Mom had decided that we’re staying on the isles until the egg hatched. She was unwilling to let me go to the Serpent’s Maw without her supervision – at least not without advancing my class again.
Since we were in no more of a rush this time, given that the Isles were our home territory, mom insisted that she will teach me to cast all the way to advanced magic circles the proper way this time, including all the foundations we’d skipped over in our rush to get the evolution unlocked.
And so, a few months passed as I spent them learning to create magic circles all the way to the advanced grade.
***
“Keep a steady hand, Kiara. Don’t rush.” Mom said as she gently held the egg.
Having used mom’s domain field for my attempt, Mom was sitting on a chair of warm ice in the middle of the snow as I labored to create the special advanced-grade magic circle that would unlock my class advancement. My brows were covered in sweat at the stress of the delicate work I was doing.
Counterintuitively, advanced-grade magic circles weren’t any different from intermediate-grade ones in terms of complexity – those already include any number of magic circles, borders, and mana lines in them. What truly makes the advanced-grade much more difficult to create was the fact that it had to be designed with moving components.
“Ah-ah-ah! Don’t use your racial traits to help you! You need to create the circle with nothing but your skill.” Mom warned.
I clicked my tongue, having had no intention of doing so. Still, I can’t deny that the temptation of simply brute forcing my way to a solution with [Kin of Mana] was tempting.
When considering the requirements to unlock my supreme rarity class, mom was initially stumped. What kind of spell would need all of the base elements at the same time? Mom had researched this little project in her spare time, while she grinded the fundamentals of sorcery into my very bones.
By the time I had learned to cast advanced-grade magic spells, mom had come up with a spell that made good use of them all. In the meantime, our lessons included a lot of memorizing what mom called ‘staple magic circles’ – so much so that I gained the [Photographic Memory] skill.
“There. It’s done.”
I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, breathing a sigh of relief at the completed circle. Mom stood up to inspect my handiwork. A few moments later, she hummed with approval.
“Splendidly done, sweety. All you have to do now is activate it.”
For a second, I took in the circle I just built. The circle contained seven circles – three apprentice grade and four elementary-grade. The elementary-grade ones formed a square with an apprentice-grade circle in the middle. The corner circles made use of wind, water, earth, and fire mana respectively, while the center, apprentice-grade circle used arcane-filtered mana.
Four mana lines extended out of the center circle in the shape of a cross, while each corner circle had a diagonal mana line pushing out away from the centre circle, making them look like a wheel without rims.
The ‘rims,’ however, were the moving components of this spell. On one side was an apprentice-grade circle that interpreted commands from the caster, and on the other was another apprentice-grade circle that held the mana and redistributed it.
The rim would be spinning, so as to input both mana and commands periodically, keeping all of the circles functioning.
Illustrative Sketch [https://i.imgur.com/Zo5IGyo.png]
I took a deep breath, before putting in all seven kinds of mana through the apprentice-grade mana battery circle. The circle began glowing, and the mana slowly began moving around the rim, making it glow with every centimeter it crossed.
When the mana reached the bottom circle, it began to glow as well, and the ‘rim’ slowly began to spin counterclockwise. Soon, mana seeped through the inner mana lines into the five inner circles, and they all began to glow, indicating that the magic circle was now functioning.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
The ground beneath the snow began rumbling, and it wasn’t long until the stone beneath the circle pushed off the snow, rising to a height of five meters. The stone began to break and warp into the rough shape of limbs, with its legs and arms separating clearly from the center piece. A large hole at the bottom of both arms formed, with powerful mana signatures being emitted from inside. The magic circle shrank, and moved to the top of the warping stone, where a small head began forming. The dark holes on its face slowly became glowing, cyan eyes that looked back at me.
The [Omni-Elemental War Golem] spell was successfully cast at the ‘mere’ cost of 25,000 MP, marking the moment I first cast a spell that no one else was capable of casting.
