For the first time in my life, I was dreaming of something other than that world. Well, it was hard to tell what I was dreaming of to be honest, all I could see was darkness all around me. I tried to Generate some lightning, but I couldn’t reach my Mana Pool.
Why? Did something change? Or maybe I just never Awakened in the first place, and this was actually reality. Maybe I was just as useless as before.
Suddenly, eyes appeared in the darkness. They glowed red and were sharp and jagged, I felt like they might pierce me at any moment. But they didn’t. It was like there was a circle a metre away from me that they just couldn’t cross, or maybe they just didn’t want to.
A hand began to emerge from the darkness, slowly becoming visible as it inched towards me, ever so slowly…
All I could do was stand there, paralyzed by fear, as the hand reached closer and closer. It was so close that I thought it must have been moments away from getting me and I still failed to move. It finally reached me and-
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I woke up. The breeze that had greeted me the past two nights I slept here was nowhere to be found, but I got up to double check the window just in case. As I went about my usual business the memories of the dream quickly faded, leaving behind a lingering unease that failed to completely disappear.
I hope that’s not from Danger Sense.
Downstairs, the tables were more full than usual, and Finch was busy doing what I assumed Innkeepers usually did on a morning. My stomach rumbled and I realised that I didn’t eat yesterday, so I greeted Finch and sat at an empty table whilst he went into the kitchen to prepare a meal for me.
Just a few minutes later he came out with a full plate and a mug of what I assumed was water, putting it down and just standing there.
“Is everything alright Finch?” He frowned.
“I should be askin’ the same o’ you. Ye ran through here last night like the devil was on yer ‘eels,” His normally gruff voice got softer as he spoke, until he sounded genuinely concerned, “Did somethin’ ‘appen?”
“Ah, well, it was nothing really,” A sharp glare made me reconsider just lying, so I sighed and told the truth, “I think something was watching me. I got a skill called Sense Danger and everything.”
At this, his eyes widened and he probably spoke slightly louder than was necessary, “That's serious. Ye can’t jus’ get Sense Danger from anythin’ tha’ wants to kill ye’. Usually people only ge’ it when they’re attacked by somethin’ at least twice their level. As ye’ can imagine, not many people survive long after gettin’ it.”
Twice my level… but it clearly didn’t actually want me dead, because I’m alive right now. A shudder went down my spine as a realisation came over me. You get more experience from killing enemies at a high level, so killing low levels is almost useless. Letting something level up a little before you fight it would be much more rewarding, especially if that thing has a Rare Path.
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A few hours later, when the sun was nearing the peak of its arc, I walked through the door of a building labelled ‘Training Fields’. From the front it looked like a normal, if strangely narrow, building just like all the ones beside it, but once I entered I realised that wasn’t quite the case. The front actually seemed to just be a facade meant to keep to the same look as the rest of the city, but the other side was an expanse of around a dozen dirt fields nestled behind each of the buildings.
There was one right at the back that took up the same space as 3 other fields, and looked more like a colosseum than anything. It was probably for when nobles came here to train or something, but it didn’t seem like it was worth the money.
As I was looking around, I noticed Kaelan in one of the fields waving at me and moved to join him. A few of the other fields were occupied, but for the most part it looked like we’d be able to have a lesson with no distractions.
Once we were situated, with me sitting on a bench to the side of an arena marked by a wooden frame and Kaelan standing in front of me with his hands held behind his back for some reason, he took on a completely different tone from when we’d spoken before. Almost like when my parents would talk when teaching me how to help around the house.
“So, since you don’t have much of a foundation when it comes to magic, I may as well start with the basics,” As it turns out, there was a lot I didn’t know about magic, and it took several hours to go over everything, but the general ideas were pretty simple.
There’s 5 main affinities, the ones that are most common among mages. These are Life, Wind, Fire, Ice, and Stone. Apparently there’s not actually anything special about these, but the terrain of the 4 nations of The Middleground made it really easy to develop these affinities, so they were always thought of as the most important. Nobody really has an exact number for just how many affinities there are, since new types of mages keep popping up as society develops new things, but those 5 are the only ones that are likely to be relevant.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Lightning affinity was actually quite rare, since people are rarely in storms enough to develop any kind of affinity, and even then it tends to be Storm affinity. Based on the skills I’d been offered, it seemed like Lightning was closely related to Static and Thunder affinities, so I could technically start changing the skills I take to focus more on either of those and still have decent spells.
Yeah, I’m sticking to Lightning thanks. The name of the Path basically means ‘Good at Lightning’
It’s generally considered a good idea to focus on the affinity of your Path if it has one, since the more you use it the higher your affinity becomes. Apparently if you have a high enough affinity it becomes easier to cast spells with that affinity, and other people using it against you will deal less damage. If someone who wasn’t focused on Lightning tried to hit me with Lightning Bolt, it’s possible I could be relatively unscathed. Although it’s hard to test these things, so I don’t plan on letting myself get struck by lightning again.
Speaking of which, I finally understand what happened on my Awakening. When someone awakens, the System temporarily takes away all of their affinity in order to examine it and make last minute changes to Path choices, but that leaves a void of affinity momentarily. Since lightning happened to strike right at that moment, it was attracted to the void and pulled in as though it were my own affinity. Then the System put it into my body with the rest of my affinity and it’s still far higher than usual.
