The spell was incredible.

Now that Gio had a moment to sift through the two halves of the spell he had recovered, he realized just how in over his head he was. The part that he had been calling “the target circle” was intricately detailed, but at the same time marvelously efficient; a fascinating paradox.

Gio consulted his notes, surveying the various parts of the circle. He identified and crossed out several sections that he knew would be of no use to him, even though there was a wealth of information contained in those sections. There was a whole subsection of the circle that could handle multiple people casting the spell from different places at the same time, and assign each of those casters their own target circle so that they didn’t teleport into the same space at the same time - a horror that Gio hadn’t considered until now. There was a whole section dedicated to concealing the circle when it was placed underneath a volcanic glass pad, which Gio thought was an interesting way to protect trade secrets, but ultimately rather redundant. And then finally, at the very center of the circle, was a pinprick-sized array of incredible detail.

The array at the center of the targeting circle was the leeching enchantment. Gio still didn’t understand a whole lot of the underlying mechanisms at play, but he could surmise that at its core, the combined halves of this spell were a covert and automatic enchantment. The spell keyed into the physical space the caster had entered the casino through and developed a nearly imperceptible tunnel that would draw in ambient mana to fuel Hart’s Casino.

Marvelous… and insidious. What kind of genius do you have to be to come up with something like this? And that’s to say nothing of the fact that this cheap spell could write the enchantment on space itself without the caster being aware of it!

Gio forced himself to put those parts of the spell to the side for now. He knew that he could probably spend days pouring over the whole thing… but he’d have to wait until he had free time, or at least until he was safe.

For now, in the scarce bit of quiet they had found, Gio and Rio got to work tearing apart the main components of the teleportation spell.

Their workspace was anything but ideal, but they had made the best of their situation. They were holed up in a barricaded coffee shop's back office. Gio managed to enter the store using [Mirror Jaunt] because the restroom mirrors were in near-perfect condition.

The front (and only) door to the shop had been melted shut by something in ages past, so the interior was nearly perfectly preserved. Thankfully there weren’t any human corpses, but there was some sort of mummified monster pressed up against the remains of the slag-melted door. After confirming that the monster wasn’t still alive and waiting to jump out at him, Gio draped a tablecloth over it so that he didn’t have to look at it.

They had made a slap-dash system of communication by bending a metal serving tray in half at 90 degree angle. This “true mirror” or non-reflecting mirror allowed Gio to read a paper through a mirror without having to translate it forwards to back, because the 90 degree angle reflects the light again, reversing the already reversed image. Rio was also writing on the reflection of the paper, so Gio could see both his own handwriting and Rio’s on the same page. [Catoptromancy] had helped with the design of the gadget, as Gio seemed to innately understand exactly the best place to mount the two mirrors in order to make best use out of the tool.

By using this setup, they were able to co-operate to divide and conquer the spellform, more than doubling Gio’s research speed. First, they de-constructed and rebalanced the areas where they took out an unnecessary feature. Then, they had to come up with a type of “spatial identity” circuit, which was essentially a way of creating a unique series of small glyphs that served to make the circle unique enough that the teleportation spell wouldn’t accidentally take Gio somewhere he didn’t want to go.

A.Hart used a seven part cipher of custom symbols to identify his network of circles, and Gio copied his idea, but not his execution. In order to make his circle fully unique, Gio ended up inscribing a different aspect of mana into each of the symbols of his “key”, making it so that even if someone else got ahold of his circle, they would still need to do some research in order to copy it down somewhere. This made Gio’s version of the spell considerably more difficult to replicate than its progenitor spell, but Gio didn’t want to mass-produce his version, so he was more than happy with the added piece of mind that the extra step provided.

Then, they worked on the tuning circuit. Hart’s Casino was located in its own bubble of space located between two realms, which meant that the part of the spell that tuned into the dimension the circle was located in had to be very robust to ensure that the caster wouldn’t end up caught somewhere else in between those two realms. Gio had read horror stories about mages who ended up trapped in a pocket dimension for years because of tuning errors, so he had every motivation to get this part of the spell extra correct. Thankfully, The mirror dimension was a distinct realm. Gio could insert his own mana signature into the tuning circuit in place of the massive structure that A. Hart had used, and based off his preliminary testing, it had worked.

Gio prepared a copy of the spell. [Scrivener’s Charm] had become one of the most used spells in his spellbook, as he drafted a preliminary copy of the spell using some general purpose inks that he had prepared ahead of time. Attuning the bigger parts to spatial mana had been trying, but not altogether too difficult, having spent the past two weeks working with the rare mana type in preparation for this very spell.

“I think it’s ready for testing” Rio wrote.

“I think we could stand to be a little more cautious with this one. Teleportation is very dangerous, as we both know.” Gio replied.

“Remember that we’re mostly just modifying a spell that already exists, though. It’s not like we’re doing it from scratch where any number of things could go wrong… that spell has already been proven to work.” Rio argued.

