The Dive: Birth of a Hero Page 6
If I just made swords constantly for the next three days, we’d have to keep tossing them into the sea. So, I put a hand on the wooden planks of the floor, and closed my eyes to focus. Since I was going to be using this spell a lot for the next few days, I took the time to memorize it before we left Hell. “I have discovered the origin, and bring it forth anew. Arise, and bring your light unto the world.”
The diagram for the spell formed below my hand, and visible blue strands of light flowed from my arm into the air in varying arcs. Each strand of light circled downwards to enter the diagram, swirling together to form a glowing ball of light. Slowly, I lifted my hand up and the ball of light remained in place. My entire mana pool had already been drained by this one spell, so I wait for it to take shape, leaning back on the floor as I found myself suddenly short of breath.
Within the blue light, black specks began forming, which then grew and grew, enveloping the light and forming an iron ball. This ball continued growing, at first the size of a marble, then a baseball, not stopping until it was the size of a 24-pound cannonball. Damn… 3500 mana and all I can make is one cannonball at a time?
My fatigue was already starting to fade, since it was simply caused by a lack of mana. With my recovery speed, it didn’t take long at all for it to get past the danger zone. Admittedly, the process was slowed a bit since the ship was draining my mana as well, but it still only took three minutes to get back to full power again.
My first course of action was to take the cannonball and use Customize on it to see how it turned out. As expected, it was just an average cannonball with no increased abilities. Well, let’s fix that. Using the Customize spell, I engraved the Wind Blade spell across its surface. Thanks to my Arcane Marksman ability, whenever I fire a projectile engraved with a spell like this, it will turn it into a Spell Shot. Spell Shots are simply projectiles that are further empowered by spell abilities.
With my new Wind Shot cannonball, I placed it carefully with the others and got back to work. For the first day, I planned to mass produce cannonballs to completely fill my supply. Tomorrow, I would do a mix of creating objects and then enchanting them. On the third day, before we arrive at Kirrin, I planned to see if I can create a new Origin spell on my own.
The day continued on in this pattern for several hours, making a single cannonball every four minutes. Eventually I ran out of empty crates and started tossing them overboard, which left Denise shaking her head as she watched. In total, I must have made two hundred cannonballs, keeping only 150 of them. At the same time, I had gained four levels in Origin Magic, and three each in Mana Pool and Mana Recovery. Ten levels today, not bad.
Since creating a single cannonball took practically my entire mana reserve, this was a good method to train Mana Pool and Mana Recovery, which allowed me to increase my magic ability while focusing my stats elsewhere. Every level in Mana Pool raised my mana by a single percent. At low levels, that wouldn’t seem like much at all, but once you invest enough into Intelligence, a single percent goes a long ways.
Likewise, every point in Mana Recovery increased my recovery speed by a single percent per minute-- the equivalent of ten points in Wisdom. Between my items, stats, and that talent, my total mana recovery right now was over two thousand points per minute. This meant two things. First, I had enough mana to last in combat for a good while and do whatever I pleased. The second, it was very difficult to find a way to train my mana. If I had started off with this kind of training, then I would easily have them at a master level by now.
I wonder, I used practically all of my mana when I was making a sword before, as well. Maybe this spell is designed to use all but the last drop of magic from whoever uses it? If that is the case, then it would explain why Origin magic can’t be used in combat. Unlike the Creation ability granted by my grimoire, which allowed me to invest a small amount of magic to make a temporary construct such as the bow I walk around in to pretend I’m an archer with, this makes items which are permanent and become a part of the world.
I still didn’t understand why it was impossible to make currency with Origin magic. When I asked Lilith, she laughed at the question and replied with a simple ‘isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?’. Apparently my ability to create currency really was a cheat. This cheat has been acknowledged by the game with a ∞ symbol in place of the Gild amount I possess. Before it was ???, but I guess it updated itself. Right now, my sheet looks something like this.
