Simon and Alan were running through the forest the next morning. After they had passed this most recent test the front door of the tower still remained. Rather than working out inside they felt the call of the sun and sky.
Simon wasn’t as fast as him, so while Simon was doing his best just to run through the dense forest, Alan was turning the trees into obstacles. He would weave his way through the trunks, leap over clumps of bushes, and occasionally jump onto a low branch and run through the treetops for a little while.
“You’re a showoff. How can you be so ridiculously fast?” Simon huffed out halfway through their run.
“I’m not that fast, you’re just too big and heavy to run properly. I’m surprised you can even squeeze your bulky butt through the trees,” Alan called down as he was swinging from branch to branch. He launched himself from the last one and landed next to Simon and exploded ahead, leaving him in the dust.
By the end of the run they both were sweaty but feeling the glow of a good exercise. They still had no evidence that this did anything for them, none of their stats had increased, but habit and faith kept them at it. They headed up to the washroom and got cleaned up.
Alan conjured water and was able to summon enough to fill two tubs. His prize from the test had given him the Water Weaver talent and he could already see its effects. Next he placed a hand in Simon’s tub and using about a third of his remaining mana was able to heat it up a pleasant amount. It was somewhere between body temperature and eyebrow melting. He then repeated the process on his own.
“This is the life, Alan. You should forget being an adventurer and become a bathroom attendant.”
“What are you scared I’ll whoop you in this challenge too?”
Simon paused before answering, “Yes.”
That certainly put a lull in their conversation. Their newest test was to upgrade one of their spells. All of them had common spells. By the end of the month they would have to upgrade at least one of their spells to uncommon or higher. Whoever improved the least would of course be out.
“I already know you will be able to do this task. Master Mazus spoke of having to increase the flow of mana moving through our spells. You have been speaking of this flow for weeks. I, on the other hand, have only seen it on rare occasions.” Simon finally broke the silence.
“He also said we could upgrade our spells by making the form the mana takes more efficient. Even if you have trouble seeing the flow, you have still been able to see the form.” he tried to encourage Simon. “I would be willing to work with you on improving our spells.”
Simon demurred and they made their way down for breakfast. Valori and Ezra were already there having a heated discussion. They quieted down when they noticed the other two coming.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t wonder boy. What talent did you pick up from that stone?” Valori asked him as he sat down.
“Water weaver. I can already tell it makes a huge difference when I cast a water spell.”
Ezra started to say something but Master Mazus’ sudden appearance interrupted him.
“Good morning, has everyone been thinking about what spell they will upgrade? I am excited to see what you can accomplish.” He seemed to be in a better mood this morning than any of them had seen so far.
“I’m going to upgrade my fire bolt. I know I can improve the heat of it.” Valori was the first to chime in.
Ezra and Simon shared which spells they were going to work on, shadow bolt and stone spear, but Alan wasn’t sure yet. Light bolt made sense since it was his first spell, but something about conjure water was calling to him as well. He told them he hadn’t decided yet.
“You should decide soon. The process can take quite a while, but if you finish one you can always try improving a second!” Master Mazus encouraged.
After breakfast Alan made his way up to his workshop. With Harper gone he had the whole floor to himself. He decided to work on light bolt. The others had chosen their starter spells for a reason. It was the one they were most familiar with. Sitting in his chair he held his palm up and summoned a light bolt into his hand.
Staring at the glowing ball he now had to try and decide how he was going to improve it. Did he want something that could travel farther, fly faster, hit harder, cost less mana? The possibilities were numerous. He thought of what he used them for. Without a precision strike to a vital, they weren’t very powerful. Alan mostly used them as a distraction during a fight. At twenty mana a pop that was an expensive distraction, although his growing mana pool made them slightly more useful. If the casting cost was lower they could become a real part of his strategy.
On the other hand, if he could somehow make them more powerful then they could be used as more than just a distraction. His spells were really his only ranged weapons at this point. Being able to pick off a few opponents before closing to melee range could have a big impact in fights.
In the end what decided it for him was the challenge of it. Making it more powerful meant stuffing more energy into it, probably a trivial task. Decreasing the mana cost meant making it more efficient, which meant more time studying the energy flows. This was where he had a huge advantage over the others.
He let the bolt he had been holding dissipate and then cast it again. This time he watched his mana flow through his body and form the magical symbol for light bolt. Symbol is a misleading term, it was a three dimensional diagram of light mana twisting and twirling a few centimeters above his palm. He felt the mana move through his body before gathering under his skin.
Then the light mana was pulled out and condensed into one braid of pure light. His will bent and twisted it until it matched the diagram he had seen before. He gave it a push and as the mana started to spin the bolt began to form, a ball of light pulsing and growing. Finally a stable light bolt sat in his palm and he cast it out at the wall.
