Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension Book 1)

by Andrew Rowe

  I still had no idea how Keras was as powerful as he seemed to be.

  “I’ve already mentioned that the Guardian’s most unique characteristic is our ability to control our shroud immediately. Today, we’ll go over the mana types and characteristics for each attunement. This will be a brief overview of each type. More details can be found in your books.”

  Conway rubbed his forehead and sighed, then pushed himself out of the chair and walked over to the chalk board. I was glad to see him up and moving again, at least, even if he did look exhausted.

  He drew the Elementalist Attunement symbol first.

  “As Master Cadence mentioned, the Elementalist commands fire and air mana. Their unique characteristic is the ability to combine these two types of mana to form lightning, which is often considered the most formidable form of attack magic. While fire spells are often popular for being able to cover large areas with a single spell, lightning is generally preferable in duels. It’s too fast for most attuned to defend against it.”

  Unless you’re Marissa, I remembered with a grin. She was amazing.

  “Next is the Diviner.” He drew another symbol.

  “They primarily use mental mana and focus on information gathering spells. Their secondary mana type is enhancement, which in their case is usually used to improve concentration, retain memories, and empower spells to break through anti-divination defenses. Diviners are unique in their ability to create memory crystals, objects that can store a copy of someone’s memories. These are extraordinarily useful for both investigation and communication.”

  Huh. Those did sound useful.

  “Diviners are commonly confused with similar attunements from other regions. Diviners tend to focus on learning and preserving raw information. The Analyst Attunement, found among our allies in Caelford, is focused more on enhancing the senses and digging deeper into existing knowledge. The Seer Attunement from Dalenos is focused on remotely viewing distant locations, something only the most experienced Diviners can even attempt.”

  I loved hearing about the analogues to our attunements in other cultures. I knew there were similar attunements in other kingdoms, but I didn’t know exactly how close they were. I resolved to pick up a book on the subject sometime in the second semester when I had a bit more free time.

  “Next, the Shaper.”

  He drew an all-too-familiar symbol representing the attunement I’d always wanted.

  I was starting to work through my bitterness about it. I was actually enjoying learning about enchanting, but there was a part of me that still wondered if I had failed by not earning the attunement my father wanted me to.

  “The Shaper’s primary mana type is earth, and their secondary type is transference. While they are best known for being able to manipulate existing spells and reshape mana, this is not actually their unique capability. It is merely a consequence of their capable use of transference mana. Instead, their unique ability is to spontaneously construct and manipulate objects made out of mana.”

  “While attunements from other kingdoms with earth mana can create solid objects, they lack the Shaper’s flexibility to create, move, and reshape such an object instantly. Since Shapers practice this process so frequently, they are also generally the best at reshaping and altering other spells by using their transference mana. This makes Shapers devastating in mage against mage combat.”

  The professor continued with another drawing.

  “Next, the Shadow. They are the only local attunement capable of using umbral mana — more commonly just called ‘shadow mana’. This is used for concealment, as well as dampening the senses of others. Their secondary mana type is enhancement, which they use in conjunction with their umbral mana to enhance their physical characteristics and senses. This unique pairing of mana types allows the Shadow to create solid illusions, making the Shadow more dangerous than most illusion-focused attunements.”

  He turned back toward the class. “It’s worth being aware that a good deal of our testing at this school requires illusions. While most of these are made by Shadows, we also employ a number of Illusionists. Illusionists are Dalenos’ answer to our Shadows. They are capable of creating much more sophisticated effects. For example, they are much better at concealing wide areas of terrain.”

  “Edria and Caelford have attunements that alter the mind, rather than simply creating visible images. Edrian Mesmers can alter emotions and perceptions. They often use this to lure others into trusting them. They are also capable of making others ignore their presence by tricking our minds into believing they are a harmless part of the background.”

  Conway took a breath. “Caelford’s equivalents are Controllers. We have a few Controllers on campus for specific tests. Controllers typically can only affect one person at a time, but they are capable of directly influencing someone else’s behavior. For this reason, Controllers are commonly employed for trials and interrogation. In your second year, you will work with Controllers to learn how to resist magical compulsion.”

  That sounded like an interesting exercise… and an attunement I never wanted to go up against.

  Conway drew another symbol.

  “Menders are perhaps the best known of all of Valia’s attuned. Their primary mana type is life, but it is their secondary mana type — earth — that helps distinguish them from other healing attuned. While there are several attunements that can heal flesh and muscle, only Menders have the combination of mana types necessary to heal broken bones. The ability to treat broken bones makes Menders popular all over Kaldwyn. In the Six Years War, Menders wore unique uniforms that allowed them to traverse battlefields unharmed, offering succor to both sides.”

  I’d be shocked if no one ever used a Mender uniform to infiltrate enemy lines. Interesting.

  Professor Conway drew the next symbol.

