The knowledge of the spell was filtered through my nostrils, following the pathways straight into my brain. This marked my first time inhaling knowledge; which by itself was a strange thought. Within the span of a few seconds, I knew in detail about how to use and activate this spell; And it turns out, I don’t need a staff to cast spells.

I grinned. Regardless of how expensive this spell was, every single point spent was worth it. The book turned to ash and dissipated after it finished its job.

The description of the spell piqued my curiosity. This wasn’t just a normal magic bolt, it also restored mana every time my bolts killed an enemy; The exact details — like how much mana would I regain from killing things — were unclear, but any mana restored was better than none at all.

Now, about those weapons…

Since I possessed a spell within my arsenal, the staff looked more and more like a viable option, even if it wasn’t necessary for me to cast spells without it. While ideas like a tank mage weren’t exactly common, if I paired my staff with a shield, I could see the potential of having both survivability and damage. Besides, the attributes I’d accumulated were all Body-related so far, so those hard work wouldn’t go to waste.

But that posed a different sort of question; wouldn’t it be best that all mages or warriors focus to increase both Body and Mind attributes? I didn’t see any reason why — let’s say if I was a mage — to not be stronger physically too.

Perhaps it was time itself? There would be a difference in how the attributes were distributed if I focused 50% of my effort on each section of the attributes compared to someone that focused 100% on one.

I’ll figure out the answer later.

Right now, my sole focus should be working as hard as I can. The rest of my questions were just distractions; Musings of my own brain that was desperate for a good sleep.

I re-opened the shop menu to claim the weapons I wanted. Gulping down what little saliva I had, my eyes searched for the shield and the staff. Weighing my options once last time, I squeezed my eyes shut when I finalized the options.

A loud thunk clamored the ground beneath me.

Inspecting the weapons given, I noted how similar the shield was to the one I was given from the Death Gauntlet before, with one point of difference; A description was shown when I equipped it.

Iron shield

Rarity: Common | Tier : 0 - not upgradeable.

A basic shield providing ample defenses, granted by the Sanctum.

Attribute bonuses :

+3 toughness, Vitality | +1 Strength.

Cool…

And upon wearing it, I failed to note much of a difference. The shield was lighter than I remembered, but it wasn’t significant enough of a disparity in strength; I had to pay close attention to notice any changes in how I felt.

Attributes are attributes… Can’t complain about it. At the end of the day, while the bonus attributes were nice to have, the main purpose of selecting the shield was to use its utility to block attacks.

Satisfied with the shield, my focus switched to the Staff below me. It was an iron staff with a clear, translucent orb clinched by a circular iron ring on top of it. It looked sturdy despite how thin it looked. Length-wise, it was comparable with the spear.

And also, I bet it’ll hurt if I smacked someone with this thing. The image of a mage smashing a goblin with the staff elicited a small chuckle from me, but I feared the scenario might not be as outlandish as it felt, since if I had run out of mana, slamming someone’s head with my staff would be my only method of dispatching unwanted advances.

Iron staff

Rarity: Common | Tier : 0 - not upgradeable.

A basic staff for fledgling mages, granted by the Sanctum.

Attribute bonuses :

+1 Arcane. Power, +5 Arcane.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The staff was light despite its material, and the orb which was dormant before, gleamed as I felt a pulse of energy connecting between the tips of my finger and the staff.

Re-checking my updated status page; with the added bonuses in place, my mana pool now stood at 20. My health points experienced a growth spurt, shooting up from 28 to 37; a grand total of 32% increase. All in all, the equipment made me more durable, and I could cast Death Bolt four times before running out of mana, instead of twice.

And that’s not all. I still have 5 attribute points that were waiting for their turn to be assigned. I’d planned to save these points for the Mind attributes,

I gained 5 ARCANE from the staff, and my MANA jumped up by ten. My genius mathematical brain counted the additional 2 MANA per ARCANE, which also meant that I needed to invest 3 free attribute points to get an additional cast of Death bolt.

3 points are a lot of investment. The more thought that I gave to this decision, the more and more I was inclined to increase my magic strength instead. Why? I didn’t believe I had any innate magical power as is, and if I took the fact that this spell scaled directly with my ARCANE. STRENGTH — which was null at this moment — How much damage would this spell do? No damage? A little?

I allocated 3 points to my ARCANE. STRENGTH, and kept two more as a stand-by once I gathered more information about how this spell performed. A strange, tiny pin pricked the insides of my skull in the next instant. It wasn’t an unwelcome sensation, in fact, I found it to be… enjoyable. Was that the feeling of being stronger at magic? If so, that is one hell of a weird feeling.