When the ball formed, the diagram had been consumed and all that was left was the light energy, but there was still a connection between his internal mana and the glowing ball in his hand. As he mentally directed it away from himself there was a pulse that ran through his body and down the umbilical connection to the bolt. That small strand of mana was suddenly severed and the bolt went streaking away before harmlessly splashing against the hardened stone of the walls.
The entire process had taken less than a second but with his growing ability to read auras and energy flows it felt like time had slowed down allowing him to see the potential waste throughout the process. When the mana was separated into just light mana there was a release of the unwanted energy. It was like buying a scarf, pulling the one strand of red yarn out, and then throwing the rest away. Wasteful didn’t even begin to describe it.
Braiding the light together was a brute force process that required a not insignificant amount of his energy as well. Then there was the process of forming the diagram and getting it spinning. If he could find a more efficient, or even faster, way of forming the diagram it could save energy there. Also, that final pulse to send it streaking away seemed like it could be improved upon as well. Where should he begin?
Thinking about it logically, where else do you start but at the beginning. By pulling all of that mana out of his pathways and to his palm before separating it there was a tremendous loss from the mana that was left behind. It wasn’t reabsorbed, it simply melted away into the ambient mana in the air. Instead he would begin his casting by separating the mana where it sat in his mana pool.
The hardest part of that process was discovering where his mana pool was. It wasn’t like an organ that had a place on his body, or even somewhere in his energy pathways, like a giant lake at the end of one line. It was located somewhere between where his pathways and body connected. It was like a filter that skimmed off a small amount of the energy flowing through him and diverted it somewhere else. Instead of a pool it was like a layer of energy sitting over the deeper ocean that was his pathways.
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This realization took him over an hour. Now that the mana pool was identified he needed to try and modify the mana there before it was pushed out to his body. It was much harder to modify the mana while it was still in this layer compared to when it was in his hand. Because of the way it was spread out the mana felt like thin strings rather than the thick yarn he was used to. Perhaps with a larger mana pool the mana wouldn’t be stretched so, but at the moment it felt like he was trying to thread a needle with thick gloves on.
Maybe this was why the mana was sent out to the body before separating it. That way there was a condensed pool to work with and finding strands to pull apart was easier. Just because something was hard, though, didn’t mean it was impossible. He spent the rest of the day, even skipping dinner, and most of the night working on his fine control. By the time his body forced him down to his bed he still couldn’t quite grasp those frustrating strings, but at least it felt like he wasn’t wearing thick gloves anymore. He had also picked up a new skill, Mana Handling. It took him three more days to level the skill to twenty-five.
His mornings were spent running through the forest or sparring with Simon, and he didn’t skip any more meals since Valori seemed so concerned about him missing that first dinner. However, every other moment was spent trying to grasp those tiny threads. He also sometimes would gather a pool of mana and squish it flatter so he could work with strands that were somewhere between the miniscule strings of his pool and the fat yarn he normally dealt with.
Twenty-five in mana handling was like a threshold. Finally he could grasp hold of the mana in his pool before it was pushed out to his body layer. The next challenge was to actually break it up into its component strands. Just because he could hold the mana didn’t mean he had enough control to unravel it. Luckily that was an easier hill to climb and he was holding his first strand of light mana inside his mana pool by the end of the next day.
Now he fed that strand into his body. One strand was not enough, but he found it difficult to work with multiple strands in his mana pool at the same time. Over and over he collected a strand of mana and then pushed it through until he had a small pool of it gathered in his hand. All of the leftover mana stayed in his pool, this was going to save a lot of energy.
Now he braided it, and with his new mana handling skill it was a trivial matter to collect the glowing strands and weave them together. As it condensed into a thick tube of light he bent and shaped it and set it moving. A ball of light sat in his hand and he sent the pulse that cast the ball into the wall again.
It wasn’t moving any faster and it didn’t seem to hit any harder, but there were two major changes. The first was that it did cost less mana, the second, though, was that it was a much slower process. Where he could fire a normal light bolt in less than a second, this took at least two seconds to gather all the strands of mana. However, it did lead to an upgrade in the spell.
Spell: Light Bolt (Uncommon). Summons a bolt of light which can hit a target up to 30 meters away. Deals a small amount of damage which scales with your intelligence. Mana cost: 10
This was a huge improvement in cost, but it came with an unacceptable penalty in time. He felt that he could further lower the cost by making improvements in the diagram formation, but first he wanted to find a way to fix the casting time. Then it came to him, what if the mana was separated ahead of time? With this next goal in mind he made his way down to bed.
Ezra had asked Master Mazus about why they were sleeping so much lately at a recent dinner. They had all noticed before coming here that they didn’t require as much rest as pre-Network. Alan had gone several days, while working through dungeons, without sleep and hadn’t suffered any ill effects, but here he felt the need to sleep every night.
“It is a matter of mental strain. Think of yourself as a race car. Before the Network you had a gas tank and would have to occasionally make pit stops to fill it up. One way of doing that was sleeping. Now with the system your gas tank has become much bigger. Your pathways now provide you with a ton of energy. Do you think you could now finish an entire race without stopping?” Master Mazus asked.
