Cleansing Fire

by D. L. Harrison

  Gwen’s spell was so effective, it didn’t even snake its head around to shoot more fire at us, its only thought in its last three minutes of its life had been on escape. Given the damage we were doing to its body, although small, it also didn’t have the presence of mind to feed its mana into a new mana shield.

  Then… it started to fall out of the sky as its wings and body went still with death.

  Gwen said, “Nice idea my love.”

  I grinned, “Nice curse.”

  Before it even hit the ground, we were inundated with popups.

  Congratulations! You have killed an ancient red dragon! You have earned five hundred thousand Experience Points!

  Congratulations! You’ve removed a menace from the skies, and you’ve saved the kingdoms on this continent from mindless destruction! You have earned ten million Experience Points!

  You have leveled!

  You have leveled!

  Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Fire sphere to expert level ten. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!

  Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Water sphere to expert level ten. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!

  Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Life sphere to expert level ten. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!

  Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Meditation skill to expert level ten. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!

  Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Sneak skill to expert level ten. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!

  Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Builder skill to expert level ten. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!

  Congratulations! You’ve advanced the Hunter skill to expert level ten. You have earned ten thousand Experience Points!

  Well, wow. We were master level at that point, but not in concepts. The rush of concepts ended for expert level ten, but we’d have to integrate and perfect them before we’d flip over to master level one.

  My mana… well, my new mana shield was two hundred and forty-four thousand. I stuck with the fifty thousand both for normal battle and in reserve, but it now took a little under five seconds to regen fifty thousand mana. My hit points were now over twenty thousand, which sounded great, but the others were way ahead of that, even Lara had about three times more, though none of them came close to my mana total of over three hundred and forty-four thousand.

  We went ahead and landed, then skinned the dragon. We filled up the back with dragon scales. None of us knew how to make armor, but I expected Gwen, Steve, and Dan would try to find someone to make armor out of it. It was harder than steel, but also suppler and more bendable, plus it would protect from fire naturally.

  Then of course, there was the dragon hoard. We didn’t need the crystals anymore to be ridiculously rich.

  We got back on the ship, and we headed for the beach house. I was almost sure we were done at that point. Aliens, awakened dragons, they were all dead for sure this time. The plan was pretty simple, make master, figure out our new skills and spheres, and then finish that vacation before we figured out what to do next.

  Chapter Seventeen

  First, the obvious upgrades for master. Seventy feet radius on our attacks and auras. Five times damage due to further understanding. The damage drop would be ten percent for every seven feet from the center of the area of effect spell. Our skill level improvements at that point yielded a hundred thousand experience, going up by another factor of ten predictably enough.

  Not much changed at all for enchanting, except for the obvious we were able to combine spheres, but more on that in a few minutes. There was a big change with our deeper understanding of the magic field. We still couldn’t detect dead spots in it, that came with grandmaster. Like expert, we could connect to and maintain our spells to feed them mana as long as they were within the aura. The biggest change there was we were now able to maintain limited contact with our spells through the mana field, at an unlimited range.

  We couldn’t power a spell once it left our range, but we could still receive feedback from it, as long as it still had mana loaded into it for a duration. It didn’t sound like much, but it was huge for certain spells.

  Detect and assess life, worked in the radius of our aura constantly, but we could now pulse it with extra mana to go beyond that aura size. Even if the magic of the spell left the aura, all we were prevented from doing was adding more mana, but the spell stayed connected to us to the point of passing back the information it collected. Which was how masters were able to detect life in a whole city.

  It worked more on a radar kind of concept. I could at that point build a spell that sent out a wave of magic, and if the spell was configured to search for all the evil races, those detected in that wave going through the city would ping back with location.

  Yes, it was possible to make the spell the size of the city and constant, as long as the center of the spell was anchored within our seventy-foot aura, but the duration per second cost went up by amount of area covered. The cost of that would rise quickly, the area of a sphere went up geometrically to the size of the radius. However, making it pulse every five or ten seconds in a sweep, was much cheaper on the mana.

  In truth, we could not only do it for a city, but for the whole planet, or the solar system, there were no limits in range. Magic moved instantly as well, so it would all register at the same time. It didn’t propagate like light did, its speed was infinite.

  Theoretically, we could also expand a fire blast past the radius, but anything after sixty-three feet would be at ten percent damage, and it’d cost more mana than was worth doing.

  Life Sphere had advanced to the point I could create animals, and even recreate a body if I was familiar with the animal’s or person’s DNA. That meant even if a body got turned to ash, it could be resurrected as long as I was familiar with the life pattern, though the two-minute limit still remained, after that the spirit would leave for Gaia’s temple.

  It also meant I could create life, like so many other masters had done. It was where all those monsters had come from really, masters of the good and evil races playing god.

