10 Days out of Kret
“So, you wanted to know more about Power Stances?” Alexandar hummed as he walked alongside his charge, the both of them having just finished packing up their camp and continuing to their travel.
“I do. I think I managed to copy the one that I saw that vampire, Tyrius, pull off. But it doesn’t feel quite the same…” Alec mumbled, mulling over his words as he tried to find the correct phrasing to get his issue across to the man.
Alexandar was more than familiar with the issue Alec was running across, having met many, many people over his three hundred years of living. In fact, one of his greatest friends in the entire world had much the same issue Alec now faced.
Both of them were natural born geniuses, true savant’s that seemed to have an intrinsic knowledge and skill in their particular field of expertise. Of course, neither of them got to where they currently were, and Alec would never reach his full potential, without a whole lot of practice and hard work but that wasn’t quite the issue at the moment. Alec was currently running into the issue of trying to explain something that he just naturally, subconsciously, understood and had no formal knowledge in.
Already Alexandar could see that being unable to find the correct wording was beginning to annoy the late teen, which he wasn’t surprised by in the slightest. Though, he supposed, being unable to explain something like this was far from the worst issue that Alec could have been facing in the wake of the combat he was forced to go through yesterday.
“How about you give me a demonstration? I’ve experienced Tyrius’ Fortress Piercer enough times that I should be able to figure out where you’re going wrong.” Alexandar suggested, getting a small, quick, nod from the teen as he dropped his pack on the ground and got into his position.
It took the teen a moment to make sure that everything was perfect before he launched the attack, burying his blade so deep into a tree that the bark of the organism was flush against the handguard of the blade. A surprised look flashing over his face before he frowned and glared at the tree and his own blade.
“Less an explosive piercing strike like Fortress Piercer and more a strike focused on slipping straight through the defense of an opponent. Honestly, I’d say that your version is more refined than that old bat’s!” Alexandar crowed, holding his stomach as he began to laugh over the idea of a seventeen-year-old making a better technique than his own rival.
“But it wasn’t what I was going for…” Alec muttered, waiting a moment for Alexandar to calm down from his laughing fit so that he could actually respond, albeit while rubbing some tears out of his eyes.
“Oh, I’m well aware of that, Mr Dius. It's because you didn’t actually perform a Power Stance, you just, imperfectly, recreated the technique that it’s based off.”
“Huh?”
“Right. So, a Power Stance is a type of Magical Contract –let’s keep walking while we talk– that one makes, not with someone else but rather with themselves.”
“A…contract with yourself?” Alec asked, picking his bag back up and starting to walk alongside Alexandar once more. “Sounds a little redundant, doesn’t it?”
“Hmmm, possibly because you’re thinking about it in the wrong way.” The elderly mage hummed, scratching his chin as he walked. “Magic, and thus mana, is all about the imagination. It works because, quite honestly, we believe it does.”
“That sounds…really dumb.”
“Eh, I suppose it is, a little bit. If you really want to piss off a formal thaumaturgist just say that and you’ll get them to start ranting for the next half an hour, guaranteed.” Alexandar grinned at the teen, placing his hand on the opposite side of his mouth to the teen as if trying to keep that information a secret from the trees that surrounded them.
“I’ll…keep that in mind, I suppose.” Alec muttered, he never really thought he’d need to know that little tidbit of knowledge, but it was probably better to play along.
“Great! Anyways as I was saying, Magic and Mana work primarily off the power of our imaginations. Our minds shape the mana we create in ourselves, and intake from nature, and transform it into the magical effects and spells we call Magic!” Alexandar exclaimed, creating a small pop and crackle above his hand in a brilliant display.
“Huh. I never knew that…”
“I’m not surprised to hear that.” Alexandar hummed with a small shrug, getting the briefest, flattest, look from his charge as he tried to figure out if the older man was insulting him or not. “But I know what you want to ask already! If it’s all based on our imagination, why do we need magic circles and whatnot? We actually don’t.”
“Eh?” Alec cocked his head to the side, confusion clear on his face.
“That’s how I reacted too!” Alexandar laughed, pointing at the teen’s expression, though he sobered up after only a second or two this time. “But it’s actually true, we don’t need any of that to cast. See?”
A bead of magic appeared in midair and fired into the ground in front of Alec, sending the teen flying four meters back in a pulse of mana and a small yelp. His feet touching the ground again after his violent backpedal and his right hand already on the hilt of his blade.
