CHAPTER 121 AN IDEA
“So what did you want to talk about?” Tera asked as the other students started to filter out of the classroom.
I had managed to talk with her after class Monday, but she had been in a hurry so she had asked me to bring it up again at the next class session. So here we were.
“I have an open skill slot in one of my classes and I think I have an idea of what kind of skill I want to put in it, but before I went around doing something potentially dangerous I figured I’d try and get your input first and see if you had any suggestions.”
She nodded slowly, “Alright, what kind of class is it and what were your thoughts?”
“It’s a lightning-based spellblade class. Since it offers a degree of elemental control and magic capability, my underlying thought was to use the elemental affinity to control electric impulses throughout the body, increasing my reaction times. What I didn’t want to do is accidentally like… I don’t know, blow my brain up or something.”
Tera just smiled, “I don’t think you need to worry about that, you’d have to actively pump a lot of mana into controlling the impulses in your brain for something like that to happen. But it’s still good that you came to me first rather than attempting it by yourself since it is possible you could’ve hurt yourself, however unlikely.
“I’m assuming you’ve read Yillidon’s Primer on Elemental Magic?”
I nodded, “That’s one of the first books I picked up trying to find out more actually. I’ve read about every single book in the library that so much as even mentions lightning or electricity. The main problem I’ve come across is that they either just don’t go into enough depth, or the depth of the topic isn’t the one I wanted so it ends up being useless to my current project.”
She just nodded while I spoke, “Indeed, people are not exactly willing to be upfront and open with the results of their research, especially when it has taken them hundreds of years to achieve the result. They’ll give you a brief overview of what they managed to accomplish, but not the methods they used to do so. Regardless, Yillidon’s Primer is basically the only source of true advice on using different elemental magics to acquire new skills, basically, a do and don’t guide. Very insightful.”
The book had been pretty insightful. It was the book that had told me that while what I was doing was possible, it could be dangerous. Water and electricity were possibly the two most dangerous elements to use on your own body, with air coming in close behind them. With water, you could rupture your own blood veins in your body. Possibly all of them simultaneously if you weren’t careful, including the ones in your brain, killing you instantly.
Electricity controls the motor functions of the entire body, if you are overloaded you could end up stopping your heart, burst the blood vessels in the area of the overload, tear muscles, break bones, and although unlikely as agreed upon by both Yillidon and Tera, destroy your brain.
“Yeah, so I was just wondering if you had any thoughts that weren’t in any of the books that I read, or maybe a suggestion for a skill to acquire that’s not the direction I’m currently headed.”
She crossed her forearms, tapping one of her fingers as she stood there thinking deeply.
“Hmmm. It might not be a bad idea for a skill, but it’s also not the best. The main problem comes from the fact that people’s impulses don’t travel at the same speed. They’re mainly based on a multitude of factors, but someone who can move faster than someone else will have faster responses, meaning their impulses have to move faster to account for this speed increase.
“What this ends up meaning is that if you were to cut out the time difference between when they think they want to move versus when the impulse actually reaches there you’re cutting off maybe… 2-5 milliseconds, at our speed. Possibly even less. So it ends up not being that great on its own.
“What people can use it for is an automated response system. So for example, with a bit of work, you can automate responses based on certain factors, the best thing being eyesight considering that your eyes will see something before your body can feel pain. Assuming you can actually see what you’re trying to avoid.”
Tera had basically gone into full-on lecture mode and had even started using the board behind her to start drawing diagrams with words next to them, some of them underlined for emphasis.
Several of the students that had been leaving had stopped and were now listening in on our conversation. I didn’t blame them, this was a pretty interesting lesson and would probably be insightful if they had lightning-based classes or something similar. Or just useful in general in knowing how to deal with people who had classes like mine.
“So what you can do, for example, is when you see a specific attack coming your way, you could have a planned response to be, let’s say something simple, ‘Dodge left.’ When your eyes see the attack, your brain’s understanding would instantly trigger the skill and the indicated response causing you to dodge left without any necessary input.
