lloyd quickly stepped closer, making it clear how eager he was to learn and begging her to just focus on teaching and talk less.
"You're such an impatient student... but I don't dislike that."
Sellen smiled, shaking her head as she picked up her Glintstone Staff.
"Introduce yourself first—name, status, what you know about magic. That'll help me figure out where to start."
"Lloyd. Tarnished. Zero understanding of magic in the Lands Between," he replied honestly.
"What is Glintstone Sorcery?"
Throwing rocks with a staff?
"Glintstone Sorcery is the art of drawing power from within Glintstone and wielding it."
"What is Glintstone?"
"You don't even know what Glintstone is?"
Sellen's expression shifted slightly beneath her mask.
In the Lands Between, Glintstone wasn't anything rare. After the Carian Royal Family allied with the Golden Order hero Radagon through marriage, Glintstone Sorcery spread widely across the Golden Order. Even roadside demi-humans knew of Glintstone's existence—some could even use it.
…Though what they used was more like "stone-flinging" magic.
"I have amnesia," Lloyd replied, using his go-to excuse.
"No wonder."
Sellen shook her head, already thinking this apprentice might be even more troublesome than expected.
Still, she didn't mind. After a short pause, she picked up a pale blue crystal from the table and held it out for Lloyd to see.
"This is Glintstone. It's amber formed from the stars."
"Golden amber holds the power of ancient life fragments. In the same way, Glintstone contains fragments of stellar life."
"The essence of Glintstone Sorcery is to explore the stars and their life. Remember that well."
Amber made from stars? Golden amber? Exploring the life of stars?
What is she even talking about?
Lloyd was completely lost.
But even if he didn't understand what she meant, the crystal in her hand looked oddly familiar.
Wait… isn't this just a reskinned Homing Crystal Soulmass? And not even a good reskin—this thing looks practically the same as the original.
With that thought, Lloyd switched to his main character and casually pulled out a Homing Crystal Soulmass.
"Is it this?"
Sellen: "?"
"I thought you didn't know any sorcery."
"I said I don't know the sorcery from the Lands Between—but I do know a bit from other places."
Lloyd answered honestly.
"But I just compared them... and even though they look a bit similar, the core difference is actually pretty big."
As he spoke, he dispelled the Homing Crystal Soulmass in his hand. Sellen's eyebrows twitched slightly under her mask.
"Wait, show me that thing again."
"No."
Lloyd conjured the soulmass again. Originally, he had just wanted to compare it to Glintstone to see if it was merely a reskin. But after seeing Sellen's reaction, a new idea came to him.
Everyone knows that in Souls-type games, magic teachers either die from their research, go mad from it, or go mad and then get killed by the protagonist.
And the best way to prevent that outcome is to withhold quest items—don't give them the key item they need to advance their side quest, and they'll just stay where they are, neither dying nor progressing.
Of course, in reality, Lloyd couldn't do that. People weren't NPCs—if he actually withheld quest items, it might spark suspicion or even turn her against him.
But if it wasn't about blocking items, and instead he came up with a plausible excuse, showed her something new and intriguing to distract her—then maybe he could slow down her research that way...
"Even though I lost my memory, when I saw that crystal just now, it brought something back. The teacher who taught me this spell—he lost his mind studying it. And before he went mad, he warned me how dangerous it was."
Lloyd looked sincerely at Sellen.
"So, until I can be sure it's safe, I can't share it with you."
He wasn't great at lying—but this wasn't a lie.
As one of the top-tier sorceries in the Dark Souls world, even putting aside the horrifying cost behind its creation, the list of people who went mad and died researching it could probably fill a whole book.
"You..."
For a moment, Sellen didn't know what to say.
But the image of that crystal lingered in her mind, tugging at her curiosity.
Any ordinary sorcerer would've dismissed it as one of Lloyd's cheap tricks.
But as a witch, Sellen could tell at a glance—that glow radiating from the crystal was a mark of wisdom, the culmination of countless masters' lifelong study...
"Just one look. Let me see it, just once."
"Just one look..."
Lloyd leaned closer and held the crystal up for her to see.
After a few seconds, Sellen's expression shifted slightly.
"Put it away."
If she had suspected earlier that he was being selfish with it, or trying to trade it for something, those doubts were gone now.
A crystal formed of pure soul...
Even as someone called a witch, with no shortage of blood on her hands, Sellen was still deeply shaken after recognizing what the crystal was made of.
The Primeval Current had explored soul research before. The most extreme practitioners—herself included—had dug out their own hearts with Glintstone daggers, fusing their souls into the Primal Glintstone.
She had once believed that was extreme.
But after seeing this crystal, she realized that compared to whoever had delved into such sorcery, the Primeval Current might have been too gentle.
That intricate structure that sent chills down the spine, the elegance of the soul patterns, and the sheer crystallization of wisdom contained within...
Behind every layer of it, you could smell blood without even thinking too hard. This wasn't something a few, dozens, or even hundreds of souls could produce. Every single strand of it carried a cost so steep, it could shake the world itself.
