14 A Perfect Eight

For perhaps the first time, no new starbane forms appeared to attack me in new or unexpected ways. The fight ended quietly without me taking any more wounds after four or five minutes of intense repositioning and Anklebitering, while every so often remembering that I was supposed to be using other spells too. A hookblow was the last starbane to fall, and I pulled it off balance using Tug Of War. When it tried to get up, it failed to do a push up jump to avoid the deadly Jump Rope beam I sent its way. After that, I was left alone in the forest, breathing hard, and surrounded by corpses.

I hadn’t moved from where I was because I didn’t think that the tentacle forms, curtain callers or calling curtains or whatever they were called, were capable of moving all that much. So far I had been rewarded for assuming that. None had shown up to try and snap my arm again.

“You should straighten your back and put a hand on your waist for support,” a voice suggested. I looked up to see the Authority Fairy circling down from the canopy. Doing that meant I straightened my back, but I didn’t do the other thing she suggested. My eyes narrowed slightly at her. “Ooh, that’s good too! We really don’t have enough magical girls who are capable of a really good glare.”

My eyes squinted a little narrower, but in the end I shook my head and elected to not further respond to her antics. Her and my Familiar really enjoyed pushing my buttons, and making that too easy for them went against my values. Instead, I checked where my mana was after killing that many starbanes.

B: 27/60

U: 137

409s

“Didn’t you want me to get a grimoire about accuracy?” I asked in the direction of my Familiar. It was lingering in the branches above, since a few sentry forms had joined the fight from ground level, and was, of course, mostly upside down. This time it had decided to set gravity at an angle again, and was pacing up and down a branch that way.

It looked down at me before responding. [We do believe that the Novice Grimoire of Lethal Accuracy would be a worthwhile investment for you. However, we maintain that using the required mana to instead further your expertise with the spells contained in the Stoccoro Grimoire for Flashy Rituals would likely be a wiser investment at this time.]

I let out a breath and finally stabilised my breathing as I considered what it said. As nice as it would be, being deadly accurate probably didn’t matter too much if I wasn’t aiming with every spell. When it was just Authentic Energy Channel and Anklebiter, that mattered. It probably still mattered with Tug Of War, which I had used to catch a few starbanes and pull them into a moving beam from Jump Rope just recently, but I was relying on accuracy less now.

“Then what should I be focusing on to get that grimoire about bloodsport?” I asked.

My familiar decided that gravity was alright for a second, and fell from its perch only to flop onto an invisible panel at around my head height. [As traditional study methods would be a poor choice to pursue in this situation, we instead ask for three bound mana to access the means to educate you,] it said as it picked itself up, only to fall the rest of the way to the ground.

I had more than enough to spare three mana. “Go ahead.”

3 bound mana transferred for designer illusions. Bound mana reduced to 24.

The stated illusion came to life in front of me, forming a graph of all things. The vertical scale only went up to four, while fifteen coloured cubes extended to the side, each on its own. They were coloured, and mostly purple and yellow, so I figured it was a representation of my mana. I found myself scanning the colours for a new one, but I wasn’t able to pinpoint it. This was the first time I’d seen something like this, and I wasn’t visually familiar with the stuff that I did have yet.

[We will demonstrate a small number of concepts using this visual medium,] my Familiar explained, jumping up to walk along the top line of the graph. [Just in case you lack the intelligence to connect separate points of data, this is a representation of your mana capacity and depth.]

“Don’t worry, I’m smart enough,” I said dismissively, unimpressed by the insinuation. “Which one is my newest colour?”

The Familiar’s tail twitched, and an orange box on the end vibrated for a moment. [We believe this colour was from protective anger, in which you immersed yourself in the wake of wishing for Diane.]

I carefully didn’t react. “So?”

[This is specifically a representation of how much mana you generate with each mana pulse. Increasing depth and adding more variants of mana is a more complex topic that is not relevant to the things we will be explaining.

[The topic we will be delving into is the concept of a mana unit, which is defined by the amount you generate at a set interval.]

“So mana goes into decimals?” I asked after thinking about it. Maths wasn’t my best subject, but I was familiar with how one thing could be made up of many smaller things. It seemed like that was the way my Familiar was leading me.

