“… and so, that’s basically everything. What’s important is that the Salamanders that attacked us evolved from the Sun mana surge, and were much stronger for it.”
Anehlia and Aiden listened, pensive, whilst I explained everything that happened during the fight with the Salamanders, including the capabilities of Sun mana I discovered, and offhandedly mentioned the names I thought of for the mana types.
I don’t know whether or not they were the best people to talk to about this stuff, but unfortunately they were the only higher ups in the Guild I knew of, although Anehlia’s status in that regard is questionable given she’s basically a consultant. I at least knew that they both have a basis of knowledge on the topic. Unfortunately Max wasn’t here to help me tell the story, but it’s important that he goes to his room to rest.
For the conversation itself we were just stood around the Receptionist’s desk, Aiden not being allowed to move whilst during his shift. We didn’t even get chairs, which might be fine for a couple of high level Guilders, but not to someone like me who’s rather low level, and probably doesn’t have too much in Strength.
“Oh! And I should probably mention, when I opened my Status I thought I saw an orange notification in it, only for a fraction of a second. I’m not sure what it could have been though, or if it was even there.”
This doesn’t seem to mean much to Aiden, but I can pick up on a sense of familiarity on Anehlia’s face.
“Hmm. I’ve noticed tha’ too, but we’ll ‘ave to come back to it later. This Sun mana-based Awakening is odd to say the least, plenty of people’s pets would’ve suddenly gotten much more dangerous. I hate to say it, but it seems likely tha’ people’ve already died to this, Salamander’s ain’t an uncommon pet and plenty of people live close enough to the Guilds to be at risk of experiencin’ exposure to this.”
Her face looks fittingly grim, similar to the expression I imagine I would have. Aiden… I can’t quite tell what he’s feeling right now, his face a mask of neutrality that makes me realise just how much emotion I miss in his face ordinarily.
“So… what do we do then?” I decided to just get the question out of the way. It’s best that we deal with this as soon as possible, after all. Unsurprisingly, Aiden had something to say this time.
“I’m going to start the process of sending out an emergency alert. I think Anehlia has an idea about what you two could do though.” He glanced pointedly at her.
What could he mean by that, I wonder? I guess we could try to find any Salamanders that have awakened, or other more unknown types of monsters, but I feel I would just slow her down in that case, being so low level.
“Righ’. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, that Proficiency Skill of yours makes you a great candidate on it’s own, and there’s the other one that you haven’t told anyone ‘bout yet. I don’t know what it does, but it must be good.”
She knew about Skilled!? No, she knew I had another Skill somehow, but not what it was. My shock must have shown, because she was quick to explain.
“It was obvious if you know what to look for. There were a lot of hints, but the most glaring was that you were simply too confident in yerself for just having Proficiency, that Skill’s in the Guild database, and on it’s own it ain’t any good. Of course, with any other Skill it lets you get them to an impossible level, but it’s difficult to get another Skill with it for obvious reasons. I have a few ideas about what it might be, but that’s not important.” She seemed to be completely different when explaining what she figured out. It makes me think she might be a little prone to monologuing.
“What’s important is that I’m going to set up a meeting between you and the Guild Leader.”
I think that might have shocked me more than her figuring out I had two Skills. A meeting with the Guild Leader? And based on the phrasing, definitely not an online one either, people with high level mental Skills are invariably careful with their words.
Thing about the Guild Leader is that, as I may have mentioned in the past, almost no-one knows who she is. There are rumours about some form of quest-giving Skill. Very prevalent and surprisingly reliable rumours, yes, but still rumours. Whilst there are people that have probably met them, there is no-one that has admitted to it, she’s that secretive. I don’t have a clue what could require that much secrecy, maybe she just likes privacy that much, or maybe something about her Skill makes it important that she be kept alive.
“I’m sorry, did I hear you correctly?”
“If you heard me say that I’ll set up a meeting between you and the Guild Leader, then yes.”
“You can’t just say that out in public, surely?”
“Tha’s true, but… I’ll just show you.”
For the first time in my life, someone showed me a screen of their status. Parents don’t even show their kids this often, usually just because you need to be over 20 and by then there’s no point, but the point stands.
