by Andrew Rowe
I’d like to thank the many readers over on my blog for their encouragements and suggestions, especially during the period of time I was debating many title options.
Finally, thanks to the community over on Reddit’s /r/fantasy, for providing constant encouragement throughout the writing process.
Similar Works
I’m often asked for recommendations for books similar to Sufficiently Advanced Magic.
If you’re looking for another magical school story with a protagonist that does a lot of research into how magic works, I would recommend the web serial Mother of Learning.
If you’re looking for another book with a lot of anime-flavored combat scenes, I’d recommend the Cradle series by Will Wight and the web serial Forge of Destiny.
If you’re looking for more books with strong RPG inspiration, there are a couple up-and-coming genre labels to look for.
“LitRPGs” tend to literally take place in a video game, or in a world that has overt RPG mechanics, such as character classes and levels. Some classic examples include the .Hack series and Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. If you’re looking for one of these, I’d recommend Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko and the web serial Delve.
There are a number of places to find great LitRPG recommendations. For example, there’s a large LitRPG Facebook group that can be found here. There is also a LitRPG subreddit, which can be found here.
“GameLit” is a slightly broader genre that includes game inspired fiction in general. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline would be a good example of this.
If you’re looking for an online community for more GameLit recommendations, you may want to look at GameLit Society group. There’s also a more general GameLit group. There’s also a GameLit subreddit, which can be found here.
Finally, we’ve recently come up with a term to describe books like my own — “progression fantasy”. You can find more discussion of this subgenre on /r/progressionfantasy on reddit.
Closing Notes From the Author
Thanks to everyone who completed this book. I realize it’s been a long wait for some of you, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed the read.
This one was a bit of a departure from the usual style, since it was covering a winter vacation, rather than a large portion of the school year like the previous books. That made it a significant challenge, and I hope the book turned out in a way that my readers find enjoyable.
There are plenty of books still coming in the series. I expect that Book 4 will be more similar to the first two, since Corin will be going back to Lorian Heights for his second year — at least initially.
When I originally started this series, I estimated the scope at six to seven books. This may still hold true, but I suspect it may drift even longer. The important part is that you should know that there’s still plenty more of Corin and the others to come.
If you’re looking for more books in the same universe to read in the meantime, there are two other series to look at with books that are already available.
The War of Broken Mirrors is on Keras’ home continent and earlier in the timeline. This is a completed trilogy with three books. (There may be more books with the surviving characters from this series later, but they’ll probably be considered a new series.)
The Weapons & Wielders books begin with the story Keras is telling the others during the train ride. That story focuses on Keras first encountering Dawnbringer and the other Six Sacred Swords.
Finally, there’s a preview chapter of a brand-new story in the same universe just ahead. It’s from the perspective of a character you’ve heard a lot about, but haven’t seen as a narrator yet. If you’re interested, keep reading: I don’t want to spoil the surprise of figuring out the narrator’s identity.
Preview Chapter – Carefully Worded Wishes
Stealing from the grave of a god isn’t something I’d recommend to others. It was pretty fun, though, and more or less a victimless crime.
The Authority had been born and died many times, and I couldn’t see any given one of them being that important to him. He couldn’t possibly need all of the sacred treasures contained within them, could he? Maybe a handful of graves worth, at most.
The rest of us, being poorer in sacred treasures, needed them far more. This was doubly true for Rai and myself, who up to that point, had no treasures at all.
Or none of the conventional variety, at least. A loving family is a treasure worth more than any sacred treasure. I understood that even then, as I risked my life alongside the one who meant the most to me.
Together, we stood at the base of the mountainside below the tomb.
We shared identical glances and nods, then turned our hands toward the rock.
I closed my eyes, assisting me in envisioning my spirit. Using such a vulgar strategy for focusing would have been fatal in battle, but I was just a kid.
My spiritual energy flowed smoothly within my body. I didn’t have a dedication yet, and thus, the structure of my soul was a smoothly flowing river. Not a wide or fast-flowing river, not yet. But enough to assist in a simple task such as this one.
I focused on that flow, concentrated, and shifted it to collect into upper arms and hands. Immediately, I felt my strength improve in those locations.
And with that, I began to climb. Rai followed just behind me, as usual.
Up. Up.
I shifted my spirit as I moved, manipulating it to my legs when I needed a foothold rather than a handhold. The mountainside was steep, but with my spirit reinforcing my body, I wasn’t scared. Even if I fell, I trusted I could spread my spirit enough to absorb much of the impact.
I wasn’t afraid of much back then in general. Such is the strength and the flaw of an unburdened youth.
Reaching the top took nearly an hour. I remember the sweat dripping from my forehead into my eyes, and that my efforts to reach up and wipe it away only made the burning that much worse.
My muscles burned, too, but not nearly so much as they might have unassisted. My spirit was strong for my age and carried much of my weight.
Rai moved behind me on the mountainside, slowly but with great certainty, as she always did.
I pulled myself over the top of the mountain and looked down at her.
