Chapter 158 – Casting Improvements

Tom hesitated before responding to Dimitri’s question. There were lots that could benefit him, but they were in a war and anything he got, robbed someone else. He had to restrict himself to what he truly needed.

“Nothing’s changed. I want to do a full tour, upgrade my bloodline as far as it can go, and to do that as soon as possible.”

“I’m working on that. Gathering all the required regents is difficult.”

“Beyond that, I don’t really have a need for anything specific.”

“Not even a teleportation spell?” Bao asked.

He looked at her in surprise. That was a particularly pointed question. “Have you been spying on me?”

“No, of course not. But Eloise’s parents are high ranked adventurers. I’m friends with them and I’ve even done raids with them. Since I’m stuck here, I’ve been catching up with my friends and those two, they’ve changed. All they ever talk about is her. They’ve gone parent loopy and you and Briana have been mentioned in those conversations. More Briana to be honest, and if Dimitri hadn’t corrected otherwise, I would swear she was the reincarnator and not you.”

“So they told you about the training spell.”

“They did. I did think it was a curious selection by a ten-year-old.”

Tom shrugged. “A convenience spell versus something to help me fight better. It wasn’t really a choice.”

Bao chuckled. “I see you haven’t lost your drive.”

“No, I can’t afford to. We’ve got a competition to win even if some people think I shouldn’t bother.”

She broke eye contact. “As I said you’ve done your bit.”

“I remember,” he interrupted. “I don’t need to hear it again and I don’t understand the how, but I certainly have internalised the intent of the message.”

“Have you really? Are you sure you understand what I’m actually saying?”

Tom shrugged. “We’ll find out.”

“We will. Anyway, if I could give you something to use the training stone on would you take it?”

“I’m not developing teleportation abilities from first principles, so if I get offered a useable skill I’m absolutely taking it.”

“How about this?” She asked, producing an elaborate orange stone with intricate black whirls across the surface. From the complex detail, it was probably upper tier four or possibly even lower five.

“It’s too much,” he said instinctively.

She frowned. “I wish. It’s a price butcher Identify it before you judge it.”

Now that he had his system room, the general identification that all humans relied on worked and he didn’t need to push items through his spatial storage and lean on his title as a workaround. Pop it in his spatial storage, have his title upgrade it and supply a full identification and from that infer what the original, lower tiered item probably did.

It had not been super reliable, but in his opinion had gotten the job done. But today there was no need. The full description immediately appeared on the wall for him to consume.

Skill: Environmental Teleportation – Tier 5

By channelling this skill, and combining with an appropriate sensing skill greater than tier 4 you can teleport through any matter which you have an affinity of over 80 with.

The identification came with a sense of intangibles as well. Even with his current developmental level, he could use this to teleport hundreds of metres away. Admittedly, such an effort would push him to the cusp of skill exhaustion so he wouldn’t use it, but twenty to thirty metre jumps could be repeated regularly with little cost apart from the couple of seconds of channelling time.

Tom looked up at Bao. “It’s niche powerful. But,” he shrugged. “This is designed for someone with an air affinity.”

“You have Earth no? To my mind it works with both.”

“It’ll be more efficient with air.”

“Marginally.”

“You have far more strategic options with air.” He argued.

She shrugged. “The question is whether you can use it? Is your affinity over eighty and if so take it. Let’s be honest it has next to no sale value. It’s an out of combat teleport with lots of restrictions.” Bao told him. “Selling it to humans with a high enough affinity works because they can purchase the sensing skill. But if that’s my target market I’m not getting tier five prices for it. As for native species, they need to have the affinity and also have held onto the relevant tier four sensing ability and not have teleportation options in their build. I haven’t run into anyone fitting that criteria in the twenty years since I got this.”

“I find that hard to believe. There have to be some species out there specialising in air magic and I can imagine them adding teleportation to their existing class skills would be an amazing bonus for them.” He started to argue and then stopped. “Your right this doesn’t really have a market does it.” Tom was still sure it did, but remembering the benefits of Known Heretic convincing her not to give it to him was stupid. If he accepted this, Bao would get its full tier five value back times two over the next couple of months.

And even if he chose not to use the ability himself, he could use it to set up his gifting chain.