  It might have been my imagination, but it looked like his hand was trembling. “Summoners. Among the most unusual of attunements. They utilize air and transference mana as means for transportation-focused magic. While this can be used to summon creatures, their name is somewhat misleading, as there are other attunements that are capable of moving creatures from place to place.”

  “Their ability is to form lasting bonds with monsters, which provide the Summoner with unique capabilities — including the ability to conjure copies of that monster that follow their commands. These bonds extract a toll on the Summoner, however. Every bond the Summoner maintains takes up a portion of the Summoner’s mana supply, leaving that mana unavailable while the bond is retained.”

  I followed the explanation with little trouble. I knew most of it already, but it was interesting to hear Conway’s perspective.

  He drew the most interesting rune — my own — last.

  “Enchanters are the foundation of our technological progress. Their primary mana type is transference, followed by mental mana. They are able to use this combination to transfer mana into and out of objects, something no other attunement is capable of doing directly. There are other attunements with similar functions, but none with the flexibility to manipulate any form of mana into an item. Thus, they are perhaps the single greatest reason that Valia continues to rival much larger kingdoms, such as Edria and Dalenos, as a military power. Every citizen in our kingdom benefits from enchantments, from the environmental barrier over our city to rain-producing rods on our farmlands.”

  That... actually sounded pretty amazing.

  I left that day’s class feeling better about my attunement than I ever had, and more motivated than ever to get some real enchanting work done.

  It was time to finally put some time and effort into learning how to be an Enchanter.

  ***

  By the end of the ninth week of classes, each of my walls, my roof, and my ceiling had a protection enchantment. The metal chain on the door had another protection enchantment.

  I couldn’t have possibly afforded the materials for that many enchantments, but I didn’t have to. I had the requis
ite types of mana to charge the runes myself. I still wasn’t comfortable using my mental mana, but I’d gotten more used to converting the mana in my hand into a usable form. That was slow and inefficient, so I used a couple mana crystals to speed up the process. All in all, it cost me about eight coins to finish warding the room. Not a bad deal.

  The types of enchantments I could do on my own were pretty limited. I was only capable of converting my mana into the types my body already naturally used. If I wanted to convert mana from my hand into mental mana, I’d focus on the mana in my hand and “command” it to change into the type of mana I already had in my head. It was pretty awkward at first, but I acclimated to it over time.

  Even for the types of mana I was able to provide on my own, I couldn’t manage very powerful enchantments. I needed to infuse all the necessary mana into a rune in a single session or the enchantment would fail. That meant I was limited to enchantments with relatively low mana requirements.

  The next thing I worked on was an anti-teleportation enchantment that covered my entire room. Initially, I’d assumed defending against teleportation would be difficult, but it turned out that teleportation itself was so complex that a ward just needed to throw it off slightly to make it fail. My particular defensive rune would just nudge the teleport slightly off course, specifically to outside of my room rather than inside it.

  None of those defenses would be sufficient against a foe on Professor Orden’s level, but the next time she examined the place, I’d be a lot better prepared.

  I finished four of Jin’s item requests in the same time frame.

  They were all pretty simple.

  The first was a bracelet that could make him invisible for about a minute before it needed to be recharged.

  Next, another bracelet that could make an illusory duplicate of him that moved about ten feet to his right and mirrored his movements. It had great synergy with the invisibility bracelet.

  Third, a necklace that could be activated to dampen any sounds he made. It’d work for suppressing the noise from firing his guns, too.

  The last was a ring he could use to generate a small illusion based on what he was thinking about. I was particularly proud of this one; it was the closest thing to actually mimicking the function of an attunement of any of the ones I’d built. It had a great deal more flexibility than the others.

  I made him a stronger shield sigil, too, which he hadn’t requested. He accepted the gift with a surprising degree of gratitude, bowing deeply at the waist.

  “You’ve gone beyond what I requested. Thank you.” When he straightened, his eyes shone with an infectious good cheer.

  He delivered more supplies to me shortly after that.

  I was getting more confident in my overall enchanting abilities at that point, so I decided to make a couple more items for myself. My resources were still pretty limited. Jin had helped considerably, but he was still only giving me small and medium cores, and the majority of them were a handful of specific types: mental mana, image mana, transference mana, and gray mana.

  The attunements he wanted me to “fake” for him were the Shadow, Diviner, and Guardian. Since he was giving me “extras” of the same materials used for those, I could build some additional items of those same types for myself.

  I headed toward the old university grounds to pay Lars a visit at the Climber’s Court. I had some ideas I wanted to ask him about.

  From what I’d heard, the original campus had been dedicated to direct study of the tower, so it had been as close as physically possible. After the first time that monsters had escaped the tower and attacked the nearby students, the old university had been evacuated and the new campus had been built.

  Funny, considering the monsters had zero difficulty in flying over the new university’s defenses and getting to us.

  The older buildings had been repurposed for any number of different things. Overflow housing for students that didn’t fit in the dorms, a few scattered remaining research facilities, and dozens of buildings dedicated to serving the needs of climbers who entered and exited the tower regularly.

