The road between cities was usually safe for travel, but the road everywhere else, less so.  

Don and Thessa were surrounded by a group of twenty bandits. Unlike normal bandit groups, this one had a wide variety of members including three mages and several rangers.

Don spiraled and danced while swinging his swords in a somewhat deceptive manner. The glint of steel draws the eyes and attention while confusing the opponents.

Thessa fired her magic guns at the rangers, leaving the swordsman and thieves to Don’s blades.

Don’s sword skill had grown tremendously since starting the game, he had no set form or patterned but he moved efficiently while keeping all enemy positions in mind.

Don turned to strike behind him, but a fireball appeared. He instinctively cut it, but the fire ball blew up him his face.

“Brother!” Thessa called out in worry. Though she knew Don had not really suffered much damage.

Truth was, these bandits were too low level to be a real threat to the pair. The encounter was not a coincidence either. Don had accepted a D rank quest to route out and disband the bandit group that had been harassing the area. This bandit group.

Don got up and dealt a fatal blow to one of the swordsman. The ameteur had let his guard down because he saw Don receive a fireball to the face.

Thessa’s stone shot had broken the bodies of onel of the mages and all of the bow wielding rangers.

The bandit chief appeared the next moment. He was two meters tall and had a stocky body. He wielding an iron spiked club and looked a bit too cocky for someone that just had half their men killed.

The chief charged Don with his club raised. He swung through the side, his club passed through Don’s torso. The next instant Don vanished like a mirage and sliced the chief from behind.

After getting the skill, Illusionary step’s proficiency high enough, the afterimages he left behind looked like the genuine article.

Rather than go through the lengthy battle of slowly chipping away the chief’s health, Don jumped up and used the pair of swords he wielded like a pair of scissors and decapitated the chief.

“Retreat. Retreat!”

With that the few remaining bandits scattered. The quest itself was not to kill them all, but disband the group. With the death of the leader, the quest requirements had been fulfilled.

Thessa assisted Don in picking up the dropped loot from the slain members. Afterwhich they started back to the city.

Half-way back, Thessa spoke up. “Big brother, why do you always cut the magic attacks?”

At first Don didn’t know what she meant, but then he realized she was referring to the fact that he slashed the fire ball when he could have avoided it. This was not the first time such a thing happened. Even though Don had the agility and reflexes to dodge such attacks, he usually tried to cut them, but always ended up receiving the attack.

Don was a bit embarrassed, but he answered honestly. “I keep trying to dispel them by cutting. I thought if I could see mana, I could cut it.” The image of someone defending from a magic attack by slicing through it always appealed to him as manly. And even though each attempt failed, it would be unmanly to stop trying.

“Ohh. But that isn’t how to do it.”

“Huh?”

At this inquiry, Thessa pulled Don’s hand down. Don followed it down, bending over until he reached Thessa’s eye level.

The white haired girl closed her eyes and bent forward, placing her forehead against Don’s.

Her hair glowed for a bit and Don felt heat coming from her forehead. It was hot and Don wanted to pull away, but Thessa didn’t let go of Don’s hand so he elected to stay.

Skill Acquired: Mana Control

Both of their foreheads cooled back to normal after a moment. Thessa straighten up and took in a deep breath.

Thessa said, “Now look at the mana.”

Don did so, he could activate his mana sight just by concentrating a bit. He saw the world again, covered in flowing mana, But he saw something else too. On each tree was a glowing center. It seemed to be the spot mana came out from.

Don looked back at Thessa. She had three such spots. He looked down at himself and saw one glowing spot.

Thessa said, “Cutting magic doesn’t work, but if you cut that spot, you can deflect it.”

Don asked, “But what was that skill? Mana Control?”

Thessa nodded. “Cutting the spot on its own won’t work. You need to be able to affect the mana while making contact with that spot to deflect it. Mana control is a Dragon skill that will let you do that.”

“Woah, you gave me a dragon skill?” Don knew that dragons could teach other races their skills and spells, but he wasn’t sure if Thessa could.

“Yes. Uncle said not to but I don’t want you to get hit with fireballs anymore.”

“Haha.. Uncle...” Uncle referred to Dragon of the East Wind, Stribog. He didn’t like the fact that the holy dragon Thessalanos chose to be raised by a human. Don once asked about a human learning dragon magic, but Stribog said it would end badly. Don figured he likely told Thessa not to teach Don under any circumstance.

“I see. Well thankyou. But lets not tell uncle stribog. He might get angry with both of us.”

Thessa nodded, “Ok.”

“Hmm. Wanna help me practice? If you use single shots of the rapid fire from the fire setting, that would be safe.”

“Hmm. Alright.”

Thessa took out a magic cartridge and loaded it into her gun. By changing cartridges she could change the output of her gun.

The pair stood a few meters apart and started. Thessa fired one shot, a small fireball launched and Don.

Don could see the glowing center light. He had cut down fireballs many times, but now he knew where to hit. When the ball came within range, Don sliced through the light. The fireball continued forward and struck Don in the face.

“Noooo,” Thessa complained. “You have to draw the mana from the magic away as you cut.”

