Ted hurried down to the forest floor, wishing on the descent that the elevator could go faster. If they were going to survive the journey, he had to learn as much magic as possible, and the window on training with Jeremy was far shorter than he’d hoped for.
Jeremy greeted him at the magic training area, and they got to work. The first matter was where to spend Ted’s stat points. Given the limited time available with Jeremy, they both agreed that he should focus on magic to make the most of that time. Further down the line, it might be worth putting points into Dexterity for improved accuracy and speed, but that could wait.
Intelligence increased spell damage and made casting easier, so Ted spent three of his five points there. That increased his MP by 30, but nothing else on his sheet. Willpower, on the other hand, did nothing for most spells but increased almost everything else, from HP to mana regeneration to Mental and Physical Resistance. He put both of the other two points there, equalizing the two stats. Meaningless, but it came with a nice warm, fuzzy feeling, anyway.
Then the training began. Jeremy demonstrated a spell, Ted watched with Discern Magic and then repeated it over and over. The moment he got it right, they moved right onto the next one.
The first successful cast of each magic type leveled it to 1, revealing perks very similar to Fire magic in Energy, Telepathy, Protection, Force, and Life magic. Each type had its own color scheme, though Jeremy warned that some casters could disguise their magic, and not to rely absolute upon the color to reveal the school.
At first, it was hard going, each spell an inscrutable mess that he had to learn by rote, no matter how many times Jeremy told him to trust in his instincts. Yet, as he practiced, it became clear that there was an underlying structure, a model that all spells followed—at least, all these relatively simple spells did. After learning that model, the spells became simpler and quicker to learn.
The failures helped motivate getting it right first time. Some fizzled out of existence, but most weren’t so kind, exploding in blasts of blinding light or fireballs of pain requiring Jeremy to heal Ted back up.
The biggest decrease in spell failures came after his Perception increased from level 2 to 3. On Jeremy’s advice, he put the extra perk point straight into Discern Magic, and the difference was way bigger than he’d expected.
Suddenly he could see details that he’d never spotted before—small vibrations in the mana, oscillations that threatened to rip the structure apart of the spell if they weren’t controlled. Many of his previous failures suddenly made so much more sense.
No wonder Cara didn’t cast much magic. Without Discern Magic, it would be like casting blind, working entirely off of muscle memory and her instructor’s eyes. That she’d learned any spells at all that way was impressive as hell.
Not that Ted had much time to think about such things under Jeremy’s relentless pace, broken up only by the briefest of pauses to heal Ted back up.
Drained to the core of his being, unable to take it anymore, Ted slumped against a tree and closed his eyes. Focusing inward, he admired his now much bigger spell list.
Totally worth it, even if their haphazard names were deeply annoying. There was no pattern to them, clearly just named whatever some random Spellcrafter had decided to call it long ago.
Most were at least in Wood Elvish, although two were in scripts that Ted couldn’t even recognize. Jeremy identified them as Dwarven and Orcish spells, and talked Ted through how to rename them.
Ted gladly renamed all of them into English, adding their magic type, form, and effect at the end. A good naming convention would make it much easier to pick out the right spell quickly.
A glance up at the orange-tinted sky informed Ted it was well past noon. Progress was much faster than it had been, but time was running out. Not that that stopped his brain from spinning at the rapid pace Jeremy drove. “Give me a moment.”
“Time is short.”
“Then when do you plan to teach me to teleport?”
The question earned a stern stare, as expected. “Teleportation is dangerous. An errant thought could bury you in rock.”
“So you said, but it’s better to have the option than not.”
Jeremy stared at Ted for a few moments before replying. “Fine, but I don’t have any low-potency Teleport spells. Promise not to cast it and I can teach you one.”
The searing memory of what low-potency spell explosions felt like was bad enough. Starting off learning to teleport with a high-potency spell would be suicide. “What good’s that to me?”
“Spellcrafters must know an effect before they can weave it.”
“They can’t discover them themselves?”
Jeremy paused, considering the question for several seconds. “Perhaps. I suspect it would be incredibly dangerous and difficult.”
“Alright, alright,” Ted said, noting the uncharacteristic uncertainty in Jeremy’s voice. He clearly didn’t know much about the craft—not surprising given there wasn’t a single Spellcrafter in the Forest. Was Spellcrafting really as dangerous as they said, or was it all a cargo cult? “I promise to start with easier teleport spells.”
“Good. Now watch carefully.”
Ted watched Jeremy cast the spell several times, growing increasingly perplexed with each casting. The spell didn’t fit into the neat and tidy model that he’d built in his head. It clearly didn’t inherit the same logic as the other spells, but beyond that, it was a mystery. If there was a logic to how the Teleport spell worked, Ted couldn’t see it, not even after committing it to memory.
