Arthur chuckled, “Yes, he is aware of better tools, but as we have discussed, there are limits on what we have. While you were busy, I took your advice and was able to connect with the stone and get a feel for it. From there, I discovered Magical Prospecting and found an iron vein about two yards into the wall. Since we have no other tools and are in desperate need of iron to make more, this was the best solution we could come up with.”
“Well, I would say that you could assist with this, but I am sure your mana is depleted if you were able to discover your new spell.”
“It’s been around ten minutes since then, so I am back up to around 80 mana. The regen isn’t terrible.”
Allendria’s eyes looked like they were about to bulge out of her head. “How in the world do you already have that much mana? Surely you didn’t use all your stats in Wisdom?”
“What do you mean? I only have five total points in Wisdom.” Arthur told her.
Her eyes narrowed at him. “So how did you manage to regenerate 80 mana in 10 minutes, then?”
Arthur was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable, “Well I have the base regen of 5 mana per minute and then when I put the 5th point in it gave me an additional three mana per minute, so I sit at eight mana per minute.”
She looked like she was about to burst a blood vessel. “Are you kidding me? How in the hell do you have that much regen? You know what, never mind. I have only just met you, but it seems that every other thing you do is incredibly odd. You have decided to go on some crusade to save a bunch of random people. You seem to have random bits of knowledge about many different things, but none of the skills to accompany that knowledge and you seem to have distinctly different rules in regards to your stats.”
Arthur was taken aback by her response. “What do you mean by, I have different rules with my stats?”
“Well, for starters, mana regen is typically nowhere near that high. For instance, I have a base regen of three mana per minute, and I only gain one mana per minute for every two points of Wisdom. Humans are typically different and by default, usually, only have two mana per minute regen and get an additional point for every three wisdom points spent. There are a few exceptions with some very special mages over the years, but yours is by far the highest I have ever heard. Especially gaining three mana per minute with every point of Wisdom. You have the potential to be an outstanding mage if you work for it.” She told him.
Arthur wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I mean obviously, it was great to know that he had such potential with magic, and the gears in his head started turning toward possibilities. With this information, Arthur was beginning to think a magical build was going to be his way to go, but something gave him pause. If he was different in this, what else might be different as well? He could have an entirely different set of rules to his leveling than other people. It might make it difficult to get advice, and if the wrong people were to learn of his differences, they might try and get rid of him for them. He could potentially see how this information could be hazardous to his health. Rivals were always easier to deal with before they could consolidate their power. It made him think of the skill points he got in archery. He had gained two points at level five and had thought it was odd because Daniel had mentioned it was one point per level. Was this going to be another thing about him that was different?
“I can honestly say I am not sure how that happened, but it is what my notifications tell me, and it appears to regen at that rate. I will say I am not disappointed by my luck in this matter, though.” Arthur said with a small grin.
Allendria took one last look into his eyes, “Arthur, you must never tell another person about this. I know you may not understand why, but some people in this world would have you killed outright just for the threat you may pose to them one day. I know you didn’t understand the implications of this, but I appreciate you being open with me about this anyway.”
She looked toward Rowan, still swinging away at the wall. She turned back to Arthur and grinned. “Care to make Rowan rather angry with you? In a couple more minutes, I think I can help guide you to creating the spell you need to get the ore out of the stone. By then, you should have a sufficient supply of mana.”
Arthur looked over at the man, who was now sweating profusely and was still a few yards short of being to the ore and smiled. Oh, man, was he going to be pissed?
Allendria and Arthur waited a few minutes and then approached Rowan.
“Rowan,” Arthur shouted at him, “Take a break and let me see what I can do about this. You look like you could use a drink.”
“No offense Arthur but I am not sure you could swing my axe without severely harming yourself.” He told Arthur.
“Oh, no worries. I am going to attempt some magic on it instead while you take a break. I completely agree I am more likely to hurt myself with your axe trying to do that.”
Rowan grunted and walked over to their cart to grab one of their skins of water. He sat against the wagon and took a long drink of the refreshing water while eyeing Arthur. Arthur walked over to the wall where Rowan had been swinging away and then looked to Allendria.
“So, now what?” He asked.
“Well, you are going to start the way you did on prospecting, but this will change a little. You need to get a feel for the stone itself, but this time you need to expand your reach into the area you wish to influence as a whole. Typically a good starting size for this spell is about five feet square. It is usually good enough to learn the spell at its base rank.”
“How in the world am I supposed to control five square feet of stone at once when it took all of my will and concentration to raise a wall of dirt that is one foot, by one foot, by three-foot?”
“This spell doesn’t require you to shift anything directly. The amount of area you can influence is reliant on your magic level and your spell mastery levels, but the difficulty of spells also changes with the way they work. Controlling anything and making it flow or create always take more effort than just destroying something or changing its properties. With the wall, you have to physically create the structure in a space where nothing but air existed before. Due to this, it requires more effort to force the natural world to accept this change. For this spell you are going to be destroying the stone in the area, well technically you are going to be transforming the stone in this area but either way, it is taking place in the same space.” She told him.
