Roran groggily awoke to a pleasantly cool breeze. He yawned and took a quick look at his surroundings. The subspace really was quite a sight to wake up to, and much less hot than the real world currently. Thankfully his practice had made heat much more tolerable, or rather the constant fire energy forced him to adapt to it. Although none of them had actually managed the conversion themselves yet. Well except Lily. Lily could do natural conversion instinctively, and apparently with a little practice that carried over to elements other than fire too.
He wasn’t too upset though, even Azura was struggling to master the skill, though granted he had the handicap of having important things to do that took away some of his time for practicing it since a copy couldn’t practice for him. Speaking of practicing, he placed on the necklace Sylvia had given him to reapply the fire spell that would constantly saturate him with fire mana. To say it was uncomfortable was an understatement, in reality it was excruciatingly painful. Like his insides were burning constantly, but it was already significantly less bad then it had been when he first started this training.
With the pendent on all of his tasks were more annoying, but thankfully though the pain was probably even being a little extra hot was hardly an inconvenience, or at least when compared to a constant electrical shock running through your body. They had all chosen different elements to cover their bases, but he honestly wasn’t sure it would come into play for a good long while. Speaking of tasks, did he have anything he really needed to do? His exercise routine, but they did that together every morning so he’d have to wait for the others to wake up first. He supposed Azura was probably around here somewhere doing his Azura things, but this place was huge, and unless Azura did something huge or was nearby he wouldn’t see it.
He glanced around half expecting something ridiculous to appear from nowhere and show him where Azura was, but sadly no such event happened. He sighed, so that was a bust. What else could he do? Horror slowly donned on him as he realized the terrifying truth… he had nothing to do! Waking the others would be rude, and Azura was off who knows where, and his only active training was a passive one. He wanted to scream, but all he could do was sit and meditate. He silently prayed that something would change the status quo soon. Meditating was boring.
***
Azura sighed, who knew architectural planning was so boring. The actual building part was fine, but having to plan it out was turning out to be more of a pain than he’d realized. Especially because when he realized it was going to take him a while to plan before he could even start, he put his pendent on, and funny enough electricity running through his body didn’t help the situation at all. Luckily if there was anything that could be called his best quality it would be his ability to put all of his focus onto a singular task regardless of distractions.
So with that in mind he got to work drawing up sketches of how his kingdom should be. Was it perhaps unnecessarily grand?… yes. Was it a complete waste of resources?… most likely also yes. Would it be super cool? Definitely. Besides even if it was empty a whole city worth of buildings surrounding a fantastical castle would look awesome. Actually the fact it was empty might even play up the aesthetic, a world too pure for mortals to touch. Of course he and his friends would be here, but he felt it would still work.
It was then that a small smirk came to his face as a realization he had noticed, but hadn’t registered the uses of came to mind. This island was a perfect circle, and the scales he was using as his primary building component were extremely mana conductive. In other words there would never be a better place for him to make a magic circle disguised as something else. The whole city was going to be a single spell, a new pinnacle of magic for him, even surpassing the spell that made this subspace in the first place. Even better was with the tree so near there would be no concerns as to whether or not he’d have enough power to activate the spell.
Perhaps most conveniently it meant he could just plan out the circle which he was incredibly practiced at, and then just place buildings at key points like he normally did with gems. The question was what kind of spell did he want it to be? Did he want it to just be something convenient, or something that would become his ultimate weapon. If he chose to make it a weapon he could think of 2 ways he could do it. He could make it one all powerful attack that would emerge when he opened a portal after activating the ritual, or he could make it a spell that gave him complete control over the domain. Not unlike how his grimoire worked, but on a wider and more sustainable scale.
All the options had their pros and cons though, so maybe it would be best to consult his friends first. The last one would probably be his pick, but the trade off for its usefulness was that it would be extremely situational. Not that a beam with more power than he could provide in a year would be any less situational. The convenience option would be cool while they were here, but would provide no actual utility. He’d probably just set the circle to help make any resources they would need whenever they were here. It would stop them from having to cast some spells themselves, but was ultimately useless outside of saving them some effort, so he could pretty confidently reject that option.
He checked the time. It was getting to be a more reasonable time, probably 3 hours before noon. He figured it would probably be a fine time to wake the others up. Thanks to the circle he had already placed there, teleporting there was easy. A quick spell and a flash of light and he stood among the sleeping forms of his friends.
