Nothing really interesting happened over the next few days.
Okay, I lied. More magic with dog boy Warran!
Warran decided the distance to the bottles was too great for Celestine to hit with air magic and he told her that what she has been doing was enough to continue on. I was a little disappointed because I wanted to see her figure out something to complete the task. But, I guess she's still a child who just learned how to use magic recently. Not fair to compare her to children her age from other places in the world.
Next was earth magic! It's always amazing to see some more elementalism. When tearing bits off the boulders for earth magic, it's like the rock becomes alive, pulsing around the fracture until it settles down and becomes solid again. And the chunk that was torn off flows like liquid in the caster's control. It might be fun to pull a Rudeus Greyrat here and start firing hollow-point rock bullets.
Warran's task for Celestine didn't change. Use earth magic to knock down the bottles. The trick was that he moved the stakes with the bottles much further away. This was still far easier than using air because you could just rip the rock out of the boulder and send it flying toward the bottles. And that's all Celestine was doing. The rocks she first used rarely flew straight. Then she started to shape them into the shape of spear points and fired them. Those flew straighter, but she had no good way to aim. It's not as easy as just commanding the rock to hit the bottles.
I didn't trust my own ability to aim, that's why I didn't ask to try my hand at this magic. Last thing we needed was a stray hollow-point bullet-shaped rock firing into the back of someone's house at mach speed.
That's actually something I learned watching Warran. You can only cast magic if you have a full understanding of the principles. The rocks Celestine were shooting off weren't going any faster than an arrow being fired. I don't think she had actually seen an arrow being fired at any point in her life, though. She understood the principles of it because she read about them in a book. If that's the fastest thing you think exists, then perhaps you can't fire magic any faster? Warran's examples were much faster, though, use his magic as a reference! Still nowhere near mach speed, though. Maybe a side-effect of using magic in his dog boy form.
She started to make corrections for drop off and wind, then finally managed to knock a bottle off a stake. The last five didn't last much longer.
Satisfied, they moved on to water. The stakes were arranged differently this time. Evenly spaced around the dead grass areas of the courtyard. She finally got to use the water in the barrels. This was a bit more difficult for her to get a grasp on because it was a fluid. Many times she pulled a ball of water out of the barrel, only to lose concentration and let it drop out of her hands. The goal of this exercise was to just get the furthest wood stakes wet in each patch of grass. She couldn't figure out how to throw the ball of water the first day, but figured it out the next and started throwing around water like is was air. She had gotten everything wet in the courtyard, including herself. Good thing she was still in her overalls and shirt. Actually, there was a reason he moved the stakes to the grass... she just watered the dead grass. Was this a request by Sylvianna?
I'm sure there's more to elementalism known to scholars in this world. Everything so far has just been the bare basics. By the way, the damn voice servitor gave her novice ratings in both water and earth manipulation. I need to figure out how to make that thing more useful...
Okay, new day, new school of magic now.
"Spacial magic! A more utilitarian school like light magic, but controls similarly to elementalism." Warran started his spiel on magic. Celestine's attention was on the many inanimate objects set up on the tables around them. A few empty tables. Most of the objects looked like trash. More bottles, a few old books, a plate with some stale bread on it, rusted eating utensils, some magic crystals, those domino-shaped metal coins, a few round coins she'd never seen before, a couple rocks, and a pair of torn shorts. "Now, it might look similar to elementalism, but it works on an entirely different premise. Instead of using your magic to lift objects, you use the space around the object to lift it."
"Like using the air?" Celestine asked, probably not understanding what he meant by space.
"Nope. I mean the fabric of space. Every object occupies space. And there is space around us. Spacial magic makes use of the very fabric of being itself to manipulate objects. The larger your conduit, the heavier the object you can manipulate and the faster you can move it."
Warran moved his hand toward the table with the rocks on it and lifted one up with the magic he was teaching to Celestine. Unlike with earth magic, there were no ripples on the rock itself, it was completely still while it was floating in the air. "This school is difficult for children to grasp. So it will be a bit of a barrier for you. What I want you to do is lift each object from one table to the others using spacial magic. Then, switch the tables around without spilling anything off of them. If you complete this, then we will move on to the rare schools of magic."
"How do I control the space?" She asked.
"To control space, you need to have an understanding of it, just like with light and elementalism. Best way to explain it is to imagine everything surrounded by threads. Threads all around, under, and inside objects. Objects exist as >obstructions?< to these threads. Objects bend space by merely existing. Spacial magic is the control of these threads to become >obstructions?< on the objects instead."
"I don't understand..."
"I didn't expect you to immediately." The rock he was lifting with spacial magic floated toward Celestine. She lifted her hand up to pick it up. She felt something like a glass barrier around the bottom of the rock before the magic ceased and its full weight dropped into her hand.
"Can this be used to make a barrier to protect people?" Huh, I didn't even think of that myself.
"Good question. Barrier magic is the step up above just moving things around. A strong enough mage can encompass their whole body in a spacial barrier that keeps out the attacks of other mages or warriors, but it's also dangerous at that level because you can end up >suffocating?< from lack of air. I won't teach you something like that for a long time."
"Can it be used to fly!?" Her eyes lit up at the thought of flying. But since there was a lack of flying people here, I doubt it.
"Nope. See, if you sit on a chair and try to pick up the chair with your hands, do you start floating? Same concept. The magic command is coming from you, so you cannot move your own body with spacial magic. Now there is a god-level magic school that allows the mage to fly, but I highly doubt your affinity is gravity magic. God-level magic can only be learned by those who are born with the affinity for those schools."
