“Ok, now that you’ve successfully increased the damage, let’s see if we can make it even better,” Alan said to Simon.

  It was two days later and Simon had finally managed to upgrade his stone spear spell to uncommon. The damage descriptor had gone from “small” amount of damage to “modest.” It was frustrating that the terms weren’t well defined, but the fact that it went from common to uncommon must mean it was a noticeable improvement.

  “I don’t know in what direction to go next. Improving the damage any more without being able to see the mana in my body would be difficult.” Simon complained.

  The next few minutes were the two of them trying to figure out how he could further upgrade his spell. They both were experimenting with the form of the stone spear diagram to see how changes would affect it. They were making a little progress when Alan heard a noise from the hall. Holding up a hand to keep Simon silent he dashed to the door.

  Yanking on the handle he pulled it open and found nothing but the stairwell. Looking around he also kept listening but didn’t hear anything else. Deciding it was nothing he returned to the room and closed the door.

  “What was it?” Simon asked.

  “It sounded like someone was chanting something outside our door. I’ve heard something a few times now and I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “I think maybe you are working too hard. Come let us sit and talk of our past.”

  Taking a seat Alan pulled out two glasses and used conjure water to fill them both up. There was way more water than he needed and the extra went down the small sink in the workshop. The water was clear and cold. Raising it to his lips it tasted like a mountain spring.

  “Ah, this reminds me of growing up with my parents,” Simon said as he leaned back with his drink.

  “I know you’re Russian, but where did you grow up?”

  “My parents lived in a small village on the outskirts of Yakutsk. It is in eastern Siberia. When I was fourteen I was sent away to a boarding school. My parents were sad to see me go, but they wanted a better life for me.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They were still living there when this whole thing happened. I used to go visit them when I could, but I do not know what has happened to them now.”

  It seemed like he didn’t know about the absorbing everyone and saving their information thing that the Network had done, and Alan didn’t have the heart to tell him. It wouldn’t serve any purpose now and could only upset him. He could hear in Simon’s voice that he cared for his parents.

  “What about you, where is your family?” he asked Alan.

  “Not much to tell. My parents died a couple of years ago during covid. My girlfriend dumped me six months before all this and my best friend got brain cancer. I hadn’t talked to him in a while before this whole thing started.”

  “I am sorry to hear you are alone, but have you made friends or found a party here in the system?”

  Alan opened his mouth to respond but found he couldn’t get the words out. He tried explaining how he was alone in his zone but it was like his vocal cords were frozen in place. This was more of Master Mazus’ prohibition on talking about the tutorial. Whenever one of them tried to talk about their time in the tutorial they found themselves physically unable to.

  “Sorry, I should not have asked. Just know that you can call me friend if you wish.”

  “Thank you Simon. If we run into each other in a later tier you can count on me,” Alan responded.

  At dinner that night Alan paid close attention to Ezra and Valori, trying to figure out who might have been listening to them outside the door. Ezra looked shifty, but he always did, and Valori was her usual chatty self.

  “Master Mazus, what happens if a spell is upgraded to legendary, is that as strong as it can get?” she asked.

  “You’re setting your sights high if you are hoping to upgrade to legendary already. But no. When you upgrade your body to the next level of power, the rarity of your spells will be adjusted downward to represent the new room they have for improvement. The most powerful fire bolt ever cast by a quartz mage would be nothing but a candle next to a common version at the orange level. It is possible to upgrade a spell throughout your Path in the Network.”

  That night as Alan lay on his comfy bed he thought of what he wanted. The idea of growing his light bolt spell was interesting. Having an incredibly powerful and low cost ranged option would be helpful, but for some reason it just wasn’t something he could get overly excited about. Instead he was more interested in conjure water. It was one of the two starting spells that didn’t seem to have combat applications.

  The challenge of making that spell something useful had been digging its way through his brain ever since Master Mazus challenged them to upgrade a spell. Could he increase the amount of water summoned? Would it be possible to make it more of a spray like a fire hose rather than a blob that collapsed from gravity?

  During their workout the next morning Simon and Alan agreed to spend a few days working by themselves. Simon was appreciative of his help, but he also understood that Alan had his own stuff to work on. At breakfast Alan asked Master Mazus for a couple of barrels. He would need something to conjure water into.