“I was wondering when you’d show up here. It’s not very nice of you to get an early start on all the research in this place without me you know?” He smiled as Roran quietly berated him. It was nice to have at least 1 like minded friend, maybe even 2 if Elismera considered them friends at this point. He had gone most of his life either researching on his own or having to force Katy to do enough that she wouldn’t flunk the trials.
“Indeed, granted at least you didn’t do anything with my tree, but still I wouldn’t mind the option to see what else you’re working on in regards to this place. It wouldn’t have been possible without my cooperation after all.” He chuckled as Roran turned in surprise having apparently not realized that Elismera was awake.
“You say that now, but if I had woken you in the middle of the night I’m sure you wouldn’t have been very pleased with me.” He knew if someone woke him in the middle of the night he certainly wouldn’t be pleased about it. The minor flinch they both gave indicated that he wasn’t wrong about their reactions. “Besides that, I haven’t done anything terribly exciting yet. I actually came to wake everyone up because I wanted your opinions on something that could be quite handy.”
“Oh? That sounds interesting. What kind of thing would be so grand you’d stop in the middle to come check with us?” Elsimera asked curiously. It was a fair question, he was known for getting ahead of himself on big projects afterall. He almost started explaining himself, but there was no point explaining it twice so he started walking towards the others.
“I’ll explain once everyone is up, but suffice to say, interesting doesn’t begin to cover it.” Either way he took it, it would become his ultimate trump card. It would be like his grimoire only restricted to one function, and a lot more powerful. Even more than a lot probably. Like comparing the power of the sun to a fireplace, no not even a fireplace, a match would probably be the most sufficient comparison.
“Well let’s get to waking them up then!” He winced as Roran’s loud proclamation proved more than sufficient to wake them all up. They all shot up in varying degrees of panic, Katy even going so far as unsheathing her dagger and preparing for combat. He raised an eyebrow at Roran who winced and looked away guiltily.
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After frantically searching around for a few seconds their rudely awoken friends calmed down and then glared balefully at Roran. “Sorry about that, I guess I got a little excited. On the bright side though, Azura has something he wants to consult us on regarding this place!” He sighed. Roran’s energy truly was a beast all of them had a hard time containing. It was extra aggravating because he wasn’t even as young as he looked.
“That I do, and I think you guys will like this one. Granted some of you will like it just by virtue of not disliking it, but still.” He had done a lot of crazy stuff recently, a lot of it dangerous. So his friends would probably just be relieved there was no… almost no risk in harming anyone in this project him or otherwise, well until it was finished then it would become the bane of his enemies.
Katy yawned and stretched her arms behind her head. “What do you have schemed up now?” He laughed. It was nice to see his friends relaxed. Given how busy the school was, and his nature to be almost constantly stuck in ridiculous situations, he very rarely got to see his friends be truly relaxed. Hopefully with this place that would change.
“Well quite a bit if I’m being honest, but firstly and most relevantly, I’m planning out our main base in the Armory. The Armory is what I named this subspace by the way. I considered putting it near the tree, but I had some other ideas for it that I wouldn’t really want the tree nearby for.” Pulling somebody into the Armory to give him advantageous terrain would be handy, but if word of the tree got out, there would probably be lots of trouble. Even more than he attracted on his own. Thankfully the base was far enough away that the tree just looks like part of the backdrop, no one would assume it was the real deal unless they were close enough to distinguish its magic from the dense ambient magic in the subspace.
“Did you just wake us up because planning is boring and you wanted help with it?” Lily’s accusatory tone made him sweat a little. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been bored planning, but that was before he had his epiphany, magical circles weren’t boring, so he could confidently deny her claim. Even if saying it was wrong wasn’t as true as he’d like it to be. He would still be asking for help on the planning after all.
“Of course not. This is delicate magic, there won’t be any do overs. Once I decide on what the circle will be, there is no changing it. So since this is our space, and not just mine I decided to check for a consensus before Just doing whatever I wanted.” He was confident that no matter what was decided he could get it done, but changing an enchantment of that scale? Yeah he didn’t like his chances of doing that safely.
“What are the options?” Unsurprisingly Katy skipped straight to business. Well more accurately she probably wanted to get it over with so she could go explore the academy for new secret passages.
