Kiresula read the message, which seemed to be less solid than normal system messages:
Skill acquired: Improved casting
By removing non-synthic magic from your system, you gain a deeper understanding of synthic magic. Your spells gain 10% more efficiency. You no longer accumulate non-synthic magic.
“Holy… Tajagera… mother of the gods!” she blasphemed in shock.
She checked her status with trembling hands:
Name: K%*x\|(
Class: &Z?!Q
Species: Glitchling
Level: 255
Strength: 255
Endurance: 255
Agility: 255
Charisma: 255
Aura: 255
Thought: 255
Magic: 320/320 Seren, Recovery: 6/min
Skills: Improved casting
Irrelevant, empty or glitched sections excluded
Another moment of shocked cussing happened.
Mayana looked shocked: “Are you okay? You look like your colours just turned a lot brighter.”
Kiresula took a moment to compose herself: “Yeah, I guess. I guess the ideas were not just as bizarrely wrong as I had assumed them to be. This had always been the more complicated option.”
Mayana nodded: “That makes sense, I guess. So, can you cast even if the [Unrecovery] is still ongoing?”
Kiresula felt the rush of the new, synthic magic as she cast [Light]. This time, she saw the light source and the glow that spread over everything, making everything appear bright and colourful, far more so than what the world normally looked like. After taking a moment to admire the colour of the soil, the tree bark and the leaves, she dispelled the [Light].
Mayana looked at her in disbelief: “Wow! That went, like, far! How far did you upchannel that spell to get such a reach?”
Kiresula shook her head: “I didn’t. I could have, I guess, but that was baseline.” She checked her status again, “though I guess it did cost more magic points than it used to. Light normally takes 4 magic points, so I guess, it upchannelled once to take 16.”
Mayana nodded: “That makes sense, relatively speaking, though if that means that you always have to upchannel your spells, you’re running out of magic insanely fast. Even if you retained all of your 64 points.”
Kiresula nodded, in a lie: “Yeah, I need to be careful about that.” Her points were above the level that was deemed possible. It was hypothesised that no attribute could be higher than 255 and here she was with a cool 320. Even if spell costs would rise one upchannelling, she’d manage. But as this was of the second system, she couldn’t say it. “I should test if anything else is upchannelled though…” she thought for a moment and used a spell of her former class: [Stalagmites]. Ice spires rose from the ground in an area of 10 or 15 paces. The stalagmites looked sparkly and sharp. Kiresula checked her status for her mana consumption. 36. Upchannelled plus out of class malus. Yikes! Not that she minded the value per se, she had enough magic and recovery, but she liked her former class and that made it all too clear that it was no longer her active one. She breathed in audibly, trying to keep it together. “Yeah, it too is more expensive. 36 points.” she said.
Mayana sucked in air audibly: “Yikes, that’s steep. Especially as this doesn’t even look all that impressive.“
Kiresula looked down: “I mean, I lost my class, so… I guess the spells cost a lot more. But I am at least happy that I can cast still. At least with broken magic. Having to lose that would have been horrible.”
Mayana nodded: “I assume that we should keep that under wraps, right?”
Kiresula agreed: “Better yeah. I mean, glitchlings are supposed to be magically inert, when they actually just aren’t exposed to broken magic enough to form serious reserves. It's not the thing that I cannot talk about, but it surely won’t make us popular with the church to proudly wield anathema.”
Mayana breathed out audibly: “I see. But this is not the actual anathema?”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Kiresula nodded: “This is a raindrop compared to a flood.” Kiresula reached for Mayana’s right hand, “but I will not allow it to drown you!”
Mayana pressed her hand tightly: “I know you won’t, Kirey!”
----------------------------------------
Later, Kiresula returned to the Rainbow House. She turned to Kju: “There’s five people with skills now.”
There was a moment of silence, then Kshi looked at her: “What did you get?”
Kiresula explained Improved Casting and mentioned “synthic” magic. The others perked up at the mention of 320 Seren. Some of the others had also magic over 255, but Kiresula had one of the highest. The others confirmed that the spell costs were however higher, roughly by a factor of 4, so the higher numbers made sense. The effects differed between seeming upchannelled to a regular effect, though there was no relation to cost increase. In general, as Kshi explained, the problem when casting was very seldomly the magical capacity or the costs, but the ridiculously low recovery. There was very little broken magic around, so outside of a source, like where the Rainbow House was located, recovery quickly trended towards zero. As such, all stated recovery was purely hypothetical outside of a few zones. Kiresula nodded, and mentioned that the lack of feeling any ambient magic had been quite disconcerting. Those who previously were mages as well confirmed this, and mentioned that this was one of the reasons that they built the house here on a source.