[Plainly put, correct,] the Familiar praised, adopting a lying down position on the illusion but keeping its eyes looking my way. Its tail twitched after a moment. [This is a representation of your current bound mana.]

The coloured blocks of the illusion seemed to double, with a second row appearing on top. It looked off though, and that was because the second line of blocks was shorter than the first. That made sense if it was representing my mana, since two times fifteen was thirty, and I only had twenty four mana at the moment.

“I’m getting dangerously close to just giving up on this and storming towards the foundation serpents that way,” I warned my Familliar, pointing in the direction Authority had been taking me. It had barely been a minute since I’d been in a fight and the proof of my victory surrounded me still. Going from that to this was jarring, and a large part of me wanted to move.

[Before you do that, tell us of one observation you have made,] my Familiar requested.

I looked at it, then at the graph, then at Authority who was putting on a poker face. Damn, I’d wanted to cheat a little. Dad had taught me that getting ahead was only cheating when I got caught. We’d made games of it when I was younger. That had led to a whole thing when I got caught getting ahead during last year’s exams.

So I looked at the graph again.

“It’s flat?”

[Correct. All magical beings naturally transmute their mana to maintain equilibrium. You perform this process quickly when compared to a contractless magician, but you could be faster and more efficient. We will provide exercises to that end after you have survived this veil, but that is not the only method. Observe here. This is what occurs when you reclaim mana from a spell. We will simulate reclaiming Authentic Energy Channel.]

Five blocks of purple mana suddenly appeared on top of the nearly two high stack that was already there, with the incomplete cube being filled before making a new one, ending with the topmost cube inheriting its shape. The sudden appearance actually interrupted my Familiar’s lounging, shunting it to the side and making it scramble to stay on top of the illusion before it eventually lost hold and fell back to the forest floor. It apparently got frustrated, and made a few angry and aimless shallow stomping jumps. But that wasn’t what I was supposed to be looking at.

The almost seven high stack of purple didn’t stay that way for long, sections of the lowest cube on the tower lit up different colours before sliding under the corresponding mana cube. It raised the level of every other colour while lowering the stand out tower. At the same time, a portion of the top cube dissolved and vanished. Then the whole process repeated, and then again with a smaller amount going to every colour. After that it was flat again.

[This visualised process has been slowed tenfold. What stood out to you when you watched that, Donna?] the Familiar asked as it continued its comically frustrated pacing. The tone of what it was doing and what it was saying didn’t match, as ever.

I almost answered with how it fell off the illusion, because sometimes I couldn’t help being witty in witless ways. But I took a moment to think more seriously for this. “I lost mana off the top,” I eventually said.

[Correct again,] the Familiar praised, and I felt my cheeks starting to heat just a little despite everything. [When a colour of mana has volume at least a single unit greater than a magician’s mana depth, there is loss. This loss increases as mana depth is further exceeded. When you reclaimed Jump Rope and Tug Of War at the same time just now you lost more mana than you normally would in the process, because you had a greater excess of purple mana than usual.]

I hadn’t paid attention to the math, so I took its word for it. No doubt it had been paying pedantic attention while I was busy directing Jump Rope into the shins of unsuspecting starbanes. “So I’ll dismiss spells one at a time in the future, save some mana that way.”

[That is a good habit to have. Do not be afraid to override that habit if the situation demands. Following that line of thought, it bears mentioning that most spells have a procedural dismissal process for this reason.]

I noticed my mana go down ten points then. Friendly Race was still on, and I was planning on keeping it that way for the time being. Since it was on my mind, I pulled my grimoire out and had it flip to the page for the corresponding spell. “Highlight it please.”

My Familiar flicked its tail, and I saw the paragraph before the usage one begin to glow. I didn’t comment on how I found that structure odd and gave it a read. Parts of the text were dim, and it was obvious why when I read a little and found it to be dry and boring. The stuff that was lit up was useful, and I tucked the knowledge away for the future. I’d be doing this for each of my spells, and flipped to Jump Rope next. Then I realised there was no way I was going to remember the procedure for every spell at once.

“Alright, enough study,” I decided when I was done with Jump Rope, snapping the book shut and tossing it over my shoulder. It didn’t make any sound like a book hitting the forest floor, so I assumed my Familiar had sent it back to storage, and that made me feel like a badass. The surviving Authority seemed to like it, at the very least. “I’m going in hard and fast. Catch up to me if I end up overshooting the cave with the foundation serpents.”

