"Come on, don’t be like that."
The sun was reaching the horizon as it bathed this part of the world in its last rays of light for the day. As for Lake Aurus, the clear blue water reflected these last lights of the day in such a way that it looked like the lake had turned into liquid gold.
It was a peculiar sight that had made the area very popular in the region, and until the recent mysterious attacks, there would be people here every day to watch the spectacle.
But today, only two players were present, and neither paid attention to the sight.
One was looking at the void with blank eyes, while the other was trying to reason him.
"It’s just a game! Don’t feel so bad."
His words went into one ear and left through the other though as Felix ignored him, muttering, "Filthy cheater."
To explain the situation, a couple of minutes earlier, as Felix was done with his introspection, he couldn’t help but ask Drakon how he had managed to get out of the illusion, which he, as a mage, had struggled to escape from.
"Well, you know my Innate Skill, Divine Charge, right? It allows me to charge through anything, with the difference in strength between me and whatever is blocking me getting translated into time. Well, as I was lost under the illusion, I figured that if it worked for walls, then maybe it would work for the illusion. So I tried to use the skill, and my mind managed to charge through the illusion, breaking it."
And that, was how this situation came to be.
Even though he did not know about Felix’s Curse, Drakon did know that his Innate Skill was a little absurd, allowing him to destroy both physical and metaphysical barriers, so he tried to cheer Felix up.
Getting on his feet, Felix looked at the lake of liquid gold with listless eyes, before saying, "We need to find that Rainbow Lotus."
Feeling a little awkward, Drakon looked at Felix’s missing arm as he asked, "Shouldn’t we go back to the city and see a priest for your arm?"
Shaking his head, Felix replied, "I’m not wasting four hours and risk having someone steal it from us just for an arm. Besides, what better time to develop a healing spell…"
Looking confused, Drakon asked, "How are you going to make a healing spell while searching for the Rainbow Lotus underwater…"
Drakon’s voice got lower with every syllable as Felix gave him a hard stare. He opened his mouth several times to argue, but after a while, he simply sighed and relented, "Fine, let the tank in heavy armor go search a lake. I mean, it wouldn’t make sense to send the mage, whose spells would be pretty much unaffected by the water."
Felix’s only response was a blank stare.
Shaking his head to himself, Drakon moved into the water with a sigh. No matter what he said, as an expert in the Control Realm, he would still retain some of his fighting capacity underwater, although those weren’t optimal circumstances.
As for Felix, he did exactly what he said he would, resuming his training. Except that this time, he did not work on Spacetime Runes, but Healing Runes.
As a much simpler concept, it only took Felix five minutes to create his first healing spell.
‘First Circle: Band-aid’
Was the name uninspired? Maybe, a little. But Felix expected to have to name dozens if not hundreds of Spells down the line, so wasting time on naming a name like this would be… well, a waste of time.
Felix did not stop working on his healing Runes just yet though, despite having found a spell that healed him.
The way Band-aid worked was pretty simple. The Spell seemingly created health points, and transferred it within him. With the current potency of the Spell, he got the equivalent of 100 HP.
On paper, this sounded very strong, as Felix only had a total of 370 HP, and he could make the same Spell five times in less than a tenth of a second. This would be different if they were different Spells, but as things stood, Felix could instantly heal the entirety of his HP if he wished to.
However, as the health points was infused into his body, Felix felt things were not that simple. Curious, Felix made another Band-aid Spell, with him still as the target.
He did receive some more vital energy, but the value was lesser, around 70. Felix spammed it a few more times, and before long, Felix was surprised to find the Spell no longer healed him.
This made him feel quite surprised, as this was an unusual circumstance. Healers did not face this problem, they could spam as many healing Spells as their Mana could afford, and the effects would never diminish.
However, while Felix could not explain exactly why his Spell was lowering in intensity, after a moment, Felix believed to have a theory on as to why this happened.
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While magic may look all powerful, it actually still fell under the laws of physics, something Felix discovered when he first trained his fire Spells, Fireball and Flamethrower.
While the flames were magically created, the moment they arrived in the real world, they would behave, more or less, like real flames, and that included the need for oxygen.
Back when he had been training, he had used a little too many fire Spells, which had considerably thinned the air, although Felix did not notice right away. And so, when he tried to use one more Fire Spell, while the flame did appear for a brief moment, the Spell eventually failed as the flame was snuffed out by the lack of air.
The same went for his combination of the Winter Wrath skill and his First Circle Spells, which interacted with each other.
Well, for his healing Spell, Felix had a hunch that whatever the component was, his Band-aid was consuming some of it, and using it too many times in a row would weaken the intensity.
This was something he would not really notice with his fire Spells, but since he could feel the energy entering him, this time he immediately noticed.
Felix still had a few questions he could not answer by himself though. For example, whether this resource consumed was external or internal. In other words, was the efficacy of the Spell lowering with each use, or with each use on an individual.
He would need for Drakon to come back to answer this question though, so he passed on to something else.
Felix felt quite interested with the Healing Runes, but since he was lacking so many answers, Felix decided to let go of it for now, and come back to it once he got some more answers, either from experiments on Drakon or getting his questions answered by a healer.
