Chapter 9

Jessica had always loved fireworks. The Fourth of July was by far her favorite holiday, back home, and she had bugged her parents every year to go to the largest fireworks display that they could find. It had been one of the few joys that hadn’t been diminished by The Diagnosis, and the year when she’d been unable to attend had been a depressive one. That had been as much due to the downswing in her illness which had kept her in the hospital as anything else, but missing the fireworks had been a huge emotional blow.

Her parents had tried to cheer her up with recorded performances and pictures, but it hadn’t been the same as seeing it live. She’d smiled and thanked them, of course, but she’d missed the real thing.

Afterward, in this second world, she had been very disappointed to learn that a lack of gunpowder meant a lack of fireworks. Antoine had informed her that some Mages specialized in putting on light shows using magic to create illusions in the sky. He had assured her that the illusions were better than the fireworks displays he had seen as a child, back in the early 1900’s in France.

She hadn’t had much hope that the displays that young Antoine had seen were anything like the ones that she had grown up watching. A century of pyrotechnic development had occurred between Antoine’s death as a soldier in World War I and Jessica’s own childhood.

Now, however, she had the power to put on a lights display whenever she wanted, and she realized that she might have been a bit hasty in her assumptions. Because being able to fill up the sky with lights and colors limited only by her imagination and her mana reservoir, it fulfilled a dream that she hadn’t realized that she’d had.

While both her Mirage and Sonic Sovereignty skills were extremely mana efficient, the scale at which she was using them caused her reservoir to drop consistently throughout her performance. She shot out balls of magic, infusing them with her intent and their purpose. The magic was perfectly dark and silent until it reached where she’d intended it to go, then Bam! The magic would cause an explosion of light and sound which lit up the sky.

She was impressed with her own creations, and spent the entire performance focusing on improving her skills in Mirage and Sonic Sovereignty. Perhaps if the sorceress bit didn’t work out, she could make a living in this world as a wandering entertainer! Hah, that would be something! She’d never imagined herself working in entertainment on Earth; aside from her illness, the few instances which had put her on a stage had led to acute scopophobia.

She felt none of that with her illusion skills on display, however. She was enjoying herself far too much to worry about what the others were thinking of her. The fact that none of the eyes were on her had a lot to do with that; while she was the one performing, the illusory fireworks were the objects on display, not her.

She was vaguely aware when the others came out of the dungeon, but rather than pause her performance to greet them, she committed her reserves to put on a truly impressive show for her friends. She checked her status, just to see how much longer she could last, and was surprised to find that she hadn’t yet gotten halfway through her mana pool with what she’d invested in the light show so far.

Name

Jessica Small

Health

240/240

Age

17

Mana

342/510

Race

Human (Outworlder)

Stamina

210/210

Class

Heroine

Strength

16

Level

21

Dexterity

23

Subclass

Sorceress

Constitution

24

(Pending)

Endurance

21

She was so focused on her performance that, for a moment, she missed a key piece of information that her status menu had shown her. Under her subclass, it showed Sorceress as it always had since she’d unlocked her menu, but on a second line it showed (Pending). She paused, and once her display stopped, a confirmatory announcement came through the menu, as though the system had been patiently waiting for her to stop what she was doing.

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Congratulations! You have unlocked a new Subclass!

Please visit the nearest Core Stone in order to process your system upgrade!

The nearest Core Stone to your vicinity is 30 meters east of your present location.

Jessica glanced at the party, which was coming forward to compliment her on what little bit of her abilities they had witnessed so far. She dashed forward and stopped in front of Tom.

“I need to touch Alpha Core. You have it with you, don’t you?” she asked.

Tom’s eyebrows rose. “Of course, it’s right here,” he said, pulling it out of the satchel he used to carry the softball sized crystal. “What’s going on?”

“I unlocked a new subclass,” she explained, reaching out and taking the Core Stone from Tom, who flinched possessively but allowed her to take it from him. The stone lit up briefly, flashing indigo.

Calculating …

Sublass Unlocked: Illusionist.

Abilities Assigned: 1

Initializing System Upgrade.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, fist pumping in the air as she handed the core stone back to Tom once the lights had finished. She’d been very briefly engulfed in light, and she felt something inside her soul changing as something clicked into place. The stone hadn’t changed her, but rather unjammed something which had already been there. After delving into her skills, she found a new skill listed.

* Fire Mastery (Adept)

* Sonic Sovereignty (Adept)

* Mirage (Initiate)

* Illusion Mastery (Initiate)

“Thanks Tom!” she exclaimed, and she gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek. The boy blushed at the display of affection, but before any further comment could be exchanged she rushed back to the square where she’d been displaying her magic and resumed her performance.

The Illusion Mastery skill helped to bridge the gap between her Sonic Sovereignty skill and her Mirage skill. Before she had been controlling the two Skills separately and bridging the gap by herself; with the upgrade she still had to think of the two skills as two separate pieces, but she was able to focus on the whole that she wanted them to make.

It was sort of like thinking of each skill as a piece of a jigsaw puzzle; before the picture had been face down and she’d been linking them together blindly. With Illusion Mastery, she was able to see the picture that the pieces had on them, and it was much easier to force them to click together.

She sent out her invisible blubs of magic, three at once, and with a slight effort of will she caused them to burst into light, color, and sound. Red with white streamers, blue with a yellow core, and Green with a purple halo.

Yeah, Jessica thought. If there were other mages out there who could put on displays like this, then she could see why Antoine had been dismissive of the fireworks shows on earth. She waved a hand and sent out six new blubs of magic, and the show continued.

