Combat Report

Your party has escaped:

Undead Horde

Rewards:

Experience earned

Your class has leveled up: Mage – Level 18

You have gained Attribute Points

Your skills have leveled up:

Earth Magic – Level 14

Air Magic – Level 12

Rune Magic – Level 8

New Quest:

Cursed Dead

Conditions:

Uncover the source of the undead

Rewards:

Experience

Description:

This once grand castle is now the tomb of a long dead civilization. At its heart lies the source of the undead hordes.

Accept Optional Quest?

Yes or No

The party found themselves in a room that now had only one exit. The door opposite the caved in wall was much smaller than the entrance, but sturdy, nonetheless. It had a handle that seemed to turn when Wyatt tried it, but they decided not to open the door for now, instead resting and eating in the relative safety of this room.

As they did, Wyatt went over his notifications and distributed his attribute points. He put two in willpower, one in intelligence, and one in endurance, bringing them to 56, 44, and 20 respectively. His last point he placed into strength for the first time since coming to this world, and immediately felt the difference.

The lower number in his strength attribute meant the effect of putting the one point into it was larger. It seemed to Wyatt that the more points one invested into an attribute, the less profound the feeling of growth was. While the raw damage a pure strength individual could unleash on an enemy scaled directly with each point regardless of how high their strength got, the increase to physical abilities lessened. This meant that the difference in strength between four and five points was much larger than the difference between 24 and 25.

Wyatt put some thought into the quest he had received, bringing up the quest menu once again. The others had received the same quest, apparently, though no one had made a decision on whether they would accept it.

“Well, we can’t leave,” Wyatt had told the others.

“Maybe quest is way out,” replied Gus, looking to Alindra for her take on the quest.”

“Fine, but exit is priority,” she said after some thought.

With that, the members of the impromptu party each accepted the quest.

With some time to kill before everyone recovered enough to continue, Wyatt decided to update his notes, gaining a skill in calligraphy as he did so. This meant he was only one level away from a new ability related to calligraphy. He wondered only briefly at what abilities could possibly be related to the skill but decided not to waste his brainpower on the thought.

When Wyatt had begun taking notes on the undead they faced, he stopped. He wanted to add a description of this new monster and realized something as he tried to recall how they looked.

“The undead were orcs,” he said, the sudden noise enough to make the others jump. They looked at him confused and slightly annoyed, and the human realized he hadn’t spoken in orcish.

Realizing this revelation meant nothing to his companions, Wyatt waved his hand at them and dropped the subject. He put his papers in his storage and withdrew a blank sheet. He decided it was time to learn what some of the runes he had written down meant.

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By drawing the rune on a sheet of paper and infusing each with magic as he did so, Wyatt only needed to see what happened when he finished the rune. Sure enough, one of the symbols that he copied from Alindra’s sword caused the paper to burst into flames and had the added side effect of scaring his two companions as they leapt to their feet.

When Wyatt drew another rune from Alindra’s sword on a piece of paper, the paper seemed to float. It wasn’t until the dark elf explained it to him that he knew it meant something akin to telekinesis. There was a second rune that tied into this on her sword which, in Wyatt’s limited understanding of the orcish language, was the “trigger rune”. For Alindra, this combination of runes meant that she could move her sword for a limited time after it left her hand. This explained how the sword seemed to move around her so fluidly, even looking like it attacked on its own. She could also throw the sword and summon it back to her like a bladed boomerang.

The three runes on Alindra’s sword were arranged in a triangle, with two circles surrounding them. The dark elf, her understanding of rune magic limited, only shrugged when Wyatt asked what the circles meant.

The formation reminded Wyatt of the runes from the dungeon connected to the illusion trap he was stuck in, and he pulled out another sheet of paper. On it were the three runes that he copied from above the spatial door, arranged in a triangle, with two circles surrounding the formation. One of the runes was the symbol for spatial magic but the other two were unknown to him.

