by Kyle Johnson
As it turned out, there was a way, and it was listed right here in front of him. A series of tables, all cross-referenced and labeled, with a list of tests he could perform on the ingot to narrow it down. He grinned in excitement; he didn’t have the testing kit that the book was describing, or even anything similar, but he thought he could figure something out.
He followed the steps as best he could, although he had to do some improvising. For hardness, he forged a mana blade and compared the depth of a scratch in the ingot to one in a gold ring. He channeled some acid mana to see how it corroded and used fire and lightning mana to test heat absorption and conductivity. At the end, he compared his result to the table and had his answer, and it had only taken him ten minutes.
“Hauratite,” he murmured, reading through the description.
“Hauratite is soft and malleable, rivaling gold and lead in these areas, and is useless for weapons or armor. However, its ability to store energy is legendary, and only the finest crystals will hold more heat or mana than a nugget of hauratite. It is often mixed with harder noble metals such as copper or silver to form an alloy that will take a much stronger Enchantment but is all but useless for Runecrafting, as it does not allow mana to flow easily through it.”
He continued for a while, taking out a bar of metal and going through the tests to see if he could figure out what type it was. Some were useful, such as arcane silver, which was an alloy of hauratite and truesilver that was as hard and heavy as steel but could hold and conduct far more mana within it. Others were less so, such as deepsteel, which was an incredibly dense metal with an odd, purplish sheen.
“Deepsteel is the strongest known metal that is native to the world of Ka. It is found only in rare pockets in the deepest mines of the Dwarven Nations, who rarely trade the raw metal and consider worked pieces to be almost sacred. The method the dwarves use to shape this metal are unknown to other races, since deepsteel resists melting or even softening in the hottest forges. It is approximately ten times stronger than High Steel, although this can increase in certain cases. It is also five times as heavy as steel, meaning that only the strongest Warriors can wear pure deepsteel armor or wield pure deepsteel weapons. Because of this, most deepsteel items are actually forged of some other metal and given a thin coating of deepsteel through some process known only to the dwarves…”
He was able to replicate that coating on his saber, although he had to work from the inside out to do it. Deepsteel was simply so dense that it took a lot of truesilver just to fashion a thin coating over the outside; the resultant blade was a bit narrower than the original, steel sword had been but did better damage and had incredible armor penetration. Still, the deepsteel blade would be difficult to Enchant and impossible to Runecraft – the deepsteel wasn’t particularly conducive to mana, and there was no way he would be able to etch runes into it – so realistically, he could get better results by using arcane silver and High Enchantments.
The last ingot he withdrew was also the most interesting. The metal was much lighter than steel and had a strange prismatic appearance to it. As Aranos watched, the swirls of color in the bar slowly shifted and moved, rolling through the metal in chaotic waves. Testing the metal was much simpler, as the strange coloration automatically narrowed it down to a scant few possibilities, and of those, only one was lighter and harder than steel.
“Faymetal is not a true metal at all and does not originate on Ka. It is brought to this world by Fay incursions and, like the Fay themselves, it seems to be formed almost entirely of spirit mana. This normally chaotic energy is held in a crystalline lattice that gives Faymetal metallic properties, such as malleability, ductility, and conductivity, but it cannot be melted or worked normally. Only the Fay know how to forge with this material, which is at least six times as strong as High Steel while weighing only half as much. In addition, the spirit mana in Faymetal is disruptive to most mana types, meaning that Faymetal resists magical energies and can disrupt magical constructs such as Spells or even Enchantments. Faymetal itself cannot be Enchanted normally, although the Fay have some method of giving it additional abilities and qualities…”
Aranos read the passage again with mounting excitement; if the book was correct, the chromatic bar of metal in his hand was filled with an Enhanced mana type. If he could tease it out, he might be able to identify that mana within him, meaning he might be able to unlock spirit mana, whatever that was.
