The next day he turned his attention back to Flame Thrower. Prior to his tangent with rapid firing spells, he realized the issue with his previous attempt was that it didn't need a shaping component at all. He should be able to simply summon and push fire out in a constant stream. He entered his library and tinkered with the spell form on paper until it was less awkward looking. Without the shaping component, it looked like a chunk of the spell form was simply missing, which was accurate. He increased the size of the fire component to compensate for the missing portions then adjusting the surrounding components and connections to better fit the new spell. Finally, he tested it out.
Pushing mana into the spell, a stream of fire poured out in front of Felix. The spell worked exactly as he had predicted. He managed to add some leaks into the spell form as well as some pain points, where he felt the mana pushing against the spell form, but he quickly ironed out the kinks. The spell was admittedly awesome, with one small downside, it guzzled mana. It took about eighty mana per second to cast the spell, which meant he could currently cast the spell for a grand total, of thirteen seconds.
With all that done, he decided to try something that he figured should now be possible with all his work on spell form construction. Ultimately, it took him three tries to construct and cast three Fire Bolt's at once. He practiced for an hour or so until it didn't take his entire focus and he could do it with three different spells.
Well that was relatively painless. All those improvements I made practicing channeled spells just doubled their returns. I was expecting to practice this for at least a few days. Now all that's left is trying to use Gust to run faster, which is likely going to result in a lot of tripping, hooray.
Felix left the town towards the field so he had lots of open space. He passed by the warehouse on the way and saw that not much progress had been made since he last saw it, the walls looked higher, but Felix wasn't certain. There also didn't appear to be anybody actively working on it.
I can't really complain cause it's not like I'm paying them, although maybe I should be? Whatever gets done is a bonus anyway, it's not like I need this stuff to get done at all, it's just a nice to have.
Running with Gust pushing him was easy, but that was just a small tailwind, what he wanted was to overcharge the spell to drastically increase his speed. He positioned Gust behind him pointing forwards and up at an angle then doubled the spell size but the effects were negligible compared to the normal spell. It took him a while to realize the issue. The targeting of the spell was way too big so he ended up with a large wind all around him but that wasn't helpful at all. He tinkered with the spell form replacing the targeting component with the Fire Bolt spell's targeting component. It was better, but dangerous this time, it felt like he might blow a hole open in his back if he increased the power anymore because the target was too small.
Next he worked on finding the balance between the targeting component of Gust and Fire Bolt, something right between the two should be ideal. Once he found the right balance then he upped the power in the spell. Over the course of the rest of day he found a good method of traveling, he would use the modified Gust behind him with a normal one in front of him to reduce air resistance. One of the biggest increases was giving up on the boots movement speed. He had been trying to maintain having both feet touching the ground at all times for the movement speed increase but it got too complicated. Once he let go of that, he started flying.
It looked like he was running on air, with each jump he flew forwards multiple meters. To Felix, it felt like he was skipping which was a little awkward, but ultimately worth it he decided. He was moving almost five times faster than his top running speed. He couldn't fly quite yet as he didn't have enough control over the wind and he definitely didn't have enough mana.
As it is, he barely had enough mana to make it to the combat dungeon, draining almost all of his mana batteries. Then he would have to let them recharge before making the trip back. It did save a lot of time though.
The idea of flying with Gust did give him an idea though, he should be able to both slow his fall and jump really high with Gust. It only took him an hour to figure out both. First, he adjusted Gust to remove the channeling and instead turn it into a burst focused in an area slightly bigger than his body. He adjusted the strength and tested it by jumping off of floors without windows in the castle. He jumped first from the second floor, a fall that wouldn't even hurt him with his new stats. Then he tried using the exact same spell, with a bigger burst to jump. With a little practice, he managed to jump back to the floor he started from.
The hardest part was the timing, when to use the spell to get the maximum effect and not throw him off. It took many times more mana and force, but it was doable. He then moved up as he tuned the spell. He managed to make it to about three stories with a jump that cost an insane amount of mana and required multiple pushes with the non channeled Gust in the air. Theoretically, he could fall from much higher, but didn't test it now. Worst case scenario, if he didn't get the force exactly right the first time, he would just hit himself multiple times until he slowed to a safe velocity.
Finally, Felix had accomplished everything he planned on before claiming rewards in the combat dungeon so he decided he would head there first thing in the morning. Before sleeping for the night, Felix checked his notifications. He had muted them before training as they started to annoy him while he was focused on training when most of the notifications were people joining his map. Thinking about it now, he set those to never show. He could change it back in the future if he needed to, but he couldn't think of any reason why he would. He did have other notifications though, going through them, he made sure the repeated ones were collapsed into one summary notification.
Ding You have gained 13 levels in [E - Special] Arcane Engineer
Holy shit, I guess I must be doing something right. I suspect this is mostly catch up experience in a sense. As in, I show the proficiency of someone at a much higher level, then I gain experience as if I was at that level. Sort of how, I assume, killing a higher level monster works. I gain more experience for killing them over lower level creatures since the experience they award is meant for someone at their level. Anyways, that's a lot of free points. Intelligence to 200, 2 in Strength, 4 in Vitality, 1 in Endurance and the rest in Agility, for the nice round numbers.