Drawing the first did nothing, and Wyatt assumed this was the trigger rune for the trap. With no other way of activating the symbol, Wyatt turned his attention to the other. The magic that activated from this one felt like spatial magic, but when Wyatt tried to grab the paper, his hand reflected backwards. The rune disappeared immediately after, and Wyatt assumed this rune was the spatial symbol for reverse. The mage drew the symbol again, this time on the wall behind him. Then he grabbed a rock and threw it at the symbol, proving his theory as the rock shot back just as fast and hit him in the head.

Rubbing the bruise on his forehead where the rock struck him, Wyatt looked to his companions. Alindra hid a smile as she shook her head, but Gus nearly fell over from laughter, as he imitated the face Wyatt must have made when the rock hit him.

With his experiments completed, Wyatt opened his notifications.

Your skills have leveled up:

Rune Magic – Level 9

Rune Magic – Level 10

Skill upgrade available

Wyatt was ecstatic at the progress he made in rune magic, and assumed he gained more experience for the skill by learning new runes than simply employing them. Opening his menu, he looked at the upgrade options available to him.

“Options” was the wrong word for it, because only one choice was available.

Upgrade:

Permanent Runes

Skill:

Rune Magic

Description:

Used by mages to create spell books of abilities they could not use otherwise; this upgrade allows the user’s runes to remain in place after the mana used to create them is expended. To reuse an expended rune, more mana must be infused into the rune.

Wyatt’s initial disappointment at the number of upgrades was immediately replaced by excitement as he read the description. With this, he could use spells from outside of the schools he knew, effectively increasing his available spells by many times. Thinking on the upgrade further, Wyatt realized he could keep the rune on his staff, as well, increasing his combat effectiveness at the cost of supplying mana to every strike.

Wyatt selected the upgrade with the excitement of a child opening a birthday present. The knowledge that accompanied the upgrade came to his mind, and Wyatt’s smile faded.

That’s it?

Wyatt drew the symbol for fire on a blank sheet of paper. Then he drew a circle around the rune.

That’s it.

Wyatt activated the rune, and the page burst into flames. When the fire died, the rune remained on the page, and Wyatt infused more magic into it, causing the fire to reignite. He tried again, this time imposing his will on the flames as he summoned them, causing a jet of fire to shoot into the roof above him. Wyatt fell backwards, hoping to save the hair on his face.

This time, Gus did fall over from laughter.

Ignoring the orc, Wyatt looked back at the page. After several unsuccessful attempts, and an entire bar of mana, he found that the extent of manipulating the fire that came from the paper was simply to make it shoot forward from whichever direction the page was facing.

Smiling, Wyatt had an idea.

On the back of the page with the fire rune, Wyatt drew the rune for telekinesis. When enough of his mana returned, Wyatt infused the new rune, causing the page to float in front of him at his will. Wyatt tried using that telepathic connection to activate the rune on the opposite side, but he found that he could not. Only the telekinesis rune, given the nature of it, would allow control without contact.

Wyatt attempted to remedy this by adding in the trigger rune from Alindra’s sword. The rune allowed her to activate the rune up to a certain distance from her, which enabled her to summon the sword back to her hand when thrown. When he tried adding the rune to the paper, however, the first rune disappeared, much like his earlier experiments with adding two runes to his staff.

Maybe I can chain more runes together when I level my skill.

Resigned to having to touch the paper once it was hovering in front of him, Wyatt did so now, sending a jet of flames shooting forward and causing Gus to dive back to avoid being burned.

It was Wyatt’s turn to laugh, one that quickly turned maniacal as the implications of his newfound skills quickly manifested in his mind.

Wyatt created similar pages for reverse, earth, air, and arcana, then added the telekinesis rune onto the backs of each. He practiced with each, summoning a page from his spatial storage which then hovered in front of him. Wyatt then placed his palm on the page, casting the corresponding spell depicted by the opposite rune like a true wizard.

Finally, the mage added the permanent arcana rune to his stone staff.

Gus and Alindra watched Wyatt play with his new toy, both impressed by the mage’s capabilities. That was, until Wyatt informed them that his mana was empty, and they would have to wait over an hour for it to replenish.