Everything began to settle down, and Midnight and I were hit with a wave of fatigue. Not sickness, like overusing mana crystals- just plain old tiredness. There were plenty of people on call for any pockets of monsters that continued to crop up, but that was hardly different from New Bay’s day to day.
After the day’s fighting I had reached level 34 and had entirely too many points to spend. It was a good problem, I supposed, but it was something that had been neglected.
“What do you think we should do?” I asked Midnight. He was also using my spells, after all. And he could use any upgrades I put, unless I increased something beyond 7 improvements. That wasn’t likely at all, at the current moment. Technically Force Armor was beyond that, because I had spent so many dumb points on it early on. Though it was only as many points total as learning Scrying, so it wasn’t unreasonable now.
“Well, what did we use?” Midnight asked. “And do we want to do that more?”
“Stoneskin was a big one. Chain Lightning isn’t cheap either. We’re going to want to use Energy Ward on groups fairly often… but the limiting factor there is Multicasting. Actually, that’s a problem for all sorts of things, since point upgrades didn’t work there.”
“We believe that our training slows if we buy point upgrades, correct?”
“That seems to be true,” I said. “But obviously our testing hasn’t been that thorough. Given we only have ourselves and various different spells at different levels and upgrade amounts.”
“Even so,” the feline said. “Going with that assumption is of some worth. Things we wouldn’t be able to train but want to use frequently would be optimal uses.”
“Along with that… expensive spells. But at the current moment, the most expensive things are Gate- which is suitable for the moment- and Chain Lightning. That actually just reached a second level of training on its own. Does that mean it would be good to spend points to upgrade it, or keep training it?”
“A good question,” Midnight said. “I think we need to consult someone knowledgable. And that we trust.”
People who knew about how levels and stuff worked… Izzy and Kalman came to mind. But both of them were less experienced with the training part of things than myself. Master Uvithar might know more but he was… well, somewhere. Uvithar didn’t want me to get caught looking for him, and I honestly felt less familiar with my old world now so I probably would if I tried to find him. Zenfer probably knew some things, but I wasn’t certain I should speak to him either.
That left people from this world who were knowledgeable and intelligent who might be able to help us sift through things. Calculator came to mind, but we already took enough time from him as it was. He was certainly on the list of people we would consult, but there should be more.
“How about Great Girl and Doctor Rose?” Midnight suggested.
“Well,” I frowned. “I trust them enough. But their knowledge is the most theoretical. They could maybe help us pick out new spells, but optimizing which ones we upgrade is another story. And I think our variety isn’t an issue at current.”
That left us with few options but to consult our other local mages, who certainly knew less than us. But it was a place to start.
-----
Jerome shook his head. “I haven’t really had that problem,” he admitted. “At least not to the same extent. I don’t level up that fast, so I conserve some points for things I might need to learn. Then I-”
An annoying high pitched whine mixed with other sounds interrupted us. “What is that?” Midnight asked, leaning his head down over the edge of the table. His ears twitched. “It’s annoying.”
“Sorry,” Jerome said, getting up. “It’s our stupid cleaning robot. It’s pretty effective and saves us work but… well, you hear it,” he gestured. He walked over and picked it up. “You don’t need to run right now. Back you go,” he said, placing it back on its dock. “I guess on that topic, think about what you can do without magic. I didn’t buy the Clean spell because… this,” he gestured. “I might still learn it for other places, but I don’t know if I want to spend the effort. But mostly it sets a bad precedent to have the spell. Then mom might want me to use it.”
I nodded. “I see. I have a few things like that, but they were too useful to not get.”
Scrying was one. With 3 natural upgrades and 1 from points, it was actually quite powerful as such things went. But that brought me down another track. “You know about spell combinations, of course. In fact, you were basically the progenitor of that.”
“Hah, something like that,” he shrugged.
“The point being, everything has been the same level. But I have two spells that naturally feel like they should combine, but are of different levels.”
“Those are?” Jerome asked.
“Locate Creature and Locate Object,” I said. “Obviously the names alone tie them together. And they have similar functionality. But they’re still separate things.”
“Well, have you upgraded both of them?” he asked.
“No,” I shook my head. “I used Locate Creature intensely for a short while, but it didn’t improve.”
“Alright,” Jerome nodded. “Then either spend the points or… put it to work.”
“And how would I do that?”
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“Play hide and seek with Midnight, I guess?”
Midnight shook his head. “That wouldn’t do any good. We already know where the other is. But we could search for you.”
“Hmm, that might actually be a good idea,” I said. “We could point towards him from two directions and get a pretty accurate location. Or…” I tilted my head. “Whatever happens with Assistive Familiar Casting.”
“... I guess I have to go along with this now, huh?” Jerome asked. “Since I suggested it.”
“And because you’re not going to school.”
“Hey, I study plenty,” Jerome said. “Just not in a building with lots of other people.”
I nodded, “Yes, I wasn’t complaining. It just means your time is flexible.”
Our first round was short. The apartment- while significantly larger than their previous place- was still only a handful of rooms. Plenty for two people, but pointing a straight line to him meant there were only a couple places to check. I found Jerome inside a cupboard.