Asking Jeremy about the difference didn’t provide any useful answers, either. It was abundantly clear that Jeremy learned spells from other casters, copying without having any deeper understanding of how spells worked.
Well, why would he? It wasn’t like Jeremy could create or modify spells without being a Spellcrafter, and wood elves didn’t do that.
Based on Jeremy and Cara’s descriptions of how they learned, and their frequent prompts to trust in his instincts, Ted suspected that learning here was easier for those who had grown up in tandem with skills.
Not that he had anything to complain about, given how much quicker his skills leveled than theirs thanks to his Hero status. Besides, easier wasn’t necessarily better. If he was going to be a Spellcrafter, he’d have to understand how it worked.
After several more demonstrations of the Teleport effect, Ted still couldn’t wrap his head around how it worked, so Jeremy called it.
Instead, he moved onto the spell he’d used to take down the gorilla. Jeremy warned that it was a very powerful spell, and not to try casting it without levelling up the accompanying skill many times. Even then, it would be incredibly dangerous to cast.
The spell shone a brilliant white under Discern Magic, and Ted could easily believe it. This was a level beyond anything else Jeremy had shown him. The spell’s structure was tight, its design sleek and precise in a way that put the other spells to shame. This was the work of a master Spellcrafter.
It followed much of the same logic as the other spells except that it carried two different Forms. The first, Imbue, bound the spell into a weapon or an arrow. When it struck the target, the Sphere form activated, blasting in an area of effect with enough power to rip anything around it to shreds.
That spell was followed by another dangerous spell, one that blasted a wall of Force out in a straight wave, stunning anyone unfortunate enough to be in the way. After that came a spell that summoned an orb that crackled in the air, blasting the ground with lightning where Jeremy mentally commanded it to strike.
“Enough,” Jeremy said. “I have duties to tie up before we leave. Practice as you wish, besides those last four. We leave tomorrow at dawn.”
“Thank you,” Ted said, to Jeremy’s rapidly departing back.
He checked his spell list and smiled to himself. That was quite an array of different types, forms, and effects for Spellcrafting that Jeremy had provided.
Firestarter (Fire/Projectile/Ignite)
Light Orb (Energy/Orb/Light)
Alarm (Telepathy/Area/Alert)
Calm Creature (Telepathy/Target/Affect)
Armor Self (Protection/Aegis/Armor)
Concussive Arrow (Force/Imbue/Stun)
Healing Hands (Life/Touch/Heal)
CAUTION Teleport (Portals/Self/Teleport)
CAUTION Blast Arrow (Force/Imbue-Sphere/Blast)
CAUTION Stunning Wave (Force/Wave/Stun)
CAUTION Storm (Energy/Orb/Lightning)
Ted practiced the Firestarter spell a few times by himself. Now that he’d cast it once, thinking about the spell returned its casting success chance—a very reassuring 223%.
Focusing in on that revealed more information. The base stability of the spell was 200%, no doubt thanks to its potency of a mere 1.05. His skill level of 1 increased its stability by 5% and his Intelligence of 18 by another 18%. Stability was clearly additive, rather than multiplicative.
He tested moving around and a spell casting success penalty appeared. The penalty increased as he moved faster, and jumped even higher as he darted from side to side as if dodging blows.
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It was good to know, even if a little concerning for casting magic in battle. The spells each took several seconds to cast, with the Firestarter spell taking five whole seconds. Casting in combat might not be as simple as he’d imagined.
On the plus side, he had healing magic now. He practiced casting Healing Hands on himself and felt that reassuring tingling sensation wash over him. Having on-demand healing lifted a huge weight off his shoulders—with the relatively high speed of mana recovery, it made natural health regeneration’s sloth-like speed irrelevant.
After practicing his new spells a few more times, Ted pulled the book on Spellcrafting out from his pack and settled down against a tree. It was time to see what his chosen profession—and everyone else’s possibly overblown concern—was all about.
The book started with grave warnings about the dangers of Spellcrafting, stressing how even the slightest mistake could result in injury or death. One such risk was a mana vortex, the result of a miscrafted spell causing a feedback loop, even on a successful cast. Such a vortex would disintegrate the caster and everyone in the vicinity. Wonderful.
The book went into detail about components and their role in stabilizing spells. Skimming through it, more components resulted in a more stable spell less likely to go wrong. Only an incredibly talented caster, for instance, could use merely thought to cast a spell, and, even then, it would have to be far weaker than if they used more stabilizing components.
All things Jeremy had already taught him and any caster would know.
It took several more chapters to reach the actual mechanics of crafting a spell. It covered the basics of combining already known forms and effects. Some forms were simpler, such as imbuing a weapon with an effect, while others, particularly area of effect magic, were less stable.
