Day 10

--- Jon ---

“So, you ready for school tomorrow?” His ma asked, deflecting a punch with her forearm.

“I guess?” He offered, hopping away from her counter. “I mean it’s school, same as any other year really.” (I hope anyway.)

“Maybe, but there’s nothing you’re, ergh, looking forward to?” His ma pointed out as caught a side kick and giving him just enough leverage to throw his weight sending them both to the ground.

“Not really.” He argued putting his knee on her chest and his sheathed blade to her throat. “Pin.”

“Nope.” His ma called, her arm wrapping around his as she shifted her grip on his leg to throw him off balance. “Really need to work on getting you a girlfriend.”

“What?” He blinked, before actually being thrown off.

“Boyfriend?” His ma asked curiously as they both rolled to their feet.

“What? No! I’m not- I-” He barely blocked the straight she threw at his face.

“You’re distracted.” She told him as he returned with an uppercut.

“You’re cheating!” He cried as she wrapped an arm around him.

“No such thing.” His mother disagreed as she flipped him onto the ground.

“Yes, such a thing!” He scowled, throwing his sheathed knife at her face as he got back on his feet.

His mother tilted her head out of the way with a smirk. “All ‘s fair in love and war, even if you die a virgin, kid.”

“Ma!”

Scene Consequences

-Thanks to Ma gained 2XP to Combat.

--Currently: Lv. 5 (6/12)

---

With his ma gone, he once more got back to his daily routine of studying whatever magic he could work out from his books and what little experience he had.

In this case having gone over what he knew about the Arcane ring, and the measurements there in, he decided he wasn’t quite satisfied with his score in enchanting. Namely that he knew he could do better than that, even if not by much. He wasn’t sure if that feeling came from Miss Edna’s professional pride or De Sade’s disdain for mediocrity, but either way he knew he didn’t like it.

And so to remedy this, he decided to try and enchant something new, something he hadn’t done before, so that it would be an actual test of his skills rather than that (failure) of a score he’d gotten from messing with the Arcane ring.

Which is why he’d searched his house for one of the numerous flashlights, his ma tended to keep around the house in case of emergency, before finding an LED Clip-On.

“Yeah… this’ll do.” He told himself, tossing the light up and down a few times.

Returning to his room he set the light in the middle of a spell circuit he’d drawn beforehand, when trying to figure out the best way to use his primary affinity -or one of its derivatives- since he knew he’d be able to push that enchantment beyond his actual skill level through sheer force of will. (Something he was hoping the ring wouldn’t be able to pick up on.)

Still as the magic flowed through his amulet and into the circle, sparking with power as it processed the mystical code he’d written out for it to follow, he couldn’t help but wonder how the concept of ‘Track’ would influence a flashlight light.

He very much doubted it would work anything like the oil lantern, Quartermaster Rogers had given him during his stay at camp. Something he felt he should be grateful for given how he’d broken his by- (the corrupted beast let loose a ear bleeding death rattle as flames danced, crawled, and devoured its flesh inch by burning inch.)

He let loose a shuddering breath as he fought down the desire to vomit as the scent of burning ozone took on a rotten stench from memory.

Pix looked over from the garden and gave him a curious look as the magic died down.

He gave a false cheer of success as he picked up the light and turned it on, hoping to distract himself with whatever mystical effect he’d infused into it.

“Why isn’t this doing anything?” He frowned moving the light all over his room. “I know the enchantment’s set. I can feel it, but… I have no idea what it’s doing…” Which unfortunately was his default state with most magic.

(Alright, let’s see… The last time I used ‘Track’ for an enchantment, it gave arrows shot from my bow a sort of autocorrect when I fired them…) He thought to himself, before shaking his head. “Yeah, no, I don’t think that’ll really work for a flashlight…”

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(Okay, so enchanting applies a concept and merges it with the concept of an object, so what is the concept of a flashlight?) He asked himself, eyeing the light in his hand. (To produce light?)

Frowning in thought, he turned the light on, and began waving it around his room. “Nope. Not that obvious…”

“So, tracking and light… Hmm…” He closed his eyes as an idea occurred to him. “Pix, can you hide somewhere for a second?”

Getting a trill in affirmative, he counted to ten before turning and looking around the room. Now looking around he already had a decent idea of where Pix was hiding, but that wasn’t the point of this experiment, so he left her alone for the moment.

Instead he slowly moved the flashlight around his room, taking note of how the few clues he’d found of Pix’s hiding spot -such as the few bits of dirt her flight dragged away from the garden- had a faint glow to them as the light passed, making them just a little more noticeable then they’d been on their own.

“Under the bed, corner against both walls, even though you entered from the opposite side of the bed.” He called out, earning an inquisitive look from Pix as she peeked out from under his bed.

“A light that reveals tracks.” He said, having finally figured out what his latest enchantment did. “Useful.”