“How this ends up being a problem is that it could end up making you a predictable fighter. If they know for a fact that you’re going to dodge left every time they use that attack, well, you can see how that would work out poorly, I’m sure.”
I nodded, I did know. It would be the exact kind of pattern I’d already be looking for a person in a fight to be able to exploit. That’s the kind of thing that would get you killed pretty quickly, even if you were careful.
“So you think I should probably go with a different skill then?”
She shrugged, “Honestly, it really comes down to what you’re looking for. Some of the simplest skills can be the most devastating when used creatively, while the most in-depth and complex skills can be the most useless in a real-world scenario. It really just comes down to what you’re looking for in a skill and what you feel you might be able to make the most use of.”
“Well, do you have suggestions for skills beyond this one? I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking but haven’t been able to come up with a skill on my own that I would like to even try aiming for, I thought maybe this one, but now I’m starting to second guess it since it runs into a number of problems like you’ve been saying.”
“Well, I don’t know all the skills you have and I don’t necessarily know the direction you’re trying to aim for when building your classes, but lightning is a powerful agility and firepower element. It really struggles with utility, however. Maybe find a skill that can shore up that potential weakness if it’s not being covered by another class or maybe just continue supplementing one of the two mainstays.”
I nodded, that was probably the best advice I was going to get out of this.
“Alright, I’ll spend some time thinking about that. I’ll probably ask my team lead for ideas as well, see if there might be anything she wants.”
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“That’d probably be a good idea,” Tera agreed, “Well if you don’t have any further questions?”
I shook my head.
She just nodded, turned around, and started cleaning the board off from the mini-lesson she had been giving me. I took the dismissal for what it was and walked out of the classroom, deep in thought.
So there went the idea of what I had been wanting to do for a while. I guess it wasn’t that big of a deal, it was a good thing that I’d decided to talk with someone more knowledgeable than I on classes and skills before just going through and doing something. Especially if it would’ve left me with a skill that wouldn’t have even been that useful.
But now that also left me with the problem of having to find a skill to fill the gap, and the biggest problem I had come up with was that I couldn’t really think of anything else that I wanted in the class. Hopefully, Lea would have some ideas to help push along the decision-making process.
Speaking of our team, it had been a few days since we had first met. And there was only a week left of classes. Jazz had surprisingly mellowed out a bit, I honestly hadn’t expected him to.
If anything, I had expected to be pulled into a meeting to talk about how his family had leveled a complaint against the organization to have me expelled or something. Except that had never happened. I had to wonder if Jazz had even complained to his family in an attempt to get that to happen, or maybe to have me assassinated or something ridiculous.
Maybe it hadn’t even gotten that far, I’d probably never know. He showed up to all the practice sessions, and he worked with us as a team and followed Lea’s instructions. He still turned his nose up at me and was just in general rude, but not enough to make a stink over. I didn’t exactly help matters by reciprocating his behavior either.
But I also wasn’t just going to sit there and let him be obnoxious.
Needless to say, the training had been going pretty well. We decided that we’d go ahead and meet this week as well for just a little bit in the evenings. We spent about an hour just continuing what we had been doing over the weekend.
Jazz hadn’t wanted to, unsurprisingly. But Lea had made the argument that we weren’t going to have time to train like this later. Once we finished up our courses the next week, we were instantly being sent on an assignment.
And until we got the assignment, we didn’t even know how long it was going to take us. It could be anywhere from a week to a year if we were unlucky.
And while I was somewhat looking forward to actually going on these missions and possibly gaining levels in my classes again, I had really been enjoying the classes. I hadn’t really made any friends, but that wasn’t a big deal to me honestly. I didn’t necessarily want attention right now.
Maybe in the future when I was strong enough, but then at that point I’d probably just want people to leave me alone in general.
But the classes had been entertaining. It was nice learning about magic and how in-depth the studies on it had gone over the past couple of thousand years. Learning about the history of this world during that time, and a little bit of Pre-Collapse era history as well.
I still didn’t care much for the Alchemical Understanding course. But it was a course specifically designed to just be an education fluffer. Something to fill in gaps of knowledge and provide cultural understanding.