Antoine, for his part, flinched at the sound of an explosion. He paused to examine the response and found himself surprised; it had been more than a century since he’d actually had to worry about mortar fire, yet the response remained. He forced the involuntary spasm down and sat back to enjoy the show; call it exposure therapy or simply the knowledge that, with his current level of power, a mortar could land on his head and he’d only be slightly inconvenienced, he wasn’t about to let his past get in the way of his enjoyment of beauty.

And Jessica’s display, it was certainly beautiful. He could see why she had been disappointed to learn that fireworks didn’t exist in this world if this was the sort of display she had been used to. He hoped that she wouldn’t be too disappointed to learn that her proficiency in the art already surpassed most of the Mages who specialized in such displays, and that it would take a team of them working together to match her casual efforts at learning the craft.

It took Jessica more than thirty minutes to finally run below eighty Mana, at which point the beginning stages of Mana Exhaustion began. She called an end to her performance there, and blushed as the applause began in earnest.

Her friends came forward to slap her on the back, physically or metaphorically depending on their personalities. The strangers who made up the dungeon town did the same, commenting that her efforts put all but the royal celebratory light shows to shame. She blushed at the compliments and felt her stage-fright creeping in for the first time, but the performance was already over. She stuttered a bit as she accepted the applause, but still felt incredibly happy with the way that the night had gone.

Especially as some members of the audience tipped her for the display. She made a total of thirteen marks, two quarters, and six farthings after adding up all the coins given to her.

In the common room of the inn, afterward, the discussion circled mostly around her performance.

“How long have you been practicing that?” Sevin asked her. “And where? Seems like if you’d been doing that at Tom’s place we would have noticed.”

“I didn’t even think of using my magic this way until one of the other adventurers saw me using my abilities suggested I try it once night fell,” she admitted. “After that, I was just trying to imitate some of the fireworks displays I saw growing up on Earth.”

“It was mighty impressive,” Rory complimented. “Do the mages of your world do that kind of thing often? We had a small display at the annual founder’s day celebrations in Caseville, but nothing like that.”

“On Earth, we use fireworks to light up the sky like that,” Jessica explained. “But Antoine says you don’t have gunpowder in this world, and that’s needed for the displays to work without magic. Emil, Aisha, you guys know a lot about chemistry, right? Do you think that you could teach them to make fireworks?”

“I wouldn’t if I could,” Emil said promptly.

“Neither would I,” Aisha confirmed. “Have you ever heard the tale of Alfred Nobel, Jessica?”

“Wait, was he the guy who started the Nobel Peace Prizes?” she asked.

“He was, and fortunately that is one of his two most famous contributions to the development of society in our world,” Aisha explained. “His other most famous contribution was the invention of dynamite. While dynamite is not inherently a weapon – it can be used in construction, demolition, mining, etc – the use of it in warfare upset Alfred significantly. His decision to establish the tradition of the Nobel Prizes for contributions to society in the various arts and sciences was widely believed to be a direct result of the guilt he felt for unleashing such a terrible weapon on the world.”

“There’s another example, a little closer to our lifetime,” Emil said. “That of J. Robert Oppenheimer.”

“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” Grant quoted, and Emil nodded to him.

“Oppenheimer was one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project,” Emil explained, “which led to the development of the nuclear bomb. While nuclear science is incredibly important in our world and has far more peaceful applications than it does in warfare, the fact remains that it was a terrible weapon and the potential destruction that its usage could cause our world weighed heavily on the minds of those who created it.

“I, for one, have no intention of designing weapons for the Welsians,” Emil continued. “I know enough that I probably could give them a working flintlock rifle. But I would much rather my legacy in this world to be the introduction of steam power, locomotives, water pressure and modern plumbing.”

“I see,” Jessica said. “I guess I wasn’t really thinking. I mean, yeah, I see where you’re coming from. I guess Antoine could probably shrug off a bullet or twenty, given the way that leveling works in this world, but introducing modern weapons would maybe kill a lot of people.”

“When I arrived, I was a soldier,” Antoine said, speaking for the first time that evening. “I tried to invent a rifle, but although I knew how they worked I didn’t know how they were built, and I knew less about crafting bullets. As time passed, I came to the conclusion that the Class system was superior, anyway. A high level Warrior, Rogue, or Mage would easily overcome a small squad of soldiers fresh out of boot camp, even with weapons from our world. Or at least they could have in my time, I’m less certain about modern Earth after hearing some of the things the others have said. However, it would allow the nations to arm their commoners to a level not available before. I can understand Emil and Aisha’s concern now, after living as long as I have, and even if I could introduce firearms, I’m not certain that I’d want to anymore.”

“Yeah,” Jessica said. “I guess I wasn’t thinking about that. There are a lot of modern conveniences on Earth that would be nice to introduce to Welsius, but I don’t think modern warfare is among them.”

“Ancient warfare isn’t much better,” Aisha said. “In fact, it’s far worse. But the fact is that when people develop a new technology that can be used as a weapon, they inevitably try to find out exactly how deadly it is. I don’t know how closely you have been following the rumors coming out of Velund, but there’s talk of an invasion. I’m greatly concerned with those rumors, although I hope that they’re just that.”

“They’re not,” Antoine predicted. He swallowed from the glass of the whiskey that he’d been nursing. “The only question that remains is which of her neighbors Queen Galya is planning to steal land from to replace what she has lost to the new blight.”

The mood was spoiled with the talk of war, and the party retired to their beds soon after that.