“Well I can make it a well for magical energy, with the ability to push out mana into devastating destructive force. The problem being that it would wipe out a wide area. So I couldn’t use it against enemies I don’t want to kill, and I can’t use it while innocents and or friends are nearby. The other option would be to use it to fully control the space. The nature of this place is held together by the spell that formed it, but it's not as attached to its form as reality is. I could in theory set an area where I have complete control of everything. I could change the air to poison, the ground to lava, whatever I wanted. The downside of that one of course is I’d have to get my opponent to come in here for me to use it.” Honestly without factoring combat into it he would almost pick the latter simply because he could use it to prank his friends whenever they were here.
“So it's a powerful instant kill that would only work in isolation, or it's an incredible advantage if you manage to get someone to fight you in here?” He wasn’t usually a fan of over simplification, but he nodded to Siara regardless, if he forced them to learn the details, they would all be here a while.
“Would either have any impact on the tree?” He sighed. That was the whole point of him setting up shop so far away from the tree in the first place. You’d think she’d have a bit more faith after he successfully moved it here, but he supposed technically he did destroy it and reform it so her wariness wasn’t completely without warrant.
“There shouldn’t be no. The place I’ve selected as our base of operations in here is fairly distant from the tree, so there shouldn’t be any effects on the tree at all.” Elsimera relaxed. He raised an eyebrow. It was unlike Elismera to just leave it at the one question, but he supposed that’s where the faith came in. She wanted to ask to be sure, but she at least trusted his answer.
“Then it sounds like the latter option would be better. It’s true the brute force method may be more effective both on powerful single targets and hoards of weaker foes, but I imagine it would take a while to charge between shots, and that means once people realize you have it, planning around it becomes easier. The other one though would leave no trace of its use, so people finding out about it is unlikely, and even if they did it would be hard to prepare against.”
He hummed in acknowledgement. That was a good point. He hadn’t considered it because everyone he used it against would without a doubt die, but the odds of word getting out about an attack on that scale was actually rather high. It’s like how whenever his father fought seriously everyone within 100 miles of him knew he was there. Azura would probably never be able to match his father power for power, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have advantages of his own.
“I’m not so sure. Azura’s already about as tricky as they come, what he lacks is devastating power that he can unleash quickly. It might be better for him to take the option that falls outside of his normal skill set.” Roran also made a good point. Controlling the arena was essentially what he already did, but on a larger scale. Whereas the pure power option was something he couldn’t normally accomplish without some serious prep time.
“Why can’t you do more than 1 of both? Surely there are enough islands here to set both circles up several times, and the tree provides more than enough mana to supply the needs.” He chuckled. That would be nice, sadly if such a thing was an option they’d not be having this conversation.
“Sorry Cynthia, but that’s impossible. These are large scale enchantments, the circle may only be on that island, but as I’m sure you’ve noticed most of the effects of my enchantments don’t end at the circle's edge. Either of these enchantments would take up a vast majority of the space available.” He could set up several weaker circles, but there wouldn’t be much point because he could do that himself in the real world. His goal for this was an ultimate trump card not a slightly better version of what he could normally do. Even the controlling the world option would be far above his normal level of doing that. He could warp the entire layout of this world with a singular thought so long as the island with the circle remained the same… and the tree of course. He didn’t need Elismera to kill him.
“That’s too bad… Hmm in that case I’d have to say the latter would be better. A powerful attack would be nice, but manipulating everything about this place could be useful in and out of combat. Plus if you bring people here it would be possible to take them alive even if they are significantly stronger than us.” He had considered that point himself, but had ultimately dropped the convenience factor as unimportant. He could have made a circle that was even more convenient if that’s what he was going for. As for taking people alive, if he was against someone that was important enough to take alive, he’d usually go for a non combat approach if possible, Which would make that a fairly niche use.
“I’m leaning towards Roran’s point. Azura can already do most of that stuff, but for him to pull off a really devastating attack he has to prepare it, and usually let it charge for a few minutes. Which is an incredibly long time to hold out against stronger opponents. Not to mention the part about him having to get people into the armory for the control option to do anything. Whereas the beam of power can be shot out of a portal he could open. It would be harder to get people in then to get the beam out.” he raised an eyebrow in surprise at Katy’s extremely valid points. Nothing he hadn’t considered, but shocking that she had put that much thought into it.
“Plus that kind of firepower would be awesome.” he laughed as Lily gave the reason that was most likely the real reason Katy had come to that conclusion. He more or less was pretty sure he knew what decision they’d come to, and he knew which option would probably be better, but he’d entertain himself with their banter for a bit longer.