If I can exert physical force through the Aura, then I should be able to use it as a shield. Thinking this, I looked at a nearby fallen branch. Given what I learned about this ability from attacking, I sat down and crossed my legs to assume a meditative stance. Since my manifested aura was strengthened by my focus, this should be the best method to practice it.
Placing my hands together in my lap, I began taking deep, even breaths. After doing this for a short while, I concentrated on creating a hand to grab the branch. Gradually, a blue shape spread out from my shoulder, extending towards my target. As it moved further and further away, it started to resemble a hand, with a thin connection leading back to me.
Doing my best not to get distracted by the sounds of battle behind me, I attempted to use this hand to grab the fallen branch. Though it seemed to grasp it like you normally would, the moment the hand lifted up the branch began falling through. From my perspective, it seemed as if it was fighting through tar as it fell out of the grip of my aura hand. Okay… so I can’t use very much force at this level? That means it’d basically be useless as a shield…
Aura has increased to 4
At the same time, I received another rather pleasant message…
Cynthia has increased Hammer Mastery to 10
Cynthia has reached level 100 and unlocked her Hidden Power
I hadn’t been tracking her progress while I was training, but she seemed to have hit the benchmark to obtain a new ability. Opening up her character sheet, I looked for the Hidden Power. I was rather surprised with what I saw when I found it.
Weaponmaster- The owner of this Hidden Power is capable of acquiring weapon skills considerably faster than other people. The level requirement for mastering a weapon is reduced by 5, and skill gain with weapons is doubled.
Until now, I had only heard of active effects like the Light Speed or Snake Sword being used as Hidden Powers. I didn’t know that there were passive ones like this, as well. But it did seem to fit Cynthia, who was eagerly learning to use various types of weapons.
Seeing how she was putting her utmost into her training, I got back to my own work. So far, I had determined that the physical force I could exert was limited with my aura, but my cutting power was decent. Likewise, I had to pay a constant mana cost while my aura was interacting with another object. If it’s like this… there may be a way to use it.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to test my theory, but it should be possible to use my aura to create an attack that targets past the armor. It would take a good deal of practice, but since the aura would pass through objects even if it didn’t cut them, I might be able to strengthen it on the other side of that defense. Like sending a blade to cut the heart without damaging the skin.
Doing something at that level is well beyond me so far, but eventually it should be possible. First, there are other things I need to practice, such as shooting my aura out as a projectile. The end result should be similar to my Mana Bolt spell, but hopefully with less mana cost and more versatility.
Extending my hand, I gathered my mana in front of myself, creating a small ball connected to my hand by a thin light. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t cut that light without extinguishing the ball as well. I could adjust its size, shape, and even make it more solid but I couldn’t fully separate it from my aura.
Aura has increased to 5
Glancing back behind me, I saw that Denise and Cynthia were still sparring. Denise would use her speed and scimitar to duck and weave around the younger girl, while Cynthia relied on her heavy defenses to intercept the attacks and deliver her own as well. Since she was technically now in my presence, her level had begun increasing quickly again.
Already Cynthia’s health was practically double either mine or Denise’s. Her Agility was fairly low, and it seemed to have a higher effect on defense than Stamina did. Otherwise, maybe her defense would already surpass Denise as well. From what I’ve been able to discover, a typical city guard is roughly level forty. Normal commoners like Denise was originally are no more than level twenty. So, Cynthia’s Agility is just a little above what a well trained commoner might have.
It doesn’t matter much, really. The way Cynthia is training now is to be able to withstand attacks, not avoid them. Speaking of which, I smiled and decided to get involved with their training as well. “Hey Denise, I’m going to be healing her for a while, so it’s okay if you step it up a couple levels.”
As I say this, I cast Nature’s Blessing on Cynthia to restore her to maximum health. That spell has only been used a few times, so it is necessary to train it as well. Seeing my actions, Denise smirked and nodded to me. “Alright… here I come!” Her body vanishes as she suddenly increases her speed, striking at Cynthia multiple times in a single moment.
I struggle to keep up with the damage she is releasing, but I know that she would stop before it became a problem. With my mana levels, I can cast this spell repeatedly and never have to worry about running out. Each cast of Nature’s Blessing takes about two seconds to use, eighty mana, and heals roughly two hundred health. Those numbers seem a bit unreasonable to me, really. When I first got this spell, eighty mana was still quite a lot. But now, I can recover that much faster than I can cast the next spell.
Another bonus to this training method, aside from leveling that spell, is that both my Nature Magic and Cynthia’s defenses are leveling up more quickly. After the first five minutes of fighting like this, we stopped for a break. By that time, I had gained three levels of Nature Magic, bringing it up to twenty. Meanwhile, Cynthia had gained five points of defense, three levels of Fortified Health, and mastered her Heavy Armor.