The ingot, though, wasn’t eager to reveal its secrets to the Sorcerer. When he reached his senses out to the slim bar, he recoiled instinctively; the energy in the metal wasn’t the smooth, placid metal mana he’d been expecting. Instead, it was a chaotic blaze of power; energy arced, twisted, and seemed to appear and reappear in ways Aranos could barely perceive, much less comprehend. He backed off and tried to examine the entire bar at once, hoping to see a greater pattern, but to his dismay, there seemed to be no underlying order or deeper structure that his mind could perceive.
He watched it carefully for long minutes, relaxing his focus and just trying to take it all in, but finally he had to admit that there was something about the energy that he was missing. If that was spirit mana, he was pretty sure he’d never seen it within himself; something like that would stand out like a spotlight on a pitch-black stage. There was no way he’d missed it – unless, of course, he still didn’t know where to look.
He sighed and set the bar aside, realizing that he needed to either learn more or try a totally different method if he was going to figure out how that spirit mana worked. A bit reluctantly, he returned the book and metal to his pack; he didn’t have forever, he did want to work on his Spells tonight, and he needed to train his Wis and Int.
Before he started, he took out an old shield, one that Geltheriel had set aside, and funneled off some of the steel banding the edge. Using his High Mastery Ability and his Blacksmithing Skill, he turned the steel into a decent looking truesilver stand for his mana crystal. While he figured that an auril stand would do a better job of channeling heat away from the crystal, it might also channel mana from it, which would be a problem, especially when the crystal was low on power already. Truesilver wasn’t very conductive to heat, so hopefully it wouldn’t get warm enough to scorch the tent beneath him.
He placed the crystal on the stand, adjusting the metal a bit until the crystal sat snugly, then sat back and concentrated. He’d only get a point each for training his Wis and Int today, but that was a point he wouldn’t have had if he didn’t do this. He extended a pair of mana tendrils and began to draw power from it, using his Mana Vampire Perk to pull almost 200 SP per second from the crystal. The stone noticeably dimmed as he drained it, but he hurriedly cycled the power through his mana spirals and funneled it back into the crystal through the second tendril. Once he had the circulating system firmly established, he closed his eyes and descended into his mindscape.
The moment he opened his eyes within his mindscape, Aranos began to check his mana spirals. The massive rush of power cycling through them allowed him to easily pinpoint imperfections in the flows, and he began correcting those flaws. He gently widened channels where the flows were backing up, smoothed places where turbulence was developing, and shifted a few transitions where energy wasn’t cleanly flowing from one hourglass to the next.
Satisfied, he walked over to his library of Skill Books. He looked over the various tomes and decided to work on his Animal Handling, Arcane Lore, Battlesense, and Runecrafting Skills. Runecrafting practice, he knew, probably wouldn’t grant him any bonuses to his High Enchantment Skill, but both his Blacksmithing and Engraving Skills were close to moving up to the Adept rank, and working on Runecrafting might just push them over the edge.
He spent the next hour training his Skills, descending into the stored memories of each book. He spent what seemed like days learning more about taming and training animals, poring over ancient texts and learning what various magical auras felt like, studying old battles and playing wargames, and le
arning and practicing new runes.
When he was done, he pulled up his notifications:
Skill Gained: Lore (Metallurgy, Trained)
Rank: Novice 5
You can identify Common metals and have a chance to identify rarer metals.
Effect: You can identify Abundant or Common metals by sight, with no check needed. You have a chance to identify less-common metals by making an Opposed Check: your [(Int – 10) + Skill level] versus the following:
Uncommon: 50
Rare: 80
Exotic: 110
Exceptional:145
Legendary:205
Mythical:315
Synergy: This Skill has synergy with any Crafting Skill that uses metal, such as Blacksmithing and Goldsmithing. You add half of your Lore Skill to all checks made when using these Crafting Skills.
Int +1
Skill Boost: Engraving (T) has gained a Level!