Spellcrafting skill increased 0 → 1!
The book explained that aspects (magical types, forms, and effects) would have to be learned from other casters. A sidebar suggested not letting them know you are a Spellcrafter before buying new spells, as that would attract a steeper price.
All the information was even more basic than Ted had expected. Not particularly surprising, given wood elven attitudes to Spellcrafting, but disappointing nonetheless. If he was going to progress with any real pace, he’d have to practice and discover it on his own
So long as he started small, the risks would be minimal. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had hundreds of miscast spells explode on him already today, and he could check that there wasn’t an infinitely recursive feedback loop before finalizing the spell.
What to start with? Not fire—Jeremy would bury him alive for that. Something simple, like a Light/Projectile combination. Casting the Light Orb spell had been trickier than many others, but the difficulty had been in the Orb form rather than the Light effect.
First, though, he ought to spend that Spellcrafter perk.
Stability (0/5): Increase the stability of crafted spells by 10% per level.
Efficiency (0/5): Decreases the mana cost of crafted spells by 10% per level.
Power (0/5): Increases the potency of crafted spells by 5% per level.
Speed (0/5): Decreases the cast time of crafted spells by 10% per level.
Durable (0/5): Increases the duration of crafted spells by 15% per level.
Cohesion (0/5): Cohesion penalty while crafting spells ignores one aspect per level.
They weren’t as powerful as the magic casting perks, but they would stack with them—and they’d apply to every spell he crafted, not just a single school.
The cohesion penalty was interesting. The book had mentioned a penalty for using more than three aspects. It hadn’t pinned down how big the penalty was, beyond that it was big enough no beginner should even consider it.
He’d have to investigate that at some point, but for now, more than three aspects would be wholly unnecessary extra complexity. Regardless of the numbers, Cohesion was a poor choice for a first perk.
Really, only one of the choices seemed reasonable for the moment. If his spells weren’t stable enough to cast reliably, Spellcrafting would be useless, so Ted put a point into Stability and started crafting a spell.
For his first spell, the choice of components was easy: both hands (mirrored casting), and a word to trigger the spell. English seemed far too mundane for spell words, and his Latin was almost non-existent. That left Wood Elvish as the natural choice. Keeping it simple, he chose the word for light, “enmir”.
The basic knowledge of Spellcrafting flowed into Ted’s mind as if it had always been there. Unnerving as that was, it made the process simpler than expected. Taking the Projectile form from the Firestarter spell was easy enough, creating a very short list of forms known. He repeated the process for both the Energy and Light aspects of the Light Orb spell, each coming easily and starting their own lists.
The easy part out of the way, he closed his eyes and focused inward on the harder task of assembling the spell.
The three aspects came easily to mind, offering themselves up as premade pieces in the puzzle. All three had various connectors that had to be hooked up in a way that was stable. The more efficiently he did so, the lower the cost of the spell.
Almost like a minigame.
Ted traced out thin lines of magical energy between the aspects, connecting them together like circuitry with as little waste as he could manage. The magical threads could be designed to allow mana to flow one or both ways, or in more complicated ways like transistors. Fortunately, such intricacies didn’t seem necessary for such a basic spell.
The Spellcrafting skill provided some guidance but also made it clear he’d have to experiment to find out exactly how each aspect was connected up.
Through a lot of trial and error, Ted determined which connectors accepted input, which took outputs, and which were fine with either. Yet, even with that knowledge, connectors sometimes broke away when he made connections elsewhere.
Whatever the rules were, they weren’t that simple. No matter what he tried, the aspects simply refused to be joined together.
His jaw clenched and a frown formed on his brow. Efficiency was always an important goal, but perhaps not the right one here. Ignoring the hardening of his stomach, Ted bound together the Light and Projectile aspects with a tangled, wasteful mess of magic. It took a few more attempts, and his chest hurt just thinking about how inefficient it was, but the two aspects finally connected in a stable way.
That left Energy. Using the same heavy-handed techniques, he set about attaching the Energy aspect. It took longer, with many more discarded attempts but, at long last, he hooked Energy up to the Light effect.
For one fleeting moment, he was on top of the world. Of course, that moment of triumph was rather ruined by the Projectile form detaching itself and refusing to reconnect.
Ted sighed. He might have to properly read the fucking manual. The section on assembling spells had to have something useful that he’d missed.
Rereading it, he found an entire section on exactly that topic that he had somehow skipped over. Apparently, each aspect had its own requirements to be stable, and they varied from caster to caster. Only careful experimentation could reveal the rules that had to be satisfied. The more efficiently their needs were met, the lower the mana cost of the spell.
Part puzzle, part optimization problem. Ted smiled. Both things he was good at. Reassured that there was a pattern to find, he carefully returned the book to his pack and set about Spellcrafting with a methodical approach and newfound zeal.