The down side to this method, however, was that Denise and Cynthia had to use energy in longer bursts so they were quickly tired out. Since all I had been doing was watching while spamming Nature’s Blessing, that wasn’t an issue for me. In fact, that spell had advanced to the Advanced stage and was halfway to being mastered! The mana cost went down a bit while the healing amount went up once the spell leveled up, so that was good.
Taking a look around, I remembered that the creatures of the forest had been pretty much hunted to extinction by the foreigners. Since monsters follow a different respawn logic here, they wouldn’t simply appear again. If there weren’t any other monsters around in other parts of the island, this place would stay abandoned. On the other hand, if there was a high level dungeon on the island, the monsters from it might pour out into this area.
Thankfully the odds of there being a powerful dungeon nearby were extremely low, given that this was a prospering capital that served as a starting point for adventurers. But, that left this place with no animal life to speak of. Maybe there is a failsafe system to prevent total extinction?
I shrugged at that thought, and turned around to practice some more. Given how fast we wore ourselves out training like we had previously, I let the two of them continue as they had been. Reaching onto my back, I pulled out my Staff of Winter Storms and opened up my Skill List to check what I had for my Arcane Staff.
Arcane Staff 5
-Spell Staff(Unranked)- This skill allows the user to cast spells through their staff for alternate effects. If a spell is carved into a staff, that spell can be used simply by passing mana into it. Otherwise, the spell must be cast normally, while using the staff as a focus. It is possible to combine two spells in this manner. Warning: Incompatible spells may result in a backlash.
Only one skill so far? I guess I’ll have to train a bit more before I get another one. Still, alternate effects for spells, might be interesting. I glanced over the effects of the staff, and then entered an offensive stance while facing a nearby tree. These poor trees, haven’t done anything to me and yet I keep testing my powers on them.
“Okay… first effect, Frost Nova!” I tuned out the sparring that was going on behind me, activating the frost nova spell carved into my staff while striking that edge against the tree. Upon contact, the spell lit up, coating a wide area of
the bark in ice. Flipping the staff over in my hands, I aimed the second side at the tree. “Now, lightning!”
As soon as I channeled the magic into the staff, a beam of electricity shot out at the tree, punching a clean hole straight through it. I wanted to test the combined spell effects, but suspected that I didn’t have any good spells to combine with either Lightning or Frost Nova. Seeing the damage inflicted by the lightning left me pleasantly surprised.
Rather than a jagged bolt, the spell came out in a straight beam, likely as a result of the alternate effect of using it through the staff. Likewise, Frost Nova didn’t cause a wide area freeze, but instead selectively froze what the staff struck. This could be a really useful ability later on..
My next training method was an attempt to combine my Arcane Staff and Aura talents, by channeling my aura through my staff. I quickly learned not to do that with this staff, however, because as soon as I would channel magic into one of the edges the spell would activate. What I needed was to completely remake this staff, and replace the carved spells with Mana Stones.
Thankfully I had the ability to do just that, so I sat down and ignored the two women training directly behind me. From what I know, creating a fully functioning magical item, even incorporating the Mana Stones as a substitute for enchantment, would be beyond the ability of my Create Intermediate Object spell. Therefore, I’d have to expand upon it again, and create an even more advanced version of the spell.
My first step was to outline the first four lines of the Create Intermediate Object spell. After that, I added a fifth line to allow additional objects to be created alongside it by tapping into the final modifications. Next, there was a sixth ring that collected mana again over a duration until there was enough stored mana in the spell to activate the final step.
The seventh, and final, ring was the hardest step. I had to get it to extract a spell diagram from my mind and overlap it onto the ongoing spell. Then the mana stored from the sixth ring would gather and activate the diagram. This was a spell that was difficult to create, but would be even more difficult to cast, because I would have to focus on the enchantment diagram I wanted as I was casting the spell. Nevertheless, after I had finished the seventh ring and drawn the spell in my head, I received the prompt.
Create Advanced Object has been added to your Spell List
You have collected 75 spells in Jin’s Grimoire. Due to the properties of the Deific Dictum, the Grimoire has now gained a new ability.
Shit, I had forgotten all about that! Back when I was making the Devil’s Mercy ritual, I had created countless spells that I immediately deleted rather than saved. If I had saved those, then even having a hundred spells by now would be easy. Pulling out my grimoire, I quickly checked what this new ability was.
Guardian Lore: As long as this book is carried, the effects of all defensive and healing spells are doubled. This bonus only applies to spells cast on others.
Not as useful as the mana barrier, but still pretty good. Too bad it doesn’t apply to me as well. Opening up my grimoire, I turned to the newest page, which detailed my latest spell. Do I really have to say this?