  Control water would work from unlimited distances, though not all that well if I wasn’t in line of sight. If I cast control water on a part of the ocean a mile away, and I packed it with enough mana to maintain the spell so it lasted a while. Like the other stuff, the spell would be disconnected to the point I couldn’t add mana, yet I could still control the spell and pass information, and form whatever I wanted from that distance.

  Control flame as well, which meant I could quell a whole city worth of fires with one spell, without even being in that city.

  The only other breakthrough in those spheres were the elementals. They’d be stronger, faster, and more intelligent. There were other things as well of course, but all subtle concepts that led to that quintuple damage multiplier.

  The biggest change of course, was our ability to cast or enchant multiple spheres in the same spell or enchantment. I’d wondered, and I’d speculated there’d be connecting concepts between them to bridge the gaps. Similar to the way we could use concepts between detect life, assess life, and heal within the Life Sphere to create a mass heal spell, just between spheres instead of between major concepts within the same sphere.

  That is sort of how it worked, but not at all in the way that I’d imagined. It wasn’t a direct connection between the spheres. Magic itself was now a sphere of sorts, though there were no levels to it. It was an over arcing concept above the other spheres.

  It made me realize a truth. There were no spheres, not really. The spheres were just a way to put things in their place, and for us to file it away in a way we as humans could understand. There was just magic, and the ability to use that magic, that energy, to modify and create the forces, energies, and different types of matter in our dimension of the multi-verse. The trick was, we could only modify or create what we understood in its entirety. So, for the
sake of knowledge, that knowledge had to be split up and categorized.

  So, in a way it looked like a pyramid, and the magic sphere was at the very top of it. It was the organization of raw magic itself. Below that, was the six spheres, and below them were the major concepts of the spheres, followed by sub-concepts for the major concepts, and more sub-concepts of those sub-concepts, etc...

  So, in short, I didn’t have to focus my mind on the life sphere to cast life anymore. I could focus my mind on the Magic Sphere instead, and then create a magical container of organized raw magic around my life spells. To extend that, now I could use that magical sphere at the top, to connect to two different spheres, or three, or all of them if I wanted. So it was all connected, but through that Magic Sphere, and not directly to each other. The organized raw magic was a bridge.

  Except, the connecting concepts to the magic sphere weren’t there yet for the other five. Despite being a master of three spheres, and a master of raw magic, I wasn’t a master of the other five until I’d gotten them up to level forty-one.

  Which, made me reevaluate my future plans. Once I hit fifty-one, and I had the last of the major concepts at grandmaster levels, I saw no reason not to immediately change to another sphere to advance three at a time, or three new spheres to advance one at a time per level. Reason being, I had so much mana I wouldn’t care about perfecting fire, water, and life simply to get nine more base damage.

  Eventually, yes, but I didn’t see a solid reason not to get all eight to level fifty-one before I finished them off. That would take… a really long time.

  Problem was, I wasn’t sure it was possible, since when I showed mastery, and then leveled, those three would automatically go up. I’d have to think about that, or maybe just not integrate the new concepts at level fifty-two, so they never level again until I was ready to do so.

  Of course, I could still do it the old way if it was a fire only spell, and I would have to do it the old way when I finally took up one of the other spheres.

  Back to the combined spheres. I made a few spells, including teleport. The safe one, the spell would just abort and I wouldn’t go anywhere, if there was something in the way on the other side, or if the other side had no air at all. I could target it in two ways. The first was by location, the second was to a person. In both cases I’d have to be familiar with the target. The first one went to a place I was familiar with. How the second worked was I’d integrate a detect life spell that would pulse and search the whole planet, and then tell the rest of the spell exactly where that was, and then move me to an empty area by that person.

  Another possibility with that detecting a specific life part was summon. The opposite of teleport, I could find Rylla for instance, and fold space to bring her to me, instead of the other way around. Assuming of course, she didn’t have an active mana shield to stop the spell, and her mind didn’t see it as a threat. It might work if I called her first, and she was willing, or if she temporarily gave up her mana-shield.

  I made a couple of others, not really made, just organized and practiced, since I casted everything the hard way. It made me better at magic, and with an intelligence of thirty-seven it wasn’t even all that hard anymore. I not only had perfect recall, but I was a lot faster. Thirty-seven is with Lara’s enhancement spell, I was just thirty-three on my own, which was still more than good enough.

  With water and life, besides teleporting, I could now rip the water out of a body, or even tear it apart, given the target didn’t have a mana shield up. I could also attack something I couldn’t see. Like searching a city for a dark elf, but also include an offensive attack in the spell that would automatically go off if it found one. That was probably one of the most terrifying things, I could kill from halfway across the planet. Lastly, was what I’d coined a turret spell. I could set up a detect life spell that looked for a certain race or even specific person, and then set it down on the ground. Then when it detected that life form, it would use it for target information and send out an ice spike to kill it, or any other type of spell.