As he experimented, he couldn’t shake off a sneaking suspicion that it was a heavily obfuscated and visual version of coding. Working on that assumption, he treated the aspect connections like arguments to function calls and proceeded from there.
Even if the hypothesis was shaky, the Light and Projectile aspects gave up most of their secrets quickly enough under that assumption. Maybe his nearly finished degree wouldn’t be completely useless here.
Energy, on the other hand, had far more finicky needs. Who would have thought a magical aspect could be so fussy? It took an hour’s hard, mentally taxing work, testing and retesting every possibility he could think of, before he finally got it. But, after all that toil, he had the requirements for all three aspects nailed down.
His heart raced. This was it, the cusp of creating his first spell. Pent-up impatience pulsed through his veins, urging him to hurry up and craft it already.
He breathed deeply, forcing himself to slow down. It was worth taking his time and getting it right, not least with all the warnings everyone thought he needed. Even so, tingling excitement buzzed through him, irrepressible and distracting.
Ted focused inward on a new spell, discarding his tests. He drew together the Energy and Light aspects, drawing out the lines of mana required to fit the pieces together as solidly as possible. It would not be an efficient spell, but it didn’t need to be.
Energy connected to Light. Projectile connected to both. The rules worked, and the connections all remained intact. That didn’t mean it would work correctly—no, that would be too easy—only that it was castable. Ted smirked to himself. This was the equivalent of code compiling. Now he had to beta test it.
A knot tightened in his chest. Beta testing didn’t usually come with the risk of death. If it did, he’d have been dead hundreds of times over already.
He double-checked his work, making sure it obeyed all the rules he’d managed to derive. It did.
The spell hummed impatiently, longing to be known and used. It still wasn’t on his spell list yet—was it not a real spell until he’d cast it?
There wasn’t any further he could go without live testing. With 5 potency and the full five second casting time, his inner sense reported the spell’s base stability as 153%. Adding 18% from his Intelligence and 5% from his Energy skill, that would give it a 176% success chance.
Great. If it blew up in his face, he could be sure that it was a mistake crafting the spell rather than in casting it. Very reassuring.
He pulled himself to his feet and walked away from his pack. The spell was small, minimizing the damage it might cause, but he didn’t want to risk damaging the village’s precious books. Mild-mannered as he was, Reltan might actually hunt down and murder him if they were destroyed. Probably once for each book.
How far was far enough? For all the useless warnings, they’d been light on specifics.
Twenty yards? Thirty?
Holding to the side of safety, Ted put fifty yards between the danger zone and Reltan’s precious books. Confident that was enough, Ted drew on his mana.
It responded eagerly, dancing to his control even as it pushed against its boundaries. The motions came easily, like knowledge forever known but long forgotten.
The spell formed before him and demanded to be cast. “Enmir!” He pushed forward with his hand and a streak of silvery light shot out, illuminating the forest. The bolt hit a tree and vanished, letting darkness close in again.
Spell crafted: Lightbolt (Energy/Projectile/Light)
Cast time: 5 seconds
Components: Somatic (mirrored), Verbal (Enmir), Mental
Potency: 5
Mana cost: 24
Base stability: 153%
Spellcrafting skill increased 1 → 2!
Progress! And a new perk point, to boot. Boring or not, stronger spells would always be useful and more mana efficient, so Ted put the point into Power.
What spell to make next? Something useful in combat? Definitely not Fire. Since he’d already cracked the Energy and Projectile aspects, it made sense to reuse those for his second test—Lightning it was, then.
Now he knew what he was doing, determining the needs of the Lightning aspect was far quicker than the other three. It didn’t take long to assemble a Projectile spell, keeping it low powered enough to be completely stable.
All that remained was casting it.
Nearby was a clearing with a dip and an area of packed earth littered with small indents and craters, presumably for magical target practice. He headed there, almost bouncing as he went. This was going to be good. Soon, he wouldn’t have to rely on bows and daggers anymore. He could put his high Intelligence to work and be a real mage.
In position, tingling with excitement, he drew on his mana. It flowed easily, pouring into the spell and filling it to the brim.
All that power, right at his fingertips! He pulled the threads of magic together to complete the spell.
It didn’t seal. Mana kept flowing, filling the spell beyond its limits.
Ted’s smile fled. Guiding the spell didn’t work. Coaxing it didn’t work. Forcing it didn’t work.
Every thread of mana he used to rein it in only added to the power swirling around him. Every attempt made it more powerful, more unwieldy, more impossible to control.
Fuck.
Ted cut off the mana, and with it, any illusion of control.
White energy enveloped him. Searing pain ignited every inch of his skin.
The world went black.