The most unscrupulous thing Sellen had ever done was slaughtering a group of Carian sorcerers—and using some of their corpses for Glintstone research. But honestly, that whole situation was a mess to begin with.
The Carian faction and the Primeval Current—or more broadly, the Academy faction—had always been at odds. The two sides had clashed in more than one war. Though they eventually maintained a shaky peace, the blood feud was already entrenched. The peace was just for show; behind the scenes, provocations and scuffles were constant, and deaths weren't uncommon either.
As a sorcerer of the Primeval Current, there was no way she'd side with Caria. With her extraordinary talent and unyielding nature, it was only natural she became a prime target for them.
At first, she managed to keep her temper in check. But that Carian lot... how should one put it...
If their magic had even half the bite of their mouths, the Eternal City wouldn't have been smashed into the ground—an event that triggered a whole cascade of problems.
Tracing it back, it all started when the Eternal City was driven underground, leaving a gap on the surface. A group of astrologers came across it and thought, "What a fine spot—why hasn't anyone claimed it?" After confirming it was abandoned, they moved in and built an academy.
Later, when the survivors of the Eternal City crawled back up from the depths, they saw an illegal structure planted on their old homeland. First, they entered under the guise of studying magic—then plotted rebellion. That eventually sparked the First Sorcery War, which ended with their victory and the founding of what is now the Carian royal family.
That's the root of the conflict mentioned earlier. And what came after? Even more tangled and ugly.
Not long after Sellen was expelled from the academy for killing too many Carian mages, the collapse of the Golden Order Dynasty left the Carian royals without their strongest support. The long-buried conflict exploded again.
The Academy faction allied with the Cuckoo Knights and laid siege to Caria, surrounding Caria Manor. But they couldn't breach it—and no one inside could get out either.
While they did manage to detain the unstable queen, they didn't dare truly harm her. Instead, they locked her up in the Grand Library, with a Carian Knight posted at the door.
And though the Carian faction looked like the side under siege, in truth, they had joined forces with the Albinaurics and even won over some of the Demi-Humans, surrounding the Cuckoo Knights and the Academy forces in turn. But still, no one could break through.
On top of that, although the Academy Faction had an alliance with the Cuckoo Knights, the name "Cuckoo" made it obvious—they were usurpers by nature. Crude and foul-mouthed, they were even worse than the Carian Faction, and their relationship with the Academy wasn't exactly solid either. As for the Albinaurics and the Demi-Human alliance with the Carian side, well, that was complicated too.
Well, um...
Sellen admitted she wasn't a good person. But she wasn't like the Carian lot, constantly turning on their own when bored, and she definitely wasn't some madwoman who killed indiscriminately—she wasn't the type to blast even a passing dog for no reason.
She was simply targeting the Carian Faction.
So even though rumors claimed she had killed a lot of people and she bore the title of "witch," when she saw that crystal, she immediately sensed something was off and forced herself to suppress her curiosity.
It was a true "taboo."
If she got too involved with it, it wouldn't just be about whether she was a witch or not. If she really lost herself researching that thing, even Caria and the Academy Faction might put aside their differences, and even the Golden Order Dynasty, currently torn by civil war, might pause the conflict just to band together and hunt her down.
"Your teacher wasn't wrong to lose their mind. This isn't something a normal mage should be dabbling in. I suggest you stay away from it in the future."
Sellen advised earnestly.
"And don't show that spell to other sorcerers. It could bring disaster."
Huh? Is it really that serious?
Lloyd hadn't expected such a strong reaction from Sellen, but he nodded in agreement. He'd already collected the entire crystal spell series anyway—there was no need to learn more.
As for showing it off... anyone who could make him pull out the Crystal Soul Spear would probably be someone he was fighting to the death. In that case, it hardly mattered whether he revealed it or not.
Seeing him nod, Sellen let out a relieved breath—then suddenly remembered something.
"How am I supposed to deal with you? This is our first meeting, and I even told you upfront I'm a 'witch,' and you still took something like that out? You really need to be more careful in the future…"
"I know," Lloyd nodded. "But aren't you my teacher?"
In Souls-style worlds, magic teachers—aside from the silent ones—were always stubborn to a fault but soft-hearted deep down. Especially the last one who called herself a witch—if you begged hard enough, she'd sigh and teach you pyromancy and miracles too.
Add that to the way she spoke earlier, which nearly triggered his PTSD, and it was hard not to believe her.
And if he was wrong, and the person in front of him wasn't a magic teacher, but someone like Patches, just waiting to steal his soul...
Well, what do you think Lloyd's super strength was for?
Looking at Lloyd's dead-serious expression, Sellen went silent for a moment, then suddenly burst into laughter.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing."
Sellen shook her head, letting out a mock sigh.
"I just didn't expect my new disciple to be such an idiot."
That familiar title sent a chill down Lloyd's spine.
"Teacher, can we talk about this? Could you not call me that? I'm a little sensitive to it…"
"Is that so?"
Sellen paused in thought, then smiled again behind her mask.
"Then it's settled."
"Stupid disciple."
"Oh, come on—don't—!"