“Umm, how do you know this?” asked Don with a blackened, soot covered face.

“I just do.” she answered proudly.

They tried again. Don cut it again, and imagined pulling the magic from the fireball into his sword. As he completed his slice, the fire followed the swing of his sword. When Don stopped concentrating, the fireball was released and fly off in a different direction.

Thessa said, “Yea, like that.”

It wasn’t so much cutting as it was catching the mana. Don was astounded by how simple it was. He wondered if all dragons could do that. Maybe, or maybe the Holy Dragon had skills the others didn’t. Or maybe it only worked on weaker spells. Don wanted to to a bit more trial and error.

“Can you send another one?”

“But you already got it right?”

“Please?”

“Ok.” With that Thessa unceremoniously shot another fireball at Don.

Don sliced through the center with the image of pulling the mana into his sword. The fireball followed his slice. He then spun around and released it, sending the fireball back, striking a bush near Thessa.

Thessa looked confused. It wasn’t that she did not know what happened, she just didn’t know what Don would want to return a weak magic attack.

To Don however it was a very manly way of dealing with magic attacks.

“Can you try an Earth shot next?”

Thessa used her other gun and fired an Earth magic shot, a rock cannon.

This rock had a magic center too. Don cut into it with the same feeling as before. The rock crumbled into dirt a lot easier than it should have considering how strong rocks are. As he continued the slash, the dirt stayed with the sword, clinging to it. When he picked a direction to throw it and released it, the dirt clod freed itself from the sword, and immediately rehardened.

“So it works on solid magic attacks too.”

Don turned back to Thessa and said, “Thankyou very much. Tonight we eat Steak!”

“Yay!” Thessa loved steak.

After receiving the reward for the quest, filling Thessa’s stomach and emptying DOns wallet, the pair returned to an Inn to rest for the night.

Don never used his game playing time to sleep, but Thessa reverted to her dragon form while sleeping so she needed an Inn.

Thessa’s dragon form had gotten to be the same size as Don. Of course as a Dragon she was still tiny.

While Thessa slept, Don was experimenting with this enhanced mana sight and his new skill.

He could manipulate the flow of mana in the air. However making it do anything was difficult. It was like giving a child a paper fan and telling them to play with the air. The fan could move the air and do things that the child’s hands could not do, but other than cool yourself off, a paper fan was useless.

Unless. Unless it was combined with something else.

Using this thought as a guide, Don considered something. He left the small room and headed for the roof. There he got out his swords and started dancing. He tried to move the mana as he danced, using the dance to shape the mana.

The wide, complex, yet intricate movements of his dancing effectively allowed him to move the mana around him with greater ease. He tried gathering all the mana around him into one spot. Doing so caused the mana to behave strangely.

“Big brother, what are you doing?”

Thessa was on the roof. It seemed she woke up and followed Don’s scent to the roof. Thankfully she was in her half-elf form.

“I’m playing with mana.” Don said it like it was obvious.

Thessa looked around the area and stared at the mass of mana Don made. “What are you going to do with it?”

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“I don’t know. What can I do with it?”

Thessa moved her hands around a bit. Mana that was in the air around her gathered effortlessly to her. Soon a smaller, more compact version of the mana mass was in front of her.

She then spread it into a ring and adjusted several bits of it into certain shapes. After she had made some shape, it glowed for a moment before dissipating, like mana spent up in a spell.

She said, “If you make a shape with it, it can do stuff.”

Don saw what she did and tried to emulate it. He used his swords to shape the mana mass into a ring and add little bits here and there. It was a different shape than Thessa’s but it was something. It looked a bit like modern art. Don decided to try something, he tried using the feeling of controlling mana, to ask the mana to do something.

The mana ring glowed and vanished.

He had seen something like this before, but he didn’t remember where.

You have received Buff of the Thunder Giant.You have learned a new skill: Spell Dance.

“Hmm? Show skill window, Spell Dance.”

Spell Dance [1] 0%

A dance that can cast magic. Using mana control to manipulate mana while dancing to form it into the proper sequence, spells can be cast through this skill without using the user’s mana.

From how he understood it, The buff of the thunder giant was the spell sequence he had just arranged the mana around him into. It could have been anything or nothing, but it ended up being something. When he thought about it, whenever he saw someone casting magic, mana came out from them and formed strange shapes. If he could use mana control to re-create those shapes while dancing, he could literally cast any spell.

“Cool.” Of course it took him several minutes to shape the mana, it was not practical for battle.

Don looked back over to Thessa and figured she would not got back to bed if he just told her to, so he decided to call it a night for now and return to the room.

The next morning, Don and Thessa set out for another extermination quest. This time the quarry was the level 180 Spellweaver Hags. There was an abandoned castle where a group of said hags had settled in. The quest was to kill 20 of them.

Of course Don choose this quest primarily for the training. He wanted to practice the uses of Spell dance and the ability to deflect magic attacks.

The castle the hags situated themselves was built onto the edge of a cliff and gave an appropriately gloomy look. The whole place looked like it could be pushed off the cliff, which made Don just a little anxious to actually go inside.

“Hey, I wouldn’t recommend going in there now.”