He smiled up at her. “I’d love to accept it. I was already planning on getting a tier four or above sensing skill so it won’t cost me to take it. As for when I can use it?” He shrugged. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to create such a high tiered sensing spell from scratch over the next five years but once I earn experience, I’ll be buying one and then this will help.”

“I’ll try to source one in the meantime.” Dimitri volunteered. “Hm… an earth-based sensing ability I should be able to get you something. Everyone interested in prospecting would already have bought the skill directly so without domestic demand they’ll be a good chance someone will be looking to offload it.”

“Well, that’s a deal then.” She tossed him the stone, and he caught it and took a moment to admire the contrast between the black and orange that made the black patterns appear like they were almost suspended in the air a few millimetres from the stone surface. Then, with a thought, it vanished.

“You have spatial storage?” she asked him in surprise.

“I do and I’m heartened to see that Dimitri’s keeping some of my secrets.”

Above him, the bright lights filled with runes had dimmed. They were running out of time.

Tom nodded appreciatively at Bao. “It looks like our time’s up. Thank you for coming and for the gift I’ll make sure it goes to good use. While making sure I don’t die,” he said hurriedly when he saw her argumentative expression. “What you came to say I heard, and I think I understand. I’ll definitely reconsider how I approach things.”

Seconds after he finished speaking the top rune stopped being linked to the others, and Dimitri raised a warning finger. There was no need as he had already retreated into his system room to let his title Hunted Reincarnator control his body and prevent it from drawing the attention of the assassins. 

Tom recalling the gazette looked up..

“Show the top five on the ladder.” He ordered, and the wall leapt to obey.

1.      Bored Babette—19,173,212

2.      Isozaki Yasuyuki—8,812,324

3.      Silas Ramu—6,231,980

4.      Everlyn Louise Campbell—5,742,611

5.      Tom Mark Brayshaw–3,913,605

In the safety of the system room he whistled, impressed. A single individual had contributed almost ten percent of humanity’s total points. He wished he had checked the ladder before his meeting with Dimitri as it would have been nice to have been able to talk about the person who was contributing more than anyone else to his species’ future.

Especially someone with such a weird name. It had to have been one they had personally picked as opposed to what their parents had named them, which was curious because it was not a functionality that he had realised existed. Thor had chosen what he wanted everyone to call him, but the name on the ranking ladder would have been his birth or potentially his legal name and not his god themed selected moniker.

He shook his head, puzzled by the mystery of that name, but it didn’t really matter. Eventually he was sure he would meet Bored Babette and then he’d find out.

Out in the corridor, he glanced around and wondered what to do. Turning ten was a milestone birthday and there was a tradition of birthday week where he could do anything. The theory was that the contents of the experience shop would have opened up a massive wealth of options for the young child. For the first time, you could seriously see where you could take your life and how much classes and skills could help.

This week was to allow the kids to get a grip on those opportunities. To go and meddle in alchemy or ritual magic or whatever amazing option they saw in the experience shop that might take their fancy as after all, self motivation was the most reliable path to greatness.

Standing outside Dimitri’s office door, he wondered what he wanted to do. It certainly wasn’t going to involve tinkering with any stupid crafting path.

Unbidden, his avatar controlled body took him to the obstacle course. The massive gymnasium when he reached it was empty, as everyone was in classes. The other outcome would have been it being in use by an entire cohort, but luckily that wasn’t the case.

This, he decided, while taking control of his body, was not a bad idea.

At the entrance, he stretched while he planned the nature of his training. The door, like it always did had locked and runes which were far less powerful than the ones in Dimitri’s office radiated across the ceiling. They would provide a moderate level of protection from remote observation and scrying, but considering the assassins would assume the real Tom was out in the wilderness fighting things he was in little danger. The locking mechanism also ensured that he would get a warning before anyone could enter, allowing him to stop any suspicious activities before outside observers entered and spotted them.

Rumours said that some older teenagers took advantage of that feature as the isolation rooms when above eleven wouldn’t lock if more than two people were in it. Child Tom instinctively rejected the implications… because ew…y would you? Adult him suspected it was a continuous problem for volunteers to manage. Every second or third cohort there was an unexpected pregnancy. It was time to get going. The banners in the dining hall were green, Danger Sense was silent and there were no monstrosities hanging from the roof either. That last he confirmed after a moment of searching.

