“So… you just want me to hit you?” Lexi asked.

“Yeah. I’m not gonna be able to use whatever spell you teach me unless I have Shock Mana in my body.”

“Is that so?” Lexi titled her head at him. “I don’t know if I have different mana types in my body. I think I just convert my energy into spells. I don’t really know how mana types work.”

Markus gave her a long look. “You’re my teacher.”

“So?” Lexi shrugged. “Most mages don’t learn like you do. They gain Paths and Masteries, sure, but they learn spells out of books, rituals, oral traditions, and most of them use conduits to cast.”

“What about you?” Markus asked. “What do you use?”

“A bit of everything. Some spells are innate to hellborn creatures, like teleportation, but most take more for us to learn. I’m not into carrying wands and staffs around, though, so…”

She pulled up her right sleeve, revealing an intricate web of ancient, swirling, cursive symbols dotted around her forearm in seemingly random places.

“What are those?” Markus asked, pointing.

“They’re runes,” Lexi smiled. “Or rather, tattoos of them. They’re inscribed with power, and they align with the energy centres along my wrists and around my arms. They’re what allow me to do this…”

She punctuated her statement with an eldritch blast, scorching the fuck out of the stone floor beneath them, leaving a searing black mark as her forearm glowed a bright blue around her tattoo lines.

“Wow, fuck,” Markus breathed as the shock blast arced and forked from her palm, striking the far wall before she finally allowed the power to stop snaking through her and relaxed the spell, reducing the lightning to small, incremental bursts of static within her hand. “That shit’s crazy. What’s it feel like?”

“Pretty good!” Lexi said, biting her lip as she mulled her words over. “I… think it kinda burns a little, but in a good way, if that makes sense? Like it feels like there’s an itch beneath my skin being satisfied as I do it. Hard to describe, really.”

“Can you hurt yourself doing it?”

“Hmm, a little, if I overdo it?” Lexi shrugged. “The more I use a spell the hotter my conduit gets. I have to space it out if I wanna be able to use the spell continuously. Abusing runes like this is how you fry your mana centres.”

“Huh, I see…” Markus stared down at her arm. This was just one arm, but she had a bunch of these. Hell, besides her collar and a section of her midriff, most of her body was covered by leathers. It was entirely possible that she had absolute tons of these same tattoos, all designed with a differing purpose in mind. “And when you say fry your mana centres, you mean—”

Lexi nodded. “Yeah, you can probably guess. Good luck using magic for the next week. If you really abuse your own body, you completely disable yourself from casting. Anyways…”

Lexi blinked, rubbing her head.

“Huh, that’s interesting,” Markus said. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt fatigued from casting. From having too much mana, sure, or from running out, but not from casting repeatedly. I don’t think so at least. Do some abilities just have cooldowns, or is it all based on how your mana centres are feeling?”

“Uh…” Lexi rubbed two fingers against her temples, blinking twice. “I’m sorry. What were we talking about?”

“The ma—are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. She nodded again. “Yeah. Just headaches. They get worse when I’ve been up a while.”

“Well, do you need a break, or a rest, or something?”

Lexi stared at him like he was stupid. “You realise you have to fight in like less than five hours, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

Lexi shook her head, black hair bouncing. “I’ll be fine. Just tell me what you were saying again.”

Markus reexplained, and Lexi told him that cooldowns and mana fatigue could be separate from one another. Sounded like there were some abilities out there he wouldn’t be able to infinitely spam, but those without cooldown restrictions he might be able to, in theory, assuming he had the right mana type.

“So… if I had tattoos like yours, could I cast lightning without Shock Mana?”

“In theory? I don’t see why not, but I couldn’t ink you like this myself. Jobs like this are handled by specialists. Screwing it up can lead to ineffective runes, or just straight up wrong ones. You’ll have to harness the energy in your own way if you wanna cast what I teach you.”

Markus nodded. He didn’t entirely expect her to get out a needle and start tattooing him right here, after all. “Well, if that’s the case, just give me everything you’ve got.”

“Everything?”

Markus reconsidered. He forgot this place didn’t exactly have Earth’s idioms, and he didn’t wanna be fried to death. “Uhh… shock me, but don’t kill me.”

“Got it!”

Lexi charged up another blast from her right hand, zapping Markus with an intense barrage of electricity that ricocheted through his body and zagged along his limbs, jolting his internal organs and setting his mind ablaze. He could even feel his blood burning through him from the static shift of each electric jolt, and while the sensation only lasted a few moments, he began to realise pretty quickly why Drathok had selected Lexi to stand in for him here—she could truly fry a motherfucker.

