Ruven and Wynather decided to combine their training sessions for intelligence based casting into a single month long block. It takes a long time to learn any of the arcane arts and just two weeks isn’t enough of an introduction for the newly awakened to really even grasp the basics. Since red & black magic rely on the same basic intelligence based casting infrastructure as summoning, combining the sessions made sense. It would also allow one instructor to demonstrate a technique while the other instructor circulated among the students and observed their efforts to recreate it. So pedagogically this was a great plan, but in practice it was a very difficult month owing to the fact that Ruven and Wynather had very, very different styles.

***

Lyle was doing extremely well in the mage training, which made sense for a couple of reasons. Lyle had high Intelligence and was very focused on honing his skill in black magic to support his potential to deal direct damage. Things typically came easily and worked out well for Lyle, I think that is probably something to do with his fae heritage as a half-elf.

Ahead of the awakening Lyle didn’t know that he was a half-elf, but it was right there on his status sheet.

Category

Value

Notes

Name

Lyle Anders

Race

Half-Elf

Origin: Earth

Class

Mage - Black

HP

100

MP

300

Spirit

1000

Strength

100

Intelligence

140

Agility

120

Dexterity

120

Wisdom

120

Charisma

100

Discipline

50

Ingenuity

50

Lyle wasn’t sure how he felt about the revelation that he wasn’t fully human. He also wasn’t sure if it was true or if he should tell his friends about it. He had decided to not mention his elven to any of the instructors. None of his relatives had pointy ears or lived in treehouses that he could remember. He wasn’t sure how this could have happened and he knew that bringing it up would just lead to more questions to which he had no answers. Lyle had been a bit more withdrawn and reserved than usual ever since he learned of his unusual family tree, but since it had coincided with everyone’s awakenings no one really noticed.

For now Lyle was focusing on learning to use the simple wand that Ruven had provided him to cast basic spells. Higher level spells typically required skill tomes to provide the detailed information necessary to effectively cast the spell, but the extremely basic elemental phenomena spells that they were working on could typically be cast based on instruction and experience alone, provided that the caster had sufficient magic particle control to manage the activation. Lyle was already able to generate both an ember of fire and a spark of electricity. A couple of times he caught a look of surprise on the usually stoic Ruven’s face as the instructor observed Lyle trigger a basic spell with only a week’s worth of instruction and practice. Lyle was betting that was much, much faster than the old mage expected.

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***

Sarah had little difficulty mastering the basic techniques necessary to generate sparks and embers with her wand and she was making progress in applying what she had learned so far to activate a basic cure spell. She was sure that she would make some inroads shortly there as well, but she was diligent about hiding her progress. She did not trust her instructors, especially stuffy old Ruven. Sarah was much more interested in learning from Wynather, who at least was not stealing creepy glances at Lyle when the others weren’t looking.

Fortunately for Sarah, and anyone else who decided that it was best to keep the details of the stats and abilities close to the vest, it was apparently considered uncouth to ask other awakened individuals about their stats. Since there supposedly wasn’t a way to observe the Unified System status screens of another awakened person, the others would have to use good old fashioned observation and relative comparisons to get an idea of her stats and skills. Since Sarah was also further obfuscating her tallent by providing any interested observers with bad data points and misleading information, it was unlikely that any of the others would have an accurate sense of what she could do.

It was a thin line between paranoid and prepared and Karl’s attempt to oust Harris was cause for additional caution. Sarah wasn’t surprised that Karl had called for the vote to remove her friend, but there was definitely plenty happening behind the scenes to which Sarah didn’t have a good line of sight just yet. Plenty had changed, but people were still pretty predictable and she was expecting a storm to blow up well before the tutorial was over.

Sarah was sure that Harris wasn’t fully on the level with respect to his departure either. If Sarah was a little paranoid, Harris was a certified skeptic. He would keep things to himself as a matter of principle. She knew that he would share more with her eventually, but she also knew that it wouldn’t happen until he was good and ready.

Sarah was surrounded by friends and teachers, but it sure didn’t feel like she was in a safe place. She did trust Queakers, but Sarah was still working through what made sense with respect to the dog and her unexpected development. Queakers seemed pretty stable currently and frankly her new attitude was pretty badass. However, it was just tough to know how much you could trust someone that little more than a month ago could have been convinced to do just about anything for a handful of roasted peanuts and a belly rub.