“I’ll do my best,” Authority said as I took the time to top up the choker crystal I’d cast at the start of the latest fight. “Just remember that the starbane forms will be dug in around the miasma beacon. The other one was less defended because it was still early enough after the veil was cast.”

I touched the bottom of the choker crystal floating nearby and had it start following my left hand. “It’s been like twenty minutes.”

“And the starbanes have probably changed their tactics if they’re trying to kill your Familiar specifically,” she pointed out. “Delaying tactics to slow down how quickly you kill the miasma beacons, and you don’t even have a spell to scry for more. As soon as the elites begin to appear, you’re going to be on your back foot.”

I frowned, but couldn’t find any flaws in her logic. “I’ll kill this one, and then we’ll think on it,” I decided. Authority flew up to the canopy, so I assumed she was on board with that plan. My Familiar wound its way between my legs like a cat, so I reached down and picked it up under the belly. Because it was who and what it was, it immediately twisted to walk along my arm and onto my shoulders as I was still straightening up.

“Alright,” I said, a little put out. I jumped a little to distract myself and pump myself up. “See ya.” Then I ran in the direction of the miasma beacon.

Resistance came almost immediately. As soon as I was away from the cluster of trees that had surrounded us, Proximity Alarm set off a dozen or more chimes in my head and the darkness ahead became tinged with indigo.

“Jump Rope!” I cast, swiftly turning it on and sending it ahead to cut out the legs of the hookblows that had gathered to greet me. There happened to be two tree trunks along the route that my bright purple beam of death took after being activated, and as many horizontal rings of burning orange showed me where the beam had met tree.

Then, because the spells worked so well together, I cast Tug Of War and snapped out its penetrative rope into the leg of the frontmost hookblow. I tugged even as I was racing towards it at a magically enhanced speed, and its leg flew out from under it. The bright red gorilla thing overbalanced backwards, and Jump Rope made two angry lines along the sides of its body when I pulled it back to where I could see it.

A horrible creaking sound joined the cacophony of screaming starbanes. I warily looked up, but I didn’t see anything moving among the trees. It was only when I looked back down to see one of those burning rings separate into two that I understood what was happening. The trees were falling.

I considered yelling timber. Then the falling tree hit a hookblow that was still standing and it didn’t even break stride.

So no lumberjack fun for me.

The one that I had tripped mercifully had stopped moving, so I set to tripping the rest of them with a not solid but definitely burning beam. It worked, though I gained a new memory of nightmare fuel in the process. They never stopped trying to reach me and pummel me, but their ankles were failing them after taking two passes of the deadly beam and still they kept coming.

One finally tripped and landed on its face, and I hurried to move the Jump Rope beam its way. Once I judged that done, I snapped out the Tug Of War rope to overbalance another while running fast to tackle the last. I jumped into the air as I turned my shoulder towards it, and the spell took that as a cue to speed me up even more.

The hookblow was sent away to crash somewhere further back. I fell back down to the ground, suddenly at a standstill.

“Ow,” I murmured, though it was lost in the flurry. My ribbons hadn’t protected me from that, and I had to move on.

All the other starbane forms around screamed their displeasure at their heavy hitters being so easily dismantled. There were sixballs and scoutscales seemingly covering the forest, and I spied some arachno web and a calling curtain a little further away. To start dealing with that, I snapped my fingers and set down my choker crystal. It had already begun killing the smaller forms one by one.

[Well done,] my Familier told me. [You are eliminating heavier lowly forms of the Enemy with ease.]

This time the praise barely registered. Mostly because I was casting Tickle Time while it was telling me that, and backpedalling to gain distance from the nearest sixballs. My friendly racing armour did protect me from a lot of attacks, but its coverage wasn’t perfect. I had already dealt with a lamper managing to get through the gaps, I wasn’t much interested in letting a sixball try getting its sword legs through as well.

Sixball forms actually fell and didn’t get up after taking a single tickle beam. It didn’t trivialise them, per se, hitting them at all was the hard part. Them going down in one hit, however, did make them much more manageable.

Diane had actually been the one felling them quicker when it was still the two of us as capable fighters. She often hit them more times than necessary, which I very much understood. But I couldn’t afford myself that same sort of vengeful habit. There were simply too many other things diving into the carnage.