  The master waved his hand and three barrels appeared. Once breakfast was over he carried them up to his room, a feat that was made much easier with his incredible strength. It wasn’t till he got the second one up that he realized he had a spatial storage device on his ring. This is why Tamee had such a low opinion of his intelligence.

  He started off his session by summoning as much water as he could into the first barrel. He was able to fill it up to just over halfway with one cast. Carrying the barrel over to the small sink was much harder now that it had water in it, but his strength still made it possible. He dumped the water down the drain and put the barrel back.

  To modify this spell he first tried pumping it full of mana, increasing the amount that flowed into the diagram. After dumping out the barrel three more times he ended up with an uncommon version of the spell that cost double the mana and let him fill a barrel all the way to the top. Feeling that he had achieved as much as possible by brute forcing it, he then looked for other places where the process could be modified.

  The cost of the spell was not a concern since it wasn’t designed for combat, at least not yet. The volume was plenty for most normal uses, but maybe there was a way to make the amount of water variable. If you wanted to fill up a cup you didn’t need a barrel of water, but if you wanted to fill a tub you needed a lot.

  Now that there was a direction to go he decided to start with the diagram. By moving the pieces around and stretching them out he discovered the section that governed the volume. By increasing or decreasing the thickness of the mana there, the water conjured could be modified anywhere from a cup to enough for two barrels. This earned him another upgrade to the spell.

  Spell: Conjure Water (Rare). Conjures a globe of water. The volume of the water varies from a minimal amount to a large amount. Mana cost: Variable 5 to 80 depending on volume of water created.

  Dinner time was still a couple of hours away and he wasn’t ready for a break yet. Now that he had increased the versatility of the spell he wanted to see if he could make it a potential weapon. When the water was conjured it was always in a globe. He could then direct the globe somewhat, but not like with a light bolt. Something in the diagram must be different about the two spells.

  The rest of the time before dinner was spent with him inspecting the diagrams of the two spells. There were too many differences for him to figure out which was the one that allowed the ball of light to become a bolt. He had a couple more ideas that might help him figure this out, but it was a good stopping point since it was time for food.

  Packing up his stuff he opened the door and stepped out to head downstairs. When his foot hit the stone right outside his workspace there was a flash of energy and then he was enveloped in a shroud of darkness. He couldn’t see the tower around him anymore but he could still feel the stone beneath his feet.

  Then the darkness contracted around his body and it felt like he was burning. Not the burning of a hot flame, but more the melting of acid. He immediately cast minor healing and felt the two energies fighting over his body. The healing energy was rushing to his skin but the energy from the dark shroud kept pushing it back. The pain was immense and he couldn’t force his mind to deal with anything other than pushing more healing energy to fight the melting darkness. Every time he cast the spell he would get a momentary reprieve, but then that terrible darkness would melt away all of that restorative energy and begin burning him again. Over and over he cast healing, burning through his mana pool.

  After what seemed like an eternity the burning pain faded and the tower once more came into view but his vision was blurry. Everything in the tower seemed normal but a quick check showed that his health had dropped below halfway. Even with the healing spells he had cast, whatever that was had done a number on him. If he didn’t have the healer class, Alan definitely would have died. Even now his skin was saggy and scarred and large patches were missing completely, exposing the partially melted muscle underneath. Something was also wrong with his eyes as he still couldn’t focus clearly on anything.

  As the adrenaline stopped coursing through his body his nerves could finally get their signals through to his brain. A new pain, even more powerful than the magical one from before racked his system. Most of his surface layer nerves would have been melted in the attack but the underlying ones were screaming in agony. His muscle control locked up and he fell back onto the floor of his workshop. After a couple of minutes he had regained enough mana to cast his healing spell again. Luckily it only needed him to say a few words which he was able to force out.

  Again a cooling rush of energy started to spread through his body. Without the magical attack draining it, he would actually be able to use it for repairs. This time he took control of it and sent it all to his head. The limited muscle tissues in his face repaired themselves and the skin reformed. The hair on his head hadn’t been affected and he didn’t want to waste any energy on it anyway. His vision also cleared, meaning whatever was wrong with his eyes was also fixed. There was still some leftover energy which he sent to his torso. It seemed like most of the damage done was to his extremities, but he wanted to make sure his core was healthy in case he needed to move quickly. Whoever had done this might be coming by to see if their trap had killed him. If they planned on finishing him off he wanted to be able to do something about it.

