I could feel the tension in the streets as I patrolled ABB territory. A quick check of my phone showed that the PRT still hadn't announced that they had Lung and Oni-lee in their custody, but it was clear that news was spreading anyway. They would probably need to announce it soon, or there wouldn't be any point.

I couldn't tell if the growing tension was because the peace was only temporary, as people knew what it meant for the area to be undefended by Lung, or if it was just people's dislike or disapproval of my presence. Either way, I could feel that it was only a matter of time before things started to buckle and fall apart.

A while after the sun had set and the streets had all but emptied out, I made my way back to the forest compound. I could feel my own encroaching tension as my next power-up slowly got closer and closer. I was excited, anxious, and eager, but I managed to keep myself from spiraling or panicking nearly as much as I had the last time.

I stopped by a shop to grab some food, and after showering and changing into some clean clothes, I started a small fire in the outdoor gathering area I had just made, specifically in the pre-designed fire pit. I then started roasting the hotdogs I had purchased over the fire, heating up the rolls on the rocks that made up the fire pit.

After enjoying the first bite of the first completed hotdog, I leaned back in my chair, letting out a long breath of satisfaction. There was something nice about cooking your own food, even if it was as crude as a sharpened stick and an open fire.

"Have you come to a conclusion on how you will spend your points?" Alya asked after I finished my second bite. "You do not have much longer until the cycle resets."

"I know, trust me. I can feel it," I assured her, shaking my head. "And not having ideas isn't the problem. I have plenty of ideas. Way too many ideas, many in fact. The problem is I don't know which ones I should go with. Especially because I have no idea what my freebie will be like at this time. If I knew, I could structure my ideas around it, but…"

"What are some of your ideas?"

"Well… honesty, it's easier to go over what I plan on not doing, since my options are more or less infinite," I pointed out. "I don't plan on putting any more points into healing. What I have is more than enough. It has its limits, sure, but I can't go around wasting charges like that. The only other thing I really want in the healing topic would be a resurrection spell, but there is no way I would get access to that at level three. Hell, it might not be in the "healing spell" category at all."

"That does seem like a stretch," Alya agreed. "But what about mass healing or issues that you can't heal at the moment?"

"I… I think the healing spells topic is good for now," I said, hesitating for a moment before repeating myself with confidence. I could feel Kali rubbing my back reassuringly for just a moment before her presence pulled back.

"Very well," Alya said. "What else are you not going to do?"

"I… I'm pretty sure I will not be upgrading ritual design and crafting, either," I responded, this time wincing at my choice. "Part of me wants to, and there's a large chance I will at some point, but for now, I am getting what I want from my rituals."

"Shouldn't that mean increasing the level would get you even more of what you want, but even more powerful?"

"Probably yeah, which is why I said I will most likely upgrade it eventually," I pointed out. " But for now, I need to spread myself out, pull up more things and expand my repertoire. Rituals are incredibly flexible and can be pretty potent, but only if they are given time to be developed and used. More ways to fight and more ways to be flexible are what I really need right now."

For a long moment, we were quiet, while I continued to eat and spent some time considering my next move and my next cycle of points.

"I think, if I have three points left over, rather than dumping them away into lightning spells or even picking a second spell type to use, I will try and find a way to quickly cast my spells," I said with a frown. "It's been a consistent weakness of mine, and if I can come up with a way to cast higher powered spells, like I can quickly cast my spark spell, then the level of power I can bring to bear would increase massively."

"What would the topic be?"

"I'll try something like quick casting first. Maybe there is a way to force a spell to function like that that I am missing," I explained with a shrug. "If that doesn't work, maybe I'll see if there is something like instant cast wands or gems or something. I could see myself with a bandoleer of wands that I could pull from if I needed to lay the hurt on someone badly. Though I would prefer not to rely on something like that."

"I think you should focus on what your primary concerns are," Alya suggested after a minute of silence, during which I put another hotdog on to cook.

We debated back and forth for a while longer, Alya switching between acting as devil's advocate and as a general sounding board for my ideas and thoughts. Eventually, I gave up debating, since I was basically just walking in circles, and decided to spend the last few hours working on the ritual for my new staff. I decided to do a double-layered ritual on the staff itself, then see if I couldn't find a way to store multiple spells at once in the crystal top.

I was just about finished with the first layer of rituals when my phone alarm went off, alerting me that it was almost midnight. I carefully put my notebook down on the table, leaning back in my chair as I waited for my charges to refill and for my freebie to trigger. In front of me, the crackling of the fire continued, its warmth keeping me calm. I could feel both Kali and Alya drawing close, supporting and waiting with me.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, I could feel the charges slowly flow into me, each one lighting up alongside the three already existing ones. When I had nine in total, the process finished, and I waited for whatever freebie I was going to get, assuming that I did.

Just as before with druidcraft, the first level began to fill after a sizable pause, but it wasn't until the first level was completely filled that I got a look at what it was.

Wands, staffs, crystal balls, gold embossed symbols and hunks of precious stones, a vial of powerful blood, or a shard of bone from a magical animal. As the knowledge poured into me, I could feel what the topic was.

The creation of arcane focuses.

I couldn't help but laugh as the second level filled as well, my mind awash with an even greater understanding of how to find, craft, refine, enchant, and ritualize arcane focuses. I knew how to make a wand that could reduce my mana cost or a crystal ball that would purify my mana for more effective healing. I saw dozens of different types of arcane focuses, all of them useful, all of them significantly better than the staff design I had just been working on.

"What is it?" Alya asked as I shook my head, reaching for my notebook.

"I just got arcane focus creation," I responded, chuckling as I tore out my staff ritual draft, crumpling it up and throwing it into the fire. "Blows what I had designed out of the water. It has also confirmed something I was curious about. I should be working with a spellbook."

