Chapter Fifty Nine
Joe lay with his back against the tree, the sparkling diamond stars lit the sky like in absolute brilliance and Joe found himself basking in the landscape. His body and arms lay pressed against the tree trunk and the grass, held in place by long vines and grasses. The pressure upon him was not painful, but actually comforting, as if he were cocooned in a blanket or sleeping bag.
He rested there, content. Suddenly, tension overwhelmed him, and uncertainty and fear whispering through his soul like smoky fog twisting through gnarled trees. Joe snapped his head up, struggling against the bindings, the pleasant cocooning of the grass now unpleasant restraints that kept him from being able to take in where his fear was overwhelming him from. His eyes flickered across the landscape in search. He immediately saw the camp fire in the distance, noticing a family and his apprentices reposing around it in enjoyment. Surrounding them, shadows danced with five very specific and recognizable faces.
Immediately, Joe snapped aware, although not awake. He was still in his dream and immediately knew where and what he was. The restraint on him immediately faded, although he still felt pressed down, although in comfort now, instead of restraint. All the figures, shadow bandits and friendly camp goers both, froze in place at his realization and the dream faded and disappeared, leaving him in peace. Joe considered for a moment, wondering whether he should try to go back to sleep or if he should wake up and begin his day. When he found himself drifting back to sleep, he accepted it and fell to blissful sleep.
* * *
Joe woke in the morning rising slowly from the fugue of perfect rest. He remained in repose for a bit before sitting up and stretching, a might yawn wrenching through his whole body. Man… perfect way to wake up! Joe thought with a smile as he continued rolling his whole body from toes to neck. He simply enjoyed the moment for a bit before finally settling into his bed and began grunting the mana out of himself once again. He did try to allow mana to escape naturally, for a bit, spending about five minutes on it, but was unable to allow any out. He did feel a lot closer than ever before, now certain that he’d figured out some things, but still struggled to accomplish it, even once.
Finally, he went back to his grunting full body exertion to force it out and then into exhaustion to continue his practice. As he did so, he took the time to manipulate the mana outward in waves, shapes, directions, and differing purposes. He was able to accomplish some of the more easily grasped ideas, but really struggled to the more complex things, like his automatic defensive shields and other things. Pointing it in a direction and puking out mana was quite easy. He did this two or three times, and even felt his control of his mana stutter a bit on his third try, coming out smoothly as he was, somehow, able to release the mana on his own will instead of squeezing it out forcibly through a closed lid.
After his third cycle of exhaustion and his MP at close to zero, he turned to playing with his points, but did not really do much with the mana itself, wanting, instead, to learn about the points themselves. He looked at each of the points, but noticed nothing too different between them, although he still remembered which one he’d played with the most, when it came to its shell and containment. He continued his experimentation on the second one, twisting, turning, pulling, and any other idea he could think of, although there was little twisting or turning. The pulling, actually worked out, and he added that to his repertoire of messing with the mana point shell, center, and containment.
After playing with his mana and mana points for a good hour or two, the others started stirring, although nobody actually woke up, the light from the dim moons and brighter gas giant still unchanged. Still night? Wonder why they’re stirring?
Joe paused, looking at them for a bit before looking around the room and realizing the room seemed to be bathed in his excess ejected mana, a thin haze of some kind wafting through the room. Huh… are they sensitive to it? Garnedell sure noticed easy enough as soon as I farted out a huge cloud of mana… maybe it’s messing with their sleep. What should… oh… maybe just alternate mana work and kata forms; let the mana dissipate a bit? Joe started to stand for his morning forms but then realized he still hadn’t looked at his status now that he’d hit level thirty in spell caster. That would work… take a look at my skills at stats! With that, Joe took a look at his current job and his full stats, wanting to see how close he was to reaching parity with his Earth stats.
Status
Blessings
Current Job
Available Jobs
Current Skills
All Skills
Log
Joe McConnell
Status
Physical Resistances
Magical Resistances
HP
30.00
Physical:
Wind
30
SP
30.00
Piercing
0.00
Water
30
MP
300.00
Crushing
0.00
Earth
30
Attack
30.00
Slashing
0.00
Fire
30
Defense
30.00
Ice
30
Magic
300.00
Gravity
30
Magic Defense
1500.00
Magnetic
30
Strength
30.00
Light
30
Dexterity
30.00
Spell Caster
30
Shadow
30
Agility
30.00
Space
30
Speed
30.00
Spirit
30
Endurance
30.00
Mental
30
IQ
480.00
Sound
30
Wisdom
600.00
Electricity
30
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Will
420.00
Learning
450.00
Luck
0.00
Well… that’s… really quite nice! Joe thought as he looked over his gains. As expected, his mental stats took a huge boost, although his learning was a bit disappointing. Ha! Almost five hundred learning and I’m disappointed! Right… The significant boost to his magical resistance was also nice as well, offering some resistance for quite a few of the various magical types. Huh… wonder… are there more? The greatest increase, however, was to the absolutely massive increase to his magical defense stats, although half of it was to his double bonus to his magic defense. Huh… my stats for magic defense before were… Joe was a bit surprised by the massive boost, so took a look at the last notes on his stats that he had and grinned a bit as he saw his previous stats there were barely three hundred. Ooh…that’s going to be very very nice! Joe flipped over to his main status screen with much more excitement then came up short when he noticed the outrageous magical defense he now had. Wait… what’s going on?