New Rank: Adept 1
Adept Level Ability: You can etch runes in Rare metals. You gain a bonus equal to your Skill level to attempts to etch runes or script.
Skill Boost: Blacksmithing (T) has gained a Level!
New Rank: Adept 1
Adept Level Ability: Craft or repair items of Rare quality.
Well, that’s interesting, Aranos mused. I got a new Skill out of playing with those metals, and it’s a Trained one. The Lore Skills I got studying in the Library of the House of Stars aren’t Trained, though; I wonder if that’s because there, I was kind of on my own, while this time, I was reading something specifically chosen for me by Ilmadia?
To be honest, the thing that excited him more was that gaining Adept rank in Engraving gave him a bonus to etching runes. He already got a bonus to the quality of anything he etched, but he didn’t think that applied specifically to runes. Even if it did, that meant he was getting an additional bonus on top of that, which made what he wanted to eventually attempt much more likely to succeed – and there was some extremely intricate Runecrafting he wanted to try soon.
With his Skill training complete, Aranos settled in to work on his Spells. I’m starting to run into a problem with area-effect Spells again, he realized. Energy Web isn’t really designed to be a high-damage Spell, Deadly Vapors is too slow and hurts me to cast it, and Hailstorm isn’t doing enough damage anymore to be useful. I need to create a new AOE Spell, plus I need to upgrade Hailstorm into something more potent.
He began by calling up the vision of his Hailstorm Spell. The original Spell called forth globes of unaspected mana and hurled them like projectiles back and forth throughout a cube, inflicting admittedly low damage per second. Of course, he chuckled internally, at the time, that’s all I had to work with, and it did a number on the edimmu.
He restarted the Spell image, but this time, instead of globes of unaspected mana, he imagined forging tiny pellets of ice, hardening them with mana until they resembled superdense ice bullets. Once he had the ice pellets firmly in mind, he began adding tiny, floating globules of lava, compressing and spinning them until the surface hardened into an obsidian-like state, glowing with heat.
In the original Spell, he had imagined the mana pellets flying throughout the entirety of the space. While it worked, it was kind of inefficient: as pellets struck a creature or object, they were decelerated, meaning the average velocity of the entire system was being lessened simply by the presence of targets within it. To fix that, Aranos used the mental model he’d created for his Flight Spell and imagined myriad smaller, linked vortices, each spinning much faster than the original tornado of the hailstorm had.
Once he had the image down, he started it from the beginning, imagining hurling the Spell at a horde of charging uruks. He heard the swirl of the wind rising to power the Spell, felt the tiny impacts of super-hardened ice slamming into the uruks’ hides. He smelled the tang of blood and seared flesh as the crystallized lava sliced open skin like a torrent of razor blades and charred the meat beneath. In his vision, the horde was obliterated, their organs punctured, bones crushed, and flesh torn and burned.
He renewed the vision and began channeling SP into it, careful to only use his own and not draw anything from the crystal. After the uruks, he envisioned a pair of ogrin standing within the storm, their massive figures shredded and charred by the Spell. After that, he pictured a group of kerruks in the midst of the torrent, trying futilely to shield themselves or to disjoin the Spell, to no avail.
Eventually, the Spell coalesced in his mind:
Spell Evolution!
Spell Hailstorm has become Fire and Ice^
Rank: Student 1
Batter, freeze, and char your enemies with fire and ice!
Effect: Pick a spot within 100’. All creatures within 40’ of that spot are hit by a barrage of ice and lava that does combined air, earth, fire, water, bludgeoning, and slashing damage. Creatures within suffer 8 – 16 LP damage per second (110- 220). As this damage is comprised of multiple types, only a creature resistant or immune to all these damage types is resistant or immune to the full damage of this Spell. Damage and duration increased by 5% per Spell level
Duration: 40s
Cost: 300 SP
Master of Elements: This spell utilizes two mana types that would normally be incompatible. Because of this, standard damage resistance from any source, including magical shielding or armor, is reduced by one-third against this Spell.