“YOU CRONE!”
“Oooooh! What a tongue on you, young man.” Alexandar snickered, a wide, toothless grin stretching his lips as Alec just narrowed his eyes on the man.
Though it didn’t last for long as Alexandar just made a small hand gesture for Alec to come back over as he continued to snicker.
“Alright, alright, come back over, Mr Dius. I promise not to fire another surprise attack at you like that again.”
“Hm…” Alec narrowed his eyes further at the man before walking back over, the two of them continuing to walk.
“So, as you just saw, you don’t need magic circles, or runes, or even verbally spoken phrases to cast. But they do have their own uses. Magic is shaped by our imaginations, but our imaginations can be….fickle, and fuzzy. Some people have a really hard time picturing things clearly and some people make really clear images in their heads but add in superfluous details that ultimately take away from the effectiveness of the spell. So, these control mediums, which you could incorrectly call the origin of contracts, are a way developed by early magi to give as much control to the usage of a spell as possible.”
“Incorrectly call the origin of contracts?” Alec parroted, one of his eyebrows raised with a small tilt of his head.
“It's because they aren’t contracts, and really anyone worth their salt wouldn’t ever call them one, but they share the general concept of ‘give and take’ that magical contracts work on.”
“Right, so, finally getting onto magical contracts, what are they?”
“Ah, yes. I was getting around to it, Mr Dius, don’t worry.”
“Uh huh.”
“Hmph, ye of little faith!” Alexandar huffed, crossing his arms dramatically for a moment before unfurling them once more. “But as I said before, Magical Contracts work on the concept of ‘give and take’ something must always be taken, and something must always be given. So, for example, you can’t just make a deal with someone to make them give you all their power in exchange for absolutely nothing. In the case of Power Stances, the contract you make is one with yourself. Sort of like a self-imposed limit to increase the power, speed and/or magical effect of the attack you’re about to unleash.”
“How is that meant to work? Like your imagination levelling the idea of a self-imposed restriction with a boost in power? Why not just boost the power yourself?”
“You’re nearly there, Mr Dius, just not quite yet. You’re right in the theory that it helps the subconscious imagination equalize the cost and output, but wrong in terms of how it functions. When you make a contract like that with yourself, and follow through with it, the world itself will reward your dedication and grant you additional power.”
“You can’t be serious.” Alec muttered, his gaze going flat, and his back slouched forward a little as he struggled to believe the words that had just come out of the mage’s mouth.
“Oh, but I am! To be fair, saying that the ‘world’ itself rewards you wasn’t quite right. We’re not actually 100% certain on the cause for the sudden influx of power when completing a Power Stance or a similar, spell based, self-contract. We do know that the mana from the surrounding area fills in the gap for us but not quite why.”
“Huh. Man, Angelica would be losing her mind to learn all this.” He snorted to himself, getting an interested hum from the old man before he continued. “Ok, so I think I get the basic theory behind a Power Stance, you recreate a specific stance before its respective attack and then are able to release a stronger attack for a fraction of the cost it would take to do it naturally.”
“Precisely!” Alexandar exclaimed, a finger pointed in the air, before he bent his wrist to point that exact same finger at Alec directly. “Just remember that it has to be exactly the same stance. Even a degree of rotation difference in your wrist, for example, will stop the Power Stance from happening in its entirety.”
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“You’re kidding.”
“Ohhhhh I wish I was, Mr Dius. Some people can spend their entire lives just trying to get one Power Stance down pat. Many mages will see the effort needed to get one down pat and just refuse to learn one, instead focusing their attention on spellcraft instead.”
“…Too frail to strike a pose, huh?” Alec calmly teased his travel companion, a small but smug grin on his face as Alexandar growled childishly and his pointed finger suddenly became a lot more accusatory.
“How dare you! And right after I deigned to teach you this information too.”
Alec just raised an eyebrow at the old man’s theatrics, waiting a few seconds until even Alexandar himself broke, his hammed-up anger crumbling to dust as he began to laugh. His right hand on his stomach as he lent back a bit while keeping pace with the much, much younger man.
“But sorry to burst your bubble, Mr Dius. I actually know three Power Stances.”
“Is that a lot?”
“Oh, not in the slightest. I’ve met monsters that know over twenty-five. I think the publicly known record is forty-three.”
