Another two weeks flew by for Chuck. He had very little downtime due to his large class load and hadn't seen Harlo since the first week he had arrived at the Tower. He was using some of his spare time right now to eat. On a positive note, multitasking had finished level four, allowing for him to train the third skill at seventy-five percent of normal speed, instead of fifty. He wasn't sure the time spent was worth it, but with little else to train at the moment he stuck with it.
All of his other skills had hit their peak level. He even unlocked a new skill from leveling up stealth.
Name: Hide in plain sight
Rarity: Epic
Prerequisite: Stealth 5
Level: 9300/16000SP to level 3
Status: Active
Stat: Dexterity
SP to next level: 16000
Description: People will assume you are a trick of the light. 80% chance to remain undetected while standing or walking in the open. 5-minute duration or until you make a quick movement.
Chuck itched to test this new skill but he didn't want to advertise the fact that he leveled skills so quickly to just anyone. Maybe he should seek out Harlo after today's combat class.
The teacher said he had a surprise for the students. Chuck couldn't imagine he or the other students would enjoy this surprise as much as the teacher did.
Chuck was a little bummed that none of his defensive spells could be combined but there was nothing he could do about that. He was making great strides in his spellcraft and history classes.
He could feel that he was at the cusp of understanding what the two researchers, Paulius and Orikin were talking about. He was also starting to decipher the journal. It seems that their country was at war with another country and they were looking to create a spell to put a swift end to the conflict. Either something went horribly wrong or they were betrayed. There was no mention of this other country or where they were located. Not that it mattered, the incident happened thousands of years ago.
Chuck hurried to his class after finishing breakfast. Being late would get him stuck in a 2v1 duel. One of those was enough. He was still sore from the ice arrow that slammed into his chest after his shield failed.
Chuck had no illusion of superiority in his classes. There were many people more competent than him in combat or spellcraft. He was middling at best, his only saving grace was his ability to out-train his peers. Most of which were in their early twenties. This meant they had four to eight years of training on him, assuming they could afford the cost of skills. A lot of them couldn't as they weren't well off. Even the ones that were well off, chose to only buy spells when they were required.
It was the mentality that there was no point investing in combat spells since no war was likely. Chuck joined the Tower due to the same mentality but he had started to hear rumors that made him nervous. There wasn't anything he could do about it now.
He focused his mind on the task at hand as he entered the arena. The teacher was standing in the center talking with a group of six men and women wearing the same clothing he had seen when he first entered Lionoss. Well, at least he knew now that the people wearing the short feathered caps were mages.
Chuck took a seat in the stands as the rest of the small class filtered in. He wasn't the only one to notice the mages and nobody seemed happy about that. I soon found out why.
"Welcome to another wonderful day students. Today you get to test your skills against real battle-tested mages," the teacher said gesturing to the people now standing quietly behind him.
"Because accidents may occur, we have decided to have two healers on hand for today's class."
Chuck looked to where the man pointed and saw two men with grins on their faces. Other than the teacher and the soldiers, there were the only two that seemed happy about being here today.
"Jala, your up first."
Chuck watched one of the few female students sigh as she walked down into the arena. The rest of the soldiers moved to the seating to watch. This was the first time Chuck had seen the main shield turned on. Most of the time they just used the smaller fighting rings within. Each combatant took one side of the arena as the protective shields formed around them.
"Begin!" the teacher shouted.
Chuck expected Fireballs and lightning and all sorts of crazy powerful spells from the mage. Instead, he watched as glittering dust formed in front of the mage.
"Match," he heard the teacher yell.
Chuck blinked in confusion, the mage was standing behind Jala with a dagger to her throat. 'What the hell happened?'
He quickly checked his skills, thinking maybe he died again. This allowed him to realize what had happened. It was so simple. The man had used some sort of spell that focused everyone's attention. When everyone was enthralled he simply walked over to her. Three minutes had passed in the blink of an eye.
If this was what the rest of the matches were going to be like he was ill-prepared for combat. Chuck couldn't even risk showing off his crafted spells and had to rely on the basics.