[Sentry form! Right side! Ground level!] my Familiar suddenly warned me.

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I was more distracted with the calling curtain that was testing its tentacles against my armour, but I did formulate a response. After whipping the purple rope towards the tentacle monster, I dropped the physical manifestation of the spell and pointed my wrist towards where the Jump Rope beam had ended up diagonally in front of me to the right. The orientation of it wasn’t useful, so I had to make it do a three point turn by gesturing with my hand, but when I was done the wide beam had cut a wide path through the forest.

So far no starbanes had ever jumped over my spell when it was moving, so I clenched my fist tight and had it move slower. Still, none of them knew how to jump. Only one scoutscale managed to avoid the beam, but it did so by pressing itself to the ground and playing an entirely different childhood game.

The rest of starbane forms there all fell over. That hookblow that had been crawling towards me the entire time finally ceased moving. It was a complete success as an attack.

[Thank you, Donna. You cut straight through that sentry form,] my Familiar said. [As well as that tree that’s now falling towards you.] That made my head snap up.

Just as it said, a tree with a trunk about three quarters the width of my shoulders was tilting my way. Its ominous creaking was audible even over the high pitched shrieks of the starbanes that pass of Jump Rope had felled but not quite killed.

“Lead with that!” I shouted as I hurriedly took several steps to my left, away from the potential danger.

Moving with Friendly Race proved to still be unpredictable. I ended up far enough away from the fight that I could barely see the angry purple glow of Jump Rope. I also ended up in hugging distance of another calling curtain.

And, as I had found out, they liked to hug and not let go.

I dismissed Tickle Time, which was still prepared on my left hand and was in the middle of casting Anklebiter when three of the new curtain caller’s tentacles slammed into my front and side. The force of those blows interrupted me halfway through saying the name of the spell, but the casting succeeded anyway. My left hand grabbed the handle of Anklebiter and began to squeeze as I, for some goddamn reason, got even closer.

[Another sentry form! It’s right below you!]

My leg met a little resistance as I made my way even closer to where the calling curtain was suspended between three trees.

[Thank you for your prompt response.]

I didn’t pay that any attention. Instead I waited for the calling curtain to try wrapping a tentacle around me. That was what the previous ones had done, and I had noticed that they all seemed to default to the same tactics. It was something I intended to ask my Familiar about at some point.

If I remembered to after this.

My prediction proved accurate when the next two tentacles from the calling curtain wrapped themselves around my extended left arm. I immediately pulled my body forward and chopped at the tentacle binding me with my other arm, willing the ribbons from Friendly Race to wrap around my hand in that moment. They left a beautiful trail behind them as my hand went straight through the thick limb, and the calling curtain began calling its pain rather than its friends.

Another few seconds of Anklebiter directed at what I guessed was its torso shut that up. Then I reached out with my other hand and pulled Jump Rope towards me.

I was relatively alone for the moment, so I glanced around to see if Proximity Alarm had anything to show me. There were four more calling curtains in range, but not quite in the direction I’d just been heading. I must have gotten off track in the fight. After dodging the tree, that made sense. Not that I was worried about losing my way again, because I noticed the telltale snaking shadow of foundation serpents coming up from underground. The shadow extended towards the calling curtains, marking my destination.

Jump Rope was actually in line with the way I was looking when I checked on it again, and was sideways from my perspective. That was of questionable use for stabbing, since the tips were magical circles that shot the magic inward. To solve that, I dragged my fist to rotate the spell for maximum coverage, then pulled it towards me once more. More trees fell, but more importantly, more starbanes were slain. I could tell from the jumping up and down my mana was doing when I was dragging the spell.

This fight had been quite profitable so far, I noticed.

B: 0/60

U: 257

155s

With another reaching pull, the Jump Rope was dragged far enough that I needed to jump over it as it passed by. I briefly channelled Anklebiter through the middle of the stumpy clearing that had been made, looking for movement on either side of the lightly strobing beam of death, and kept it up until the trees had all mostly fallen over. There was probably a better spell for that in Grimoire of Bright Light Enthusiasts, but this was what I had so this was what I used.