Strangely, it was purple.
Privacy Bubble Lv 103
Create a bubble originating from a point between you and a target. This bubble’s diameter may be up to or equal to the total level of all users of this Skill combined, with one level equalling 2cm. Instead, add half the User Level if they a person in the bubble doesn’t have this Skill. (Currently 2.14 m).
All interactions within this bubble are obscured from those outside of this bubble, using any necessary methods.
So this is what a normal Skill looks like? Not the purple thing, that’s strange, but… well, it’s certainly more verbose than my Skills. Why is she showing me this though? She surely could have just told me about the Skill.
“I’m sure ye’ve noticed the unique colour. The Skills the Guild Leader hands out are Purple, this is what I got from ‘er. Another thing you might’ve noticed, is that there isn’t a cost.”
She was right, although she was wrong about me noticing it. I didn’t have any Skills that cost anything, so I didn’t even consider that most would. Costs are one of the few parts of Skills that don’t have any numbers associated directly with them, due to the lack of a standardised measurement system.
“This is common with her Skills. They’re atypical, doin’ strange things in strange ways, like this one. Notice how it doesn’ give me the ability to create a bubble. The Skill itself does all the work, I jus’ activate it.” She gave me a moment to process that information.
That’s… interesting. Actually, it’s pretty great for most people. I wonder how it interacts with Proficiency though? I guess as long as it’s in the Skills list it’ll be fine though. But I wonder why, and how?
“Now, there’s no guarantee that she’ll give you a Quest, bu’ if it’s best that you already know how it works. The Quest itself can be anythin’ she wants, though the specifics aren’ up to her. The Skill reward can be anythin’, basically, but will always be among the best possible Skills you can have, as it relates to her goals. Now, I don’ know what her goals are precisely, only vaguely, but tha’s not important for you right now, maybe ever.”
I can’t tell if I’m over or underwhelmed by all this information, really, because I don’t feel much of a reaction at all. Maybe I’m just tired, healing potions can do that to you.
“So when will the meeting happen?”
“’M not sure, but it’ll be soon. The main reason for it is for you to explain to her in person, though the only reason yer telling her at all an’ not me is ‘cause yer also a good candidate for a new Skill. She’ll be comin’ here, teleportin’ into yer room during the day whilst yer not in it, and on a day where you should be back soon. If yer not comfortable with that, then the meeting can’t happen, those rooms are some of the most secure places in the entire Guild, privacy wise.”
“That’s fine.” Honestly? It is. Back home… in my parents home rather, it would have been weird, though I still would have done it. Here though? It still feels like a hotel room. They are intended for long-term habitation of course, although high level Guilders move out to a bit of a fancier place far more often than not.
“If she accepts the meetin’ then she’ll be in yer room a few days from now. If not, then I’ll tell ya soon as I can. I best be off though, need to do some maths to figure out how many people might be in the radius fer the Mana surges.” She patted me on the shoulder and walked away from me, to the Guild housing. I wonder, does she live in the other room on my floor, or one of the higher ones?
“Bye! And, thanks for the help.”
She nodded the affirmative and then closed the door behind her, leaving me standing in the lobby alone. Then I realised, I was planning on going that way too, to mentally recover from my near death experience. It’d be a bit awkward to say bye and then immediately walk in the same direction, right?
I’ll just wait here for a few minutes.
-----------
As the Guild Leader, she got dozens of important messages a day. Precious few of them, however, come from Anehlia Spark.
She can tell at a glance of course. Jeremy, one of the Guilders she gave a quest, to got the ability to create Resonance Stones, a strange magical item that can, how would she put it, ‘bounce’ the effects of a Skill around inside of it’s self, prolonging it’s duration at the cost of range and often-times power. With Anehlia’s Privacy Bubble, the only thing lost is range. For a letter that isn’t important.
She carefully removed the wax seal, making sure to pry out the Resonance Stone and put it aside to return to Jeremy later. She pondered all of the Skills involved in delivering this simple letter. Sarah, who made the wax that protects the letter from being opened by anyone other than her and the Guild Leader, or Alexa who is the reason these letters can be transported so quickly.
