Freed from the unpleasant meeting, I returned to the bunks. I needed to do something to take my mind off of that unpleasant experience.
Sitting in my bed, I activated my simulation boon. I soon found myself in the strangely lined world from before. Nothing I had created last time still remained, so I was once again in a black void with a grid of white lines stretching off as far as the eye could see.
Like last time, I began with a simple light spell to make sure everything was working as expected. The spell formed as expected and I was ready to start experimenting with the new spells I had been developing.
The main set of mana forms I wanted to experiment with were from the spell Salvador showed me. The analytic and control mana forms were capable of copying another set of mana forms in a repeated pattern. I figured that I could use them to make casting my water gathering spell much simpler.
I was wrong.
Trying to replicate the water gathering spell was trickier than I expected it would be. I was able to replicate all of the components of the spell without difficulty, but getting them to take on the right shape was proving much more difficult. The mana forms I was using were designed to arrange the copies in a cylinder, rather than the sphere the water gathering spell used. Testing the cylindrical version of the spell was rather disappointing. A few of the simulated water droplets fell from the spell, but nowhere near as many as with the sphere.
My heat moving spells faced similar problems. They still worked, but nowhere near as effectively. The one good thing about the cylindrical spells made with the replication mana forms was how much easier they were to make.
I tried for a little while to adjust the replication mana forms to make a different shape, but the results were much worse than the cylinder. Angling things in the right way was far more difficult than I had anticipated. After struggling with the shape for a while, I decided to just see what useful spells I could make using the cylinder.
The force spell I tried first proved very interesting once I got it to push something along the inside of the tube. It cost much more mana than a regular force spell, but it was much easier to aim. I did notice something odd while trying to get the angle of the force correct. My first attempts were not pointed quite as straight as I had hoped, causing the simulated rock I was using as a projectile to drill through the air. Once I got the force pointed in the direction I intended, the spinning stopped. The strange thing was that it didn’t fly as straight or as far as the spinning stone. Even after a few dozen tests, the spinning rocks almost always flew better than those that were pushed perfectly straight. Interesting though this discovery was, I had other things I wanted to try as well.
There was a powerful magical weapon I once used that these new mana forms would likely let me replicate. When trapped by the demonic titan, I had tried to defend myself by taking advantage of wraiths' vulnerability to sunlight. The weapon I had ended up crafting proved to be wildly more effective than I ever could have expected.
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Linking together mana forms to produce and direct heat, light, and force, I tried to recreate the weapon I used on that fateful day. The first attempt created a brief flash that didn’t look very useful. Adding some control mana forms to provide a continual supply of mana resulted in a cone of heat and light that would have probably been unpleasant to stand in front of, but was unlikely to cause much harm.
Like with the force spell, it took some work to get everything lined up perfectly. Unlike the force spell, things grew far more impressive once I got the angles right.
A narrow beam extended out from my spell, stretching out as far as I could see.
It didn’t take me long to test my spell on a variety of simulated targets. It very effectively pierced thin targets like leaves or the wings of simulated animals, though It had a much harder time digging through hard or thick targets like trees or stones.
The final round of testing was mostly just to satisfy my curiosity. I tried seeing what would happen if I fueled the spell with eight times my maximum mana pool. The spell was likely too complex for me to ever use my supplemental mana to such a degree, but I wanted to see what would happen.
The resulting beam was deceptively well contained. Almost all of the heat and light was pushed directly forwards, making it look very similar to the less powerful version I had tried before.
The results, however, were wildly different. After the spell ran out of power, I was able to see a small hole burned straight through the simulated tree I was aiming at. There was also a similar hole through every single tree and stone directly behind that, creating a perfect path straight through each obstacle.
It was interesting to know that was technically something I could do under the right circumstances.
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I spent the next couple days following my routine from before I fell ill. I practiced with Ophelia in the morning until I could barely move. Later in the day, I worked with the rune carvers to maintain the various magical tools and amenities around the camp.
A slight change was the fact that none of Martin’s party were around. He had taken them all back out into the jungle to look for the source of the light magic I had noticed above the camp. Salvador’s absence during our morning training seemed to annoy Ophelia, as she occasionally grumbled about it.
As I was eating in the mess hall with some of the rune carvers, everyone suddenly grew quiet. Everyone else in the room got the blank look of looking at their interface at the same time. It was rather bizarre to watch.
Looking around in confusion, I noticed a green mark at the edge of my vision. It took me a moment to remember that was the alert I had set for system messages other than boons. I didn’t have a chance to see what the message was before everyone started leaving their seats in a hurry.
“What happening?” I asked Catherine as she frantically devoured her last few bites of stew.
“You can use offensive magic right?” She asked quickly in between bites instead of answering my question.
“Yes?” I responded as I followed her out the door.
“Get up on the wall then! We are under attack!”