The next match was between Darfon, a wiry man not much older than twenty, and one of the female mages.
The match lasted a bit longer, only because Darfon refused to give up even though he was sinking into a pit of quicksand. The woman just canceled out all of his basic spells he tried to cast at her, not moving from her initial position.
Vigo was up next, he was the best mage in class so perhaps he could hold his own.
He threw up an Earth wall as soon as the match started. Chuck watched the Mage fighting him chuckle. While Vigo was the best in class he lacked real-world experience. Never let your target out of your sight.
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The mage sunk into the Earth as soon as Vigo obscured his vision. You had to give Vigo credit, he was quick to correct his mistake when he couldn't see the mage anymore. Vigo repeatedly used stomp to shatter the area around him, thinking the man had become invisible somehow. Chuck didn't know if invisibility was a spell, he hadn't heard anyone mention it but he supposed his hide in plain sight came close.
Vigo looked around frantically until he was tossed into the air by a pillar of stone. The mage now rose out of that pillar and cast a water ball spell at Vigo. He kept the magic aloft as Fibo struggled to escape, finding no footing or surface to push off of. The teacher called the match after Vigo stopped struggling to escape.
Chuck had to admit, these were all devious spell combinations. That last one would cancel out a good deal of magic, rendering a fire or ice mage nearly useless.
Chuck jumped as his name was called. Looks like he was up against the other female mage. He walked into the arena, nervous but ready for anything.
"Begin!"
As soon as the word was uttered, Chuck was already casting. He placed a kinetic barrier just in time to catch a weird pink glowing orb. It slowed the orb but it still burst into blinding light.
Chuck tried to blink away the blindness as he activated hide in plain sight. It should buy him enough time to recover. Initially, he wanted to hide this skill, along with the other ones he created. But if he couldn't survive one mage he didn't care for his odds going up against the evil entity he was sent after.
He heard spells impacting his barrier and passing through but he couldn't see what they were. Since the mage was missing him he figured she had lost sight of him in the flash. Now she was randomly peppering the area to try and find him.
Chuck saw a wave of mana billow out from the mage, as she cast some sort of spell. It bounced off the floor and people, returning to her... oh, she was using some sort of detection spell. After the wave hitting him returned to her, she turned towards him. He had managed to slowly move ten meters to his left. Unfortunately, it left him exposed.
He could feel the spell build but the wave of water that crashed towards him wasn't something he could stop. He threw everything he had at the spell, thinking maybe he could burn off the water or freeze it but it wasn't truly water it was mana.
The tidal wave swept him off his feet and tossed him around before he was slammed against the arena wall. He felt his arm break from the impact as the water receded.
The healers were only too glad to set his arm and use their magic on him. He howled in pain as they pushed the bones back together.
The duels went on for the rest of the two-hour-long class. Not a single student managed to even hit one of the mages. Vigo came the closest with his earth-based attacks. You could tell after class that the confidence level of the student had taken a major hit. From the teacher's gleeful look, that had been the goal.
Chuck figured it was a break them down and build them back up sort of approach, at least he hoped so as he painfully walked back to his room. Even his healing spell hadn't been enough to banish the aches and pains from today's combat.
Chuck plopped bonelessly on his mattress, too tired to even roll over or remove his clothes and armor.
He lay like this for an hour before he got enough energy to turn over get back out of bed. As much as he would like to just lay in bed and relax for the rest of the day he had the mystery of the necklace to unravel as well as a spell crafting class later in the day.
He dove into the necklace.
"Paulius, have you heard the [unknown]?"
Chuck figured the word might be news he added a note in the book to see if he could reference it to other instances of that word.
"What [unknown]?"
"The council of Grema has given us the go-ahead to develop [unknown]."
"Are you sure that's wise? [Unknown] is [unknown] and could be used [unknown]."
Chuck knew the last word in the first sentence and the first unknown word in the reply was the unknown spell's name. Not that it helped him. The other two words didn't have enough context for him to figure out yet.