She’s grateful for her Skill, for all that it’s been able to do not only for her, but also for the Guild. The lengths she must go to in order to preserve her life, but this Skill cannot die with her, not after what almost happened to the last Guild Leader.
She shook those dark thoughts out of her mind however, and focused on the letter Anehlia sent.
Guild Leader
There’s been some unfortunate developments from the Mana surge. As you know there has been a Guild recruit, Nathan Golding, who awakened to this new type of mana, a type which he is calling Sun mana. As we feared however, we aren’t the only people with that potential. He went on a quest to a nearby Zoo, a simple Salamander extermination/investigation quest, only to find that the Salamander’s had all awakened from the Sun mana in the Mana surge, and were much more powerful.
I’m not just writing this letter to you to explain this however, I want to make a request. I already mentioned that Nathan having Proficiency provides a unique opportunity, and his potential in Sun mana only makes that more obvious. I suggest that you set up a meeting with him as soon as possible, not only to issue a quest, but also so that he can explain the events of that day. There are some interesting facets to Sun mana that I think that he could explain far better than I, and explain the name as well.
I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but I fear this is only the start of something much, much worse.
All the best
Love, Anehlia
The Guild Leader sighed. She was worried about something like this, how could she not be? Her entire job was to be worried about things, her entire life defined by it. It’s just such a shame that her worries are so often correct.
Her friend was right of course, as usual. Nathan would be a great candidate, and she was even planning on giving him a Quest at some point in the future. Perhaps one for that friend of his is well, if his lack of achievements suggests the sort of Skill Anehlia seems to believe he had.
It’s just such a shame, truly. She creates these careful plans, with such massive room for error it’s a wonder they could even be considered plans at all by her Skill, and yet the scale she’s forced to work at mean some improbable situation like this is all but guaranteed to occur, and send it all tumbling down.
She sighed. It’s time to accelerate her timetable again. She got a pen and wrote a typically simple letter back.
Anehlia
I agree.
Bronze
-----------
Over the next day I never received any indication that the meeting was off, which I took to mean I should expect to be seeing the Guild Leader soon. Really it seems like a bit of an excessively secretive system, and there are ton’s of flaws. What if something happened to Anehlia? Or the Guild Leader? Or, what if I went into my room alongside someone else, and they saw her? I could poke holes in it all day if I wanted to, it doesn’t change the fact that somehow it works.
It was the next day, just after breakfast, and I was done wasting time, waiting for a message that I don’t know is coming. The meeting will happen or it won’t, but no matter what I’ll make the most of it.
With that in mind, I head to the training room, surprised to see Max already there.
“Oh! Hey Nathan! I guess I should’ve known that you’d show up here as well, huh?”
I look at Max in shock, wondering why he’s training so soon, especially lifting those very heavy-looking weights. I’d say he should be resting, but even specifically looking for the same injuries I knew he had yesterday I could hardly find anything.
“You must be wondering why I’m training already, right? Well, it turns out that having good Stats is better than I thought, I’m already pretty well healed, and training under adversity is supposed to be more effective, so I thought I’d get here before being fully healed. It hurts, but I just need to push through, right?”
I put aside the bulk of what he said for the moment, instead focusing on one thing in particular.
“Max! You can’t just go blurting out secrets like details on your Skills like that, not out in public.” I whispered harshly to him. He seemed… strangely confused?
“What do you mean? You were talking about your meeting with- ah, I shouldn’t say right?” He was at least whispering now, but, if he heard about that couldn’t someone else?
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“How did you know about that?” When I ask, Max’s eyes seem to widen, as if realising that he forgot something important.
“I just realised, I never told you did I? I guess first I should say that I was going back downstairs to get something to eat, but then I heard you two talking through the door to the lobby. I left after a bit though, because I suddenly got really tired. Well, after your weird orb did that black hole thing something appeared on my status for a second. I forgot to tell you because you almost died, and then I didn’t check my status until earlier today. Here, I’ll just show you.”