“For- huh?” Alec stumbled over his own foot for a moment, unable to believe the words that had just left the old man’s mouth.
“Exactly. Look far enough, look wide enough, and you’ll always find another kind of monster in this world, Mr Dius. Now, let’s try and teach you how to initiate a magical contract, shall we?”
“Uh, yeah. Ok. Can’t wait.”
XXXxxxXXX
Meanwhile, Blessed Catalyst
“How do you think Alec is doing?” Felicia asked, fiddling with the pendant of Solyre that hung from her neck.
Currently the three of them were wandering towards a particular section of the forest outside Kret, looking for a small breeding ground of dracolings so they could cut down their population to stop them from overbreeding.
An individual dracoling was no issue for any of them. Even as a member of the Dragon-lineage they were the most watered down and weakest member of the entire draconic bloodline by a large margin. However, the issue came in their sheer numbers.
From what Angelica had been able to find out, through a late-night library binge that Peter had, quite literally, had to drag her away from; the main issue with dracolings was that the infamous mana generation of dragons was put to poor use in their hands. Spewing mana from every orifice and scale at such a constant rate that it left the dracolings themselves horrendously weakened at all times.
Yet, with enough of them gathered in one place, the displaced mana from all of them actually began to flip back around into a positive. Creating a feedback loop that filled the dracolings with ambient mana faster than they themselves could release it, forcing them to grow larger and stronger in response.
However, it had been almost ninety years since the last time any pack of dracolings had been a threat to anything more than a singular [Silver-rank], and it was quests exactly like these ones that kept it that way.
“I reckon he’s already learnt something new.” Peter grinned enthusiastically, getting a soft smile from his sister as she placed two fingers on her chin and tilted her head back and forth in thought.
“I just hope he actually accepted the Veteran-assistance program they have.” Angelica finally commented, getting a small nod from Felicia and a confused hum from Peter as he cocked his head to the side.
“Oh Peter, come on.” Felicia muttered; disappointment clear in her voice as she noticed the confusion on his face.
“Woah, woah! How did this turn on me all of a sudden?” The Party leader yelped, his hands raised in surrender as the disappointed gaze of both his sister and one of his best friends weighed down on him.
“Because I told you about it at breakfast the day after Alec left.”
“Because she told us about it after Alec left.”
The immediate, overlapping, replies from both girls made Peter wince and smile reflexively as he backed up from the both of them, his hands still raised in weak surrender.
His red spikes bobbed briefly into his vision as he backpedaled from the two young ladies and constantly looked between the two of them, not quite sure who to pay more attention to currently.
“What could you have possibly been so busy with while I was trying to explain what Alec might have been up to?” Angelica accused her brother, her rose coloured eyes narrowed as she leant forward with her hands on her hips.
“…Breakfast?”
“…May the sun’s light cleanse Peter’s sin’s-“
“H-hey! Don’t try to cast a purifying ritual on me!” Peter yelped as he watched Felicia pray, her purple eyes glued directly onto the rising sun.
“Felicia, just leave it. We both know how Peter is in the mornings.” Angelica sighed, her face in her palm and her other arm supporting her elbow.
“I feel so attacked right now.” Peter muttered; his comically depressed look sharpening as he caught a rustle in the bushes behind him.
None of the members of Blessed Catalyst, current or past, were slouches when it came to reflexes. It was an important part of why they felt so comfortable being this relaxed in the wilderness. But even compared to Angelica and Felicia, who were already drawing forth mana to draw some runes, Peter was a step ahead. His blade out of his sheath and his entire body turning with a strong step towards the rustling bush.
The crimson red eyes of Peter reflected back at him in the cold, animalistic slit eyes of the dracoling that had launched itself at him out of the bushes. A small hiss of released air left the creature’s open maw, only to meet the sharp edge of Peter’s blade as his arm finally caught up to the rest of his torso. The large longsword bursting out of the reptilian creature’s tail in a burst of blood and viscera as both halves of the freshly bisected creature hit the ground with a wet splat.
Peter paused for only a moment to wince at the brutal, disgusting, sound that the dracolings body made on impact with the ground, but that singular moment was long enough for Angelica to pick up on her brother’s slack. A fireball shooting past him to strike the bush, igniting it in a small, rushed intake of air.
In a disorganized cloud of frenzied movement and panicked shrieks, dracolings began to launch themselves out of the ignited bush in a number that almost made it appear like a magician pulling creatures out of his hat.