Name: Felix Kade FREE 0 Level: 16 STR 30 Class: [E - Common] Caster (Lvl 19) DEX 115 Race: [F - Common] Human AGI 59 Profession: [E - Special] Arcane Engineer (Lvl 13) PER 105 Health: 400/400 VIT 40 Mana: 1632/2000 INT 200 Energy: 127/350 END 35
Wait a second, why is my race F tier? I didn't even know F existed, I thought E was the lowest. Ugh, probably something I missed in the pre tutorial course thing, I'll ask Noah when I get back.
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He quickly timed his spell form construction for each spell at less than a second, some were faster than others, but he didn't have a clock accurate enough to measure exactly. Overall, Felix had gotten even more done than he had hoped within the past few days. He went to sleep that night more than satisfied with his progress, but not with the goblin rations he was left with at this point.
The next morning, it took Felix almost two hours to get to the dungeon with his new traveling method. As soon as he arrived he spaced the batteries he had expended around him and meditated. He made sure to use as much mana from batteries as he could so his own mana pool once he got there, was mostly full. Meditating for a brief few minutes until his mana was full allowed the batteries to refill themselves to about seventy percent. He decided that would be enough so he reached out and touched the door.
Combat Dungeon C
You have found a dungeon. Would you like to enter?
Yes
No
Yes.
Felix found himself in the same cubic room as the first time he entered the dungeon.
Combat Dungeon C
Choose your difficulty.
-2 ~ -5 Lvls
-1 ~ +1 Lvls
+2 ~ +5 Lvls
+6 ~ +9 Lvls
+10 ~ +15 Lvls
I guess now it shows the difficulty that I picked last time. Seems kind of cruel for me to say "Highest" last time and it chose an option I hadn't even seen. It should know my intentions, unless the dungeon isn't reading those at all and just heard the keyword, "Highest." That's probably it, damn. Now the question is, can I go even higher and pull off that top difficulty, I could probably ask for even higher than that, but that sounds insane? I do have a lot more tools and a good amount more stats from my profession but I'm still worried I'll fight something like the troll and just run out of mana. Even worse than that would be a swarm of something at level 32, if they are significantly faster than I am, I am fucked right? Same as last time for difficulty.
Combat Dungeon C
Would you like to claim your reward in this dungeon?
Note: You may claim the reward in this dungeon once. The maximum reward tailoring level is 19. This level increases based on how many Combat Dungeons you have completed and claimed.
Yes
No
Yes.
Combat Dungeon C
Warning: You have selected the difficulty: +10 ~ +15 levels above your own. The encounters will be deadly to a party with an average level of 19. Proceed with caution.
Note: Rewards will be tailored to level 19 independent of levels you may gain throughout the dungeon.
Calibrating, one moment please.
Oh SHIT, well I guess "same as last time" means give me the highest one? That is really dumb, can we get the AI upgraded on this dungeon, it seems to be broken. I really need to be explicit and just use the numbers next time, maybe if I say it out loud it can save resources on reading my mind? Oh well, nothing to do about it now, except die I guess. Also, now I know it's designed for a party. It is kind of annoying that it will tailor to 19 even if I level higher than that, but I guess that's what I expected. Does that mean it judges my feats as if I was level 19 as well? That doesn't make much sense, maybe there is some rule or something it has to follow? It's The System though, why would it have to?
After a few moments for Felix to accept his fate, the wall in front of Felix disappeared. Through it he saw a bleak sight, a field stretched out before him in all directions full of dead plants with a small town a few kilometers away right in the center. The night was lit by the light of a full moon peering through misty grey clouds above. Felix realized everything looked grey and washed out because of a hazy fog hanging low over the area.
With no other indication of where he should head, Felix started towards the town. He constructed and held a Flame Thrower, a concentrated Gust and a large Mana Bolt, just in case. He was more focused on surprise melee attacks. If he encountered a ranged target, he hoped his spell form construction and general casting time would be fast enough to retaliate at this point. He made it all the way to the town with no issues and eerily, no sounds other than himself, the crunch of dead grass beneath his feet and the whistle of the wind.
He walked into the town and looked around but didn't find anything so, he continued all the way down the road to a clearing surrounding a fountain that Felix guessed was the center of the town. Felix walked up to the fountain and looked around. The whole town looked abandoned, there was no movement and the buildings, roads and fountain all showed the initial signs of decay. Felix waited for a few minutes until finally something happened.
Peering through the haze in front of him, Felix spotted movement. He waited a few minutes, finally realizing, whatever it was, was approaching him, very slowly. Finally out of the haze a humanoid figure appeared, followed by a lot more.
[E - Common] Human Zombie (Lvl 27)
Looking to his left, then his right, he saw the exact same thing, and finally behind him as well. The zombie horde approached, excruciatingly slowly, from all directions. Felix was trapped but he had a decent amount of time to think.
They're only level 27, meaning there are likely a ton of them and their stats have to be able to injure me otherwise they wouldn't be a threat to a party of level 19s. They might not be as slow as they look, it's possible they are much faster in combat. More than likely, their strength and numbers are the issue. My best bet is likely to burn them, assuming earth zombie logic applies. I can't let them keep surrounding me though, I need to get out of here and draw them to follow me so they group up. Then I can conserve mana. My Flame Thrower spell only reaches about fifty meters so I likely can't get them all in one quick burst. . . . . .