I didn’t have to worry. My twin would catch up to me. She always did.
I didn’t reach down to offer her a hand as she approached my height. I wouldn’t dishonor her with the presumption that she needed help with such a trivial task.
Perhaps I should have. For all our shared traits, I often failed to understand her. I didn’t understand the foreign expression of hurt in her eyes when she approached and pulled herself, alone, atop the mountain.
Instead, I simply grinned. “Ready to get in trouble?”
She offered me a nod. “I will do this for you, sister.”
“Not for me,” I corrected. “Never for me. This is for our parents, remember?”
Rai’s expression showed only the slightest hint of a frown. “Of course.”
“C’mon!” I waved eagerly and turned to rush toward the building.
The Seventy-Seventh Authority’s Grave was marked by a single stone door set into the top of the ground. More a hatch than a door, really. Like a wine cellar, but for god corpses.
Maybe just one god corpse? I wasn’t sure.
The door was covered in sacred glyphs. Some were mere text: Your usual “Keep out, dead god in here, heavily riddled with deadly traps, thanks.”
The rest were glowing glyphs invested with spiritual power. The type that would ordinarily keep unscrupulous children from robbing and otherwise mildly desecrating such an important place.
I could not have hoped to break down such a door with my own meager spiritual power. It was likely wrought of the power of Masters or beyond. My strength was a raindrop; the runes were an ocean.
But enough rain can wear down even the mightiest mountain in time.
I mean that in the most literal possible
sense.
The door was perfectly intact. Years of rainfall and a recent flood, however, had eroded some of the nearby rock. Perhaps some of the increasingly-frequent earthquakes had contributed, too.
And so, while the door stood unmarred by the rigors of age, the large crack in the ground nearby provided an entrance.
It was a thin one. Too thick, perhaps, for most adults to slip through. A child, especially one on the thin and admittedly scrawny side like Rai or myself, had a much better chance.
I had improved this chance by widening the hole gradually over the course of the last three months. I was not foolish enough to try to squeeze into such a place and get stuck, especially considering the types of traps and sacred beasts that were likely to take advantage if I was in such a vulnerable state.
Each time I worked, I covered my progress by moving nearby brush to cover the hole. Few traveled to this obscure location. There were many other graves of the Authority that were closer to major cities or otherwise more easily accessible for pilgrimages. My heart had nearly leapt out of my chest the one time I had seen another person — a wandering monk making a tour of all of the graves — but he simply bowed his head, gave me a gap-toothed grin, and left a bowl of softly glowing rice as an offering at the entrance of the tomb.
The rice was delicious. Enough that I brought half home to share with Rai. She didn’t ask where they came from. Even then, she knew better.
Don’t look at me like that. Why would anyone let good rice go to waste? If the Authority was dead, he wouldn’t care. If he was currently alive, I judged that he was very unlikely to come by just in time to eat some rice left on the top of one of his graves.
Really, I was doing everyone a favor by eating it.
Anyway, the delicious glowy rice was likely a source of some of my early spiritual power, but I had little idea of that at the time. I did, however, know that I needed more power. Far more.
I’ll get to why later.
My hands moved swiftly at the fissure near the tomb, displacing the branches and rocks I’d used to conceal the entrance.
I turned toward Rai. She was already handing me the lantern, affixed to a rope.
Yes, we had rope, and we didn’t use it to help climb. Stop judging me like that. We didn’t need it.
I tied the rope around the metal ring at the top of the lantern and lowered it into the hole.
Inside, I could see a structure very different from the outside. It was perfectly cut grey-white stone. I don’t know what type, sorry. The rocky kind? Never been an expert at that sort of thing.
I’m not a murderer of rocks like you are.
I swung the lantern from side-to-side just a bit, hoping to find any obvious traps. I didn’t see any.
Then I let the lantern touch the floor.
I heard an immediate “click”.
Spears shot out of holes in the nearby walls. Fortunately, Rai and I were still up top, and the lantern itself was so low to the ground that it didn’t get hit.
The rope was nicked by one of the spears, but not destroyed.
“Ooh!” I grinned. “Spears! Nice. I bet we could use some of those.”
Rai sighed.
The spears withdrew back into the walls they’d come from. Now that I’d seen them come out, I could see the small holes in the wall they’d emerged from.
As I lowered myself into the pit, I realized that the holes had been covered with something — a thin layer of stone-colored paper.
“Wow. Rude.” I didn’t let myself touch the floor immediately. Instead, I pulled myself back up and reached up with a single hand.
Rai wordlessly placed a rock in my hand.
I dropped the rock, swinging my legs upward as the spear trap triggered again.
Six spears shot out of the holes, then began to slowly withdraw back into the wall.
I let go of the rope before the spears had fully withdrawn, grabbing the end of the closest one. Then, as I landed, I shifted my spirit into my arms and yanked downward hard.
As I’d hoped, the force of my fall and the pull snapped the spear’s shaft. I tossed that up to Rai, who caught it, then began to snap the next one.