“Alright, you haven’t steered me wrong yet, so let’s get to work.” He said.
Arthur felt out with his magical senses and was able to push his awareness into the stone as he did last time. Instead of sending out a pulsing wave, though, this time, he allowed his sense to ‘expand’ and get a better understanding of the area. It was an odd sensation, but Arthur compared it to looking at something with squinted eyes for a long time and then slowly starting to open them to encompass more and more of it. He was able to get to the full five-foot square she had mentioned and was thrilled that he still had a sufficient amount of mana left. He had only used about twenty mana in this step.
“Alright, now comes the difficult part of the process,” Allendria whispered next to his ear. “You need to force your will on this area and start to vibrate the stone inside your influence very quickly. Be sure that none of these vibrations escape the influence of your spell area, though, or you could cause problems elsewhere.”
The sound of her voice that close to his ear sent chills down his spine. He could barely feel her warm breath on his ear as she spoke, and the sheer thrill of it almost broke him out of his concentration. He grasped on her words, though and focused.
He knew that just trying to shake this area with his power wasn’t going to work and would probably only cause a cave in. Instead, he decided to use force to accomplish his goals. He decided to make waves of power that continually rolled through the area from all sides at once to constantly batter the rock in the contained area. He started this process and could see dirt and dust beginning to fall
on the outside, so he kept at it. He slowly increased the speed of the waves and the frequency of when they started and was seeing a drastic shift in the wall. Parts of it were beginning to crumble. He kept at this, and soon the pressure vanished, and his spell finished. He saw the stone in front of him in a perfect square crumble into gravel and start flowing back his direction as it collapsed on itself like a kid pouring sand into a pile.
Congratulations, you have discovered the Earth Magic Spell: Transform Stone: Gravel. You have gained 250 experience in Earth Magic for discovering a known spell.
You have gained 150 experience in Earth Magic for successfully casting Transform Stone: Gravel.
Congratulations, you have learned the Subskill Magical Mining for a 100 experience bonus.
Congratulations, you have learned Mining for a 100 experience bonus.
You have gained 150 experience in Mining and Magical Mining for finding Raw Iron Ore (x6).
Spell: Transform Stone: Gravel
Requirements: Earth Magic
Mana Cost: 50 MP
Cast Time: 5 seconds
Description: Causes all stone in a 5 foot square area to be reduced to gravel.
Mastery Level: 1
Arthur took a step back to avoid all of it getting on him and turned to Allendria. “I cannot thank you enough, Allendria. I know we have an agreement in place for you to assist, but I do feel like you are going above and beyond to help me. I know you could take our agreement very literally and be very selective in what you show me, but you have been nothing but helpful, and I appreciate that.”
Allendria had the grace to blush with that statement, which was humorous to see on a purple-skinned face, but Arthur thought it made her look even more beautiful than she already was.
“As I said before, I have had minimal contact with humans, but in the society of Dark Elves, we tend to be very straightforward. I was wary of this arrangement at first, but I think it may end up being a great benefit in the long run. You have some amazing potential in you, and I am sure you have the capacity for many other schools of magic, as well. Who knows, maybe if you impress me enough, I may teach you my fire magic as well.” She said with a wink and started to walk off.
Rowan stomped up to Arthur after he had seen what he had done and yelled at him, “Are you fucking kidding me, Arthur? You had me here sweating my ass off swinging a damn axe at a wall to mine for this iron, and you could have just made the damn thing fall apart the whole time? I should hit you square in the nose and be done with it.”
“Whoa Rowan, I honestly didn’t know I could do this until Allendria told me a couple of minutes ago. She was the one that guided me and showed me how to do this. Now that I know it can is possible, it should make this process much easier, and you can put your axe away.” Arthur soothed.
Arthur reflected on the spell. The spell didn’t destroy, as she had suggested, but transformed the stone. That explained why the stone started running out of the wall and looked like someone dumping out sand. The gravel would need to be swept out of their way, but that would be easy. Arthur walked back to the cart and found the old rusty dagger from one of the goblins and proceeded to use it and his feet to move the gravel out of his way. Once most of it was out of the way, and he had a clear view of the back wall, he was happy with what he saw. Rowan had managed to get them a couple of feet into the wall with his axes, but now that Arthur had taken out another five-foot, he was able to see the edge of the iron vein. A few small pieces of the iron had fallen out and were resting on some of the gravel. Arthur picked up one of them that was about the size of his fist to check it out.
Item:
Raw Iron Ore
Durability: 20/20
Rarity: Common
Weight: 1.5 kg
Traits: A chunk of unrefined iron ore.