There were only about 30-40 dracolings, based on Angelica’s extremely rough estimation. Enough to warrant some caution but nothing outright dangerous for the three of them. It would take about five, maybe seven, minutes to deal with if none of them messed around.
“Peter, feel bad for the creature after we aren’t being attacked by monsters.” Angelica droned, throwing another two fireballs out at the small swarm of draconic monsters while Felicia threw a small, shining, ball of light towards one of the smaller congregations of dracolings.
To their credit, despite their general lack of intelligence, the dracolings at least had the intelligence to avoid directly touching the small bead of light as it flew in a small arc towards them. However, unfortunately, they did not have the intelligence to avoid the bead of light entirely. And so, when the bead hit the ground and detonated, none of the congregated creatures were able to avoid the small explosion of hard-light shrapnel that tore into them.
Yet for all its fanfare only a single dracoling fell to the ground dead, having had one of the hard-light fragments land a lucky shot on its eye and not the harder scales that coated the rest of its form, as what happened with the rest.
“Right, right, sorry!” Peter called out, turning away from his sister to begin fighting.
The battle was quick, lasting only about 3 minutes, despite Angelica’s estimate. For the most part, Felicia stayed in the back and played support for her two friends, healing Peter whenever they happened to injure him and aiding in the mana gathering of Angelica’s spells. Yet, even with the constant healing and each of his strikes being debilitating, if not lethal, for the small draconic creatures, it was not Peter that caused the fight to come to such a short conclusion.
No, it had been Angelica that had finished the fight two minutes ahead of her earlier estimation, and all because she’d had an idea after reading a story the night before.
‘If I slow down its travel speed and make it more susceptible to destabilization then maybe…’ Angelica thought to herself, lines of runic letters swirling around her hands as a condensed ball of fire began to swirl to life.
Now, Angelica as a [High-Sorcerer] worked primarily off intuition when it came to magic. Everything about it tended to come naturally to her, from initially finding her internal mana stores to bringing it out and manipulating it, it was all instinctual. However, in this exact moment in time, such natural, instinctual control of mana came back to bite her.
What she had just done, without knowing, was impart a contract on herself regarding the particularities of her fireball spell to increase its explosive damage. But, of course, she did not know exactly what she had just done, and she did not know the repercussions of what she had done because of that.
So, when the fireball in her hands began to flare out and bubble like a pot of boiling water, she could react in no way other than unknowing panic. Her right hand flicking out towards the dracolings, with the destabilizing fireball hovering over her palm and flicking out slowly towards the creatures with her hand motion, and both of her legs pushing off the ground with all her might.
“PETER!”
The young woman’s scream was not one of warning, it was one of uncontrolled, clueless, worry. Whether for herself or for Peter, nobody knew.
On pure instinct, Peter launched himself back towards Angelica, twisting as he moved to sprint forward and grab her. The young man having caught up and grabbed his sister as if her retreat hadn’t been with as much speed as she could possibly muster.
And with his next step, the fireball destabilized fully, detonating with an explosion of fire that could have swallowed a house whole. The ground shaking beneath the red-haired teen’s feet, making him stumble in his retreat to the relatively safe distance Felicia stood at, and the shockwave blowing over the two of them and knocking him over fully.
It took only a second for Peter to be back to his feet with his sword out before him, his breathing heavy from adrenaline and his eyes wide; darting this way and that in preparation for more dracolings to come after them, only for none to come.
With a pained groan, Angelica pushed herself into a seated position on the ground, looking over at the charred crater she had created in the middle of the otherwise densely packed forest. The occasional dracoling flinching and stumbling on injured and unstable legs as they tried to escape from the party, the pack of 30-40 dracolings cut down to only 7 thanks to the endless curiosity of Blessed Catalysts very own [High-Sorcerer].
Seeing that their mission was done, and the remaining dracolings were in no state, mental or physical, to continue their assault, Peter finally lowered his blade and turned back to his sister, worry evident in his expression.
“Angelica are you- eh?” That worry didn’t last long, however, paused in its tracks by the slowly escalating look of excitement on his sibling’s face.
‘Of course. Leave it to Angelica to be excited by a spell that dangerous…’ Felicia thought to herself, rolling her eyes good naturedly as her best friend slapped her hands on the ground and leant towards the soot-coated crater.
“That. Was. AMAZING!”