There was a sixball I dragged the beam down to kill, but otherwise I didn’t see anything. The sixball must have been up in one of the trees, because I had yet to see a starbane successfully dodge a Jump Rope in motion. That dealt with, I turned to where the calling curtains were on the very edge of my Proximity Alarm’s radius.

[You have left your Tug Of War spell behind,] my Familiar informed me in the brief reprieve. [The spell is now wasting mana.]

“Rig-” I cut myself off as the word interfered with me breathing in at that moment. I straightened my back and pulled my personal grimoire from storage. “Show me the dismissal instructions,” I requested, absently turning Jump Rope off without reclaiming the spell for the time being.

The purple book lifted itself into the air at my words, and I let it go. I was a little annoyed that the act of tossing it up had been robbed from me, but I was out of breath enough that I didn’t make it known. Seconds later, it was done, and I grabbed the book from the air.

My eyes scanned the page, then I turned and held my hand out in the direction I had come from. I willed the rope of the spell to return to me, and for several seconds nothing happened.

[Recalling the rope requires a somatic activation,] my Familiar said, walking along my extended arm.

“Meaning?” I asked, dropping my arm.

It held on like nothing had changed, of course. [A physical gesture in which you imbue your intent.]

“Holding my hand out isn’t enough?” It felt like that should have been enough.

[Try going through the motions of catching a ball.]

I frowned, but extended my arm again. Then, when nothing happened, I tugged it back like I had just caught something.

It turned out I had. There was a glowing purple rod in my hand that quickly fell down in that slack way ropes always did. It had flashed across my vision in an instant.

“Huh,” I said, then dropped Anklebiter for the time being. I used both hands to straighten the rope of Tug Of War, then twisted one hand back while the other hand went forward. The rope slowly dissolved into purple motes that reduced themselves to nothing over the course of a second.

“How was that?” I asked, picking Anklebiter back up.

[Some mana was lost, but it was less than a single point,] my Familiar told me. [Your mana depth is still shallow, so mistakes are easily made. Slowing down the gestures you make for the dismissal can impact the speed that mana re-enters your bound pool.]

“How do I get more mana depth?”

[Cast spells.]

I looked at where the curtain callers were waiting. The only howls of starbanes that I could hear were distant ones from behind, and Proximity Alarm hadn’t gone off. “Not going to give me a long winded explanation?”

[We judged that you were wanting to achieve the objective of destroying the miasma beacon, and an adequate explanation would make you impatient. Thus, we summarised.]

“You were right,” I said, twisting the ring to turn Jump Rope back on before sending it forward to where it could fell the trees those tentacle monsters were using to suspend themselves. I didn’t get every one of them on the first pass, but I was able to get more on the second and third by rotated the beam and dragging it from side to side. Then I rushed forward while they were all still flopping about on the ground.

I still had no idea where the heads of these creatures were, if they even had one. However, I quickly found that kicking them in the middle of the spine with a friendly kick was an effective way of immobilising half of one. I directed Anklebiter to burn the half that was still moving of my first victim and found it dying after five seconds. With a better tactic discovered, I then repeated that with the second and third, facing some difficulty when the third one hadn’t fallen on its apparent side.

Two more calling curtains came into the radius of Proximity Alarm, making things even more difficult. But they weren’t very threatening after I felled the trees they were hanging from, and I was eventually rewarded for my efforts. That was, after my Familiar got panicky about two sentry forms showing up at the same time. It was only after I had kicked those away that I was able to turn around and inspect the hole in the ground that was being guarded.

This part of the forest was very close to where the hills bordering the valley of Camp Elysium Lux, as much as it could be called a valley, began to seriously make an incline. The hole that the shadows of the foundation serpents were leading to was a massive yawning shape where that increase of height really started. It was a near perfect circle, and in the purple light of my spells, I could see that the stone on the top was perfectly smooth.

Basically, this wasn’t a natural cave. I glanced at my Familiar to see if it had anything to say.

[Please set a convex crystal at the opening of this cave,] it requested. [Do not forget to charge it if you do.]

I snorted. Of course it was looking out for itself. “Convex Crystal,” I cast all the same. That last fight had gotten me up to three hundred unbound mana, so I didn’t feel bad about spending mana like this. Getting attacked from behind would suck.