Mex gestured towards me, and in a shocking display of trust the screen for his Skill, Mask, showed before me. I may have already known what it did, but I assumed there was more.
I was surprised to find that not only did he tell me everything, but that there was also some sort of a… I don’t know, modification? In the same orange as the flashes of notifications I’ve seen and, presumably, Sun mana.
Mask Lv MAX
Allows you to replace your name, achievement, and level with a faked version. Allows you to see through secret keeping abilities whilst active, relative to the level of this Skill.
“What’s this? That’s…”
“Yeah. I don’t know, I guess that when your spell exploded it had the same effect as one of the mana surges, at least to a lesser extent. I think I saw the same notification that you did, and I think it changed my Skill.”
I took a moment to consider this new information. Obviously, it’s just another thing to worry about isn’t it? Sun mana is somehow interfering with the System. In benevolent ways for Max, sure, but who knows what it’ll do in the future? Realistically, it’s probably just completely random, meaning there’s not much we can do to predict the effect it could have on things. It’s sort of terrifying, having something just come in and mess up the System like that.
Or… is that what’s happening?
Obviously there’s a correlation between Essence mana and the System, everyone sees it whenever they get a notification. Perhaps rather than thinking about it as some foreign element coming in and doing a hostile takeover, or something along those lines, it’s more like a… DLC, maybe?
Even, something returning to it’s rightful place. I think that Salamander’s were a little too adapted to Sun mana, and there is little to no information on when the System first came about. That doesn’t explain how, or why though. I think it’s best if I leave it in the hands of someone more capable for now. But one day, it’s not impossible that I become those more capable hands. Especially if this meeting goes well.
There was one thing that’s bugging me about this though. Admittedly, not the most important thing, and I think I already know the answer.
“So if you already knew that you were seeing through an illusion, why on earth did you think that we were just talking out in the open?” He seemed a little sheepish at that question.
“Not everyone has cool ‘good at everything’ powers okay? I just wasn’t thinking of that. I’m sure my Intelligence will stop me from doing that at some point, so you won’t be able to make fun of me for it.”
“I wasn’t going to make fun of you? I just wanted to be sure I understood what was going on.”
“Wait, really? I kind of thought that everyone did that. Everyone I knew did, anyway.”
“Maybe? I’ve been sort of… disconnected from my peers for… a while, maybe I missed out on some sort of necessary bonding activity,” It was at this point that I realised I’d told him far more than I was willing to, and quickly moved to change the subject, “Let’s table this discussion for the moment, we should get to training yeah?”
“Yeah, sure! I think I’m just going to exercise for a while, whilst I was injured I read that the levelling benefits of the System seem to multiply what’s already there. I’m trying to make use of that.”
I hadn’t known that. It’s logical though, and makes me wonder if Skills do the same thing? I certainly see enough skilled teenagers that didn’t yet have access to the system.
“That’s interesting. And of course, your Constitution would make strength training faster, so it’s logical to start there because it would have the most effect. I would suggest multitasking though. With how vague your improvements are relative to mine it may not seem as important, but it still is, and pushing as many limits of your Skills at once causes them to level up faster. I assume this same logic applies to your own level in the same way.”
“Really? I mean, yep! That’s why I chose strength, not because it was the easiest. I’ll think about multitasking, at the very least thinking about multiple things at once would definitely be good for my Intelligence.”
Well, he obviously didn’t put as much thought into this as I would have. That’s fine though, with his Skills the majority of his gains would come from fighting, and at the moment I’m too focused on practicing magic to tutor him like I’d planned so that’s out.
“I think that I’m going to stick around here and start working on my first array. I’ll… make sure to stay away from you and everyone else,” I look around the room, seeing it almost completely empty, “Or, I guess the few people that would be training this early in the morning.”
“Well, good luck then! Don’t die, I feel like that might happen.”
“Umm… to you as well.” Not knowing what to say, I nod and then set off to the corner of the room, where there were no weapons and no people. Still not as far as I would have liked, but this is the best that I can do. There aren’t any more private training rooms of course, why would there be? Magic has always been very controlled, just dissipating harmlessly with most array failures, outside of the famous outliers anyway.