Worst case scenario, I could deal with those goblins with a good smack. The club I used way back when I fought them the first time was a small stick compared to this heavy staff…

Iron is tougher than wood, right? It has to be.

Now… to test this stuff out.

I held the staff high up in the air, aiming it toward the sky. The notion of shooting magic into the slight gathering of people around could be amusing, but I wasn’t ready to antagonize anyone yet.

[You cannot cast magic inside the nexus.]

As I expected…

Alright, if that’s the case… the only place to try my magic would be during a mission. There were two missions that I had my eyes on, one being the goblins, and the other one being the secret mission. I did NOT want to fight the spearman until I was sure I could take it on.

The safest option was the goblins. Numbers aside, they were dumb, and they were slow. Two characteristics made them good practice for my magic.

Looking around, I didn’t see anyone else carrying their massive weapons on their waist or back. I wondered why for a split second before witnessing someone conjuring their weapons out of thin air, before realizing that there was one more function that the Observer mentioned.

The [inventory].

At the same exact instant that I thought about that word, a massive list of boxes opened in the form of another blue screen. They were empty since I had nothing, but I was given the option to store anything I wanted on this screen.

I tried it out by attempting to put my magic staff into my inventory. Immediately after that thought ended, The staff that was held in my hand flowed into the box, followed by an image of my staff inside the inventory screen. So that’s how this works… Neat. Then, I tried taking it out and putting my shield in. This is so much more practical than I’d expected.

Satisfied with the experimentation, I interacted with the obelisk again and eyed the goblin mission.

[You will now partake in the mission : Hunt Goblins]

It didn’t take long before I was back in the foggy area. No goblins had spawned when I entered, so I used the idle time to practice using my spell.

From the knowledge that was given to me, all spells — most, if not all — had two separate phases in their casting process.

The first step was priming. By channeling my mana to a specific point in my limbs — or in this case, the orb on my staff — I could prime the spell, holding it until the moment it was fired, or in this case, cast.

Following the steps in my memory, I noted the surge of greenish-black, horrid energy being channeled from the inner core of my body, seeping outside. Like smoke being sucked into a vacuum, they entered the orb that glinted in the same color as the energy, eventually glowing as the spell had been primed.

The process took about a half, maybe one second, which wasn’t that long, but in a close fight, one second of doing nothing could be brutal.

Now, the next step was simple. I just had to will my own spell to do its job. As long as I didn’t command it to do so, the spell would be primed until I died, or, until I canceled the spell. I have no intention of wasting my mana, so I let the orb hold my spell until the goblins spawned.

And speaking of the devil…

A group of maybe 5 or so of them appeared as a shadowy figure in the distance. Raising my shield, I approached them with caution, prepared to let this spell go the moment I could see them clearly.

The number of goblins didn’t increase as I got closer. The 10 goblins mentioned in the mission description weren’t a lie, sure, but ten goblins didn’t mean there would be ten of them in a single spot.

Or is there the invisible one here?

I couldn’t detect it the last time we met. If the invisible goblin existed in this mission, I’d be in deep trouble.

Seeds of doubt were planted in my head. All of a sudden, the prospect of an invisible enemy in the midst of the numerous goblins instilled a sense of fear in my heart. I’m still afraid, After the things I’d gone through?

I steeled my resolve and studied the movements ahead of me.

At this distance, I could shoot two of these bolts before one of them would reach me. I breathed in deeply as I willed the spell to shoot toward the left-most goblin of the group.

A greenish-black bolt of magic shrieked as it blazed through the fog, piercing the air as it produced one of the worst sounding sounds I’d ever heard before in my life; Akin to the high-pitched sound you hear when you scratch your nails on the floor, only louder and pricklier; Enough to cause your ears to shrivel.

The bolt exploded on its face, generating a light show of multiple colors within the green spectrum as the goblins went hysterical from the sudden attack. The smoke that followed persisted for a while, and I used this moment of unrest to prime another bolt, aiming at the one beside it.

But what I saw when the smoke dissipated froze me. Its face — what was left of it — melted from the spell. Bubbles of unknown properties popped as its eyes drooped from its eye-sockets and the green skin that I grew used to turned purplish.

What combination of words could I mix to describe what I saw… If I had to put it into a sentence, I’d say that its face flowed like thick sludge, drooping into the ground.

It clawed its face to get rid of the pain, but… nothing ailed its obvious distress. As its life slipped away, it thrashed around on the floor for a few seconds until it drew its final breath. The other goblins watched in horror when they saw what happened to one of their kind, before another bolt shrieked once more, shredding what little courage they had left.

Never once did I expect that this would be the outcome of my magic.