Before I charged the crystal, however, I twisted the purple ring on my pinky to deactivate Jump Rope. Then, I began to pull the ring off of my finger. I took the advice I had been given after dismissing Tug Of War, and did so slowly. There wasn’t any real friction after I started moving the ring, and both it and the circles of the spell had dissolved by the time it would have been pulled off of my finger.

“How was that?” I asked as I snapped my fingers to set the convex crystal, then set the charge rate to its maximum. The crystal had to float a decent way into the cave since the opening was too wide, but it narrowed quickly.

[Considering that you spent zero point eight seven seconds longer than necessary dismissing the spell, we have no criticisms you would be able to act on while still wholly human. No mana was lost, so you therefore did an adequate job.]

The start of that felt like it would open a can of worms if I asked about it. I elected to keep my mouth shut after blinking at the Familiar for a few seconds. With it on my shoulder still, I walked further into the cave.

And the whole thing blew up.

I just took a single step into the place and happened to step on some arachno web that I hadn’t noticed. Just as it had done in the forest, it caught fire on contact with my armour, and then that fire had spread. Pretty much the entire cave had been covered in the stuff, so the whole entire cave caught fire for a few seconds.

[Hold your breath,] my Familiar was telling me before the fire was fully burned through.

I was already covering my face and closing my eyes against the wind rushing past me, but I took its advice all the same. My lungs began wanting more air straight away, and I had to hold my nose with one hand. Heat played on my cheeks.

[With the breath you have held, cast Emergency Respiratory Correction,] my Familiar instructed, serious enough that I didn’t question the advice.

“Emergenc-ah!” I was hacking and coughing before one full word was out. The spell was one I vaguely remembered from the clearing with Diane, when I had been searching for something blood related. Why I needed it was something I wasn’t clueless about. School had put me through classes about fire safety when I was younger, and I knew why the advice was to get low.

But this felt different. I’d only breathed out and my upper body felt like it was dying. Then a dark green magic circle formed around me, just under my bust. It pulled up a little, and then I felt better.

[Do not breathe in,] my Familiar warned just as I was about to start asking questions. [The spell you just cast will continuously provide oxygen to the necessary organs without your input for long enough to finish your business here. You may breathe out and speak normally, but do not breathe in.]

That was… an extremely odd demand. I opened my mouth and felt myself start to breathe in before speaking, and the pain returned. With a grimace, I stopped, then asked my question with a single word when things felt normal again. “Why?”

Even with just that, I really wanted to breathe in.

Not breathing in was just such a weird idea.

[This is an example of the dangers that an arachno form can produce,] my Familiar explained. [In addition to the silk being sticky, it combusts into a compound that is toxic to most non-starbane forms upon exposure to heat. It disperses rapidly when air circulation is introduced, but reaches dangerous levels quickly in stagnant locations like this one. The trap is deadly to those who find the sticky silk easy to burn off, as it is intentionally made vulnerable to being burned. It is a psychological trick, and can be effective against the unwary.]

“Hate,” I said, expressing my opinion on the matter without tempting a need to inhale.

[Many magicians have been caught off guard by this quality of the starbane form. However, we have managed to prevent any of them from perishing from the attack. Arachno forms remain vulnerable to heat as well. Four were further into the cave, and we have already harvested their mana.]

So there was a silver lining, at least. I frowned, then pushed forward while doing my best to not breathe in. It felt like I had just decided to hold my breath, but for longer. The feeling of panic never escalated, and that was the only reason why I wasn’t sucking down toxic ‘sticky silk’ air.

Soon enough I reached the end of the cave. It widened out again, but not by much, and there were four many-legged bodies on the sides of the bottom. One was wedged against what I assumed was a forming miasma beacon, which looked further along than the one in the cafeteria. This one had about twice the height, bringing it up to my waist, but the pattern of growth was the same. It was eight snakes, all intertwined and leaning on each other.

I considered my approach, and remembered what Authoritative Authority had told me. Mana injection was the way to go, and I also remembered that my choker crystals had killed three of them, while I had only managed to get one with Anklebiter.

So I dismissed the spell, then held my hand out in front of me. “Choker Crystal.” I had to stop myself from inhaling after casting.

As soon as that was done, I snapped my fingers to set the crystal by one of the snake necks, then cast the spell again.

And again.