Well, this was fantastic and just what they needed. It also appeared Arthur’s spell had the added benefit of breaking up almost all of the standard stone that was attached to the iron ore as well. That would save a lot of time for Rowan when he started refining the metal. Now that he knew this spell could take care of this for him, he gathered the few pieces that had fallen out and handed them to Rowan. Rowan smiled broadly upon seeing the ore, and there was a bit of glee reflected in his eyes.
“We can stay here and relax for a bit longer while I let my mana recover so I can do that spell again. It will be much quicker than trying to mine it with incorrect tools. Discovering that spell sapped my mana, and I am almost completely out again.” Arthur said.
Rowan nodded, and they walked over to the cart and sat down. Arthur got him a drink and just relaxed with his back against the side of the cart’s wheel. It felt good to take a load off and get off his feet for a bit.
“Allendria, why don’t you come to sit with us? Feels good to take a break and get off the feet for a bit. I am waiting for some mana to recover so I can cast the spell again. Another two spells should be enough to get through the main portion of this iron vein.” Arthur said.
She rolled her eyes at him and walked over to join them. Arthur supposed all women must be the same no matter what world or what race they ended up being. Some mannerisms were universal. They sat there in companionable silence and all just relaxed. Arthur had his eyes closed and was enjoying the relative cool in the cavern.
They waited about twenty minutes just enjoying the break when Arthur decided it was time to get up and get back to work. His mana pool was back up to a respectable number of 160, not quite full but nowhere near empty. He went back to the wall and focused on the next section and cast the spell. His hand reached out and touched the stone, and he could feel the waves of energy running through the rock even though he didn’t directly cast them himself consciously. Five seconds later, another five-foot square section turned to gravel and starting to pour out of the tunnel he was creating.
You have gained 150 experience in Earth Magic for successfully casting Transform Stone: Gravel.
You have gained 550 experience in Mining and Magical Mining for finding Raw Iron Ore (x22).
Congratulations, you have reached level 2 in Mining. You have a 3% increased chance to find rare materials while mining. Whistle while you work!
Congratulations, you have reached level 2 in Magical Mining. Increases the chance that items found will be a higher rarity by 3%. Kind of cheating, isn’t it?
He went back to work with the rusted dagger and pushed the gravel out of the entrance. While he did this, he gathered all the pieces of iron and handed them out to Rowan so he could store them in the cart. He finished getting the metal sorted out of the gravel and moved to the next section of the wall.
You have gained 150 experience in Earth Magic for successfully casting Transform Stone: Gravel.
You have gained 600 experience in Mining and Magical Mining for finding Raw Iron Ore (x24).
Congratulations, you have reached level 3 in Mining. You have a 6% increased chance to find rare materials while mining. Dig for gold!
Congratulations, you have reached level 3 in Magical Mining. Increases the chance that items found will be a higher rarity by 6%. Still pretty sure it’s cheating.
When he finished sorting through the final section he had destroyed, he decided enough was enough.
He walked out of the small tunnel he had created in the wall and decided to walk to an adjacent area and triggered his prospecting spell again.
You have gained 100 experience in Earth Magic for successfully casting Magical Prospecting.
This time he found a couple of other pockets of iron ore, but most were deeper. He had no intention of doing anything with them at the moment, but it was good to know there would be a chance in the future to come back and get more iron when needed.
Arthur was pleased to gain not only a new skill but also a Subskill. To top that off, he also gained a level in Earth Magic.
“Rowan, is all that ore loaded and secure?” Arthur asked.
“All packed down and ready to go. I almost feel
giddy with the chance to get back to town and get to work for once. The shortage of iron has severely limited my usefulness in town. Now I can start working on things needed to improve the town with you. The question will be, what we need to work on and in what order. We should consult with Daniel about this as well.” Rowan responded.
“I agree, we may also have to bring Dalia into the conversation since she is officially part of the endeavor now. Either way, the few things we found today should be a good start, and we can’t afford to delay any longer. We need to get back to the village as quick as possible. That deer carcass is going to start to turn if we don’t get it boned out and at least salted down.”
“I guess this means I finally get to see the little village I will be staying in for a bit,” Allendria said with a little more cheer than Arthur expected.
They all headed back out with Rowan pushing the wheeled cart again. They made good time on their way back to the town and didn’t run into any other issues. Arthur was able to spot a few different plants on the trip that were useful and gathered them to take with them.
You have gained 1500 experience in Herbalism for identifying a Wild Onion (x15).
Congratulations, you have reached level 5 in Herbalism. You now have a 12% higher chance of identifying an herb successfully. At least your eyes work.
You have gained 750 experience in Farming for successfully harvesting Wild Onion (x15).
Congratulations, you have reached level 5 in Farming. You now have a chance for up to 20% increased yield from plants. You are on your way to a green thumb.
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