“YES, I DID IT! I FINALLY DID IT!” I yelled, jumping up and down before throwing my arms around my war golem.
“Congratulations, dear. Why not take it out for a test spin?” Mom said.
With a flick of her wrist, hundreds of ice statues depicting Alanus Alypius – the bastard that tried to enslave me when I was an Abyssal Drakeling – rose from the snow all around us.
Chuckling, and eager to see what my golem could do, I gave it the quickest command I could think of.
“Golem, break that statue!” I said, pointing to the nearest statue to us.
The moment the words left my mouth, the golem pushed me out of the way, making me eat a fistful of snow as it barreled into the statue, smashing it into smithereens.
“You might want to be a little more specific than that – it’s not using its elemental cannons, but brute strength. Not necessarily a bad decision, but its strengths lie elsewhere.” Mom chuckled.
Rubbing the snow out of my hair, I grumbled before I gave the golem another command.
“Lemmy, destroy a statue with each of your elemental cannons!”
“…Lemmy?
This time, Lemmy raised an arm towards another ice statue. A powerful gust of air exploded out of the golem’s arm, propelling a sharp rock straight into the statue and shattering it violently. It then pointed its arm at another statue before a continuous breath of flames erupted from it towards the statue, melting it on the spot.
When the statue was completely melted – and all the snow surrounding it in the process – the statue turned its arm yet again towards a third statue, before unleashing a cutting stream of water, chopping up the statue into tiny pieces. Lemmy then stopped moving, having completed its orders.
“Sweet! Also, since when could water cut things up like that?!” I asked incredulously.
“Normally, it can’t. If you’d paid close attention to the magic circle you were creating, you would have known that it included tiny specks of sand in the water to give it that effect. Although I am happy that you’ve memorized the spell to an extent that you did not even understand what it did, we’re still going over every little detail once again to make sure it sticks.”
“Urk…” I winced.
Eager for a distraction from the disturbing, near future, I gave Lemmy another command.
“Lemmy, destroy all the statues with your cannons!”
***
Fortunately, the golem managed to destroy all the statues without running out of mana. Unfortunately, the golem had run out of water, fire, wind, and earth mana long before the statues were destroyed, forcing me to command it to finish the job with its physical body.
“Its mana battery is about half-empty. Not bad.” Mom said.
The golem used the cannons twenty times each before running out, then destroyed nearly two hundred statues with half its regular mana. As I refilled its mana, my MP dropped by roughly 5,000 points.
“Huh. It can hold 10,000 MP. Does that mean the body took 15,000 to form?”
“It’s not that simple, sweety. The golem is greater than the sum of its parts. More importantly, did this finally unlock your supreme class?”
“Oh, right.”
I quickly checked, and I wasn’t disappointed.
[The Crusher]
Secret Class Requirements:
* Can speak, read, and write fluently in an Akashic language.
* Possesses a minimum of high affinity for all attributes.
* Possesses at least five divine shards.
* Cast a spell with all base attributes using an advanced-grade magic circle.
* Has not evolved to rank A or above.
* Possesses a limit breaking skill or title.
Those who wonder what it feels like to collapse under their own weight, need to fit somewhere significantly smaller than their bodies, or retire from their worldly routines to find employment as a root vegetable need only antagonize The Crusher to get her help. With her helping hand, friend and foe alike need not worry for the future.
“It’s here, it’s here!” I said, shaking in excitement.
The last roadblock in my way is now gone; the last few months of study had finally paid off! And the best part is that, unlike evolutions, advancements are often euphoric experiences!
“Congratulations, darling.” Mom said with a smile.
I smiled back at her as I took in the prompt.
Do you wish to advance your class into [The Crusher]?
Seeing the words before me, I accepted.
…Or at least, I tried to.
No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get the words ‘yes,’ ‘I accept,’ or anything like them out. I couldn’t even silently agree to it, my intent vanishing before it could even form.
Before I realized it, my breathing was growing shorter and quicker.
“…Kiara?”