It was time to cut loose and develop some of the basic skills he had been deliberately avoiding acquiring. Ready for a few hours of hard training, he chose to line up on a course graded for twelve-year-olds. It was two steps down from the fourteen-year-olds ones that he practiced on with the girls, but now that he had his falling skill or at least a version of it, he no longer had to avoid gaining acrobatics.

As he ran the course, he laughed in joy as he threw himself through a variety of ridiculous movements. He would do single and double flips on the leaps between platforms, perform cartwheels on balance beams, throw caution to the wind and do absurd jumps up the rock-climbing wall and then carefully controlled falls when that went awry.

The entire time, Fateful Earth Body hummed softly in the background. Bending reality and twisting physics in subtle ways to make everything easier. While he had been trying to regain the earned falling skill, he had deliberately avoided manoeuvres that could lead to Balance, Gymnastics or Acrobatic skills.

Now he attempted to do all of them as perfectly as possible.

The earned criteria for them would be along the lines of spear mastery. It was simple. He just had to perform a large percentage of an unknown list of bodily sequences perfectly.

And just the change of pace in the training was fun.

He fell.

Collision Mitigation activated, the wooden wall bent when it should have been rigid and the ground when he thumped into it was unnaturally soft. He bounced and barely suffered any fall damage.

In moments, he was back up. There were skills to acquire and while they weren’t going to add much to his battle prowess even a small gain if it came effectively for free was worth acquiring.

An hour later, after over ten gut busing runs of the lower complexity course he prepared for the first of the thirteen-year-old courses. Touch Heal kept him going by banishing the exhaustion that would otherwise have gotten to him and the surprisingly insignificant cuts and bruises he got from two or three story high falls.

It went smoothly, so he migrated to the second, then the third, and midway through his third run having failed the first two there was a ding.

He finished the course and then, puffing away at the finish line he looked at the time he had achieved. It was a long way from his personal best.

He snorted. What else was he expecting. With the amount of showboating he had been doing, it was impressive that he got within twenty percent of it like he had.   

He stepped into his system room and was greeted by empty metal walls. “Well,” he demanded, “what did I get?”

Words formed on the metal, and his eyes skimmed the details. It was unfortunately what he had expected tosee.

Skill: Balance – Tier 1

Grants improved balance, and as you gain levels, provides supernatural support.

It was not Acrobatics or Gymnastics, which were the primary skills that he was going for, but it was still a small bonus for future combat.

Tom smiled.

The result was not the perfect one, but progress was always welcome.   

He went back to the training and four hours later, when the door seal was broken there hadn’t been any more dings.

Freedom week passed in a blur with Tom doing solo exercises and then halfway through his ninth day a volunteer found him and told him very firmly that he needed to go back to class and that was why he was why he was working on his ritual disks sitting on the blue grass with Briana lazing across from him.

He glanced at her. She loved her magic and practiced it with an intensity he would have expected from a reincarnator. But she was a child with a ‘get out of boredom pass’ that she was mercilessly abusing. “Bri, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve already said that.”

“You should be in class. Mathematics is important.”

“How? Learning magic is more important we’re in a war.” A column of water rose from the ground, undulating up and down in rhythm with the flicks of her finger as she directed it like a conductor. “More important and far more interesting.”

“You can practice in class.”

“Can’t. I get yelled at.”

“Then don’t get caught. Cast without them noticing. Providing you keep the manifestation hidden you’re safe. For goodness sakes they’re trained to turn a blind eye.”

“Don’t want too. It’s not like you’re going.”

“Because I know it all. I’ve done maths years more advanced than this..”

“I know it all, too.”

“Bri, you got sixty-two percent in the last test.”

“Twelve percent more than I needed to pass, and I beat over half the class.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I beat you.”

“That’s because I was trying to be in the middle.”

“Me too.”

“Are you lying?”

“No.” She refused to make eye contact.

“You should go and learn.”

“No, I’ll review the memory dump when I leave here.”

“It’s not the same and you know it.”

The water column kept springing up and down at her command. He checked his own mana and more than enough of the earth affinity flavour had regenerated.

He studied Briana and knew he wasn’t going to win the argument.

With a defeated sigh he focused internally. This was the hard bit. Tom focused as he mentally went through the steps he needed to occur.

“You look like you’re trying to poop.”

He half jumped at the interruption. “What did you just say?”

She giggled. “You look like you’re trying to poop.”