  Another few minutes passed as he lay there with the smooth, healed skin of his face resting against the cold stone. The rest of his mutilated flesh was being tormented by contact with the same floor. It felt like he was constantly being stabbed by thousands of knives and needles. Thankfully the next time he cast his healing spell he was able to repair most of his outer flesh. One more break and another casting later and he was able to sit up. He wasn’t fully healed, but enough of the damage was repaired that he was able to function again.

  Warily he got to his knees and looked outside his workspace. Nothing looked any different than when he had come up this morning. Switching over to his aura senses he could just barely detect a lingering energy in the stones in front of his door. Too much time had passed for him to get any more information other than the fact that something had been there. If he had to guess, based on his limited gaming experience, some kind of trap or rune had been placed outside his door.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Thinking back to the previous day he remembered thinking someone was chanting outside his door. He thought they were trying to spy on him, but they must have been trying to place a magical trap outside his room. Yesterday they had been caught out, but somehow today they must have been successful. Simon had been in the room with him yesterday so he discarded the Russian as a suspect.

  The energy he had felt pressing around him was based in darkness. That brought one person to the top of the list of suspects. Unfortunately there was no way to prove that Ezra was the one who had tried to kill him. It would be best to act like nothing had happened as he gathered more evidence. He was already late for dinner but his body wasn’t yet ready for a pace faster than a sloth’s, so he slowly made his way down the stairs.

  When he got to the next floor he found Master Mazus laughing so hard that pieces of food were flying from his mouth. Simon also was laughing uproariously. Ezra’s head started to whip towards Alan as he made his way down, but it paused partway before slowly turning back to face the table. Valori was finishing her story.

  “And that was the last time that boy ever tried to peek in my window!” she concluded.

  “Nice of you to join us Alan, I hope you have been making progress?” the Master asked after he stopped laughing.

  “Sorry, I fell asleep while working and am a little stiff.” he lied.

  Valori looked at Simon before calling “Phrasing!” and they both erupted in laughter. Ezra cracked a smile but the Master seemed confused.

  “What is the significance of this ‘phrasing’?”

  “It’s an Earth thing, but only for those with low humor.” Alan explained since the others were still cackling. The rest of dinner was uneventful and everyone else rose to leave, but Alan remained seated.

  “You ok there Alan?” asked Valori.

  “Yeah, just working up the energy to go downstairs. I’m just really tired tonight.”

  Shrugging, she followed the others down to their rooms. His body’s natural healing during dinner had helped some, but it took a final minor healing spell to get him all the way to full health. All throughout the dinner he had surveyed the other people at the table. Simon was out as a suspect. The Master was out too. He just couldn’t see him needing to bother. That left Ezra and Valori. Ezra was the obvious suspect and his behavior wasn’t helping his cause. Valori could have been the one to do it, but if so she was one smooth operator.

  Alan’s dreams that night were filled with darkness and pain and he awoke in the morning wrapped up tight in his sheets. For a moment he thought he was back inside that trap outside his door, feeling his very body melting away from him. Frantically he tore at the sheets before finally he managed to untangle himself and took several deep breaths. He was covered in sweat.

  Alan was no stranger to pain, even excluding recent events, but that feeling of being enveloped in an essence that was trying to leech away his life was terrifying.From here on out he would be scouring everything in the tower with his aura senses. The cursory glance he usually gave things these days hadn’t warned him of the danger.

  His door was clear and so was the area in front of it as he left to go meet up with Simon. Alan had thought last night to keep the information to himself until he had proof, but upon further thought this morning he decided that Simon had a right to know. He could be in danger as well.

  “It was some kind of trap that must have triggered when I stepped on it. It was a nasty piece of work. I think I can detect the energy of it now that I know to look, but you should watch yourself.” Alan told him while they were doing yoga. Simon had originally balked at the ‘girly’ exercise routine, but after trying it one day he had found it helped loosen his body up.

  “I won’t be able to detect it that way. Maybe I can poke around with a stick?”

  Their discussion of who it was mimicked Alan’s own thoughts. It was almost certainly Ezra, but there was no way to be sure. They both agreed it was an attempt to eliminate the competition. Alan got a chance to show off his new conjure water spell when they took a bath. He summoned a small ball of water in one of the tubs and then caused it to grow until it filled the whole tub.