I made a total of eight choker crystals, set each of them beside a different neck of a foundation serpent, and did my best to ignore intrusive thoughts about my apparent volume increasing. The mana I wasn’t worried about, because I was going to get eight doses of sixty four mana if this went well. That done, I looked at my Familiar.

“Charging crystal?” I asked. “Simultaneous.” I very much wasn’t enjoying this whole not breathing in thing, even if I was fine to keep doing it. Speaking in full sentences was something I just didn’t trust myself to do. A single comma in my speech could be a death sentence.

[Collaboration Crystal is the spell we deduce you to be seeking.]

I flicked its head since the little thing was in reach, then pulled out my personal grimoire. This time I flipped through the pages manually to not risk breathing in. It took longer, but I still found it. Reading through the description, it was in fact what I was after, and its apparent radius was enough that I didn’t need to worry about where I placed it.

“Collaboration Crystal,” I cast, and watched as a new type of crystal formed. It was tall, like all the others from the Grumskn grimoire, but was only one solid piece in the middle. The structure split into four points as it went up and down, for a total of eight, making the crystal distinct. Even right after being cast, it had a faint purple glow to it.

I made sure that I wasn’t standing over a foundation serpent, then tapped one of the top spines. A familiar charging circle appeared, which I pushed up at a reasonable pace.

“How much?” I asked.

[You will need to maintain a connection, as your current mana total will not translate into enough invasive mana to kill all eight.]

“Still work?”

[It may. Foundation serpents have a distributed constitution, which is redistributed upon any one’s demise. Each is therefore more difficult to terminate than the last. One of eight serpents will therefore perish upon exposure to one eighth of the trauma necessary to destroy a single lone foundation serpent.]

Odd, was my reaction to that explanation. I wrapped my head around what it was saying, but there was no reason I could think of for why the foundation serpents might be that way.

Actually, if they arrived as a single creature that divided itself into octuplets, that might make sense. Just in a, “It’s magic, don’t think about it,” sort of way. This wasn’t the time to ask, unfortunately.

The bottom line of that explanation was that this wasn’t going to net me the five or so hundred extra mana I had been expecting. It was still going to get me more mana than I had ever held before, so I could deal with that. There was nothing left to do but keep my hand on the charging circle and wait.

Soft beams of purple light had begun connecting the collaboration crystal to the choker ones as soon as there was mana to send. The choker crystals on the other side of the foundation serpents weren’t excluded and had a bending beam of light connecting them back to the collaboration one. The smart little thing was probably dividing my mana equally between the other crystals available inside of its range.

And this was dumb? I wanted to see what a smart intelligent hand looked like to the Grumskn.

Sure enough, the serpents weren’t able to ignore the choking beams for long. It said a lot about their defences that they were able to writhe that much when the crystals were doing their damndest to choke them, every other starbane it caught froze. Even the striders.

I didn’t get off scot free from doing what I had done, I was standing far too close to the eight root-like serpents for that. But all my punishment amounted to was some shards of rock flying my way, only to get caught on my armour and deflected away. One large rock fell on me from above, and I only noticed because it hit the floating crown that I had but kept forgetting about. The impact made my neck strain before the offending rock fell down to the ground in front of me.

The struggle continued, and the foundation serpents were making me worried as they unhinged their jaws to start eating themselves. Then, one by one, they stilled. Only one managed to properly clamp its jaw backwards on itself.

For one long, drawn out moment, it looked like it was going to explode itself. Another second passed, and I let out a relieved breath I’d somehow pulled before turning my hand to pull my mana back from the crystals.

I checked my mana. The fact that I’d missed a mana pulse during a previous fight occurred to me, giving me a nice surprise.

B: 23/80

U: 472

521s

“New colour?” I asked. My mana depth seemed to have gone up as well.

[It is another shade of purple, and is now your colour closest to true magenta.]

“Mm…” I wondered what that meant, but didn’t want to ask the question out loud. I wasn’t sure I would have asked it if I wasn’t limiting myself to two word sentences. Breathing in was nice, and I missed it dearly. But it didn’t really change who I was.

[Donna, you should also know that you have outperformed ninety six percent of contracted magicians by harvesting all foundation serpents on your second attempt. Your colleagues will be impressed.]

“Bragging rights,” I agreed. With another look at the mess at the base of the cave, I turned and walked out with a smirk on my face.