Status
Blessings
Current Job
Available Jobs
Current Skills
All Skills
Log
Joe McConnell
Status
Physical Resistances
Magical Resistances
HP
164.2 (138)
Physical:
Wind
53.26
SP
241.1 (283)
Piercing
17.5 (48)
Water
52.76
MP
490.9 (100)
Crushing
18.25 (132)
Earth
49.45
Attack
167.2 (181)
Slashing
18.5 (39)
Fire
50.45
Defense
167.2 (158)
Ice
52.51
Magic
941 (100)
Gravity
49.45
Magic Defense
3376.2 (100)
Magnetic
49.45
Strength
181.2 (148)
Light
49.45
Dexterity
174.7 (112)
Shadow
45.00
Agility
170.7 (133)
Space
49.45
Speed
168.2 (115)
Spirit
67.45
Endurance
183.7 (193)
Mental
61.45
IQ
1278.5 (132)
Sound
49.45
Wisdom
2916.8 (105)
Electricity
49.45
Will
1955.8
Learning
29987.89
Luck
39.63
Joe actually boggled a bit when he saw his magical defense now over three thousand, then realized that the same thing happened with his magic, it being at barely three hundred the last time, but now suddenly almost a thousand. Ooh… ok… the current job page only shows the stats for that job itself, nothing from any bonuses to skill, titles, or other things! That should have made sense a long time ago! I should have seen that with the Titular Master title. My luck is zero right now, on my current job. If titles and boost were added, I should have something like thirty five luck or something, just from that title alone…
Joe’s thoughts considered for a moment before he grinned, actually grateful that that tab only showed the stats from the job itself. It would have been a royal pain to have to figure out each job’s base stats by having to subtract all the bonus boosts he was getting. And what if there were some kind of invisible or unknown boost, like the racial boosts Kilniara and Zilnek were getting. That would have been … miserable.
With Joe’s thoughts spiraling around, he interrupted his thoughts and noticed his MP was back at a max significantly greater thanks to his new job, and returned to his mana practice, returning to his full body tension to exhaustion method to practice. He did take the time to look through the room and noticed that it was mostly empty before beginning again. This time, he only made it through two cycles, his exhaustion from the previous cycle still taking the wind out of him. He wasn’t able to continue even though he still had a nice chunk of MP left, but he didn’t get annoyed, just taking a short moment to rest another couple moments before starting his third cycle and completely exhausting his mana. After the third cycle, he decided it was now time to look at the new skills he had from spellcaster, hoping for something useful.
Joe flipped open the available skills tab and found five new interesting, but ultimately meaningless new skills. Maybe useful if I can become a mage? Maybe, definitely? The five skills were increased casting speed, vocal cast, runic cast, increased power, and a final skill boosting both speed and power even more. Huh… interesting. Let’s get the boring obvious ones done first.
What is increased casting speed?
User is able to cast quicker at no cost or loss to power.
A blue box popped up, reporting. Cool… then what is increased power?
All spells have increased power without extra mana cost.
OK, thought so… now the cool stuff. Help, what is vocal cast?
May cast spells using your voice.
Well… ok? How else do you cast spells? And why would I want to use my voice? That seems like a perfect way to be a dead give away, that’s not … Joe ended his irritated train of thought and continued to his last new skill.
What is runic cast?
May cast spells with runes written with appropriate materials and inks on appropriate materials and surfaces.
Joe sighed and just ended his exploration of the skills. Very specifically useless! He had no spells, and what he did have made him not very happy with the idea of making spells. While using his voice was easy enough, he really didn’t feel like shouting out spell names as he cast them. This isn’t a stupid anime!
The runic cast, on the other hand, made it almost useless in battle as he didn’t have the time to write down a spell. And shuffling through a book and page after page to find the right spell to use seemed like a good way to get someone dead! Your weapons needed to always be ready almost instantaneously. A book full of spells to search through sounded like a really bad idea for fast reactions. And even if he put only one spell in one book, the pages all duplicates… Would I need to? Would one runic drawing be enough to repeatedly cast that spell? Or is it used up after a cast? Either way really doesn’t make a difference! I have a book full of spells I have to search through, even if they don’t get destroyed after use. Or, I have dozens and dozens of books to search through full of copy after copy of one spell. Either I search through a book full of different spells or through a library shelf of many books… doesn’t seem… useful? Right? Joe ended up dismissing the spell caster job, no longer really interested in it for now as he didn’t have any spells or any way to test if his deductions were valid. His mana had returned, and now it was time for him to return to his mana training.