Vey doesn’t comment further as the girl does her best to wrap herself in some of the furs as she stands up. It notices the girl shiver as she stares at the blood trail, and that she shakes her head vigorously from side to side when looking down at her ripped and torn clothes in a heap next to the necromancer’s clothes. She exits the living chamber, but turns back towards Vey right before she does so, and Vey does its best to try and comprehend her thoughts.

The girl, meanwhile, is trying to guess what exactly the skeleton wants from her. The one thing that she can find for comfort right now is that she isn’t dead yet, and that the skeleton is for some reason, giving her apparent instructions to wash herself. Dread creeps up on her when she idly realizes that the reason the skeleton has instructed her to do so is because it wants her to be clean before it uses her as a plaything. She shakes the thoughts off as she approaches the stone fountain. She swallows a shocked scream in her throat when she spots the runed altar in the back of the ritual room, as any elf would recognize the runes on it anywhere.

The runes are all obvious prayers and marks of the God of Undeath, with some general marks of desecration and corruption sprinkled in for good measure. It’s the exact sort of thing every child of the goodly races is taught to avoid, sanctify, or else destroy at all costs, and she can practically feel the atrocities committed in this room as she takes another step towards the fountain.

She looks into the water, shocked to find it pristine, perhaps even purified, but then allows logic to take over. Even a necromantic rapist needs clean water to drink. She thinks to herself as she allows the furs to fall down, exposing her blood-coated body to the slightly cold dungeon air. She picks up the wrappings the skeleton had given her, and spots the two wooden buckets, one of which has dirty, bloody water in it, and the other is empty and looks completely dry. She spots what looks to be a drain in the corner of the room, with a slight slope leading downwards to it, and picks up the surprisingly heavy bucket of dirty water. It is a small amount of comfort to the girl that even in her current situation, she’ll at least be able to wash herself off.

She fills the ‘dirty water’ bucket by scooping out water from the fountain using the ‘clean water’ bucket, and lightly soaks the cloth in the cold water before using it to scrub the blood off of her hands. It is a slow process, but she manages to build up the courage to bring the cold, damp cloth over her sensitive breasts and nipples, and she still nearly has to stop from the shock of it. As she wrings the blood out of the rag in the ‘dirty water’ bucket, her naked body shivering and her teeth chattering, she sees her reflection in the water. Her face covered in blood, her eyes red and puffy, and the small amount of dried snot under her nose. Her long ears twitch, eyes all of the bruises on her face and chest, the bite marks covering her collar and neck. She sees the tears welling in her eyes at the sight, and kicks the bucket over.

Vey hears the sound of a wooden object hitting the ground and what is probably a curse in the elvish language, followed by the sounds of frantic struggle/wrestling match with a wet, rolling bucket, which Vey finds humorous. The moment the brief distraction stops, however…

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Vey nearly snaps its quill in half as it tries, once again unsuccessfully, to determine how to write down all of what it knows is necessary to produce a [Light] spell. It has thirteen pieces of paper with incomplete spell information, half-drawn matrices, poorly drawn spell circles, and thousands of scribblings and notes on how and why it might work or is not working. Vey grabs a fourteenth piece of paper, noting with displeasure that it only has about twenty left, and rests its quill in the inkwell.

Vey once again goes over all of its notes. It knows that to write down a spell, it has to create a spell circle; a visual representation of the incantation and somatic components required to cast it. It knows that it needs a spell matrix; to document all of the possible parameters and conditions that Vey will need to memorize or calculate when casting it. It knows that it needs to document as much about the spell as possible in whatever space it has to spare, as being able to determine what the spell is later on will likely be incredibly important, as will knowing how it solved issues with spell creation if it encounters similar problems in the future.

What Vey is fundamentally failing at, however, is how in Eternia it is supposed to get the written spell information to integrate with the system, or if that’s even how it is supposed to work. After its brief mental break, Vey picks up the quill, and watches the excess ink fall off of the tip back into the inkwell, a stream of excess at first, before tapering off into drops.

*Drip*

*Drip*

And then inspiration strikes; Vey doesn’t need to make a spell integrate with the system, or necessarily have MP to test its work with, all it needs is to make a spell that is good enough and then brute force its functionality with enough ‘Ink’. Vey knows it was animated by magic, and that its senses and movement are done through magic, even its thoughts exist through magic, so it must have some magic in it, even if it doesn’t know how to use it. Perhaps the key is simply willing the spell to work through brute force, in the same way it uses [Undead Lieutenant] to command its peers! Vey writes and draws with an even greater drive and passion than when it had killed the necromancer, and doesn’t take even a single break to think or question itself until it is done.

Vey reads, rereads, and re-rereads its work. Its jaw parts in what might be called a crude smile, it begins tapping its left foot in anticipation. Vey takes a moment and thinks through all of the parameters, memorizes the spell circle, finalizes its command, and opens its palm…

“[Light].”

[System Notice-Spell Casting Warning; No Available MP]

Would you like to attempt casting anyways?

Y/N

Yes! Is Vey’s first thought, and it suddenly feels dizzy, as though its senses and control over its limbs are failing. It has the feeling of taking damage, not pain per se, as it does not have such a sense, but a definite slight decrease in its structural integrity. As Vey regains its sense of sight, it looks at the table in front of it, at something bright, as bright as the [Permanent Light] spell its former master used to cast from time to time. Vey’s mind fails to consider the obvious until the instant its momentary haze is perturbed by a system notification:

Lifetime Achievement earned: Magical Breakthrough

Title Earned: Arcane Thesis

Congratulations Vey!

You have unlocked Class: Wizard(WZD), would you like to level up?