[D Grade Shock Mana absorbed! Mana capacity at 89%.]

Markus wobbled in place as the attack ended, his body charred and slightly smoking. He used [Meditation] to cycle his Blood Mana, calming his injuries ever-so-slightly, though he still twitced each time he felt his electrified mana touch against his wrists and fingertips.

“Sorry… did I go too far?” Lexi asked, staring up at him with unmasked concern.

“No, I’m fine,” Markus said, gritting his teeth. “Happens to me all the time.”

“You… regularly get struck by lightning?”

“Sure,” Markus nodded, holding his breath and puffing his cheeks in an attempt to not huff or cry out in pain. He focussed intently on tapping into his Respite passive, finding it helped to take the edge off of the attack. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“We can take a break if you want?” Lexi offered.

“Didn’t you literally just say that we don’t have time for breaks?”

“Did I?” Lexi scratched her head. “I guess I did!”

Ugh. He almost felt like she was fucking with him on purpose for a moment. He knew better, but still. “I’m alright. Let’s just do this. What do I do if I wanna shoot lightning like you just did? Can I even do it without a rune, or wand, or something?”

“Not to the same potency,” Lexi admitted. “At least, I doubt as much. I could be wrong. But I suppose I’m not familiar with your style of casting.” She hmm’d for a second, then pointed a finger. “Do you do anything special with your mana when you use it? Show me a spell you can already cast.”

“Okay…” Markus activated [Stone Barrier], erecting a small, thin earthen wall to the left of him and quickly letting it go. He was on his last dregs of Earth Mana, and the spell wasn’t particularly potent. Good chance a stubborn enough woodpecker could’ve gotten through it.

“Huh, that’s interesting.” Lexi stared at the space where the small wall had briefly stood.

“How so?”

“You’re commanding and shifting the ground before you, but you really don’t use anything to conduct the energy, do you? You just have a refined type of energy in your body already, and…”

“Yeah.”

“Hold on. Can you do it without your glaive?”

Markus hadn’t considered that. He’d almost always had a weapon handy when he used magic. With the exception of Frozen Tomb, he had probably cast every magic spell he’d used until now while holding the glaive, including every Stone Skin, Stone Barrier, Detonate, and Reforge.

Come to think of it, Detonate might’ve been a skill, rather than a spell. He wasn’t sure how the principles differed exactly, but he assumed it might be something to do with the fixed cost and the way it channelled through the weapon.

“...better to ask. What’s the difference between a spell and a skill?” Markus lowered his glaive to the floor as he spoke.

“Their origin, mainly. Skills are acquired through Growth and advancement at a far, far higher rate than spells. Spells are almost always learned through study, practice, tutorship, and spellcrafting, which in of itself is a skill.”

“Can skills not be taught?” Markus asked, rolling his shoulders as he prepared to cast once more.

“Some can, but they have limiters. A creature’s class is going to affect what they can learn and at what rate, as are their attributes. Some attributes and skills are even hidden, usually because they’re not considered to be relevant or major contributors to an individual’s skillset.”

“Okay, got it.”

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“Why are you standing there like that?”

“Because you asked me to—” ah whatever. Better to just test this. He figured he had enough Earth Mana left for two more potent casts of Stone Barrier. He almost wondered if he could splice the cast with a higher degree of Spirit Mana in order to get more uses out of the spell.

If there was a way, it wasn’t readily accessible to him, and Markus did find that while he was able to erect another small wall of stone, the mana was harder for him to direct than he was used to, even if grabbing and singling out the Earth Mana had become a fairly automatic sensation to him.

“Ah. You use the glaive as a conduit and that speeds up your casts.” Lexi picked it up, wrapping two dainty hands around it and lifting the hefty metallic weapon with a touch of shakiness. “Malichor, right?”

“Yeah,” Markus answered. “You can tell?”

“It was pretty common to see on demon soldiers’ weapons where I came from, but…” Lexi veered off. She dropped the glaive, falling to her butt and proceeding to sit cross-legged. “Ahh, sorry. Give me a minute.”

“You’re fine.”

She clearly wasn’t. Did she have a full-blown migraine right now?

“Hold on,” Markus said. He placed a hand on her head, her skin smooth and hot to the touch. He raised it to her black hair and began to cast [Reforge] on her.

“This helping at all?” Markus asked, channelling the spell as best he could, snaking his glaive over with a foot to see if it’d help as a conduit like she’d said.