  I could do that with my offensive duration spells too. Just cast them with a certain list of enemies in mind, and the damned thing would start shooting until all my enemies within my aura were dead.

  Fire and life had possibilities as well. The turret spell, obviously. Also, tying the heat spell into life concepts, I could boil someone alive, or suck out all the heat in their bodies. The heat spell itself was just good on non-organic matter, but if tied to Life Sphere concepts that changed to include the organic. I was sure I’d come up with a lot more, but I was satisfied with that as a start.

  The biggest thing with that was that I wouldn’t have to peek anymore. I didn’t have to see my enemy to hit them, because I could use detect life for the targeting information for my offensive spells. That meant staying behind cover, and it meant random arrows weren’t quite so scary.

  Of course, if I faced another master staying behind cover was limited. Well, if they had life too, to aim, but still. It was a reminder I was far from invincible. Hell, we’d just taken out an ancient dragon way out of our league. Yes, I doubted one million mana mana-crystals were thick on the ground but getting cocky would get me killed.

  Fire and water didn’t really go together, but at least my next tub enchantment could go on one gem. Steam for a sauna? Yeah, not much going on there, but both fire and water mixed with life in various ways. I imagined earth and air combinations were similarly limited that way, as would be life and death, and light and darkness.

  In short, I was kind of scary now, we all were.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gwen snuggled into me, a contented sigh falling from her lips as I held her close.

  It was late the next evening, Gwen and I had just made love, and were getting ready to get some sleep. I caressed her back slowly in small circles, and loved the feel of her body against mine, and how her lovely chestnut hair teased my chest.

  “I love you.”

  Gwen turned her head and looked up into my eyes, “Love you too. Feeling better.”

  I grinned, “Glad to be of service.”

  Gwen smirked, and then giggled, “Thanks for your sacrifice. How about you?”

  I shrugged. In the moment I was drowning in the after-bliss, but I knew it would take time to get over the destruction of two kingdoms. I wasn’t even truly over the war, and thoughts of Wynn still bothered me at times.

  “I’m okay. We need a week or two off, I’m not ready for anything else. My mind keeps telling me those people, and Wynn, aren’t real, and that the dragons and other evil races are the true guilty ones, but my heart isn’t buying what my mind’s selling.”

  Gwen nodded, “No complaints from me, I could take a month off. To enjoy you, and so we can get a little perspective. The others need it too, especially Lara.”

  I felt pretty damn shitty at times, but I wouldn’t argue, Lara had the softest heart out of all of us, I’d hate to see it grow hard.

  “Let’s just hope Gaia cooperates, and doesn’t send a damned island invasion.”

  Gwen snickered, “Another one you mean? I don’t know, do you still feel that urgency to level, as if something is coming?”

  I frowned in thought, and then kissed her hair on the top of her head to give myself a moment to think about it.

  “Actually, no. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or not.”

  Gwen nodded against my chest, “Me neither.”

  “I can’t imagine what’s next either. Most masters and grandmasters we’ve heard about just sit on their asses and rule, or work for royalty.”

  Gwen snickered, “The world’s a big place, I’m sure there’s more than enough challenges out there.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. Hopefully they’ll keep.”

  I felt like I’d want to run if Gaia pushes again, we needed the time off to recharge, for our mental health, but I knew when it came down to it, I’d suck it up, pull up my big boy pants, and get to work.
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself otherwise, if I ignored whatever plight was thrown our way.

  Gwen caressed my chest softly, “Tired?”

  I nodded, “We should definitely sleep.”

  Gwen kissed my chest, and her hand roamed lower, much lower.

  “On the other hand,” I said in a breathy amused voice, “We can stay up a little longer.”

  She giggled, as I held her tighter and pulled her up my body to claim a kiss.

  We got to sleep, eventually.

  I sighed, the mattress felt comfortable. Really comfortable, like the foam mattress I’d had in the old perfect world. I felt warm, and Gwen was snuggled back against me in the spooning position with my arm around her body. That last part wasn’t strange, I woke up that way a lot.

  The scent of bacon reached my nose, and my eyes snapped open. I was in my old bedroom, in my old house, in perfect world. What the hell?

  I shook Gwen awake, and she made annoyed wakeup sounds, and then squeaked in surprise when she opened her eyes.

  “Where the hell are we?”

  I replied, “My house, on the old world.”

  “Not quite,” said a pleasant familiar voice, “Old world was deleted and is unrecoverable. This is merely a small simulation made up of your memories. We have a lot to talk about, so join me in the kitchen.”

  Gwen said, “Gaia?”

  I blew out a breath.

  “It sounded like her, sort of. Didn’t her voice sound a lot more… well, human to you?”