“Do you know the other synthic skills that are around?” Kiresula asked.
Kshi nodded and pointed to a particular engraving: “Synthic perception is mine. That is how I found you based on your skill use.”
Kiresula read up on the various skills. Synthic Perception allowed the user a vision of synthic magic akin to that of a mage on regular magic, albeit over a larger distance of several hundred paces, diminishing with higher concentration of synthic magic. It was not sure how the skill could be gotten, but it seemed to relate to being outside of synthic mana for a long time. There was some speculation that this related to being in a magical class, but the classes were currently not understood and the engravings seemed to be frustrated about that. The System characters seemed to relate to specific sets of spells that don’t have an out of class penalty, but there were as of yet no class definitions. The documentation of the other skills was more lacking. Someone had a skill for camouflaging the glitchling colours, gained in what was just laconically described as ‘a life threatening situation’, someone else had a skill to temporarily raise their attributes but only for about 30 seconds, which they gained after a long series of debuffs, to try to get to the values of the second systems. The others shared Kshi’s perception skill.
Kiresula offered her own help to cast the spells she knew and check the magic requirements. To her displeasure, the initial spells were all out of class. While she had a larger magic pool, eventually, she had to sit down and focus on recovery of her magic pool. “It looks as if the only spells without out of class malus are those generally without one.” she said.
Kshi grinned: “That must be horrible for your magic pool. You might even notice a slight drop.”
Kiresula looked a bit embarrassed: “I mean, am okay with that, but my wife still assumes my magic pool remains 64, like before, so I mostly need to keep my accounting up well. As the 320 are in the synthic system, I cannot like actually tell her. But aside from that… I would just like an indication as to what my class is.”
Styuq looked a bit angry: “None of us does! You’re not special about that!”
Kiresula made a movement backwards: “Sorry. I know, I am just taking time to get used to that. I used to work hard for my class, to get my spells. So, I guess, I just need some time to cope.”
Sidik looked at Styuq unhappily: “I am not telling Kysan how bad you coped with the transition.”
Kiresula looked confused about who Kysan was until she realised that this referred to her. The pun worked in her language: Ki for Kiresula, Asan for one hundred, Sy meaning three and Sysan being an admittedly shortened word for three hundred, which in upper strata would be Sy-yasan. She had not expected Sidik who probably spoke the Ilkshehiran dialect to make such an eloquent pun. Still, she raised an eyebrow: “Kysan?”
Kshi giggled: “I tried to imply before that you probably should come up with a name yourself. Quite a few of our names are puns. I didn’t feel like I could fully explain it around others. Including my own one. Kshi referred to me coping to becoming glitched by means of profanity. We just made the other explanation up as a bit of an inside joke. But, it helped us to cope, so I guess, we started doing it.”
Kiresula asked the others for the origins of their nicks and found out the following:
* Kshi was named after the curse Kshinikki, which he overused initially.
* Styuq was named after something embarrassing and he steadfastly refused to explain.
* Mak was named after famous author of dynastic fiction Makivan. She said that her family situation was worse than in the 10 generational epics.
* Kju was named as such because of her way to handle the glitching, which was by denial.
* Tvik was named so for his lanky statue and his admittedly weak strength even for a glitchling.
* Qari was named as such because he was the lead researcher of the group. The name Qari referred to second System (qinci rajeni) in the local language in a primitive code children often used.
* Ziyik was named as such because she was the first to have been able to unlock the stat Might (yikzin) in the second system.
* Shla was named after the stat Dexterity (Alashzin) that she discovered, though it later turned out that that Ilkshehir already knew about it.
* Sidik was named in the Ilkshehiran accent for Green, for finding the second system as well.
Kiresula found this all quite confusing, but planned on just rolling with it. This was not weirder of a tradition than some academic ones, which she had to go through.
As they were talking about things, they heard the loud clangs from the church of the [System], indicating the evening. Kshi immediately perked up: “Choir practice time! Feel free to participate!”
Kiresula looked at Kshi in confusion: “Is that your hobby?”
Kshi made a vague gesture: “We believe that while the church can hear us sing religious songs daily, they won’t think that we are quite the heretics that we are. It’s basically a public relations activity. As we are going outside, your wife can participate as well.”