Sarah decided to bide her time. She didn’t correct any of the misconceptions about her that flowed from the arrogance and preconceptions of her instructors. There would be a reckoning, but it wouldn’t be today. At this time she would simply puzzle through the cure on her own and see how high she could push her red magic skill while the others figured out basic casting. At this rate it was going to be a very long month.

***

When Deldes and Delirin told me about the stone bears in advance, I thought that would be something that they would do for each subsequent session. Unfortunately for me, Deldes and Delirin were rarely consistent in their treatment of me beyond the ubiquitous cackling that formed their homemade laugh track for all of the physical abuse that I experienced during our time together. I had no idea what we were hunting until I heard a faint buzzing around noon on the first day as we trekked northwest of the Emerald Sea.

The forest wasn’t quite as dense here as the territories that we had visited on prior trips, but I still couldn’t get eyes on whatever was buzzing in the area. I asked Delirin what the sound was and she said “dragon flies.” Notice the space between the words “dragon” and “flies,” you can see this space because I am writing this down for you, but when Delirin answered, I couldn’t hear the space. She got a real chuckle out of her answer, so I am sure that she knew that I would misinterpret her response.

I was looking for large insects when the first fireball washed over my energy armor. I wasn’t unprepared because of Delirin’s little pun, I was unprepared because I had no idea that we were going to be “hunting” what appeared to be flying, fire breathing chameleons with translucent insect wings. After a few more fireballs, I got hit by a little lightning bolt, so yeah there were some that didn’t breath fire, but that did shoot electricity. They could blend in with their surroundings like an actual chameleon and they zipped around in small groups. Back in town after the trip, I looked up the proper collective noun for these little guys and it is clowder in case you were wondering.

So according to what I had learned thus far from my self study and asking Tanyl questions, energy armor could be designed to protect against just about any phenomenon that one could encounter in nature, magical or otherwise. However, there were always tradeoffs. If your energy armor mitigated a wide range of damage types and phenomena, it would either require more magic particles to operate, require additional specialized materials and magical circuitry, mitigate significantly less damage of certain types or some combination of the three.

I was using a model of energy armor that focused on broad coverage at levels of magic particle consumption that would be accessible to a beginner like me. It was a top shelf model, but it wasn’t going to handle 100% of the damage from heat and electricity that the dragon flies were dishing out. The attack power of the dragon flies was mercifully low, but with multiple enemies launching frequent attacks there was definitely some danger from the aggregate accumulation of damage and, frankly, exhaustion. I did have additional equipment that I could have used to boost my resistance to heat and electrical damage, but I did not have it with me, because you know why would I? I had a goal to purchase or develop the most powerful defensive setup I could and this was a great wakeup call to do just that.

In the meantime I needed to figure out how to not get slowly fried to a crisp. I figured that with the small menaces flitting around and attacking Deldes and Delirin in addition to me, I could pick up some tips by watching the elven duo deal with the pests on their own. The elves were much more graceful in their movements to evade the attacks than I was, which wasn’t something that I was going to be able to emulate, but they also had some sort of stealth skill that made them hard to focus on and, apparently, target with the dragon flies offensive magic. I needed to talk with them about how I could learn a similar skill. Beyond grace and stealth their strategy was simple: fast, accurate ranged attacks targeting the origin of each shot of offensive magic.

My first instinct was to use the magic particle gun, but the dragon flies were apparently pretty accomplished magically as they could deflect my particle beam even when I did manage what would have otherwise been a solid hit. What they couldn’t deflect was a standard physical round from one of my magically enhanced pistols. I holstered my magic particle gun and I had already used the strap attached to my magic rifle to swing it around to rest on my back. It was time for a good old fashioned dual pistol shootout.

Getting hit with small fireballs and lightning bolts definitely messed with my aim, but I eventually got into a pretty good rhythm during this first encounter. The dragon flies were not good eating, but they could be processed to yield some useful materials for certain artificers. Dragon flies were a scourge to any team looking to resources in the forest, so this was apparently also some kind of public service. Now that she had her fun by surprising me, Delirin revealed that we’d be traveling quickly from one dragon fly hot spot to the next for this hunt. We’d be trying to exterminate as many of these pests as possible while also collecting as many useful materials as we could along the way.