I still haven’t found the time to buy a new phone, so I instead have a few basic arrays that I traced from the screen of my computer. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, I spread them out and think.
There were three arrays that I chose from. The first is the easiest one that I know of, at least for essence mana. It’s name is Force Ring and it’s effect is as simple as it says, it creates a ring of force. Typically, unless a lot of mana is put into it, it doesn’t deal a lot of damage. The main thing that I’m hoping to test is whether it actually creates a ring of force or not, with Sun mana. Unlike an affinitied array such as for divination, there is no sub-array that handles turning the mana into force, as force is it’s natural form. If there was it would be more powerful due to lacking meta magic, but it would be unreasonably complex.
You see, the array itself is rather simple. There’s an outer ring where you put mana in, four lines going inwards, and then an inner ring from which the force ring is released. A conversion array would have to be placed at each of the inward lines in order to have maximum efficiency, which of course would be hard to construct entirely using mana. The intended form of the array is the simplest array I know of, and will certainly be the one that I start with.
Force Ring Array [https://imgur.com/Glwcpqb.jpeg]
The next array is Flamethrower, the simplest fire array I could find. It uses a conversion array, leading into a simple Exhaust point, little more than a dot connected to the rest of the array by a line. This dot is where the fire exits from. This array needs some unstructured mana manipulation to be most effective, the exit point would normally create the fire in whichever direction the mana is flowing naturally, which is away from the centre. Using mana manipulation, it’s possible to point this in any direction so long as the origin is the Exhaust point. An interesting part of this array is that it’s possible to add as many exhaust points as you want, though the mana will have to be split between them all.
The layout, whilst more complicated than Force Ring, is still simple. There’s the fire conversion array at the bottom, a line connecting it to a circular junction, and then the Exhaust points can come off anywhere from that junction. I push mana into the outer circle, specifically the back half of it, and it runs through the conversion array’s and eventually out of the Exhaust points.
Flamethrower Array [1 Exhaust Point] [https://imgur.com/UNfmhEl.jpeg]
My final array I chose because of how it opposed Sun mana, Water Ball. Unfortunately, this doesn’t create actual water. Like all creation arrays I’ve heard of, the water it creates is only a construct, and will fade some amount of time after creation. This duration varies from person to person, though generally is longer if more mana is put into the creation of it, even if there’s also more that’s being created alongside it. This array essentially creates and launches a ball of water, as I’m sure it isn’t hard to guess. It uses a different conversion array from the other array, as well as a split junction as some force is needed to launch the ball. I modified this array slightly, adding a force conversion array. This is intended to test the efficiency of turning Sun mana into other types, whether there’s any difference at all.
The array starts with the mana input, right at the bottom. It leads directly to the split junction. To one side is the water conversion array, typically the right side, and to the other is where ordinarily there would just be a straight line. For my modified version, I added a force convertor. The actual launching mechanism is interesting, because the force and the water need to be kept separate. This forms two concentric rings, the inner of which is where the water forms. In order to connect the water conversion array to this inner ring, a cross junction is added, which is just a circle in the outer ring that it connects to.
Water Ball Array (Modified) [https://imgur.com/eLLojWe.jpeg]
I decided to go with the simplest order, starting with Force Ring. In an effort to preserve the sketches I painstakingly drew of those arrays, I tuck them into my back pocket. If they get damaged there, then something must have gotten really quite bad, and a little bit of wasted time would be somewhat minor in comparison.
As is typical with most magical arrays, I start from the end point. Some people start from the – well, the start, but that’s only if they channel the mana into a pre-set shape, such as with a scroll, wand or staff. In this case, I’m building the array from the ground up. This means that I need to build a sort of hollow tube out of mana, and make sure that the tube and the fuel are flowing in opposed directions, in order to maintain the shape.
This is actually the main point of difficulty for constructing complex arrays, as it requires you to manipulate it into the shape at an approximately equal rate across every part of the array, at the same time. Complex arrays have much more simultaneous points, my modified Water Ball array for example which has two distinct sections.