  “It is too bad you can’t conjure the water already warm. That would save time and mana.” Simon commented.

  After breakfast Alan now had two things to work on. He wanted to figure out how to direct the water like a bolt, and he wanted to see if there was a way to change the temperature. The idea he had thought up the night before to address directing the water was really straightforward. Rather than comparing it to light bolt, he would compare all of his bolt spells and see what they had in common.

  He started with light bolt again and was still dissatisfied with the casting time. He wanted to do something to bring that down but now was not the time. If he lept off onto every tangent he would never get anywhere. He would get all he could out of this spell before working on another. Depth first, not breadth.

  Once he had the three bolt spells to compare, it was a simple matter to identify what parts were in common. It was another hour of tinkering before he was able to incorporate the correct component into conjure water. While he did get an upgrade, the results were not what he was hoping for.

  Spell: Conjure Water (Epic). Conjures a globe of water. The volume of the water varies from a minimal amount to a large amount. The shape of the water can be modified and it can even be moved slightly in a direction. Mana cost: Variable 10 to 90 depending on volume of water created.

  Rather than being able to shoot a jet of water like he had hoped, it was more like tossing a bucket. It could have uses in terms of directing water flow, but it was still not an offensive tool. Getting it up to epic was a worthwhile improvement though. He didn’t think anyone else in his group would make this kind of progress. At first he was surprised that he could make an epic spell, but then he remembered this was only epic for a quartz mage. The Master had mentioned that the rarity would go down as he ranked up. Now it was time to focus on changing the temperature.

  This was going to be a very difficult change. He wouldn’t be able to copy a component of another spell's diagram since none of his spells allowed him to modify temperature. Fire bolts were the same insane temperature every time, and only his light spell and water spell had any other effect that could be adjusted. Studying these two diagrams gave him some ideas, but he was stuck on the fact that his conjure water spell already had that scalable structure in it. How would he make it modify a different aspect?

  Two days later there had also been no other attempts at sabotage, but he had made no progress on his heated water spell either. This wasn’t to say that the time was uneventful. In an attempt to modify heat he ended up upgrading his fire bolt spell.

  Spell: Fire Bolt (Rare). Summons a bolt of fire which can hit a target up to 30 meters away. Deals a variable amount of damage from miniscule to medium depending on the mana used. Mana cost: Variable 10 to 50 depending on size of fire bolt.

  Again, this was a worthy gain, but not what he was going for. He also figured he could add this to his light bolt spell, but that would be for another time. Today was going to be different. He decided that he would get creative. If he couldn’t get the necessary heat built into the water spell form, what if he added fire mana to the diagram.

  The magic primer he was reading was not helpful when it came to telling you how to do things, but it would offer hints of things that could be possible. He had come across a section that discussed that using different mana in a spell was possible, and even part of more complicated spells when he upgraded his class. The challenge was that it is impossible to combine the mana, you had to create separate intertwining diagrams. This would require a lot of concentration and adept manipulation.

  He started by taking the simple conjure water diagram he had originally learned and the basic fire bolt as well and trying to combine them. The first struggle was attempting to create a pool of fire mana at the same time he had a pool of water mana. This took most of the morning. By the end he had increased his mana handling skill to fifty.

  Working on two diagrams was not difficult now that he had learned to work with two manas at the same time. The problem was trying to get the diagrams to intertwine without overlapping. The first time he touched a water mana strand to a fire mana strand he had been blasted across the room. Luckily a chair broke his fall so he only cracked his tailbone instead of smashing his head open on the floor like a watermelon. He was looking forward to growing some watermelons back at his house.

  After a quick healing spell he was back at it again. At no point could the manas touch. This had just been shown to be a bad thing. If this was a two dimensional diagram that would have been impossible, but they were interacting in three dimensions. This meant there were ways to move the mana around each other, but it also made the diagrams themselves so much harder to visualize. By the time he laid down for bed he had been unable to get the diagrams to meld, but he did see a path forward.

  It was just before dinner the next day when he finally managed to intertwine the two diagrams. They were not actually the original diagrams, but all of his experimenting had let him understand which parts could be moved around or changed while still keeping the overall spell the same.

