Deep within the first dungeon of the third chunk, a young mage stood before a blank spellbook. Their appearance hadn’t changed between moments, but their posture had inexplicably grown cold and shut off. Their shoulders were hunched, and their hooded eyelids drooped lazily.

Suddenly, the young mage blinked, looking around as if they had just heard a voice.

“Who the hell is talking?”

The young mage angrily asked the empty stone walls carved with system glyphs. The stone glyphs ignored the inane question, choosing instead to act as they had always done: watch silently.

“Stop mocking me!” the young mage shouted at the dim ceiling.

The young mage continued shouting at the deaf walls. In time, they would certainly acclimate to their dangerous surroundings. Of that, was certain. They had a job to do, after all. It wouldn’t do to shirk their duties. In fact, the coming harvest was fast approaching. Their hand was needed to ensure the gentle sprigs wouldn’t succumb to rot.

“...Harvest?” the young mage muttered quietly.

The young mage sensibly ended their fruitless interrogation of the walls. Choosing instead to explore the safe zone of the dungeon. Why they found the need to do this was a question for scholars and fools for they had spent several days living within these bioluminescent chambers.

Of course, the young mage claimed not to remember spending so much time farming the crops. That was alright. Even if their mind had forgotten the how, their hands were always prepared to harvest the blossoming kiku fruit when the time arose. The fuzzy fruit were quite delicious served in the fried flesh of a buttermilk gourd.

The young mage inspected their status over dinner. Puzzling over the strange set of statistics inherent to their character. They wondered why such a status was available to them and why the numbers appeared almost random in distribution. However, this was not a riddle easily solvable with the present information, and soon the young mage moved on to explore the tunnels.

Vicious monsters swiftly drove them back, and it was several long minutes before the tears dried and the shivers calmed.

“I wasn’t crying you flea-riddled shit-stain,” the young mage cursed the ceiling again. Apparently, not ready to accept that the ceiling wouldn’t respond. The young mage shook their head and, with nothing else to do, wandered back into the spellbook’s tunnel.

They watched the walls warily with each passing moment but swiftly found their hands brushing the vellum pages of the unfinished spellbook. It called to them. A secret power solely for them to create and wield. Unlimited potential whose methods were carved in the walls around them, if only they were wise enough to unravel them.

“It doesn’t bloody call to me,” the young mage grumbled sourly, verbally denying their own urges as their gaze settled on the intricate glyphs lining the walls. Almost immediately, their tense shoulders lifted. Their wariness fled as a sparkle of inquisitive curiosity glimmered in their eyes.

Yes. It was easy to decipher for one with such an extensive pedigree. These symbols were simply high-level abstractions no different than the innumerable programming languages the young mage had spent their life mastering. Perhaps the intricacies were lost on them in this early phase, but they understood enough and could extrapolate the missing details to form their first spell.

Ice frosted the corners of the spellbook as the young mage took the black sap of the braeburn root to inscribe the glyphs. Energy crackled in the air as the young mage pressed their will into the magical pages. Their blood pounded in their skull at their creation. Little did they know. A flaw would prevent the casting.

They cursed suddenly as if realizing their error a second before the spellform fizzled, and all the gathered energy melted away.

And so, the Bolt spells were born.

“Piss off voice, there wasn’t anything wrong with that.”

While not technically incorrect, the ice bolt spell was classified as tier 2 and therefore dealt far too much damage for a mage with only 1 magic to cast. Luckily, the young mage promptly realized their error, though quickly abandoned attempts to trim down the spell when they noticed a loophole they could exploit in the system.

Dropping the problem for the moment, the young mage set out to craft a new spell. A different spell. Not an attack spell, but a utility one. A diagnostic tool that was utterly essential for any sort of complex programmatic creation. One that would allow them to summarize what they saw through the system interface and predict errors in real-time.

It took days of trial and error, extensive research, and pensive thought. It took half a dozen harvests before the young mage finalized the spell. They cast it with a flourish and it pulsed like a grotesque eye above their head. It distorted the air with its power, but as it dealt no damage, it was technically a tier-0 spell. The young mage pursed their lips thoughtfully, vaguely disappointed that the system had forgotten that there was more to power than raw damage.

With the Eye pulsing overhead, the young mage easily crafted a minor variant of the ice bolt spell.

And so, the Strike spells were born.

The crystal projectile slammed into the far wall, but the young mage didn’t even register the successful casting. With the Eye glaring down at the runes, it became obvious that these particular runes had been neutered from the outset. Things that should work together simply didn’t with no rhyme or reason. It was as if an artificial limiter had been set to keep complexity down and help an uninitiated mage craft their first new spells.

“How. Utterly. Ridiculous,” the young mage grumbled as they left the chamber to raise their magic level.