The trap triggered again, faster than I’d expected.
I barely managed to throw myself to the side quickly enough to avoid the four remaining spears.
I let out a giggle.
“Are you unhurt, sister?” Rai asked.
“Fine, fine. Don’t worry.” I snapped another spear, then the next.
By the time the trap triggered again, there was only one spear left, and I was able to snap it easily.
“Tossing most of these up.” I tossed her three more broken spears. Rai stacked them at the top of the cavern. If we found nothing else, we’d at least have a few spears to sell.
Unfortunately, they seemed purely ordinary, so I didn’t think they’d be worth much. I’d have to go deeper and hope there would be a worthy reward.
Rai descended shortly after. We each picked up one of the two remaining spears. Rai held the lantern in her off-hand, which would make using a spear more difficult in a fight, but that wasn’t what either of us planned to use them for. In such close quarters, we couldn’t maneuver a spear much, anyway.
Instead, we began to use the spears to prod the floor ahead of us. If there had been one pressure plate trap already, we could expect to see more.
The first place we checked was toward the entrance door. Our plan was to try to open the entrance doorway from the inside, allowing us to escape more rapidly if necessary.
We also left the rope in place. That would be our escape route if the doors proved stubborn.
We triggered one more trap as we prodded the floors in the entrance hall; a hail of arrows. Leading the way, I deftly deflected the majority of the arrows with my spear. Rai simply side-stepped the few that slipped past me.
At that point, we’d reached the entrance. We stood just below the door.
There were two unlit braziers on the walls nearby. We lit them. Nothing in particular happened, but it did allow us to more clearly see an inscription on the stone nearby.
The Seventy-Seventh Incarnation of the Authority Lies Here
Woe be to Those who Would Desecrate this Sacred Place
For They Will be Forever Cursed
Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.
It was all boring stuff like that, so I stopped reading and shoved my spear at the bottom side door.
Sparks flew from where the metal tip of the spear contacted the door, then the spear lit on fire.
“Aww.” I tossed the spear aside. “I liked that spear.”
I probably should have climbed back up and gotten another one, but I was feeling impatient, and also lazy.
Rai passed me her spear. “We should not disrupt the door further, sister.”
“I concur.” I slapped her on the shoulder. “Ready for the really dangerous stuff?”
She lowered her head slightly. “If we must.”
“We must! Onward!” Now that we’d reached the entrance, we only had one way to go; back the way we’d come from and down the hallway beyond.
We headed forward. I began to tapping the floor to a jaunty, musical rhythm.
“Trap, trap, trap. Trap, trap, trap. Need to find a trap, need to find a trap. Trap, trap, trap. Trap, trap, trap. Gonna hit a trap, gonna hit a trap.”
I heard a sigh behind me. Clearly, Rai did not share my expert talent and taste for music. Such was but one of her many regrettable flaws, but I loved her regardless.
Admittedly, the song had flaws. I’d gotten so into it after a few minutes that I didn’t immediately notice when I actually hit a trap.
In fairness to me, the smoke was almost invisible.
Rai grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back as gas began to spread down the hall.
“Huh?” I startled.
“Down!”
She tackled me to the floor.
Her talents for music weren’t great, but she had a s
trong instinct for some things. In this case, she had quickly discerned that the smoke began to spray from two holes in the walls was drifting up, rather than down. We didn’t understand the reason for that at the time, but as I observed what she’d intuited, I remained on the ground.
We lay there for a while, breathing cautiously, as the smoke drifted upward.
Time passed. I fidgeted.
“Wait a bit,” Rai pleased.
Time passed. I jittered.
“Wait,” Rai insisted.
Time passed. I shifted and began to push myself up.
“Give it a bit more. Please, sister,” she begged.
I sighed. “Fine.”
We waited until the air seemed clear, and then beyond that.
“I do not believe the floor was the trigger for the gas trap,” Rai explained as we pushed ourselves to our feet.
I blinked. “What, then?”
“There.” She pointed into the distance. “Use your eyes.”
I frowned, narrowing my eyes. I could see something glowing faintly, but...
I focused my spirit into my eyes.
Such a basic reinforcement technique was not very potent, but it was enough. My vision cleared, and the darkness within the tomb seemed just slightly less oppressive.
Just about a dozen feet ahead, I could see something glimmering on the wall. A glyph, shaped like an eye.
“Oooh, you sneaky sneak!” I pulled my arm back and aimed the spear.
“Wait!”
I didn’t wait. I threw the spear.
I missed.
The spear clanked harmlessly to the stone.
Rai sighed. “I was going to suggest that we could, perhaps, simply use a stone, sister. In such a way, we could have held onto the spear in case there were more floor traps between here and there.”
“Uh...oops?” I scratched the back of my head sheepishly. “So, rocks...”
She reached into a pouch at her hip, retrieving a rock. She her time aiming, then hurled the stone.
She hit the glyph dead-on. It sparked on contact, flickered, and died.