  He watched with his senses as the two strands of mana maneuvered around each other. As the diagram finished he sensed the energy growing in his palm. Instead of getting a ball of water he got another explosion. Similar to his first attempts at heating water in a tub there was an explosion of steam that not only blew him off his feet, but it also drenched his body and clothes.

  Everyone laughed at his appearance when he made his way to dinner a few minutes later. Strangely, Master Mazus seemed happy to see him looking so out of sorts. The following day he attempted the spell over and over with the same result. It was not a problem with his handling of the energy, it was a deficiency with the concept.

  Combining that much fire with the water was causing it to instantly boil away into steam creating an explosion. He needed less fire and heat. He spent a little while trying to break fire mana into heat mana, similar to how he solved the problem of heating up the tubs. However, while he was able to subtly modify how much heat mana was in fire mana, he was not yet at a level where he could break it off to use in a diagram.

  Next he tried manipulating how strong the fire bolt was. If the amount of fire was less, the heat should be lower as well. He again had to struggle with modifying the diagram for his upgraded fire bolt so that he could fit it in with the conjure water one. With his earlier struggles he had gained a better understanding of the entire process and it was not long before he had figured out how to merge the two together.

  This time he tried to build the fire bolt part of the diagram with the smallest pool of fire mana possible. Once he had the two pools he started assembling the spell. One significant issue was that the fire bolt spell was more complicated than the water one, which made it take longer to build. The problem was that they had to be finished at the same time or both would fizzle out. The solution was to slow the speed at which he created the water spell while building the fire one as fast as possible. Easier said than done.

  Finally, he had success. Both diagrams completed at the same time and began writhing around each other. The energy built and he could tell immediately that something was different. Instead of an explosion of steam he instead got a ball of steam that he quickly directed away from himself. He ended up blasting the wall with a spray of hot steam. He noticed a notification and checked.

  Spell: Cone of Steam (Rare). Sprays a cone of hot steam ten meters long and five meters across. Deals a minimal amount of damage to all creatures within the cone which scales with your intelligence. Mana cost: 30

  A new spell! This was not just an upgrade of the previous spell, this was something totally new. He wasn’t sure how effective it would be, though. Minimal was the smallest amount of damage he had seen so far, but it also seemed to be an area of effect spell. He cast it a few more times just to get a feel of the size of the cone.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to increase the damage of the spell. Unfortunately, simply increasing the energy flowing into it didn’t work because the increase in thickness of the strands of mana caused interference in the diagram. The diagram was also so complex that he had no success in modifying it to get any new effects.

  He was still excited about his achievement when he had dinner with the rest. While eating, he noticed that Valori was not her usual energetic self. After dinner he went to her room to talk to her and see what the problem was. When he knocked on her door there was no response. Shrugging he turned and started to go back to his room. At the last moment he changed his mind and instead returned to his workshop, he was excited to keep working on his new spell.

  Opening the door he was greeted with a dark room. There was a flame lamp he could use but past experience had shown that it only provided a dim light outside of the table it was over. Instead he cast his light spell on the lamp and it produced a bright steady light.

  He started this session off by casting the cone of steam again. He just took in the whole process to see if he got any inspiration. Nothing about the mana gathering process or spell diagram caught his attention. However, when the spell itself manifested and the steam shot across the room he noticed something new. The light from the enchanted lamp passing through the steam made small rainbows scattered throughout the cone.

  This gave him an idea. It was stupid and probably a waste of time, but he needed something to enjoy after all the work he had put in. This wouldn’t be easy, though. As a matter of fact it would inevitably be harder than anything he had done so far and would most likely result in something worthless. On the other hand, what is life without a little whimsy every now and then?

  He decided to try and combine a third mana into his spell. The magic primer did not even talk about combining more than two types of mana. This was probably well beyond what he was meant to be able to accomplish, but he felt confident passing the next testing with his epic spell already. That meant that the rest of the month could be his to play with.

  In order to combine three types of mana he would have to increase his mana handling to the point where he could even hold three types at the same time. That was only the first challenge as that would simply enable him to begin trying to weave three diagrams into the space that was already crowded with two. It was not something he could do tonight, or even in a few days so he unsummoned the light and headed down to bed. Better to face this mountain with a good night's rest and a full day ahead of him.