Enhanced: The complex nature of this Spell means that all attempts to disjoin it suffer a penalty equal to [Caster’s Int/ 10 (rounded down)]
You will be taken in by Fire and Ice!
+250 XP
Spell Evolution!
Ascended Spell Tempest of Rage has become Impossible Tempest!
Rank: Novice 4
Destroy your enemies with a seemingly impossible storm of fire, ice, and rage
Effect: Choose a point within 300’. All enemies within 40’ of that spot take 80 – 240 LP damage per second within the storm (843 – 2529). This damage is combined air, earth, fire, water, bludgeoning, and slashing, and only creatures resistant or immune to all of these types can resist or ignore this damage. Ignores armor, and magical defenses are only one-third as effective against this Spell. Any creature killed by this Spell also has all non-Soul-Bound items destroyed.
Duration: Wis Stat in seconds. Can be extended beyond this by sacrificing LP: 10% of the caster’s LP extends the Spell by 10% of the base duration.
Cost: 99% of current SP.
Special: This Spell can only be cast in an enraged state, and only by a creature with the Title Master of Elements.
Wild fury and righteous anger stirs up in the hearts of men, driving them to doom
+250 XP
That works, he grinned, reading the new Spell description. The average damage is basically increased by 50%, and now it does lots of different types. Not too many shields will hold up to that kind of an assault for long. And I guess it automatically upgraded my Ascended Spell, as well; with my bonuses, it looks like it’ll do around 1700 LP damage per second! I guess the downside is that both Spells have a distance limit, now, when I could hit anything I could see before. Still, those are phenomenal upgrades.
He dismissed the notification and began thinking about a new AOE Spell. He didn’t want another DoT effect, doing small amounts of damage over a long time. Instead, he wanted a fast attack that would hit a large number of enemies quickly for a lot of damage. Basically, he snorted internally, I want a Fireball.
The concept was easy enough for him to envision. In classic RPG games, a fireball Spell basically shot a compressed ball of fire to a specific point, where it would erupt in a massive wave of flame. While that was awesome in tabletop games, he didn’t think it would work very well in reality. Explosions gave up their force quickly according to the inverse square law, meaning that if the game was using realistic physics, a creature a foot away from the explosion would get hit 100 times harder than a creature 10’ distant, or 400 times harder than one 20’ away from t
he explosion. Basically, to make a blast large enough to do any significant damage at the periphery, he’d probably have to use the majority of his SP, and even then, it would probably only be fatal to about five feet.
He’d been pondering this for a while, though, and the answer, he thought, was to do something like his Energy Barrage, except all at one. Rather than trying to fashion and create a single, hyperdense ball of energy, he could create multiple smaller projectiles and launch them into an area so that they all burst with overlapping fields of effect. It meant that rather than having a massive explosion that would kill a single large creature – or a few smaller ones – with relative ease, he’d have multiple blasts that would badly injure everyone inside but would probably only kill weaker ones. Which is the point of this sort of AOE, really, he assured himself. It’s meant to wipe out hordes of weak creatures, not a few powerful ones.
The difficulty, he quickly realized as he began envisioning the Spell, was creating a pattern of blasts that fully overlapped the entire area and used the minimum possible mana. It took him significant trial and error to find a basic hexagonal pattern that gave him complete coverage without massive mana expenditures. Holding and guiding that many projectiles at once, though, was very mentally taxing, and he had to practice forming the construct in his mind repeatedly before he felt confident enough to start applying SP.
The first time he ran through the Spell while adding mana to it, he imagined hurling out seven tiny pellets of compressed fire mana, allowing his instinct to guide them to the proper locations. Each burst in a five-foot radius of roaring flames, the edges of the blasts overlapping and ensuring that anything within was covered in fire. The blasts only reached eight feet above the ground, creating a rough, slightly irregular disc of searing, orange flame that burned for a second or so before guttering out.