Leveling their magic was simple in theory. Just cast spells on a valid target. Unfortunately, tier-0 spells granted zero experience, and ice strike required an aggressive target to grant experience. The tunnels were dangerous though, and the young mage quickly found themselves back in the safe zone in order to plan.

They needed more information. How was damage calculated? What did defense do? Did defense apply to magic, or did magic circumvent the stat entirely? To figure these things out, the young mage decided to collect their own data that they could use to reverse engineer the formula from scratch.

That prospect didn’t daunt the young mage. They’d undertaken far tougher challenges in the past and jumped into this one with gusto. The first thing they did was yank open the spellbook and direct the Eye on the two ice spell formulas. Almost immediately, their clever mind discovered an avenue for optimization.

The ice aspect of the two spells was, in its current state, purely cosmetic. The cold did nothing to boost the damage, nor did it impart a special effect. It was simply a consequence of the spell's internal structure but couldn’t be leveraged as all the available energy budget in the spells was already allocated for damage.

The young mage manipulated the Eye masterfully to build off the existing ice spells such that the cold would be consumed on contact. Ice would flow into the target’s veins, sapping their strength and, most importantly, reducing their defense. The effect would be small but noticeable, especially as the tier of the ice-type spells increased.

And so, the Rush spells were born.

However, before setting out to test the numbers, the young mage devised three new classes of spells to handle the breadth of the dungeon’s monsters.

From the deep recesses of darkness formed by the organic growth of luminescent moss slithered out Shadow Strike. Where Ice made foes brittle, Shadow made them weak. But mastery over attack and defense did not satisfy the young mage. So Smoke Strike was birthed from the stygian ash belching out of the incandescent forge. To wither was its purpose, and prevent any form of recovery while infected by its black stain.

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Last of all, the young mage took a precaution. A blade to their own wrist drew out the rejuvenating lifeblood that they channeled into the next spell. The insidious weakening of shadow melded with the steady poison of smoke. Reversing the effect with the Eye and forming: Blood Strike. The blood spells would be the weakest of them all and yet required the highest magic level to cast. For it was the blood spells that would keep the mage alive even in the most dire of circumstances.

Slipping from their creative fugue, they couldn’t help but notice the deeper strands of the spellbook revealed to them by the Eye. The book was destined to seal shut. Locked. Immutable. Becoming one with the system and forever unchangeable as an item drop of this world. Once the final spell within the book could be cast, no more changes could be made.

Except, the young mage wasn’t nearly done.

And so a routine was born. The young mage would rise with the dawn to harvest the beds. Seeds and fertilizer became common as the days passed with extensive testing of the new spells on the hapless monsters of the dungeon. The strike spells were too weak, so eventually, bolt and rush spells were used to learn the function of the combat stats.

Magic and farming levels rose swiftly. The young mage rushed to optimize and create the bolt and rush variants of shadow, smoke, and blood. Their power swelled, and the monsters went from being impossible to defeat to merely difficult. It was hard to collect data in this way, but the young mage was persistent. Before they could truly optimize their strategy, their level neared the requirements of blood rush, and they were forced to pause lest the spellbook seal before they were ready.

The next tier of spells turned out to be far more difficult to create. Weeks passed with little to show for the time and effort spent. Bolt spells were already efficient, and rush spells already optimized the element associated with a spell. Every aspect of their construction was simple and direct. There were no cheap shortcuts or careful methodologies that could be taken to eke out more power. In fact, even with the higher power budget of tier-4 spells, it was impossible to compress the energy enough to deal more damage. Something different would have to be done.

Something more.

Instead of miniaturizing, the young mage expanded the formula. Each spell took a dozen pages each, with hundreds of runic inscriptions detailing convoluted minutiae and the fractal expansion coefficients required to subvert the spells' original purpose. Instead of attempting to compress the damage, tier-4 spells would radiate out, dealing damage to anything in their path until the power was drained.

And so, the Surge spells were born.

With a level buffer once more established, further testing of the damage formula ensued. Time passed, levels rose, but frustration mounted. While tier-4 enemies could be defeated with surge spells, they were far too dangerous to allow for the wanton experimentation required to collect nuanced data. Blood rush helped somewhat, but blood surge was what was really required to keep the young mage alive in the tunnels. Unfortunately, unlocking that spell would forever lock the spellbook.

Still, the young mage tried with blood rush, but all too quickly, they were forced to stop once again right before unlocking blood surge.

It was then that a form of madness set in. Leaving the cave was impossible. Doing so would wipe all the progress to the spellbook. Delving deeper only netted more monsters that couldn’t be killed lest magic experience be gained. So the young mage was forced to stay in the safe zone. Farming and thinking. Thinking and testing. Researching and experimenting.