A lot of stuff flew completely over my head, like the actual reason the lightning was attracted to the void (was it conductive? Or maybe it was more like a whirlpool?) but there was one last thing that I was able to understand completely.
There are two categories of magic (aside from skills), which are Unstructured, and Structured. Unstructured spells are the easiest to use, since they basically amount to raw control of mana or an element. The Lightning Bolts I could cast without the skill were actually Unstructured magic, although apparently it wasn’t impressive enough to get me a skill, so I had a little bit of a headstart in that regard. For the most part, this kind of magic was limited to moving stuff around, but you could also use it to turn affinitied mana into its element, which most skills for affinitied mages do automatically.
My Lightning Generator was somewhat unique in this regard, since it basically let me do this easily without taking up a General Slot, like most mages have to do.
Structured Magic was where things got real interesting, and also real complicated. By forcing Mana to take specific patterns, it would do something or another and create an effect. Someone with an unaffinitied Mage Path would actually be able to use these patterns (Runes apparently) to cast spells that seem to be affinitied, so most Archmages actually use these instead of attempting the astronomical task of gaining and maintaining high affinities for any element they want to use.
“Alright, since you should have a little willpower by now, it shouldn’t be too hard to memorise all of that, but if you forget something just make sure to ask and I can remind you. Hopefully you got it all though, because now it’s time for the fun stuff!” Kaelan grinned and rubbed his hands together. I thought he was just being dramatic or something, but sparks began to come out from between his palms, quickly expanding into a roaring flame.
“First, do you have any magic related General skills already, and how many slots are you willing to use for metamagic?” I wasn’t quite sure what metamagic was, but it sounded cool so I may as well use my last slot for it.
“I already have condense mana, and I have one slot left open.”
“Alright, we can work with that. Condense Mana isn’t normally good for Structured Magic, but if you want to get as much power out of an attack as possible it’s the way to go. For that last skill, let's see about getting you some variation of Mana Manipulation before we move on. If we’re lucky you’ll be able to manage it today, but if not we’ll come back tomorrow.” As he spoke, he pulled his hands away from each other, splitting the flame in two. The fire began to move slower, until it looked more like orange-red cloth, and then formed into tendrils that moved into a ball in the middle of his hands.
That’s cool.
“Since you probably have a lot of experience with using Mana from your skills, I bet you can already sense your Mana Pool, right?”
I closed my eyes and looked inwards, towards whichever direction my Lightning originated. It was full now, so it almost seemed to blend into the rest of my senses, but once I took a little out to use Lightning Generator a gap formed and I used that to figure out where it was, “Yeah, I can.”
“Good, good, now just try and manually take some of that out and bring it out above your palm.”
I tried to do as he asked, but it felt like the Mana kept slipping through my fingers. It was somehow much easier to control as Lightning than in its normal state, probably because of my Affinity if I had to guess.
“You won’t be able to do it right away, just keep focusing and you’ll manage eventually.”
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I focused on my Mana Pool for so long that I lost track of time. At first I was constantly getting distracted by the sounds of other people fighting, and a small but persistent itch from Sense Danger, but soon enough they seemed to fade from view.
A few times I almost got a good grip on it, but then my excitement would distract me and I’d fail, so I had to start all over again. This wasn’t quite working, so I tried another method. I’d been just pulling the Mana this whole time, and it had nearly worked, but just that alone wasn’t going to cut it.
The Mana seemed to slip to either side whenever I got a good grip on it so I, for lack of a better word, imagined a barrier to either side keeping it in place. There was an immediate difference in how the Mana behaved. Whereas before it was moving from side to side constantly, now it was trapped in a nearly straight line. The task immediately became far easier, and on that very attempt I finally managed to succeed.
Opening my eyes, I was immediately greeted by 2 notifications in my face.
Proficiency Gained Would You Like To Take The General Skill [Meditation]?
Proficiency Gained Would You Like To Take The General Skill [Channel Mana]?
“I did it!” I cheered, and immediately felt a slight jolt as the mana that I had forgotten would actually be above my palm lost cohesion and popped harmlessly.
I’d even been offered two General Skills for my efforts, although I could only take one of them. Declining Meditation, I took Channel Mana and only then remembered that Kaelan was still there.
“Good job! That was quicker than most people manage it, but I guess most people can’t stand still with their eyes closed for four straight hours!” He laughed and I sputtered at the amount of time I’d been doing that for.
Four hours! It barely felt like 20 minutes!
“But man, your Lightning Affinity must be insanely high. Your natural Mana almost looks like Lightning already. I bet your Path Skills have some insane efficiency. I’m jealous.” He shook his head and grinned, “Anyway, what variant did you end up with? Mine’s just the basic Manipulation, but I bet you got something weird.”
“It says it’s called Channel Mana.”
“Ooh, nice. I bet that fits Lightning really well. That one’s not too common, but I still know a little about its mechanics. Basically, your mana should be much better at following a path, but you’ll struggle with large area effects, like making a cloud or something. Actually, I think if you want to do that you basically get no help from the System now that I think about it.”
“Hmm, do you think it’s good for Lightning Bolt then?”
“Lightning Bolt? Yeah, probably. You might even be able to turn it into a more continuous beam if you want to.”
Nice.