It was extremely unlikely any of it would ever be useful, even just in a day-to-day conversation. But it was a class that people of this world and country had the subconscious knowledge of.
Katherine’s words also came to mind whenever I thought about trying to drop the class again, so I persevered. In the end, it might pay off, and if it didn’t then it’s not like I was harmed by taking the course anyway.
Well, I had a few hours to kill before I met with Lea and Jazz for our daily session. I might as well go back to the dorm and knock out some of the homework I had. Hopefully, Lea will have some suggestions.
***
“Ideas for lightning-based skills to fill out the rest of your class?”
I nodded, “Yeah, I talked with Teradine and she basically all but explicitly shot down the idea for the skill that I had with some pretty good points about how it could easily be manipulated into getting me killed or at least seriously hurt.”
Lea nodded. As usual, both of us had shown up a bit early. Jazz on the other hand was always slightly late, never by much, maybe a minute or two. We both knew it was intentional, but once again it was just another thing that wasn’t enough of an issue that we really pressed on it.
This is why when he walked in we tended to ignore him for a few minutes and just talk for a moment and make him wait on us in turn.
Speak of the devil he just walked in.
“Hmmm, well I can’t say I’ve given it a lot of thought. Off the top of my head though the one thing that would actually be nice to have is a party buff skill. Right now none of us really have anything like that. Normally that would be the case for the main mage of the party, but Jazzosaur doesn’t exactly have the element for that. Metal is a powerful offensive tool, but not great for empowering allies.”
Jazz scoffed, “I don’t need to empower allies if I kill all their enemies.”
Normally I’d ignore him but I had a good retort for this one, “You couldn’t even beat me in a fight where I deliberately gave you a handicap, so sorry if your arrogance doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but Lea aggressively cleared her throat, causing him to shut his mouth with an aggravated click.
She turned her gaze to me, “Alex, don’t antagonize him.”
I just shrugged, “Sorry,” I said, my tone conveying the fact that I wasn’t even remotely apologetic.
But his attitude was a two-way street, the fact that I apologized basically exonerated me from all guilt regardless of how I truly felt. All in all, it was rather amusing seeing the frustration mount on his face realizing he couldn’t continue prodding without getting in actual trouble.
The last time he had tried to continue a conversation I just had to sit back and let Lea lay into him all the while I just stood behind her smiling smugly. He had tried to bring in his status as a noble into the situation only to realize that Lea was a noble as well, and apparently of a higher status.
Jazz was the first son of a recently ascended Earl, from Viscount. Considering most of the nobles were either Viscount or Barons, it was a pretty notable position.
It meant absolutely nothing to Lea who was the third daughter of a Duke. She had wanted to keep her peerage under wraps since we hadn’t apparently noticed her, but she eventually had just had enough of Jazz’s attitude and dropped that bomb on us one day and basically threatened him along the lines of ‘he’d either step in line or she’d make his father step in line.’
Since then Jazz’s attitude had cleaned up immediately, thus leaving us in the state we were in now. When Lea said to drop something we both dropped it now for different reasons. Me, because I respected her for treating me as an equal at first contact, Jazz because there was a very real possibility of social punishment if he didn’t.
As they say, ‘Different strokes for different folks.’
I’m not sure that’s how that analogy was supposed to be used, but it fits in a way. So I was gonna stick with it.
Still, “Party buff, huh?”
I’ll admit, I hadn’t really thought about that. I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d be able to snag one for a spellblade. It was magic-based, but it focused primarily on weapon and body enhancements for the self rather than the party. That felt more like it would be a thing that my mage class would acquire.
But… maybe…
Maybe it would be possible to stretch the definitions just a little? The classes were close enough in scope that some overlap was to be expected, as had been seen with the agility buffs. Maybe something similar could happen where I could boost the party with the skills?
I wasn’t even sure how to begin going about that, but it’d have to be something I worked toward. Maybe we could run some drills specifically designed to help them run faster.
It wouldn’t be easy, but it was an idea at the very least.
Hopefully, it would pan out.