The person who called out seemed to be an adventurer a little older than Don. He was covered in wounds.

“Why not?” asked Don.

“Another party entered there a while ago. They are the territorial type. I was there first but they kicked me out through sheer force. I got a quest to do here so I can’t just leave. I can only wait till those jerks are finished.”

Don understood. The cruel reality of massive multiplayer games was the fact that the players had to compete with one another over resources. In most games when two different parties entered the same dungeon at different times, they would use different Instances. But Royal Road promoted competition. It was a feature and anything goes.

“I see. Tell me, what kind of party did they have?” asked Don.

“Eh?”

Don had a great idea.

_________________________________

Within the forsaken castle that housed the spellweaver hags was a party of five users.  The leader of said party had received a quest to acquire a certain poison the hags were making, somewhere deep in the castle. The quest was given by someone with a less than savory character, and the intended use of the poison was for no one’s benefit but the poisoner.

The leader of the party, Salsa, didn’t care about what the poison would be used for, only that she would be paid. The remaining party members were like minded in this as well.

At first when they arrived there was another adventurer killing off the hags. Their quest was to find the poison, so it didn’t matter if all the hags were killed, but they wanted the experience for themselves. They forcefully kicked out the adventurer.

Such things were easy to do against small parties or solo adventurers. Her own party was very strong and had much battle experience against mobs and users. She had worn the murderer’s mark a few times, but killing monsters for a while makes it go away.

The first part of the quest seemed simple, go to the castle and rummage through the hag’s workshops.

Then things went nuts.

Salsa had never heard of a large beast existing within the castle. Was it something added recently? Did the hags keep some sort of giant monster pet in the dungeon?

In any case, three of her party had already been eaten and killed. In that order..

Due to the nature of the castle, sitting on the edge of a cliff, there was only one entrance and exit. The monster patrolled around that area, preventing anyone from leaving.

But it was also searching for them.

__________________________________

Don decided to play something of a mean spirited prank on the Users. He asked Thessa to use Polymorph to change into a scary monster. He proficiency in the skill had reached a high enough point she could turn into most monster species.

The form she choose what something that seemed to be a cross between a wolf and a bear, with the scariest features of both. In this form she slowly hunted the group.

This was not the first time they acted in this manner. Don lead several hunts, taking advantage of a dragon’s instincts to succeed in tracking quests that were usually only taken by Rangers.

Thessa herself had no problem with being asked to hunt and terrorize Users. It was no different to her from hunting bandits or monsters. From the perception of a dragon, all lower life is equal, so there is no difference from killing a wolf to killing a User.

Not that Thessa was unfeeling. She would not kill a monster is if did not attack and she never harmed monsters that were not fully grown. So although humans were as easy to kill for her as monsters, it was not like she would harm a child.

Also, she had no fear of the murderer’s mark. She was not a user, but a monster herself.

After about an hour, all the party members had been killed. Don returned outside after Thessa changed back to her half-elf form, but the adventurer had already gone.

Don returned to the castle. There were still many spellweaver hags on the other floors and he had all day to experiment.

The ancient spellcasters looked like textbook evil witches. Large crooked noses, huge warts on their faces, a snaggletooth, and bleach white hair. They attacked trespassers with fire, ice, and curse magic.

Don tried out various things using his spell dance. The mana shape that formed around the hags when they cast the magic was smaller than he expected. He eventually memorized the shape of the mana for casting the spell Arctic Gale.

It took some time, but he was able to use the spell dance to recreated the form of the mana. When he activated it, the spell shout forward.

“Ohh.” Don remembered where he had seen this. In artificing, artifacts that cast spells used Sygs to control mana just like the spell dance did. If he made custom artifacts that could help control the flow of mana, he would be able to use spell dance quick enough to actually use it in battle.

“Thessa, I think I’m onto something.”

With that, Don continued experimenting. If this worked out the way he hoped, he would not need dragon magic or anything else.

When the quest was completed, Don headed back to the city and began work on new artifacts. He was going to be busy.

Hello people who read my stories. Sorry for not posting in a while, but I had a reason. Truth is, I had a sudden idea for an interesting story line some time mid-november. And during the time I have been absent from my other stories, I have been writing chapters for that story.

The thing is, I also wanted to test something. How popular would a story I wrote be if no one knew I wrote it? So I did a few things. I made a new account and posted the story under a different name. Next, to make absolutely sure no one could guess I wrote it, I did everything for the story opposite I usually do. I gave it a prologue, something I never do. I wrote the entire story first person, the mc isn’t human, and while in game, I made the MC female, since that also something I never do.

The story currently has 18 chapters and about 2k average views. It is called Maker of Heroes by Curiousbeing.

For those who know and have talked to Curi, that was me all along.

For those who have not heard of Maker of Heroes, here is a link. At the very least I’m glad I got good reviews from a story that did not include the words, “As expected from Gnomebob.”

Ahh, yes, the story Maker of Heroes is also complete. I will be posting no more chapters for it. However, at the end of the last chapter, I mention the details for my next ff Project. If you’re interested, feel free to look it up.

Maker of Heroes

http://www.royalroadl.com/fiction/639