CHAPTER 11: A SPELL IS LEARNED

As she started Enchanting the next piece of Hardened Glass, Jenna marveled at how much more Magic it felt like she had. When she’d started doing Magic control training, she was lucky if she could get four pieces of Hardened Glass a day before she ran out of Magic. She could tell from the feeling of the Magic flowing out of her that the etching tool was inefficient, sure.

When she finished the second piece and still felt as though she was nearly full of Magic, she realized that either the tool was incredibly inefficient, or she had really increased how much Magic her body could hold. The second one was better made, which she knew for certain. Seeing the Grade, though, was a little disheartening.

First Tier Hardened Glass Rank: D+ Would you like to sell your Hardened Glass?

“What was wrong with it?”

Analysis of Hardened Glass Primary Flaw: Inconsistent Magic density within piece. Other Flaws will not improve quality of product without fixing Primary and Secondary Flaws. Would you still like to see the other flaws?

“No.” Jenna looked at her piece more closely. As she stared at it, she did see that there were ever so slight imperfections in the Magic density across the surface. Looking at the other D Grade Hardened Glass she saw, Jenna was glad to see that it was at least more inconsistent than the newest one. The three days she’d spent working on her Magic control hadn’t been wasted, at least.

Once more, Jenna started carving a piece of glass. Unlike the last two times, though, she tried an idea that had been floating in her head since she’d started with Magic control.

She poured out a thin cloud of Magic over the entire piece of glass. Jenna’s assumption was that the cloud of Magic could help even out any imperfections in her ability to control the speed that her Magic came out. To her slight surprise, it worked.

The lines that she carved looked slightly less sharp than they had before, but she hoped that the Pyramid wouldn’t penalize her for it. She found that Enchanting the glass also went faster with the cloud of Magic.

Of course, the technique came with its own drawbacks. When she finished the piece, Jenna knew that she would only be able to make at most one more piece of Hardened Glass like this. Still, seeing the Pyramid’s response made that worthwhile.

First Tier Hardened Glass Rank: C Would you like to sell your Hardened Glass?

She had done it. Jenna had made C Grade Hardened Glass. She noticed a notification that something had changed in her Status.

Jenna Fredrickson First Year Spells Known: First Tier: Hardened Glass Expected Years Completed: 7 Prediction Confidence: 35% Points: 45 Qualified to Ascend to Next Year? Yes

Her eyes immediately went to the fact that she was qualified to ascend to the next Tier of the Pyramid. Here was when she needed to start making choices. Some people recommended pushing to as high a Tier Spell as possible as quickly as possible. Others recommended staying at Tier, learning new Spells as available. She wasn’t aware of anyone who recommended mastering a single Spell until it was S Grade, but she supposed that there were few enough Primary School Enchanters that maybe other Schools of Magic didn’t have the distinction.

As she kept looking, though, Jenna realized that there was another change. The Pyramid now thought that she would make it through Tier Seven, albeit with low certainty. That was one stage closer to her goal, and it made the hard work she did feel easier in retrospect.

Jenna considered the pieces of glass in front of her. On the one hand, there was something to be said for not wasting points. On the other, she reminded herself that points existed solely for the purpose of climbing. Rather than continue arguing with herself, she asked the Pyramid for advice.

“I don’t know if I’ve outright stated this yet, but I plan to climb all eleven floors of you,” she said. “I’m not sure what to do now, though. I’ve heard advice that I should learn as many First Tier Spells as I can while I’m on the first level, and I’ve heard other advice that I should learn as high of Tier Spell as possible as soon as possible. I also was wondering if it was in my best interest to make S Grade Hardened Glass?”

Query makes faulty assumptions. In order to learn a Second Tier Spell, Two First Tier Spells are needed. As a result, at current time, first two pieces of advice are in agreement.

“So is my best idea to learn more Spells, rather than mastering this one?”

Insufficient data for absolute answer. Single data point of successful completion of training grounds not sufficient for general abstraction.

It was interesting to learn that recorded history was right. There was only a single person who had climbed the entire Pyramid. The fact that it called that “successful completion” was interesting, though. It implied that its expectation was that everyone finished climbing.

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“Which method is the most common at the tenth level?”