Scene Consequences

-Flashlight gained Enchantment: Tracker’s Light (C Rank): With a target’s image in mind, light from this object will passively draw attention to anything related to that target. (+4 to finding a target’s tracks within object’s light.)

--Note: This bonus scales inversely with other lights in the room. (I.E. A pitch black room gets the full bonus, but a well-lit room gets no bonus.)

--Flashlight Enchanting Capacity (4/4)

--This Enchantment Cost 4 MP.

-Prove Your Power: Scored E+

--Bonus Points carried over from safety measures.

--Despite the strength of the enchantment, the ring knows you used your primary affinity to get it. That said, it does give bonus points for being smart enough to do so.

-Gained 1XP to Enchanting

--Currently: Lv. 4 (2/10)

A/N: Quick note, I redid the numbers for the enchanting equation. Now it’s Enchanting Rank +/- Affinity bonus = Max Enchantment Power, while (Enchanting Level + Occult Level) * Size Modifier = Enchanting Capacity. I did this to try give skill levels a little more weight since before they weren’t really doing anything.

---

Having finished playing with his newly enchanted flashlight, he decided to try figuring out how to branch out his magic a bit.

So, to this endeavor he began shifting through one of the books Miss Edna had given him for studying his concepts. Admittedly he could’ve gone through De Sade’s higher quality books, -given how Miss Edna’s was a handwritten notebook- but he didn’t feel like learning how the concept of ‘Defender’ could be used to horrifically murder someone today.

(Still can’t believe the moon can induce homicidal insanity…) He was somewhat relieved De Sade had only used that as an example of turning his affinities into a weapon, rather than actually making him learn how to do it himself.

While the material in the notebooks wasn’t as in-depth, nor did it have quite as many concepts described as De Sade’s, the few it did were significantly kinder in nature. Such as ‘Guard’ a relatively straight forward concept derived from Defender.

On the surface it looked like the two concepts were largely similar, given how they both focused on protecting something, but when you dug a little deeper that was when the real value of the concept came to light.

Namely in the fact that guard still possessed an offensive edge in comparison to ‘Defend’ which threw away all ‘Offense’ in exchange for guaranteed protection.

Admittedly, it was still primarily a defense concept, but given how guarding someone could be seen as keeping them controlled or contained, it could theoretically be used to ensure something dangerous remained sealed away too.

(Which given some of the things sealed away in Blackwell, is probably a good thing to learn now that I’ve got the time.)

Still, he had to actually use the concept a few different ways to know for sure how it would work rather than just guessing at it.

Regardless, even if he wasn’t one hundred percent sure how it would turn out, he at the very least felt he understood the concept enough to work his own affinity of ‘Defender’ into the concept of ‘Guard’ should he have to.

(I really hope I don’t have to…)

Scene Consequences

-New Concept Learned: Guard

--Added a tier below Defender.

-Gained 1XP to Occult

--Currently: Lv. 5 (3/12)

---

“Alright, looks like I’ve got everything packed up for tomorrow.” He nodded, as he set his backpack at the foot of his bed.

Pix eyed him curiously before pointing at the backpack with a soft trill.

“Oh, tomorrow ‘s the first day of school.” He explained, earning another look. “Think of school as like… my lessons with Miss Edna and De Sade. Except instead of learning magic, I’m learning about other things like history, math, languages-” Pix gave him another trill. “Mm, yes, and no. I mean, I did learn languages with De Sade, but his stuff was more… esoteric, than the stuff we focus on in English classes.” (Namely in that we aren’t trying to find loopholes, lock people in with double meanings, and figure out how to make a word as aggressive in definition as possible.)

Given how he never let Pix attend those lessons, he decided to keep all of that to himself.

Pix frowned thoughtfully before pointing at herself and then the bag, and he couldn’t help but wince. “Um, no… Err, that is, I don’t think it’d be a good idea for you to go with me.”

Upon learning this new bit of information, the little fairy turned a glare on him.

“Sorry, it’s just… It’s like with my ma, and how we can’t let too many people know about you, because there’s all of these regulations for magical beings, and there’s no telling how people will react and… it’s a mess…” He trailed off with a sigh as he noticed he was beginning to ramble more than anything else.

Pix’s glare was unrelenting as she crossed her arms.

“Come on, you know people tend to overreact to magic.” He pleaded. “I mean, you remember what happened in Blackwell with those two cops.”

He hoped his mother never found out about the time he had to evade arrest, because he very much doubted she’d be as lenient as Miss Edna’s ‘Who hasn’t had to flee from the cops before?’

Pix pouted, before flying off into his closet and slamming the doors as best she could.

(I’m going to be paying for this later, I can just feel it…)

Scene Consequences

-Jon has everything he needs together for school and has told Pix not to come with him for her own safety.