“What?” he said. “There aren’t a lot of places to hide.”
“Perhaps we should go outside, then.” Using Locate Creature for a few seconds was… pretty wasteful. It cost 8 mana, which was over an hour of recovery. Though not as much over, as the ambient mana in New Bay seemed another notch higher. Was that intentional, or simply a side effect of Doctor Doomsday’s plans?
We made our way out to a park. The point wasn’t for Jerome to hide long term, but simply to see how quickly we could find him- though I was once again the only one who had to use magic to track him down. Even if I didn’t know a distance, narrowing down things to a thin line was very useful.
“This is a problem,” I said to Jerome.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “It’s working, right?”
“Yes, but it’s so easy to find you among the others here. Which also means it would be easy to find me.”
“And who would be able to look for you, except Midnight who already knows where you are?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s the issue. You can’t even resist this spell, can you?”
“Hmm,” Jerome frowned. “I hadn’t tried but… I didn’t really feel anything,” he admitted.
I furrowed my brow. The spell did require some knowledge of the target and relative proximity, but it was still uncomfortable that it would end up unknown. No wonder people cared about the magic to counter that. It wasn’t something I’d considered much before, but it was becoming more relevant. Because of that, now was a good time to purchase it- and it used some of those excess points. Though only a small portion.
“The protection against this is Nondetection,” I said. “I’m going to demonstrate on Midnight and myself, and I’d like you to try to learn it.”
“That one is… level 7?” Jerome determined. “Or 6?”
“7,” I said.
“I should use Enhance Mind first. Just to hopefully catch it better,” he said.
I nodded. Once he could sort of cast it, then practice would provide what he needed. So a temporary boost would be fine.
He cast his spell, and I cast mine. Nondetection didn’t really feel like much, just a thin layer hanging over me that was easily ignored. Of course, if it was obvious then it wouldn’t be much good, would it? At the very least, you could sense someone was hiding something. In this case, I was hiding myself and Midnight.
Relevantly, it didn’t seem to dull our connection anyway. I only thought about the possibility afterwards, and that opened up some sources of danger. But I was already incentivized to keep Midnight safe as my non-cat buddy and wanting to keep him safe as a potential weakness was just an extra thing I didn’t have to consider. And this would make both of us harder to find with magic and hopefully other things.
“How was that?” I asked. I could feel Jerome fiddling with his mana.
“Didn’t quite get it,” he admitted.
“That’s to be expected,” I said. “Midnight, split the cost with me. Or I’ll just run out soon.”
“Got it,” he said.
It took two more tries, which was honestly pretty good. Jerome still only half cast it on his first ‘successful’ attempt, but he managed to pull the whole spell together the second time. It did leave him nearly out of mana, but the spell felt… Well not solid because I only knew it was there because I expected it and watched him cast it. But good enough.
Then Jerome went off to hide once more, and I tried to find him. “Huh,” I said. “Well, at least it works,” I looked at Midnight. “Doesn’t feel like he wandered out of range. It would still be a vague direction at least.”
I had the feeling like I might be able to force my way through, which was certainly a good option for training. But I wanted to see if potentially getting closer might let me feel something with the spell already ‘active’. If I pushed, it might use up the mana sustaining the spell. Was that an actual insight, or just weird thought? We’d have to test.
“Hi!” a voice called out. “Didn’t expect to see you here. What are you doing at the park?”
I turned to see Ceira- as well as a cat and dog both on leashes. “Looking for Jerome,” I replied.
“What? Is he missing? Did something happen?” her eyes widened and she looked around.
I shook my head. “Don’t worry, it’s just magic training.”
The dog began to sniff his way over to Midnight, his eyes set on him. The cat, meanwhile, seemed to intentionally ignore my companion.
“Easy, Bun,” Ceira said. The dog stopped. “Leave him.” The dog looked slightly disappointed, but began to wander around on his leash, seeking out other interesting options.
“He’s not so bad like that,” Midnight said. “But I don’t think I’ll be making friends with a dog anytime soon.”
“Yeah, well,” Ceira shrugged. “It works for me.”
“So why are you here?” I asked. “At this time, I mean. Obviously you’re taking your pets out for a walk.”
“Well, you know. No job,” she said. “If I make videos, then D- some scary guy knows I’m back and might try to find my new place.”
Hmm, that was indeed a problem. “He might be able to assume anyway. I I participated in dealing with the last portal stuff. Though I suppose revealing things about yourself makes that more risky for you.”
“Yeah… I’m kind of looking for normal jobs.”
“Power Brigade is always open,” I said. “I can vouch for you. Beyond that… I have a spell I am uncertain if you can learn that might help if you can. But that’s for after I find Jerome. Walk around with me for a bit.”
I focused mentally on Locate Creature. It had no feedback, but it was still ‘active’. If we got close enough, I could hope for something without a magical wrestling match. But maybe the latter would be more effective for me at improving the spell. But I could always try that after, and there was no way to go back to the subtle approach if I didn’t keep on course. Hopefully, something useful would come of this besides some justified paranoia.