Name: Jin
Race: Human
Title: Mage, Emissary of the Underworld, Ritualist, Arcane Savant
Fame: 1670
Level: 168
Gild: ∞
Soul: 124
Health: 750
Mana: 3045+600
Strength: 20
Agility: 40
Endurance: 140
Wisdom: 244+30
Intelligence: 500+20
Luck: 10
Attack: 10 + 10
Defense: 10 + 55
Talents: Magical Talent 25(+2), Magical Knowledge 25(+2), Navigation 5, Nature Magic 17(+1), Summoning Magic 12(+1), Runescript 6, Discovery 4, Divination 3(+1), Enchanting 7(+1), Infernal Magic 25(+1), Arcane Marksman 8(+1), Sailing 11, Mana Pool 5, Mana Recovery 7, Origin Magic 8(+1)
Title Bonuses: +2 Int/Wis, +400 Mana, +2 Magical Talent/Knowledge, +50% Mana Recovery
Equipment bonuses: +20 Int/Wis, +500 Mana, +10 Wis, +50% Mana Recovery, Elemental Resistance +5%, Magic xp gain +50%, Magic Talents +1
Really, I have too many different talents… I sighed to myself as I looked over the page, having spent practically all of the points I’ve earned since reviving into my Endurance to increase my health. Compared to the meager amount I had before, I was already more survivable. Especially if you included the damage reduction I received from my grimoire. Although, that ability was directly related to the amount of mana I had left. I didn’t have a way to confirm, but I suspected that it reduced ten percent of my current mana from damage.
To increase my immediate ability to defend myself, there were several choices. I could increase my mana, and thus my ability to absorb damage with my grimoire. I could increase my health, making me harder to hurt in general. Also, I could get some defensive spells and enchantments. Finally, I could find a tank to join my party.
For the time being, I decided to increase my health until I could find a tank. I had plenty of mana, and the armor I wore regularly was created with my grimoire’s ability--meaning it couldn’t be enchanted. Once I found a tank, I could begin focusing on increasing my Wisdom again. I was interested in seeing what kind of ability I’d get once it hit 500. When my Intelligence hit that benchmark, I received the devastating Magus Wrath spell.
As I am now, I’d have to rely too much on Denise if we got into a difficult fight. Remembering how her body looked, impaled on the wooden teeth of the nature dragon, I was determined not to let something like that ever happen again. Even if it meant becoming a mage tank, taking all of the hits for myself. I absolutely wouldn’t let Denise be killed again.
From the moment I woke up the next morning, I immediately began working. Today I was mixing Origin and Enchanting training, so my first goal was to make a proper platform to enchant items on. Using my Origin magic, I created a stone tablet, approximately five feet squared and four inches thick. I had determined previously that as long as I knew the properties of a material, I could create it. By that rule, I was unable to make Mana Wood because I didn’t know how it got it’s special properties.
Once I had the tablet, I used my Sculpt Earth and Stone spell on it. This allowed me to carve a diagram into the stone. Specifically, the diagram was one for Leaf Blade Assault, a spell that caused all the leaves near the target to come under the control of the caster and surrounded them with a Wind Blade. At one end of the outer circle was a semicircle connected to it. This was the real enchanting diagram for advanced spells, that you attached onto the diagram of the spell itself.
If I were to enchant
a customized effect, rather than a spell into the item, I’d need a unique enchanting circle. I imagined that kind of thing was used for effects like my ship’s autopilot. The question now was, what did I want to enchant with Leaf Blade Assault? Placing my hand on the floor next to the tablet, I chanted the Create Lesser Object spell and made a green metal disc with a leaf insignia that had two swords crossed behind it.
Since I wasn’t at the point where I was granting permanent enchantments, a disposable item like this was best. Placing the disc on the tablet, I put my hand on the enchanting diagram and channeled magic into it. Unlike with my Origin magic, I hardly noticed my mana dropping for a few seconds. More like its recovery slowed down for a bit. Imagining the activation sequence--tightly gripping the coin and then throwing it-- I created the first of many items. Like the Message Tokens, I named these items Forest Assault Discs.
I made about twenty five of these before moving on to another item. Erasing my previous diagram, I replaced it with the one for Create Passage. This was a spell that I had used, repeatedly, to dig a tunnel through a mountain. Of course, that mountain later turned out not to be a mountain at all, but that’s not the point. The spell itself works, and after reading through the advanced enchanting book I knew how to make it a permanent enchantment.