“Where do you get these ideas from? Do you even know what someone looks like when…”

He stopped talking as she scrunched up her eyes and grimaced like she was making a huge effort. One of her eyes opened, and she saw him staring at her. She smirked. “You looked like that.”

Tom couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t look like that. If I looked like that, I’d be sore. The way you were contorting your face would be painful.”

She stopped pulling the face and rubbed her cheeks. “A little, but that’s what you looked like.”

He rolled his eyes at her. “Shoo. I’m here to train.”

“With your poopy face.”

He sighed in exasperation. “It’s not a poopy face.”

“Uh ha,” she wagged a finger at him. “You can’t see yourself.”

“Whatever. I need to focus.”

He concentrated, while taking care not to scrunch up his face at all, and he let the spell form. Then with his mind he positioned where the Earth Spike would erupt out of the ground. His domain rubbed up against the spell and he held them together but separate.

Sweat ran down his face.

The hard bit was coming.

Attuning, incorporating, merging, integrating or whatever the appropriate terminology was, was not simple. For Touch Heal, the secret had been stuffing the spell into a tube and then pushing it in such a manner that it came out at the end in an even flow. Spark had involved having the domain take the energy of the cast and tearing it into bits to spread through the entire volume of his more powerful skill. While Earth Manipulation had worked basically by him mimicking the sense of claiming ownership of his rock with his domain and after that the spell had attuned easily.

They had all been different, and he hadn’t found the trick for Earth Spike yet. While each process was unique, there were similarities. What he had to do was clearly related to the underlying nature of the spell to be absorbed.

How did Earth Spike work? He asked himself.

First was the anchor point of the spell, then the shaping and visualisation and finally the release. Four steps, positioning, sizing, speed and angle of emergence and then activation.

He had tried and failed to mimic each of those processes. This time, he forcefully smashed the two together in explosive action like what happened when it burst from the ground. For a moment there was resonance, but then the explicit differences between the spike and the domain took hold. The two clashed and the spell form was shredded by the higher tiered skill. The mana he had invested vanished without having done anything to affect the real world.

He bit his lip.

“Did you fail?”

He glared at her. “Go back to class, unless you want to remain as an ignoramus your whole life.”

She giggled and disappeared.

Tom had sufficient mana for another attempt, but he didn’t leap straight into it. Instead, he meditated on what he had felt. The abrupt, almost violent, forced combination of the two had produced a resonance. How could he expand on that connection?

His mind once more went to his three successes.

The funnel imagery had integrated with Touch Heal because the spell was about delivering the healing to where it was needed. Basically, the vision constructed didn’t need to capture the whole spell to enable attuning, but only a part of it. For Spark, the approach had worked because of the way electricity functioned. Ultimately, lightning was the building of charge within a large volume, usually a cloud, before an activation event occurred and it snapped into existence in the familiar crackling bright line of energy. His act of spreading the spell throughout the domain mimicked that. Earth Manipulation was the same. Once you knew where everything was it was only then that you started the commanding the rock to move.

Earth Spike was a sudden focused upthrust of stone. It had to come from the ground, but the type of surface didn’t matter. It worked as well on dirt as rock and while sometimes it was truly a physical stone that impaled the enemy often it was just dust given solidity for a period.

The essence was an explosion of rock. He focused on that feeling. The act of triggering the spell at a distance and the violence of a shard of rock launching itself at the monster’s feet or throat.

Almost without realising it he cast the spell through his domain.

There was a sense of rightness and a spike of stone, twenty metres away brutally erupted , shredding the blue grass.

He smiled to himself at the success.

He loved his domain. Using it wasn’t easy as he had to integrate the spells before he could use them, but the boost in strength he got when he succeeded made it worthwhile.

With a thought, a spear of rock exploded out of the ground almost forty metres away.

He grinned. The domain had turned a situational, mainly defensive spell, heavily limited by range, into a dangerous offensive option.

The attack spell had erupted over thirty-five metres away from him! That was where even a shouted conversation became difficult to hold and it was effortless to do. Thirty metres of range from his domain and an additional five from the spell. He idlily wondered how many tiers of power extending the reach of the spell by seven times was worth. Definitely one, but probably two or three.

He flicked his finger for fun. He only had two points of mana, but the thin delicate spear shot out and crashed into the one he had just materialised.

The boost in power was undoubtedly greater than one tier even if that benefit never showed itself on his status sheet.