The chant for the spell was even more ridiculous than usual, so I was reluctant to use it. Nevertheless, I needed to ensure that the staff I was making had the highest possible chance for success. Before I started with that, though, I needed to practice another spell. Turning around, I silently looked at the sparring, and saw that of course Cynthia was mostly losing.
Raising a hand, I cast Enchant Mind on the two, and then on myself. If I can increase my level with this spell, or with Enchanting in general, maybe I can get a better result than what the Staff of Winter Storms provided. I kept repeating this process for the rest of the evening, until we decided to rest for the night. Every now and then I would throw in an Enchant Body spell on Cynthia to give her a boost, but mostly I stuck to that one spell.
By the end of the day, I had gained another three levels in Enchanting. Even after hours of repeatedly casting the spell, Enchant Mind only rose to the Advanced rank. Despite casting it regularly after it reached that point, it didn’t seem to gain any experience. From the looks of things, unless I had a real use for the spell I couldn’t master it. For instance, I had been casting Scan almost constantly after learning it, but still my first spell to be mastered was Message.
Looking at it like this, my Scan likely only received experience when it helped me. On the other hand I mastered Hellfire Aura by grinding it. At the time I was doing that, though, I was pushing the aura to its extremes so that I could train my mana consumption, so that might have allowed it to qualify as helping me.
Speaking of which, the ability I gained from mastering Hellfire Aura should be more usable now. At the time, I wasn’t able to maintain it for very long because it used roughly twenty-five mana every second, and my recovery boosting items didn’t work since only infernal items work in that form. But now, even without the staff to boost my recovery, it should be sufficient.
Back on the subject, though, I pretty much have to go with what I can do if I want to make my new staff now. The question was, did I want to make it, or just stick with the Staff of Winter Storms for a while? At the rate I was learning, I might even be able to create more powerful spells before upgrading.
Nodding to myself, I decided to just stick with the staff I had, at least until I was able to make a better storage item than the bracelet. Leaving magical items of this quality lying around could be bad. Well, maybe I could come up with a spell to destroy these items for me so that wasn’t a problem.. That’s actually not a bad idea.
Sitting down in front of the tree, I got to work on the spell I had in mind. The first ring had to be able to target items specifically, so that I didn’t accidentally use it to destroy a caster or magical creature. After that, the next few layers worked based on the runes I had already created, searching out the components of the item’s aura with my Components rune, and then using the Rewrite rune to make the object’s own magic destroy itself.
Please select a name for your Spell
Hmm… I know! Smiling to myself, I concentrated on the name for the spell I just created.
Arcane Inversion has been added to your Spell List
I couldn’t help but let out a small laugh, as I looked over the spell’s description in my grimoire. Protected or more powerful enchantments, presumably measured by an object’s rarity, are harder to break down. I guess that means for powerful items I’d need to level it up a bit first.
As a test, I removed one of my Stone Keys from my backpack and placed it on the ground in front of me. While pointing a single finger at the key I read from the grimoire. “All things must end. Crumble, decay, return to your natural state and deny the laws of this land.”
A dark energy emitted from my hand, black-ish light shooting out at the key. There was a slight crackling that could be heard, though barely audible over the sparring behind me, and then the spell ended. For the most part, the key looked exactly the same. The only difference was the jewel embedded in it, which had turned black and cracked.
Picking up the key, I attempted to activate it as I normally would, channeling my magic into it and placing it against the ground. As soon as my magic touched the gem, the entire key shattered in my hand. “Perfect… so it really does change it to a self destruct enchantment.”
The Stone Key is only an Uncommon rank item, so I wasn’t surprised that the spell worked on it. However, the Staff of Winter Storms is rare, so I need a bit of practice first. As I took out the rest of the keys, I left only one in my pack. The others, I destroyed one by one, until Arcane Inversion reached Intermediate rank.
I don’t know if I’ll ever use this in an actual battle, but for cleaning up after myself when I trade in better equipment it will work wonders. Surprisingly, while I was destroying my Stone Keys, I received an extra two levels in Enchanting as well. Altering magic items seems like another branch of that magic, I suppose. Better than me getting some
entirely new field of magic. I would really like to master what I have before getting anything new.
Turning back to the others, I saw that they were just getting ready for a break. But since the sun was starting to set, I suggested that we go ahead and move back towards town. Tomorrow’s the big day. As we went back, I decided to check Cynthia’s progress since I wasn’t paying attention to the messages while practicing myself.
Name: Cynthia
Race: Human
Title: Hard Worker
Fame: 40
Gild: 0
Level: 132
Health: 2230 + 178
Mana: 0
Strength: 150+45
Agility: 90
Endurance: 436
Wisdom: 20
The Dive: Birth of a Hero Page 21