Alan had an idea of where he was going with this, but Simon seemed to latch onto the car metaphor.
“No, you would still need to stop and change tires. Also, the driver himself would need a break at a certain point.”
“Exactly. No matter how big the tank or even how good the tires, eventually the driver himself will need a break. Think of the driver as your mind. What you are doing here is straining your mind in ways it is not used to, so it will need more rest than it otherwise would.”
The next day Simon made a confession as they sparred in the forest. Now that they didn’t need to worry about damaging the tower they were using their weapons. They were only going at about sixty percent because a minor slip-up could cause serious damage or even instant death. Alan had already needed to heal both of them several times for small cuts and bruises.
Once he had failed to angle his seax properly and took a hard blow from Simon’s club to his upper arm. It had caused a nasty compound fracture with several pointy white pieces of bone pushing through his skin. He had tried to heal it but found the spell strangely ineffective, like it didn’t have enough power. Simon had helped him push the bone back into something like proper alignment and then he tried again. This time it healed the puncture wounds in his skin and even caused the bone to fully align itself before mending. It seemed there were limits to what could be healed, at least for now.
Today he was focusing on using the terrain to slow Simon down. His daggers were much easier to maneuver around the trees and bushes. After one exchange where he managed to score a line of red down Simon’s chest they paused so he could heal it.
It was during this lull that Simon made his confession. “I am not making any progress on my spell. I can sense the diagram, but I do not know how I can change it.” Alan knew this was a huge confession for the big man so he took the time to listen as he vented his frustration.
“Every time I cast the spell I see what I am doing, and I even have seen ways I could improve the form of the diagram, but I don’t know how to actually do it. I am on autopilot and I cannot find the switch to take over.”
“Today, after breakfast, why don’t you come to my workspace and we can see what we can figure out.”
“I do not want to slow you down. You have your own work to do.”
“Actually, I already upgraded my spell. It isn’t exactly what I hoped for, but it is something. And maybe working with you will give me more ideas.”
Simon was astounded at his progress and grateful for the offer. They decided that was enough sparring and instead switched to lifting weights. Alan summoned and heated their bathwater afterward and then they were shoveling down their breakfast.
“Oh ho! I like this enthusiasm. Eager to get working today?” Master Mazus asked.
“Yeah, Simon, I don’t think I have seen you this excited recently. You and Alan finally succumb to the sexual tension of your bromance this morning?”
Alan’s fork dropped and he glared at Valori. He couldn’t tell if she was trying to be funny or cruel.
“No, he does not interest me. I like my men to be bigger, not so puny.” Simon shot back.
Alan wasn’t interested in men at all, but found himself giving Simon a hurt look.
“Sorry, not puny, um…adorably pocket sized?”
Even Ezra snickered at that comment and Alan blushed as he finished his pancakes. Then he and Simon both headed upstairs to his workspace and Valori gave a suggestive wink as they entered his room.
The next two hours were spent helping Simon learn the mana handling skill. Alan had the hardest time getting him to develop a kind of mental hands. For himself he had found it natural to apply his will to manipulating the energy, but Simon hadn’t made that leap yet. It was only after repeated castings of stone spear where he watched himself shape the mana that he finally got how he was doing it.
It was then many more attempts before he developed the mana handling skill.
“Blin! This is amazing. Thank you Alan.”
“We’re not done yet, you need to keep working on that skill, the higher it goes the better you can control your mana. Why don’t you try changing the spellform and we can see what happens.”
He wasn’t just helping Simon out. By watching how he shaped the mana it gave him insights into how he could improve his own diagrams. He also noticed how easily Simon was able to separate the earth mana from the rest. It was much quicker than Alan could do it.
During a pause where Simon was going to take a break, Alan asked him if he would cast a light bolt for him. It was the only other spell Simon had learned so far, but it was also one that Alan had a talent for. As he suspected, Simon was not nearly as good at separating the light mana. It seemed at least part of the mage talents had to do with handling the mana.
The rest of the day he scrutinized the way Simon handled earth mana. By the time they were ready to break for dinner they had both made a breakthrough. The damage Simon dealt with his stone spear had increased by a few points, and while it wasn’t enough yet to count as an official upgrade it did give him a path forward.
Alan meanwhile thought he finally understood the difference in how Simon handled the mana and how he did. He told Simon to go on ahead and he would be down in a moment. Once Simon left Alan started casting stone spear himself. Each time he focused on adjusting his handling of the mana. After his third cast he got a surprise.
New Mage Talent unlocked: Earth Mover
He hadn’t even thought this was possible, but he had unlocked a talent without using a talent stone. Alan had only been working to make his mana handling more efficient, but this was a potential game changer. If he continued to work at it, he could gain all of the mage talents without using another stone. Was this possible with other classes and talents as well?