  The Climber’s Court thrived on that close proximity to the tower. Other magic shops might have been cheaper, but Lars was convenient.

  The front room was littered with tables and shelves carrying dozens of items. Prices weren’t listed; Lars consulted a list behind the counter before buying or selling anything. I assumed that was a tactical move so that he could vary his prices on a per-customer basis.

  The retired climber was up on a ladder when I came in, putting a vase on the top of a bookshelf that was laden with non-book items. I didn’t know why anyone would ever want to put a vase on the top of a shelf, but he managed to get it up there without incident, waving to me as I closed the door behind me.

  It was early in the day, but there were already a couple other customers. A boy with glasses was thumbing through a stack of books on a table on the left side, muttering something to himself. A blonde woman was tossing a glowing dagger up and down, apparently testing the weight.

  But it was the masked swordsman that caught my attention.

  I felt a moment of panic before I processed that he wasn’t Keras — his hair was shorter and he looked closer to my own age and build. The mask was the wrong color, too. He carried an impractically huge sword like it was weightless. With the blade rested against his shoulder, it almost brushed the ceiling of the shop.

  The swordsman had a blonde-haired doll in a powder-blue dress poking out of a pocket in his cloak. That was unusual enough in itself, but I could have sworn that when I looked away and looked back the doll’s expression had changed.

  Is there something about this tower that attracts eccentric masked swordsmen?

  I shook my head to dismiss the thought. I had bigger things to worry about.

  “Corin!” Lars closed the distance between us in a few steps, slapping me on the back. “My favorite customer!”

  I definitely wasn’t his favorite customer.

  “How can I help you, lad?” He had a cheerful grin behind his voluminous red beard.

  “Thinking about picking up some more supplies, and I was hoping you could give me some advice on what might be useful in the tower.”

  Lars nodded knowingly. “Ah, sure, sure. Getting prepared for your practical next week?”

  I blinked. “My what, exactly?”

  “You don’t know?” Lars let out a deep belly laugh. “Oh, goddess, boy, you’re killing me. Your first practical exam is next week and you didn’t know?”

  I drew back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about; we’re not supposed to make our first trip into the tower until the end of the year.”

  He nodded, still chuckling. “Right, right, course not. But you get to go into the fake tower next week.”

  Oh.

  That made a lot of sense.

  I knew the academy had a building they used to set up tests that were similar to the rooms in the Serpent Spire. My brother had taken a mock Judgment in a similar facility for practice, but I’d never had the chance.

  When I’d heard we were going to be having tests periodically throughout the school year, I’d assumed they were the traditional written kind.

  But of course not. Not at a school where professors liked to ambush me in my room in the middle of the night. No, nothing could be simple here.

  Did the others already know? Was I the only one who’d so thoroughly misinterpreted things?

  I’d find out, but first, I needed to get myself prepared. I was nowhere near ready for another encounter with the tower — real or otherwise.

  I had planned to start gradually putting together an inventory of magical items that would be useful for going through the tower in the middle of the year, but if I had to plan for next week, I’d need to prioritize whatever my first items were much more carefully.

  I needed to make sure I scored well enough on the test to make it through the rest of the year. If I failed out, it would be y
ears before I could get another chance to start climbing the tower. I couldn’t afford to wait that long.

  “Right, um, of course. So, I need to get ready for that, and I could use some ideas.”

  Lars walked over to one of the nearby walls, gesturing for me to follow. “I’ve got just the thing.” He lifted an axe off of where it hung on the wall, running a hand affectional over the surface of the grip. “This here is Maverly. She got me through some of my toughest scrapes. Did I tell you about the time with the Baren Hydra on the third floor?” He swept the blade through the air, just a few inches from me. “There I was, neck-deep in goblins, when suddenly—”

  I smiled, but waved my hands for him to stop. I actually enjoyed Lars’ stories, but I knew that one.

  Also, he was trying to sell me on one of the worst items in the shop.

  And it was out of my price range.

  “Nothing against Maverly, but I’ve heard that one. Also, I’ve already got a magic weapon, and I’m getting rather attached to it.”

  I patted the hilt of the sword on my hip. Lars looked at it, his eyes nearly squinting, then flashing wide open with surprise. “That isn’t... Show me the blade on that, lad.”

  He hung Maverly back on the wall as I drew the weapon. I held it up for him to see.

  “Well, now there’s something I never thought to see. Selys-Lyann, the Goddess’ Tears.”

  My eyes went from him to the sword and back. “You recognize this thing?”

  He sucked a breath in through his teeth, nodding. “Put that away before you hurt yourself.” He himself was standing a cautious distance from its reach.

  I sheathed the sword carefully. “...What can you tell me about it?”

  I briefly entertained the idea that I was holding some sort of legendary sword that could only be wielded by a chosen hero.

  “That sword is marked with a terrible curse.”

  Yeah, that sounds more like my luck. Of course it is.