"Gravity magic?"
"Gravity magic is similar to spacial magic where the mage doesn't just manipulate space, but also the gravity that affects the onjects that interact with space. It's a very powerful school, but not the strongest."
"What's the strongest?"
"Well, there are two known god-level magic schools. The second one is >temporal?<, or time. A mage with a firm grasp of their affinity of time can speed it up and slow it down relative to objects or even themselves. As you can imagine, an adversary doesn't have much of a chance if their opponent can slow down time to the point where they cannot possibly react. That's why it's so powerful. There's even a case of time manipulation where a time mage has appeared out of nowhere after travelling from hundreds of years ago in the past. Though that itself might just be a myth."
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"Whoooah."
"Wait, you've distracted me! Get to work. Practice your spacial magic, missy!"
Seems spacial magic is going to prove just as difficult for Celestine to learn as light magic. Does this mean her affinity is elementalism? Well, what ever. She'll learn it eventually. I need to go back to working on how to make this servitor useful.
----
Okay, so far the servitor, which I will now call Voice, has listed Celestine as having six skills, all novice level. There's Housework, Magic Comprehension, Meditation, Air Manipulation, Earth Manipulation, and Water Manipulation. I feel like there should be more. She's a pretty good reader, too. And she learned English just by listening to me and me translating it. Actually, she doesn't know a lick of written English. Maybe that should be next on my agenda...
I kind of half-assed this thing just to see if I could make it the last time. Now I needed to improve it. Here I sat in the darkness of Celestine's mind while she is off in dreamland. I sit here thinking of nothing while focussing on what I to improve in Voice.
It doesn't need to do more than keep track of skills, I don't think. And instead of using something arbitrary like numbers, I used a simple scale. Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, and Master. Yes, these are from Skyrim.
It would be nice if she could pull up her skill list, too. Like a VRMMO skill window. I could repurpose the translation square for that. So when Celestine, or I, think the word 'skills' and want to see her skill list, Voice should interpret that and manifest the list in her vision. It needs to be able to be interacted with, too. So if she presses something with her finger, it might display more information. Maybe a bit of flavor text, too.
Voice's judgement needs work, too. Magic Comprehension shouldn't be a skill. It should be Magic Control. Skills with language should be judged, too. And... damn it would be amazing if she could pull up stats on others just by looking at them.
No... wait... There's charcoal-eyes man. He was using a type of magic to look over Celestine that day in the church's medical basement level. Since I already know the first three common schools of magic, and Warran told me about the god-level schools, then the rare schools would be... Well Warran displays his restructuring magic often. Did he also say this can be used for healing? He used magic to heal Celestine's burns when she played with fire, so that might be part of restructuring. So charcoal-eyes was using another type of magic. Was the name ever mentioned in Celestine's memory...
Oh, I remember. Charcoal-eyes was also there when Celestine was born. He was looking at her and writing stuff down on a clipboard and paper. Well, the only name this kind of magic could have is identification magic. If it has another name, Warran will teach us later on down the line. I wonder if I can teach Voice how to use a magic I have only seen used and never properly been introduced to. Celestine has three conduits after all. One probably corresponds to Voice.
Okay... Voice will take control of Celestine's left eye. The visual feed will run by Voice first and it will use the eye to practice identification magic, channelling magic with its conduit to the eye to do so. Control of the muscles and eyelids will remain with Celestine so she can still control her vision. The vision feed will then be sent to Celestine's short-term memory like normal. With luck, this shouldn't cause any noticeable lag.
Now... I have no idea how to practice identification magic, Voice should just demand the magic to identify what is seen.
Well... that was easy enough. Celestine is asleep after all. But that would get annoying fast. Voice should only speak identities when either Celestine or I think 'identify' and are wanting a response from Voice. It would also help if Voice could identify anything hostile to Celestine immediately, so judge that and make it happen. The identification skill should have some ability to identify creatures' magic conduits and their magic affinity. Magic conduit size should be scaled to Celestine's largest conduit and displayed numerically. That should be helpful.
Okay, Voice, identify Celestine.
There was a long silence. Time was hard to judge in this space right now because the body's consciousness is currently dreaming. But I think it was a long time. Eventually, a window popped up in front of me.
Name:Celestine TanettRace:HumanAge:6Sex:FemaleConduit Strength:40Magic Affinity:Elementalism
What surprised me the most was the conduit strength. The conduit corresponding to Celestine wasn't the strongest. Wait, how did Voice figure out what the church could not? Was it just because they were looking at the body and not distinguishing between individual egos like I am now?
Identify Voice.
This didn't take too long before another window appeared before me in the darkness.
Name:Voice of the SystemRace:ServitorAge:1Sex:FemaleConduit Strength:15Magic Affinity:Identification
That name is never going away, is it? Well this narrowed it down to me now. I almost don't want to know.
Identify Novos.
This one took far longer than Celestine's did. Maybe I should have put a fail-safe on Voice to where if it can't identify something, it just gives up?
Then a window popped up in front of me.
Name:NovosRace:UnknownAge:UnknownSex:UnknownConduit Strength:100Magic Affinity:Unknown
One great big unknown. But I guess it means my conduit is the strongest in this little girl's body. Don't know how I should feel about that. Things seem to be working fine with Voice, though. Perhaps it will be a little more useful from now on. Wait, it has its own magic affinity? How the heck? Does this mean if I tried really hard, I could make a servitor with the temporal affinity and start time travelling? I want to try it... but I have no idea how Voice got that. I shouldn't start making egos willy-nilly in here. I need to learn my lesson after what making Voice caused.