Insufficient data for absolute answer. All three methods are statistically equally represented at Tenth Year. Better query: projected success rates of each method for making it to Tenth Year. Accept query?

That was interesting, the Pyramid had never given her a better query option, only a less vague one. “Yes.” She was curious what it would tell her.

Third choice option: Master each Spell before moving to next is the best option at current situation. Mastery path leads to bimodal distribution. More than ninety percent of students fail out before Fifth Year when attempting Mastery path. Of those that make it to Fifth Year, however, a statistically insignificant number fail out before Seventh Year. From Fifth through Tenth Years, percent of students following a Mastery path grows. This rate is higher than the conversion rate of students to a Mastery path.

“So you think that I should master this Spell before moving on?”

Current situation implies best chance of successful completion of training grounds if Mastery path is followed.

As the Pyramid gave its advice, Jenna realized that she had been hoping for a different answer. Learning how to Enchant a Mace seemed like it would be more useful in the short term, so it would have been nice if it was also more useful in the long term. But, she would be a fool if she didn’t trust the Pyramid. Even the sum total of data that her country could provide amounted to little more than anecdotal evidence compared to the sheer numbers of people that had tried to climb the Pyramid.

“What was wrong with the Hardened Glass?” she asked. The Pyramid responded unhelpfully.

Hardened Glass was made of sufficient quality to demonstrate knowledge of Spell

“Why wasn’t it S Tier?”

First Tier Hardened Glass Rank: C Primary Flaw: Carved with Pyramid Assistance, rather than by memory.

“How does that make a difference to the quality of the Hardened Glass?” she asked.

Points are partially an incentivizing tool to encourage good study habits. Outside of the Pyramid, Enchanting will need to be done by memory or self-made aid. Additionally, carving with Pyramid assistance encourages ignoring slight imperfections in physical glass that may need to be adjusted in Spell form.

That was an annoyingly straightforward answer. Still, Jenna had a good enough picture of the Spell for Hardened Glass in her mind that she was nearly positive that she could Enchant it without the Pyramid’s support. Or, at least, she was before she started carving.

Jenna began the piece like she had the time before, making a cloud of Magic and then Enchanting through the fog. The initial spiral went well, but that was where she hit her first stumbling block. She couldn’t remember how many loops the spiral had.

After a moment of panic, she remembered that the Grimoire had a visual description and image of the Spell, and set the Grimoire next to the glass she was Enchanting. Once she had the reference there if she needed it, Jenna found that she only had to refer to it a few times throughout the Spell. Of course, she knew that the quality of the Enchanting would have suffered in the moment she stepped away, and she was proven right.

To her pleasant surprise, though, it wasn’t by as much as she had expected.

First Tier Hardened Glass Rank: C- Would you like to sell your Hardened Glass?

“No.” She was nearly out of Magic, so rather than carve a piece haphazardly, Jenna focused on drawing all of the Magic she had into her right index finger and then expelling it at once.

As soon as she did, Jenna realized that she had made two mistakes.

First, she hadn’t emptied herself of Magic since breaking her Core. Being without Magic felt so much worse than she remembered. It felt even worse than how she’d felt before she broke her Core, which made her think that her body might be relying on Magic now.

The other mistake was that she still had her finger pointed towards the piles of glass and paper that made up her workstation While nothing broke, it looked far less orderly than it had before. Jenna considered the fact that her Magic, even without being shaped into a specific Spell, could still affect the physical world.

That was strange to her. She knew that at upper Tiers, Mages who focused on a single element could sometimes find that to be true. There were countless tales of high Tier Fire Mages who started fires by just releasing a little bit of Mana out of their bodies. What there were not, however, were stories of low Tier Fire Mages doing the same.

Before Jenna was able to ask the Pyramid, though, it gave her a notification.

Congratulations! You have pushed yourself to your limits, completely emptying yourself of Magic. As a result, more time spent working on Enchanting would be wasted today. Would you like to add Combat Training back to your schedule today?

“Yes.” Jenna forced herself off of the floor and made her way over to the combat room.

Jenna’s Status:

Jenna Fredrickson First Year Spells Known: First Tier: Hardened Glass Expected Years Completed: 7 Prediction Confidence: 35% Points: 45 Qualified to Ascend to Next Year? Yes