Since the subject of his healing was handled, Felix finally truly resumed his initial training, that was studying Spacetime Runes.
---
"And take… that!"
Violently smashing his sword into the attacking Ausafàr, Enzo easily sliced it in half despite being underwater.
Fortunately for him, the lake was not very deep, and he was capable of holding his breath for around an hour, or thirty minutes under strenuous effort while in the game, so he wasn’t having it too hard.
As for the wildlife, it was even less of a worry. The Ausafàrs had seemingly taken care of whatever had been originally living in this lake as Enzo did not cross anything else than Ausafàrs.
And even for the manipulative creatures, most of them flew away the moment they saw him. Enzo didn’t know how many of them there were, but he had a hunch they had killed the majority of the tribe on the shore.
As for the few that did stick around to fight him, they thought being in the water would advantage them, when in reality it doomed them.
Be it outside or inside the water, Enzo wasn’t able to break their illusions, so he was practically blind to them. As he did not have the insane magical affinity Odin had, Enzo could only sense them with his other physical senses, and being in the water allowed him to sense their movements.
The lake itself was rather large, so Enzo had to spend quite some time searching for the Rainbow Lotus. Fortunately for him, although night fell at some point, the bottom of the lake had many bioluminescent plants that offered him some light, allowing him not to search blindly.
Sticking to the bed of the lake also wasn’t a bother, his armor was more than heavy enough to allow him to sink like a stone, so although it was tedious, searching through the bottom of the lake wasn’t hard.
It ended up taking Enzo slightly more than 4 hours to find what he was searching for. Although the plant was called a lotus, it only had its shape in common. Not only was it underwater, it was rooted in a large rock.
As for its petals, the lotus was much larger than a normal lotus as it had a total of seven layers, each a different color.
It was also guarded by four Ausafàrs, who were all looking at him in fear. To their credit, they did not flee, but that only spelled their end.
As he approached them, one of the Ausafàrs threw itself at him, a tail popping out from behind it. At the end of that tail was a bulb, which Enzo knew could open.
Readying his sword, Enzo used his Iron Fortress Skill, which manifested a layer of Mana around his body, which gave his body a grey hue.
At the same time, the Ausafàr reached him, and the bulb on its tail opened up to reveal a long stinger, as the tail launched at Enzo’s chest.
Enzo ignored it though as he eyed the monster’s face closely, not even blinking.
And right as the tail was about to hit him, the Ausafàr opened its mouth, firing its tongue at him. This time, Enzo did not ignore it as he swung his sword at it, parrying the blow that was so strong it made his arms feel a little numb.
As for the stinger, it harmlessly collided against his armor, not doing a single point of damage.
The Ausafàrs were manipulative creatures, as not only did they master illusions, they also had a natural camouflage that made them hard to spot in the water, and even their means of attack were deceptive. Anyone would be wary of the stinger and ignore the possibility of it using its tongue.
Fortunately, Enzo had already fought several of them, so he knew about it.
Once parried, the Ausafàr’s tongue, which had been straightened and toughened for the attack, turned sluggish and slowly retracted back towards its mouth. It would take more than a minute for its tongue to recover, and for it to be able to attack again.
A minute it would never get.
Enzo swiftly dispatched the four Ausafàrs, and carefully uprooted the Rainbow Lotus, his super-human strength making the task of pulling the roots out of the rock much easier.
Taking out a Spatial Item he had prepared beforehand for this mission, Enzo placed the Rainbow Lotus within. He couldn’t place it in his regular Spatial Pouch, as there not only wasn’t enough space inside, but the Rainbow Lotus was rather fragile, and he didn’t want it to get tainted by anything within his Spatial Inventory.
The small box he had bought from the Alchemist’s Guild was made to hold precious resources, so after getting the Rainbow Lotus within, he no longer worried about it as he placed it within his own Spatial Pouch.
The convenient thing about Spatial Items was that they could be placed within other Spatial Items, meaning players could have a virtually infinite Inventory, granted they had the money for it.
And didn’t fear losing it when they died.
His job now done, Enzo could finally return to shore, and see what Odin had been doing while he was scouring the bed of the lake.
How surprised was he when he returned to see Odin sitting in the same position as before, his arm still missing, but covered in blood.
Blood that did not look his, judging by the dozen new corpses surrounding him. Human corpses. Horribly mangled.
Opening his eyes the moment Enzo’s head popped out of the water, Odin asked, "What took you so long?"
His eyes widening, Enzo was about to get angry, before he controlled himself, understanding he was being teased, and replied coolly, "It was a big lake. And what happened here?"
Looking incomparably arrogant, Odin replied equally coolly, "Nothing much, assassins who came for us. You should be thankful, I stopped them from ambushing you."
Not willing to back down, Enzo harrumphed, "At least I would have done it cleanly, and not looked like a bumpkin barbarian. Makes you wonder who’s the wise mage between us."
Blinking, Odin took a second to reply, "You are blind to the mysteries of magic."
Rolling his eyes, Enzo gestured towards the lake and said, "Go wash yourself, you stink, you child."
Enzo nearly failed to contain his smirk when he saw the vein appear on Odin’s forehead.