“Yes, but who knows how many flaws we could have just introduced? Dad has a saying-” Gio started writing.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“An inexperienced mechanic can make a drill more broken faster than the good mechanic can fix it after he’s done.” Rio finished.

“Right. So I think we could probably spend a bit more time working on it, rather than heading straight to testing.” Gio wrote.

Gio looked down at his finger and noticed that he was bleeding.

“What did I get cut on?” Gio wondered out loud.

In the mirror, Rio looked down at his hand, noticing that he didn’t share the cut.

A bead of blood dripped down Gio’s finger and onto the dusty floor beneath him. Another drop followed shortly. Gio began to reach into his pack to find a bandage, but already the small cut was producing more and more blood. By now, Gio’s whole hand was covered in blood, and it had begun to drip down his arm, staining his shirt.

Gio felt lightheaded. He pulled out a cloth bandage, and tried to apply pressure to his finger, noticing that it didn’t even hurt at all. He looked down, curiously noticing a trail of his blood snaking across the floor and seemingly heading in the direction of the melted door very slowly.

Gio’s eyes went wide at the system message. Adrenaline took over, and he began piling his belongings into his backpack. He heard muffled footsteps and light scratching noises coming from outside the sealed building, and he managed to get his backpack on, staining entirely too much of it with blood from his still damp hand.

An explosion ripped through the front of the building, Sending the metal door, the corpse of the monster behind it, and most of the furniture in the room flying towards the rear wall. Gio was knocked backwards despite being well outside of the direct radius of the blast. He scambled to pick himself up from the ground, dazed as he was. Having been pelted with wood splinters and debris, he was now bleeding from several places, all of which seemed to be streaming towards the door at an alarming pace.

Once the smoke had cleared, several figures stepped into the coffee shop one after the other. At the front of the group was a lithe man covered in metal piercings of many shapes and sizes. He held what looked like a small doll. He was wearing a tattered brown trench coat, and had long silver hair that curled down to his navel. Through the jewelry he had, Gio could hardly tell what his face looked like, but he could just barely make out a smile with bone-white teeth.

The pierced man held up the small doll. It seemed to be made from bone white cloth. The doll had two tiny, eerily glowing gems in place of eyes. Gio’s blood snaked up the man’s body, writhing into rope-like structures, and dancing across the piercings on his arms until the blood made its way to the doll, staining the whole thing instantly.

A pounding headache set into Gio as blood stopped pouring from him. He felt his heartbeat accelerate, and was nearly paralyzed in fear of the man in front of him.

“Well hello there. Nifty trick you did, running from my wraith. You’re some kind of… mirror based class?” The man asked. His voice was smooth, almost enchanting, yet with a lot of bass and grit like a heavy smoker.

Gio was silent. He could hardly think over the sound of his own pulse.

“Not the talkative type? No worries. Lisha, what am I looking at?” The man ordered.

A muscular black woman with long, red braids and silver eye makeup stepped out from behind the man. She was wearing black combat boots and a maroon leather bodysuit. Gio felt a wave of magic sink into his skin when her red eyes met his.

“[Student-Mirror Mage]. Got some weird skills, but no levels? I think he’s a true mage or something. He’s also got some great affinities.” the woman said through a half-smile.

“Odd. I like odd. I don’t think I’ve seen too many true mages around. You really think not leveling up is worth being able to use more magic than the system lets us use, huh? Well… me myself, I like my class just fine. Say, how’s this- you can work for me. Either that, or we throw you in the pit and see if you can fight.” The man said.

A wave of nausea shot through Gio, making him buckle to his hands and knees. He coughed up a bit of blood and bile.

“Whoops, let’s dial back on that for a minute.” Said the man.

He put away the doll and flourished his hand. Gio felt the nausea dissipate, and like his heart remembered what tempo it was supposed to be beating at. Gio looked up at the man, collecting himself for a moment.

“I just want to leave. Coming here was a mistake.” Gio said meekly.

A round of laughs erupted from several of the man’s crew. The man laughed alongside them.

“Don’t we all know it, kiddo. But hey, get this- all the machines that are supposed to print our ticket out of here are super broken… so you’re stuck here with my pretty face. It’s not all bad! We’ve got food, water, and most comforts you could desire. All I ask is that you help me brutally murder anybody who pisses me off. Pretty easy gig, if you ask me.” Said the man. He reached down, offering a hand to Gio that was covered in Gio's blood.

Gio didn’t take the hand, picking himself up and backing away slightly. The man in front of him pressed forward, still offering a handshake.

“Look, I know that my public relations could use some work, but I promise that I’m an upstanding guy, despite what our first impression may or may not have been- with all the cursing and the hunting and all that. My name is Giovanni Tongue, but you can call me Gio.” He said with an unnerving smile.