Seemed not. He could use this spell at full potency with or without the glaive, and it seemed to be the same with Frozen Tomb and Empower. There must’ve been some other modifier that affected how the glaive helped him with some spells but not others. Perhaps distance?

“I…”

She was silent for a few moments. He was almost worried he’d accidentally hurt her with his spell, or something.

“You okay? Want me to stop?”

“This feels amazing.” Lexi smiled at him. It didn’t take him long to realise that she was crying, a pair of tears streaming down her her cheeks. “I think we should get back to work, though. I doubt you can cure me, and we don’t really have time for you to try. But thanks for a blissful moment.”

Lexi shook off his hand, and with a tussle of her now somewhat messy black hair, found her way back to her feet.

Markus stared at her where he knelt, then stood, going back to towering straight over her. “You feel any better now?”

“...a bit. But it’ll fade quickly. Nothing works for long. It’s a chronic condition.” She wiped her face, still smiling. “It was nice of you to try, though. I’ll try my best to help you, too, and not just because Drathok said so.”

Markus sighed. Lexi worked for Drathok, but he had no animosity towards her at all. She’d only been nice to him in the times they’d interacted. He wondered if that was just a mien of professionalism. Maybe she was just as bloodthirsty as everyone else here.

It was hard to say what was what, but his gut told him she wasn’t evil. At least not to the same degree as the average dungeon denizen. He’d like to believe as much.

“Say… do you know why Drathok chose to help me?”

“Probably a lot of reasons. Drathok doesn’t really do things for no reason.”

Markus laughed. “Yeah, and it’s probably not on account of his massive heart, I imagine.”

“Yeah, well, following his heart’s gotten him in trouble for most of his life.” She shrugged, biting her lip. “Something had to give eventually, I guess.”

“You mean he wasn’t always a cold bastard?”

“He still isn’t.” She paused. “I mean, I don’t know. Not to me. I see how he treats the summons here and I think twice about it sometimes but…” she threw her hands up, appearing frustrated. “Being in a place like this does stuff to you, okay? Especially if you’re a big idealist that wants to protect everyone, and you’re forced to make deals with other demons to see that through. Working under a demon like Elasar…”

Markus blinked. Hearing the name almost felt as if he’d been briefly stabbed through the brain. He recognised it. He knew it from somewhere. Where? A book? A story he’d heard?

“Who?”

“Elasar. The demon that truly runs this arena. The one Drathok came to work for so his people would have somewhere safe to go.”

Another demon ran the arena? And his name was Elasar?

And his name was…

…

Markus blinked. What had they been talking about again?

Oh, yeah.

“So you’re saying he wasn’t always a complete asshole.”

“Drathok?” she asked.

“Who else?”

Lexi tilted her head back and forth, as if in thought. “I suppose you could put it that way. A lot happened in the last twenty years. I can’t comment on all of it, though. I was a kid for most of it. I just know what I saw.”

“And what did you see?”

Lexi grimaced. “A lot of fucked up shit.” She sighed. “Anyways, we’re stood here for a reason, right? Oh yeah! You wanna cast lightning. Well, I can teach you a set of words I memorised to use with my rune…”

She recited the words to him at least three times before he could pronounce them back to her clearly. Funny to think that Lexi could memorise anything so complex. Did she do this for every spell she learned? Shame this language wasn’t one that autotranslated for him. He wondered if he could change that in future? He was shit at languages. Absolutely flunked Spanish.

“Now, I used to have to say them aloud, but now I can do it in my head and it basically has the same effect. It’s faster, too.”

“So… should I just try reciting the words while I focus on my Shock Mana?”

“You could try that, but use your glaive to discharge the spell. I don’t want you electrocuting yourself if it goes wrong.”

Noted. Glaive in use. He aimed it like a divining rod, pointing it at a far wall. He felt the energy beginning to crest inside of him as he attempted to focus his Shock Mana, then, as his neurons fired with power and his chest thrummed like a generator, he finally began to recite the words he’d been taught.

“Marel soare, sandeo, shoffth’ca, ha—”

The lightning shot from his glaive before he’d even finished speaking, messily smashing into the far wall and dissipating before long, the shock of seeing the lightning in action too sudden for him to maintain proper focus on the spell.

He turned to Lexi as he finished, hairs on his arms bristled, heart thumping. “So… how’d I do?”

She looked somewhere between awestruck and gobsmacked. Her mouth hung open. Her ears were raised to a higher point than usual, and her eyes all but sparkled with something between confusion and wonder.

“Hey,” Markus said, waving a hand in front of her face. “You good?”

“You… you butchered that pronunciation.” She blinked. “Like. Horribly. Like the most horribly I think you possibly could.”