The two celebrated for a bit before the recording switched to the next memory.
The next memory consisted of mostly unknown words as the two discussed what Chuck could only assume was some obscure magical theory. He struggled with this memory the most since he had no source material for the words. He wasn't too worried about that fact, he wasn't trying to recreate the spell from scratch.
He did make a few notes based on assumptions and the calculations they were drawing on a chalkboard. Some of them were similar to the ones in the written journal, maybe he would get lucky in translating them.
He ended his session with the necklace after a few hours without any significant breakthrough. With a sigh, he turned towards the journal to review what he had learned and see if he could piece any more tidbits together.
He came across one word that he thought looked familiar. He flipped through his notes until he found what he was looking for. The word wasn't exactly the same, the one he had a note on just said solo or point. At least according to historians that had translated it. He scratched his head at that and looked at the formula accompanying the unknown noun. He thought he saw a density calculation in the formula but he wasn't certain. It wasn't like they used Earth-based math calculations or even standard lettering.
For shits and giggles, Chuck did the math, glad that he remembered how from high school. 'Enhanced memory was awesome.'
The numbers checked out. So now he knew for certain that it was a density calculation. But the number made no sense... oh, no... that can't be right. They didn't, did they? Chuck recalled obscure facts from his science classes back on Earth. One was about the density of lead which was 11.342 grams per cubic centimeter. The number the researchers had listed after their calculation was 2 x 1015.
Chuck only knew of one thing that could be that dense, a black hole. But if the researchers had created a black hole, the entire planet would have suffered. Then Chuck realized he saw revised calculations later in the journal that significantly reduced this value. He got a sick feeling in his gut when he calculated the result. The value was close enough to what he estimated the crater in Grema to be.
The mana requirements for a spell of that magnitude were equally extreme though. It would have taken dozens of mages days to power a spell of that size. Is that why the spell backfired?
What would have happened had they succeeded in casting the spell? Chuck didn't want to even think about it. The last page of the journal was written with a further revised formula, 1/100th of the density than the previous formula. Written next to it was the name of the spell. Chuck sighed and opened his interface to verify his assumptions. There it was, the unknown spell now had a name.
Name: Singularity
Rarity: Mythic
Level: 0 -1
Prerequisite: Mana Manipulation level 5
Damage Type: Gravity
Status: Active
Stat: Intuition
Range: 100m
SP to Next level: 350000
Conditional Information: Pausing skill training resets skill to 0 Skill Points
Description: Creates a point of intense gravity that pulls everything within a 100m radius into a dark abyss. Not even light can escape this monster.
Chuck wanted to throw up at this revelation. Why would they create a spell to do this? It was suicide to even cast the spell since the radius and distance matched, and even past that you would be subjected to tidal forces so extreme it was liable to rip you apart anyway. He couldn't imagine a spell capable of devouring a whole football stadium.
Chuck lowered the journal from his shaking hands and wiped the cold sweat that had formed on his brow. While he knew this spell was a death sentence. He wasn't sure his blessing would save him from something like this. Despite the risk, he still swapped his secondary main training slot to this skill. If it came down to dying or saving the planet he would sacrifice his life if the need arose. He stared at the skill for long minutes before he clicked yes on the button to train it. He wouldn't ever tell anyone that he had this skill and would prefer to never use it and that knowledge of its existence died with him.
Chuck took the journal and necklace to one of the casting rooms. He shut and locked the door. Chuck placed the items on the stone floor and backed away. When he was far enough away he used flame thrower on the items. The journal turned to ash almost instantly but the necklace survived. He repeated the casting, pouring mana into the fire of the spell, turning it a blue-white so bright he had to turn away.
The intense heat caused him to sweat furiously. He kept it up until he heard a crack. The gem in the necklace had shattered and with it the enchantment. After the protective enchantment failed the gold quickly liquified in the intense heat.
Chuck waited for the area to cool before he collected the gold and left the room. In a little over two months, he would have a deadly monster in his pocket.