With my new class in place, I took a look at what new boons were available.
Physical Enhancement: Variable
Select from a list of physical enhancements. May be selected multiple times.
Codex: Mana Form Simulation
Grants the system assisted ability to accurately model how hypothetical mana forms will perform.
Codex: Supplemental Mana Control
Grants the system assisted ability to craft mana forms partially utilizing ambient mana.
The three of these boons certainly looked interesting. I took a glance at the physical enhancement boon and found some familiar options. It gave me the option to pick from any of the physical enhancements that the novice magician class had offered.
The other two boons seemed new at first glance, but not so much after thinking about them. What made them different from what I could already do?
The system already let me design new mana forms using the codex. What more would the simulation do? It sounded like it might give me more clues as to how my new spells would work without having to cast them, but I wasn't sure how it would do so. Regardless of how it worked, it was likely going to be very useful when designing new magic.
The other boon was a little stranger. Every spell I cast already used the mana from the world around me. I still needed to use some of my personal mana to shape the mana into the correct forms, but most of the mana for my spells came from the ambient mana. I was at a bit of a loss as to how this boon would work.
Considering how helpful the system usually was, I was willing to trust that both of these enigmatic boons would be more helpful than they looked. That left me with the choice between a physical enhancement that I knew would benefit me or a pair of probably helpful unknowns.
I didn’t have any pressing need to grow stronger immediately, so I was willing to see what one of the new boons would do. I wasn’t sure about either of the boons, but one of them was a little more transparent than the other.
After selecting the simulation boon, I took a look at my interface.
Name: Kyo —-----
Current Class: Prodigious True Caster
Class Boons: 0/20
Boon Integration: 0%
Time: 7:63:07
Mana Pool: 190/200(+0.3/Tock)
Codex: 86.01%
Credits: 30(+20/day)
Other Classes: 3
Other Boons: 27
MR: 265
TPEL: 40
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Environmental Mana: Moderate
Updates Available: 1563
I noticed a few changes since the last time I looked. With the integration of the capstone boon from the outlander class, a few of the different numbers had gone up. The percentage of how much of my codex was in use had dropped by half. I didn’t lose anything as far as I could tell, so it was likely that my information storage space had doubled.
Another change was that my mana resistance had gone up by about ten points. I still didn’t know what exactly those numbers meant though. Exactly how much more resistant to mana poisoning did one more point of mana resistance make me?
I was pulled out of my musing when I noticed a familiar face nearby. Liam and one of the women I had seen in the mess hall were climbing a ladder to the top of the wall nearby. I hadn’t seen the rune carver or most of the rest of Martin’s team since we had parted ways the day before. Curious as to what the two of them were going to do up on the wall, I decided to follow. It didn’t take me long to scurry up the ladder with my bag hanging from my back.
At the top, Liam was examining some runes on one of the metal tubes pointing out toward the jungle. To his side, the woman was talking to one of the sentries who stood watch from atop the wall.
“Are you sure you let it charge all the way?” She was asking him.
“I don’t think that a lack of charging time was the problem.” Liam answered for the sentry, sounding far more confident and assertive than I was used to. “This capacity rune has a pretty bad fault, bleeding away all of the energy the weapon should be storing.”
“Can it be fixed?” The sentry asked.
“Possibly… Give me a moment to see if there are any other problems.”
With the three of them crowding around the metal tube, I couldn’t see the rune they were talking about. I stepped closer for a better look.
“Looks like we might be able to do a patch jo-” Liam cut himself off when he noticed me. “K-Kyo? When did you…?”
“Now who might you be?” the woman asked, seeming amused by Liam’s stuttering.
“Kyo. What are you doing?”
“W-we were fixing this…”
“One of the cannons wasn’t working, so the two of us were taking a look at it before patching up some of the other runes up here on the wall.” The woman supplied as Liam faltered..
“Cannons?”
“You don’t know what a cannon is?” The sentry asked with surprise. “Wait, you’re that native Martin found. Should you even be up here?”
“Oh, lay off it Roger. The girl’s just curious.” She turned to Liam with a mischievous grin. “You’ve made friends with Kyo here, right? Why don’t you explain to her how a cannon works?”
“Oh. Erm, well… T-these runes here slowly hold force. Wait no, they hold mana that becomes force.”
As Liam struggled to explain how the tool worked, I took a look at the runes. Most of the runes looked like they were meant to feed mana into a series of mana storing runes. Those runes were connected to a control rune that would cause them to all dump their mana into a series of invisible force runes.
One of the storage runes was leaking badly, draining mana from the surrounding runes. This prevented me from making a good estimate as to how much mana the thing would normally hold. It did look like it would be quite a bit. It was clear that this tool was designed with one purpose. When activated, it would throw something very, very hard.
I wanted to see it in action.
“-presses this rune here, the projectile is launched.” Liam finished his explanation. “I h-hope that made sense.”
I nodded, rummaging around in my bag. The three of them started giving me odd looks as I pulled out a jar of sigil paint and a reed.
“What do you think you are doing?” The sentry yelled as I brought the paint covered end of my reed towards the cannon. He reached down to grab me, but the woman stopped him.
“Come on, the thing’s built to withstand the forces needed to launch lumps of lead through monster skulls. She’s hardly going to break it with a bit of paint… Oddly magical paint…” she trailed off, suddenly looking at my jar of paint with much greater interest. “What are you doing with that, exactly?”
“Fixing it.”
The sentry did not seem to like my answer. He made to stop me again, but Liam stood in his way.
“P-please let her finish. She knows what she is doing… I think.”
I was fairly sure I knew how to fix the device. I didn’t know how to fix the broken rune, so I worked around it instead. The sigil I drew took the mana leaking out of the broken rune and pushed it back into its more stable counterparts.
“By the sun… That worked?” The woman asked incredulously after I finished my final stroke. “The charge is building again and nothing's leaking out anymore. How did you do that?”
“I used a sigil.”
“A sigil hmm…? I’ve never seen magic like this before.” She said leaning in to take a closer look at the painted mark. “Think you could teach me how to do that?”