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"You haven't needed one so far," Alya pointed out, a bit confused. "And why does a topic called arcane focus creation make you think that you need one?"

"Because I just had the designs for one downloaded into my head," I explained. "An arcane focus built into a spellbook, the ultimate in convenience or spare focus. It definitely implies that most wizards or mages would have one already."

"Okay, but why haven't you needed one so far?" Alya asked.

"Because all the spells I have been casting have been directly downloaded into my head," I explained, leaning back in my chair. "I don't think I could forget the chants for any of my lightning or healing spells, even if I tried."

"Then what's the problem?" Alya asked.

"There's no problem, it just means I'm going to need to make myself a spellbook," I explained with a shrug. "Especially since I'm pretty sure I'm going with my first plan."

While debating and discussing potential ideas, I realized what I really needed was the ability to really go deeper into magic. So far, despite having unlocked six, now seven different topics, I was still barely even scratching the surface. Every subject I had access to had one thing in common, and that was that it pointed to their being so much more beyond what I had selected.

My purchase of ritual crafting and design had opened my eyes to just what sort of things magic could do. Now, I wanted to dive into a new section, spell crafting. With the ability to design and write my own spells, I could finally start to explore magic more freely. While I might not be able to intuitively cast the spells I made like I could the spells I unlocked via Marvelous Mage, they would still give me a level of flexibility and an ability to explore the limits that I desperately needed.

For all the power that I had, I had no way to put out a fire, lift an object with magic, to cool or to heat, to do anything but heal or spark lightning. I had made due and even risen above, but now it was time to dive deeper into magic. Even if I had to rely on a spellbook for the majority of the spells I designed.

Carefully, slowly, I pushed one charge of my power into spell crafting, feeling the connection latch on easily, the link growing as the charge was used to unlock knowledge. Just as it had for ritual design and crafting, the knowledge went further because I was learning the parts and methods rather than complete spells themselves.

When the first charge was set and spell crafting unlocked to a single level, I spent a few minutes going over what I now had access to. Crafting spells was a balance between several layers. The first was arcane symbols, which I already knew pretty well, thanks to my ritual crafting knowledge. The second was chanting, which was used to invoke the symbols through intent and latent magical concepts.

The chanting was done in the arcane language, which was an old, modified version of Latin that was somehow tied to magic. That language, or rather the words being chanted, had to be balanced with elemental energies and symbolic weight in order to properly invoke the correct arcane symbols. The words mattered, and they needed to fit together like a puzzle while still carrying the intent of the spell.

That balancing was achieved between the fourth and fifth layers. The fifth layer was the starting point, the intent of the spell, and what the caster wanted to happen. Choosing what words belonged in the chant required an expansive amount of calculations and arcane formulas, as well as a long-running list of strange numbers and conceptual interactions. For example, most arcane words for "death" could not be in the same sentence as the arcane words for "life."

In some cases, you could use spell solutions you already knew to inform how you designed new spells, which is why people often had specialties. After all, why branch into four elements when you could get so much further just by focusing on one? There were also things like two-handed spells, spells that require certain hand movements, and several other similar concepts.

Basically, you first figure out what you want your spell to do. Then, you use whatever resources you might have to guess or at least generalize just what words would work in your chant. You then do an incredible amount of complicated magical math to prove or disprove what words worked in your chant until it all balanced out and the spell was complete.

Of course, because my knowledge came from the Marvelous Mage, I had a major advantage. While a normal wizard might struggle to gain an understanding of new words, I had a large chunk of the language just downloaded into my head, and that chunk only got bigger as I bumped the level all the way to three.

I sat there in my chair, slowly absorbing and acclimatizing to the knowledge I had unlocked. Somehow, I managed to resist the urge to grab my notebook and get to work designing something. I still had three charges to spend, after all.

I took a breath and pushed aside my excitement and eagerness, instead focusing on finishing my task. Carefully, I pushed a single charge into quick casting, partially convinced that the investment wouldn't go through and I would have to pick something else.

To my surprise, the subject greedily accepted the charge. Suddenly, there was an explosion of knowledge as my new quick casting topic reached out like a spider web, connecting to dozens of spells from my healing and lighting subjects.

Before, all I could manage to quick cast was a few minor lightning spells and the weakest levels of general healing, barely more than a pat on the shoulder and wishful thought. Now, I could feel dozens of my spells, ready and waiting for me to cast in seconds. Some of them required a word or two, while others required none at all. I quickly invested my remaining two charges, feeling the spider web extend even further.

Slowly, I stood, looking up at the night sky through the gaps in the trees.

"Fulgura meum!"

I shouted, and a torrent of electrical energy poured from my hands. The same spell I had used to take down Lung fired up through the trees and into the darkness above. A spell that took nearly ten seconds and several chanted words now took two words and under two seconds.

Even better, I see the topic linking to spell crafting, ready to guide me in doing similar things with spells I designed, even if it's at a lower level since I won't have an internal download of the spell on hand constantly.

I cast a few more spells, switching between casting them wordlessly and with shortened chants. Finally, when I was satisfied that I had fully explored my last purchase, I finally picked up my notepad and began designing a new spell, my first new spell.

It took me nearly fifteen minutes to put together an incredibly simple spell, working out the chant and the elements. Eventually, when I was satisfied it would work, I stood from my chair and held out my hand.

"Candens palma," I intoned, and immediately my palm began to glow.

A single arcane symbol appeared on the back of my hand, and a beam of light akin to a high-quality flashlight shone out of my palm, lighting up the trees as I swung the beam of light back and forth. After a few more seconds, I cut the spell, letting the light fade