But I digress. I decide to make the array at a small size first, around the size of my palm. Usually people start smaller even than that because, whilst it’s more difficult, there is also much less chance of a catastrophic failure. It helps that people often develop mana very late, without a specific Skill that gives it to them, and as a result are much higher level and therefore more capable.
I feel my mind drifting much more than usual right now. I’d guess that it’s probably nerves. The results of these three tests, although calling them that is generous because I won’t be recording any results, could easily determine the overall usefulness of Sun mana.
I suck it up, and start to form the array, although I can immediately tell that there’s a problem. The mana is unruly, latching onto itself and causing instability. The second I devote anything less than my full attention to a part of it, it tears itself apart. I was worried that this might happen, this exactly in fact. Just as an educated guess, I’d say that the problem is the ‘gravity’ aspect to this mana, the part which lets it pull in more mana. It may be a very small amount of mana that I’m using, but it’s also a much smaller amount that needs to be moved.
Without far greater control than I currently have, there’s only one way that I can make this more effective, I have to go bigger.
It’s fairly simple logic really. If I make the walls of the array thicker, then I’ll be able to make the centre of them denser, and provide a slight resistance to the pull of the surrounding mana. This, combined with a hint of my attention, should at some size be enough to keep it stable. There are still other issues to worry about of course, but these would also be fixed by a greater size. The chief among them is that the tongues of flame that come off the mana at even fairly low densities may cause interference with the array. Until my control gets better, I’ll have to hope that it’s big enough that the array can’t come into contact with itself anywhere other than where I intend it.
I form the array again, this time the same diameter as the length between the heel of my hand and my second knuckle, which I notice is somewhat better. When this fails, I try the third, pleased to note the stability is almost acceptable. There were just a few gaps that were torn out at the junctions between the straight lines and the concentric circles.
Finally, after making it almost the same diameter as my hand, I’m successful. Something interesting, that logically should have been expected, happens whilst I maintain the array before firing. The density of mana I had to use, not an incredible amount, was just enough to start to make the flames of the mana visible. This was only in the densest part of the walls, the very centre of them, creating a semi-transparent image of the array, with a sort of orange, glass-like appearance.
I hold the array in front of my palm whilst doing a few tests. First just moving my hand to see if it stays locked relative as it should, which I am pleased to note that it does. Then, I try to put more mana into the exterior of the array, thankful to see that it just gets pushed off by the movement that it had to be imbued with. The final test was one I was technically doing the entire time, that is, duration. When after a few minutes the array showed no visible deterioration save for that from my lapses in attention, I was satisfied that it was functional. Certainly it was much larger than I had expected, and with the more complex arrays I expect this to only get worse, but it doesn’t cause any actual problems. For this array, that size is much more reasonable in order to get any useful effect from it.
But now, it’s time to do what I came here for, the part that I’m simultaneously most excited for, and dreading the most.
With a hesitant hand, metaphorically speaking, I start to feed mana into the outer ring of the array. I can actually watch as Sun mana flows through the array like liquid fire, moving inexorably towards the centre. After what feels like far too long, it finally fills the entire array.
The moment the central ring is completely filled with mana, a small, concentrated ball of flames appears in a few centimetres out of the very middle of the array. Strangely, it’s a completely perfect sphere. Unlike my orb, there is no movement or flickering, or even any visible change across the surface of the orb, making it look sort of like a marble.
This result was better than I could have hoped for, if you’ll believe it. It actually matches my predictions very well, although I didn’t think it would be such a perfect sphere. Without the natural force that Essence mana seems to have, there was nothing to drive this forward, so the mana just collected in the centre of the exit point. It formed a few centimetres from the array because of my conscious direction, something that is necessary for Force Ring so that the ring doesn’t come back and hit you.
Experimentally, I swung my hand around a little, finding the orb stays locked in position relatively, in the exact same way as the array itself. Unlike with Force Ring ordinarily, I could continuously pump mana into it in order to keep the orb stable. I decided that, if I wanted to test the sort of damage I may be able to do with this to the training dummy, it would be best to hold off on any further testing for the moment. To conserve my mana, I carefully dispersed the array. When I stopped directing my focus to the array, a notification appears in my vision.
