Lyura left first for the airport. Lis and Mahya were busy at the computer, looking for a good place to work, and left the next day.
For the first couple of days, I didn’t know what to do with myself. After spending so much time with good friends, suddenly being alone was tough. I wandered around Lleida a bit, but didn’t even feel like buying anything. I wasn’t exactly down, just lonely. Rue picked up on it and kept clinging to me, licking my face, rubbing his head against me, reminding me I wasn’t really alone.
God, I love this dog.
After two days, I realized I needed to snap out of it and get back to my assigned homework. I headed to Madrid, booked a hotel, toured the city for a couple of days, and then returned to my studies. I delved into the book Mana Constructs for Spell Creation and studied in earnest. My study sessions were brief and inconsistent because of all the other things I had going on, but I had already covered about half of it. It took me a week to finish the book and another two weeks to do all the exercises and practice creating the basic mana constructs. The simplest forms were an orb, a cube, a tube (whether small for a dart or bigger for more complicated spells), a mesh, and a shell.
The shell and mesh were the trickiest since they didn’t have standard shapes. The shape of the shell was contingent upon the spell it was meant to hold or the object in which it was embedded, whereas the shape of the mesh depended on the item or area it was meant to influence.
Another complication of the mesh construct was that all area-of-effect spells needed an open mesh; however, a mana construct couldn’t have open ends because it would cause mana leakage, leading to the collapse of the spell. You couldn’t just “close” the edges together; that would short-circuit the spell, making it collapse. Instead, you had to build a complex lattice at the edges with a single, continuous line of mana that “closed” all the mesh lines, sealing the spell. It was like weaving with geometry, as the mana lattice had to have precise, repeating measurements.
The hardest part was that most embedded mesh spells needed a shell, but the two would conflict and interfere with each other. I had to learn to balance them perfectly to keep them stable. This made me realize that all this magic stuff was fascinating, but way more complicated than I’d initially thought. My initial thought about magic was, “Hey, it’s magic. You wave your hand, and everything you want to happen happens.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case—it had laws and rules like a complex technological device that I needed to follow.
Bummer.
Once I got comfortable with the basic shapes and could create a simple open mesh, it was time to move on to the next step. Before diving in, I toured the city some more, stocked up on food for my future journey, and visited the Prado Museum—couldn’t miss that.
Despite having the mana dart, I couldn’t apply it to my class because of the super annoying “no double benefit” rule. So, I started building offensive spells. I figured I’d start with the classics: fire and ice. There was probably a reason those two showed up so often in the books I used to read.
I didn’t have any fire mana handy, but I had an idea. I rented a one-bedroom apartment with a fireplace and burned two logs from Tuonela. At first, the mana released was wood and nature, but after about two hours of burning, it converted to fire mana, giving me the aspect I needed.
In the middle of my fire experiments, Rue approached, his usual heavy paws thudding against the floor. Suddenly, his voice shouted into my mind, making me wince, “No! Understand!” The frustration in his tone was unmistakable.
“What don’t you understand?”
“TV.” He huffed, his tail flicking in irritation.
“You don’t understand the TV?”
“Yes! No! Understand!” His ears flattened, and he pawed at the floor.
Curious, I went over to the TV and saw it showed a channel in Spanish. “Maybe we can find something in English?”
“No! TV! No! Understand!” Rue barked and shouted mentally.
I was looking forward to the day he would start speaking in full sentences at normal volume. Trying to understand him from a single shouted word was pretty challenging.
I bought him Local Adaptation: Spoken Language—another 5 points gone—and understood why Lis called it the “Starting Package”. It never ends. I spent the 500 mana for Spanish, and he went back to his show.
He must’ve spent too much time with Lyura; she infected him with her TV obsession! At least he could change the channels with telekinesis and didn’t need me to do it.
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I got back to my fire experiments and focused on the aspect—and burned my hand.
Ouch!
The next time, I was smarter. I built a mana mesh around my hand, like in one exercise, and continued focusing on the fire aspect. Although I caught it once, I still needed to study it more deeply. After another half hour of trial and error, I finally had a flame in my hand. I had to keep feeding it mana so it wouldn’t go out, but there it was—a flame I’d created!
I WAS A REAL WIZARD!
I just sat there, admiring my flame, captivated for a solid ten minutes. Finally, I called out, “Rue, come see!”
He trotted over and leaned in to inspect the flame. Without hesitation, he sniffed it and immediately started sneezing, his whole body jerking with each sneeze.
“Bad! John!” Rue shouted, his tone accusing.