“Well, shit. It still worked though, right?”

“I mean, it shouldn’t have!” Lexi shouted, smiling in spite of herself, staring at him as if he were a total enigma. “How the hell do you work…”

With that, she sat back down on the ground.

“Do it again. Keep using the glaive.”

“Do you wanna tell me how to say the spell again?”

“No. Just try it again.”

“Alright…” Markus aimed at the far wall once more, gathering his energy. “Marel, soree, sandel, shotfca…” he lowered his glaive a touch. “I think I’m saying it wrong.”

“You’re not! Just do it!”

“Alright, alright. Loreal, sorro, sando, sho—”

Lightning shot from the tip of Markus’ glaive again, sparking along his arms as he sent the energy flying out, though it dissipated just as quickly.

[Lightning Mastery: 0 >> 2.]

Wow. He was really fucking good at this already, somehow. Who’d have known?

Markus tried it once more, shooting the lightning out for just barely longer than he had previously. He smiled at the result.

How’s that, Mrs. Kensington? I habla magic now. That worth a passing grade?

“You’re… butchering the pronunciation, but the spell’s firing anyway, even briefly.”

Markus’ smile immediately faded. “Wait, I’m butchering it?”

“Horribly.”

“Shit.”

Sorry, Mrs. Kensington. Turns out I still suck.

“Buttt… you shouldn’t be able to do that and get those results. That’s absolutely insane.”

A glimmer of hope. “It is?”

She patted the spot beside her. “Sit, and tell me everything that’s going through your mind as you cast. I really wanna try and understand this.”

“Uhh… I just say the words and think where I want it to go. I don’t think there’s much else going on up there.” He considered it for a moment. “I guess I think about separating the energy types in my body. That too.”

“You might just be a freak of nature,” Lexi admitted. “Let’s try playing with your lightning powers. Focus, intensity, aim…”

She once again fired her own beam, twisting and moving it even as she did so, increasing the power of the lightning and how often it forked and bounced and then reducing it just as easily. “I want you to have control over your ability. Let’s figure out if using the incatations helps with that.”

“Okay…”

“And then after that, if you still have the energy, we can practice some more. But don’t burn yourself out. You need to keep your energy for the fight.”

Oh right, the fight. The fire breathing monster. Somehow, Markus had been too preoccupied shooting lightning from his body like some kind of ancient Eastern deity to concern himself too much with reality.

It was one of the only times he’d ever really gotten lost in the feeling of mana and power outside of combat. He could scarcely blame himself, though, this was fun. He almost wished he had bottles to aim at.

Then again, aiming the lightning was the only thing he was good at. It was all well and good being able to snipe someone, but when the spell you were sniping them with equated to like five volts, big fucking deal.

Markus got to work on firing up his lightning once more, trying to focus more intently on intensity and duration. He didn’t mess with Dark Knight yet, knowing there was some deal of amplifier sat within that class but not wanting to resort to using it in practice until he’d gotten as much juice as he could the regular way. Only then would he bolster it.

Still, this was an incredibly difficult thing to do. He found it rather easy to aim a small beam for a short time, but the more in pressure and duration he stacked onto the ability’s cast, the more he began to feel his thoughts wanting to tear away from the task, his arms begin to grow tired, his glaive moving to the side of its own volition or at one point even flying out of his static, sizzling hand.

It was almost like recoil, only if that recoil was on a minigun. To say that it was difficult to use or aim such a spell was a vast understatement, but with the amount of Shock Mana he’d been charged with and the ticking time counting down until he had to fight once more, Markus was going to keep repeating the process, even if he was tired, determined to get the spell right.

Markus kept practicing until he finally brought Lightning Mastery to level 4, high enough that he felt he’d made some actual progress, and while he was eager to keep grinding it all the way to 10 and unlock a specialisation, he knew he had to get moving.

“Is there anything you can teach me that protects against fire?” Markus asked.

“Teach you?” Lexi shook her head. “Nothing you could actually learn in this short of a time. A flame barrier’s way too advanced. However… you should go to the smithy. Ask about some protection. You’ve been running around in robes for the last few days. You could probably use some proper gear.”

Markus nodded. It’d already been his next planned stop. He didn’t have time to wait for anything to be made for him, but he decided he’d take the metals and gems he’d found anyways, hoping to get them appraised.

Maybe, with the coins he’d found and a bit of luck, he’d be able to fashion together something that afforded him some proper protection from all of the bullshit this world continually threw at him.

Or at least some of the bullshit. Some would do.