Proficiency Lv 24 --> Lv 25
Current bonus: Lv 7 --> Lv 7
I’m glad to see Proficiency going up, now more than ever. Previously I of course always wanted it to increase but now, with magic at my disposal, it’s better than ever. A few times in the past I’ve used multitasking in order to help train it, but if I can simultaneously fight with a weapon whilst casting spells, without much of a loss in effectiveness in either of them, I would be so much more effective. If I had to choose, of course, I would always choose magic, but I don’t think that I do have to.
Of course, I’ve been doing a lot of research into Skills lately, just whenever I get an interesting idea and want to confirm it. In this research, I’ve found three separate Skills for different forms of multitasking: Multitasking, Parallel Thoughts, Split Focus. These all perform the same task but in slightly different ways, and there have been examples of people having multiple of these, even one enchanter that had all three. Then there’s the meta magic Skills, such as Multi Array which make it easier to split focus when spell casting, and it suddenly seems impossible to imagine it not happening.
I realise that I’d gotten distracted again, although in this case not because I was avoiding anything, I was just like that I suppose. To continue my practice, I grab the lightest training dummy again and drag it over. One of the things I’m planning on testing is the range, and I want to make absolutely certain that I know how far away it is.
The simplicity of this spell means that it’s one of the most structured ways of understanding the actual capabilities of Sun mana, and in the past similar arrays were used to test the abilities of Essence mana, though they of course just called it mana.
After getting the dummy set up and stepping 10 metres a way I reformed the array, this time focusing as much as I could on making the resultant sphere form as far from the array as possible whilst I imbued the mana into it.
It formed much further away this time, though I at first didn’t bother to estimate this distance. I slowly walked closer to the dummy until the array effect came into contact with it, estimating that I was around 3, maybe 4 metres away. My arm was extended, so I decided to go with the lower range of that estimate and say that I was able to form it 3.5m away from my body, coincidentally half of my Proficiency bonus.
Next, I double checked whether it’s position was still anchored to the array. I was getting a little tired of testing that over and over again, only made worse by the fact that I got the exact same result as before. It was clearly unlikely to ever change, so I moved on.
There are two more things I needed to do. First, put more mana into the array to see what happens, and second, see how much damage I can do if the additional mana input works as I expect. There’s no need to test it in it’s current form, the sphere is clearly in contact with the wooden dummy, and though it’s charring and catching fire, it’s only about as much as you’d expect from a robust lighter. Still useful, I can certainly think of more than a few ways to use it in a fight, but not the incredible wizard-like might I was hoping for.
I stretch my arm out as far as I can, bracing it with my other hand as though it would help at all. I already have to put a fairly slow stream of mana into the array to make it work, so it is barely any work at all to increase the rate of that flow, starting at a very small amount. I aimed to increase the flow rate by about 10%, but I can’t say whether or not I was successful.
As I thought, there wasn’t much of an effect on the sphere with this amount. It did get larger though, which means that unless I put in an absurd amount of mana it’s unlikely to form that black hole event like with my orb, a spell I recently learned was called a Mage Orb. I need a better name for that event, it was really quite similar in concept to a black hole, but was obviously different.
I steadily increased the flow rate of my mana, though it wasn’t until I was approaching triple the output that I started to see positive effects. The sphere was about triple the size now, clearly somewhat wispy around the edges. I realised that, but changing the direction I think of whilst inputting the mana, I was able to alter the direction this wisp-like exterior moved in.
I thought this was worth experimenting with. I focused more on directing the wisps inwards, concentrating the exterior of the sphere. Not to the point of risking an explosive dispersal, just to equalise the density throughout. Though it changed slowly, it seemed that the direction I used was ‘imprinted’ into the mana and stayed, if not permanently, then for quite a while in the sphere. Soon, it started to change colour from a warm orange to fiery red, becoming half the size it was before I compressed it.
This time when I moved it into contact with the training dummy, the wood immediately cracked loudly. When I moved the orb away I could say small amounts of ash floating up on the updrafts it creates.
This, I thought, was certainly a good start.