A chuckle escaped me, I couldn’t resist. “I’m not bad, John; I told you to look, not smell.”
“Bad! Friend!” He insisted, his eyes narrowing as if to show he was serious.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “Next time, don’t sniff fire. But look, I created a flame with my magic! I’m a real wizard!”
He shook his head, shouted, “Strange!” and went back to the TV.
It was time to move to the next stage. I filled a bucket with water, created a somewhat thick dart construct, filled it with mana, applied the fire aspect, and pointed my hand at the bucket. The dart just sat there on my palm, not going anywhere.
Huh?!
No matter what I tried, it wouldn’t budge. The only thing that worked was physically throwing it into the bucket. Clearly, I was missing something.
As I began checking through Lis’s books, I ran into a snag. I’d paid the mana to learn the spoken and written languages of some of these books, but I hadn’t actually read the languages to learn them; I’d just paid the mana. So now, I had to read a page or two of each book to recognize the title and figure out if it would help me.
Unfortunately, none of the books I’d paid the mana to understand had the solution I needed. So now I had to spend a thousand mana on each language, read a page or two, identify the title, and move on to the next book. After 8,000 mana, I still had found nothing useful.
I needed to up my regeneration. Looking at my wizard spirals, I remembered I fixed one to 95% but still had an old one at 93%.
Maybe that would help?
Unraveling the spiral was fast; building a new one was harder. But finally:
Second Spiral Completed
Quality: 95%
Checking my regeneration, I saw it went from 7 mana per minute to 8 per minute. Not much of an improvement. Then I remembered the mana levels had risen.
So maybe not an improvement at all?
I built another spiral, and this time, it was an actual battle—I didn’t know why, but each spiral got harder to create, and the difficulty jump was significant. After I finished the third, I knew there was no way I was attempting a fourth; I’d definitely fail.
Third Spiral Completed
Quality: 95%
My mana regeneration rate increased to 12 per minute.
Needing something to do while my mana regenerated, I sat at the computer and started looking for workshops. I needed to refill the points I spent on Rue.
* Paella and Sangria Workshop with Dinner and Drinks
* 10 Tapas 2.5-Hour Cooking Class
* Flamenco Class Experience
Workshops were a lot more fun with friends.
Sigh!
After another eight books, I still didn’t find a solution.
* Latin Dance & Salsa Class Experience
* Unique Traditional Cooking Class of Sardines
* Leathercraft Workshop in the Rastro of Madrid
Another eight books—still no solution.
* Private Bachata Class
* Velázquez Tech Museum + Paint your Menina Workshop
* Stone Carving in Cercedilla/Madrid
* Small Group Make Your Own Bird Feeder Workshop in Cercedilla
Yes! Success!
After three more books, I finally found Action Aspects for Spell Creation. I also had another 9 points—my total was back to 150.
I celebrated by touring the Royal Palace and checking out the Royal Collection for an extra fee. The next day was Sunday, so I went to the El Rastro flea market to see what I could find. It was huge and in the historic center of Madrid. Initially, I took Rue with me, but when he saw the crowd, he wanted to go back home to watch TV. He was binging on some cop show in Spanish.
After returning to the market, I wandered around the stalls and bought quite a few things. At some point, my red light started blinking, but I didn’t want to stare into space with all those people around, so I waited until I got back home to check it.
Level up
+3 wisdom, +3 perception, +2 luck, +3 free points
Profession: Merchant Level 7
My lowest stat, not including Luck, was Agility at 37, so I added the points there. I agreed with Lis; we needed all the stats.
I got back to my studies and was halfway through Action Aspects for Spell Creation when my phone buzzed. Lis’s name flashed on the screen, and I answered with a quick swipe.
“Are you still in Spain, or have you left for Italy?” His voice came through the line, calm and straightforward as always.
“Still in Spain, in Madrid.”
“Fly to Toulouse airport in France, rent a car, and drive to Balma. Call me when you get there, and I’ll give you further directions,” he instructed.
“Why?”
“We’re done with the project and want to show it to you.” There was a hint of excitement in his voice.
“Okay, see you in a couple of days,” I said, doing cartwheels in my mind. I was super excited since I missed both of them.
“Rue! We’re flying to see Lis and Mahya,” I called over the noise of the TV.
“Friends!” he shouted back.
I needed to practice talking to him telepathically. It would at least save my throat. He was blasting the Tv at an insane volume—he liked to hear the gunshots loud, and I had no idea why or how. I always thought dogs’ ears were sensitive.
I booked a flight for the next day and went to bed, excited to see my friends soon.