Scene 4A - Spells

Vince stood tall, his back firm his hands itching to go. He had already finished reading the earth and gravity spell books, and now it was time to test the theories and craft his own spells. His first master had told him that to be a true mage one must create their own spells from scratch. All beginner spell books said the same thing on the very first page, and contained only theories, a few basic spell models, and basic spell building runes to help out the budding mage. The mage had to rely upon themselves to use what was given to them to make the most effective spells they could.

For example,if two practitioners with the same level of talent learn from the same earth spell book, one could come up with an earth spear spell while the other could create an earth wall. But if both practitioners came up with an earth wall, one of the walls could be stronger, last longer, and use less mana than the other. It all depended on how well the mage could attune themselves to the laws of the world and their creative comprehension.

Even if a mage wanted to teach their spell models to another, based upon their student's comprehension, it's possible that the spells couldn't be effectively be passed down. The main reason was that the strength of the spell wouldn’t be at the same level as it was originally, since the spell model had a high chance of being incompatible with the new user, which would cause it to be much weaker in various areas than it should be. Although the heavens allow a few exceptions to the rule, those were rare and almost impossible to find.  

‘Let's start with a simple spell, <=Earth Wall=>’, Vince closed his eyes and concentrated, beginning to shape the mana around him. He straightened out his chosen runes within his mind and reached out with his right hand, slowly lifting it up. Nothing happened at first, but soon a rumbling sound could be heard in front of him. A one inch long, two feet wide, and six inch tall wall rose from the ground, appearing before him.

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‘It’s pretty small, cast time sucked, and I doubt it could even pass into the range of a 1st rank Core formation spell, the lowest ranked spell for a mage, but let’s test its defense.’

Channeling the mana in his right hand, Vince created an hammer made out earth and swung downwards with all his power. The wall crumbled into dust at the lightest touch.

‘So crap defense, the cast time sucks, and the size isn’t even nipping at my knees... I have a lot of work to do before it’s even presentable. Let’s try it again!’  

With the amount of mana in the air, the time he needed to gather it was nearly negligible. Vince went through theories in his mind, crafted runes, casted the spell, studied the effects of the remodeled spell, and made notes in a board of earth to track his progress. As a result, his <=Earth Wall=> spell steadily grew stronger.

But sometimes problems would arise, causing his spell model to fail, and Vince couldn't figure out why. When the problems persisted, Vince would switch gears and make use of gravity magic to train his his body doing sit-ups, push ups, and squats, use earth magic as weights, spending the rest of his time in a body training frenzy or mess around with gravity magic to relieve the stress caused by the problems with his earth magic.

‘From the theory I learned from that gravity spell book, I can lift, move, expand, crush, accelerate, and decelerate objects with simple runes, making extremely fast spell models. I wonder how fast can I make an object go?’

Layering a quickly created earthen ball with his own accelerate spell model, he pointed it in one direction and watched it slowly and steadily travel at a snail's pace. Not what he had expected.

He then created a bigger ball of earth the size of his head and used Gravity magic to crush it down, condensing it to the size of a fist. Vince tested the strength of the new fist sized ball of rock by smashing it with his trusty hammer to see if it would break. It didn’t.

Vince smiled to himself and decided to use this new method to strengthen his <=Earth Wall=>.