Time blended together with no sun to demarcate the days. The only metric available was farming experience. It predictably increased a set amount each day. It worked as a marker of time’s passage but failed to provide joy as the sunrise might.

In this aberrant state of mind, the young mage stumbled upon an epiphany. Time was passing, passing, passing. So why shouldn't the spell do the same? With ease borne from mastery, the young mage imbued time into the ancient magics. In exchange for the breadth of surge spells, the next tier gained specificity. No longer would ice and shadow weaken just once. No longer would the questing tendrils of blood and smoke fade swiftly after their inception.

And so, the Curse spells were born.

Testing continued, and finally, the young mage was safe in the tunnels. Blood surge healed them as ice and shadow curses sapped the dungeon monster’s stats. The beasts died in droves, and data flowed in quickly. Within days, the answer fell out of the equations.

“Five percent,” the young mage said quietly to themselves. “For every point difference between the level of a spell and defense, there is a five percent multiplicative increase or reduction in damage.”

Truly, the young mage had discovered a truth. One that explained the paltry effectiveness of strike, bolt, and rush spells against tier-4 enemies. They could kill tier-4 enemies. Certainly, they could, but it was neither easy nor a quick endeavor.

Several days passed after the discovery in quiet contemplation. The goal was complete. The spellbook was crafted. The questions were answered. And yet, the young mage didn’t want to level their magic and finish the job.

Once the spellbook sealed, the book would become a drop for anything to acquire. Perhaps even monsters. And if not that, it was only a matter of time before the world spawned in a human that had access to magic.

That wouldn’t do at all. No one else had worked for who knew how long to create these spells. No one else had suffered silence and boredom in a dank cave with only plants for company, all to preserve the integrity of the tome. No. These spells were personal. Creations to be wielded by the young mage and the young mage alone.

The worst part was the spellbook wasn’t even useful to the young mage. It was as if the entire task of creating the spellbook was designed for others. All the spells were — by definition — too low level for the next encounter. A tier-6 enemy would struggle against curse spells, but a tier-7 would shrug them off like nothing. Let alone a tier-8 or above.

The young mage diverted their effort to find a solution, but there wasn’t much to be done. Destroying the strike spells to prevent anyone else from leveling with them was possible, but doing so would require a complete rewrite of the entire spellbook. Bolt spells relied on strike spells for their function. So did the higher tiers. It was this self-similarity that enabled the hyper-efficiency of the spells.

The very thought also revolted the young mage. To restart was blasphemy. To settle for less was even worse. Something else had to be done. Perhaps...with the Eye?

Turning it not onto enemies, or spells, or the spellbook that birthed it, but rather on itself yielded a strange turbulence. One moment the young mage saw a reflection of themselves, and then the entire world clipped out of frame. Empty whiteness filled the young mage’s vision as the inner workings of the world were revealed to them.

There was a limiter on magic. An intentional, disgusting torc to ensure magic stayed in line with the rest of the world. At first, the young mage almost tore it out thoughtlessly but paused just before enacting the change.

The limiter was present in much of the world’s structure. A failsafe related to damage, present everywhere for an unknown reason. It was important that frisea leaves could only be farmed at level 15. It was important that iron weaponry was locked before 30 attack. It was important...

But why?

A mystery wrapped in an enigma, though perhaps one not so thoughtlessly tampered with.

So instead of wholesale refactoring, the young mage reached through the Eye into the subliminal space between frames and tweaked just a few values. In an instant, all the combat spells within the spellbook increased by five tiers. Their power spiked, but so did the magic level requirement to maintain the world's stability.

That was alright, though, since it meant the young mage could still cast ice strike at their current level.

Anyone else, however, would be locked out.

The young mage then split their attention. With one hand phased through the void, they carefully flipped through the spellbook until the intricate design of the Eye was arrayed before them. It was tier-0. Devoid of damage, and therefore out of the jurisdiction of the level system. If anyone — or anything — got their hands on the spellbook, then they could cast the Eye easily and perhaps even undo the changes made to the system.

That wouldn’t do.

With a decisive movement, the mage ripped out the pages containing the schematic for the Eye. Simultaneously, they finalized the changes to the underlying system and cast blood curse on an unsuspecting grasping bulb.

With a deafening thump, the black tome with purple highlights slammed shut. The cover wriggled and twisted, revealing a thick clasp that wrapped around the fore-edge of the book and permanently sealed the pages away.

With almost reverent fingers, the young mage took the sap of a braeburn root and signed the spellbook with their name.

Ancient Magicks

Charles Thrun

Then Charles Thrun smiled for the first time in many, many months.

And so, the Ancient Spellbook was born.