The item I created to hold this spell was a key made of ivory, with a single topaz embedded in its handle. According to the book, a topaz was the best stone for holding earth magic. Similarly, rubies were best for fire, diamonds for light, and so on.
Placing the key in the diagram, I began the enchanting process. This time, there were two semicircles attached to the main spell. The first was the same as before, whereas the second was designed to turn the topaz into a mana storage unit for the spell. Since topazes were aligned with earth magic, it could draw energy from the ground as it used the spell.
This time, the activation process was simply placing the tip of the key against a stone surface and pushing inwards. The passage created was set to be six feet squared, and would get deeper until you stopped pushing on the key. Of course, someone has to be holding the key for it to work, otherwise dropping it would result in a bottomless pit and nobody wants that.
That would be an interesting strategy for a doomsday device. Just drop a magical item that constantly tunnels into the depths of the earth. I shook my head at that thought. There was no need for me to create a doomsday device of any kind. Instead, I focused on creating more of these keys, which I called Stone Keys. In total, I made ten of them before moving on to the next item on my agenda. There was one more item that I wanted to produce before I was done for the day.
The item I used as a base this time was a simple copper ring, with a ring of obsidian pebbles along its edge. Obsidian, according to the infernal crafting guide, is the aligned material for infernal magic. Of course, the stones were rough and unpolished, because my skill with this spell wasn’t all that great. Still, it would serve its purpose.
The diagram I drew on the stone tablet this time was the one for Soulfire Blessing. This was a spell of my own creation which consumed Soul Energy from me to grant an effect to my target. This effect caused any spells cast by the target to include a life drain effect that only targeted enemies.
Considering that I was dealing with Soul Energy this time, and not with mana, I had to include an additional aspect to the diagram. Surrounding the spell were three semicircles. The first two were the same as had been used before, whereas the third one was a separate enchantment that would be placed on the ring itself. This enchantment would imbue the ring with the ability Salvage Soul, something I unconsciously used to harvest Soul Energy whenever I killed a monster.
Whenever the wearer of the ring killed something, if the ring wasn’t at full power, the Soul Energy from the defeated enemy would be transferred to one of the black stones on the ring. Once each stone was charged, it could be used for a single casting of Soulfire Blessing, which would last for ten minutes. In total, there were six stones on the ring, meaning that fully charged, the ring would work for one hour.
This item, which I named Soulfire Ring, I planned to keep for myself. If I came across a spellcaster some time that joined my party, I might give it to them, but otherwise I’ll be the one to use it. Even if I wanted to give it to Denise, she’d likely never consent to using an item powered by souls.
Today’s results, I made twenty five forest assault discs, ten stone keys, and a single soulfire ring. For levels, I gained two in Origin Magic, three in Enchanting, and two in Mana Pool and Mana Recovery each. Another good day.
Chapter 5
Later today, we’ll be arriving in Kirrin. Until then, I’ve decided to use my time trying to come up with new spells for Origin magic. Without a doubt, it is the most complicated field of magic I have due to the fact that it can create practically anything. But before I can figure out how to create a more advanced spell, I have to make sure that I understand the basic spell Create Lesser Object.
Opening up my grimoire, I turned to the page that details this spell. I could just as easily find this information through the interface, but studying the book also gave me a bonus to my Magical Talent. Every time I used the spell, a brief glimpse of the diagram for it appeared in my head and wherever I placed my hand. Unfortunately that brief glimpse wasn’t enough to understand the spell to the same degree that a normal caster would.
Looking over the diagram, I began to understand its individual components. What I believed to be a complete drain of my magic was actually all but one percent. Since I could recover that much in an instant, I hadn’t noticed that it was still there. That was the outermost ring of the spell. The next ring retrieved the design of the item I wanted to make from my head, while the third made a rough replication of it using the acquired magic.
So, a three step spell to acquire the magic, acquire the image, and then make the item.. With this spell, even if I mastered it the quality of the item likely wouldn’t improve much because of how it is designed. Since a mental image is never truly a perfect representation of an item, the spell only takes the general shape and what specifics are clear enough to replicate. In order to craft high quality items, I’d need to either train my imagination to superhuman levels or develop a more advanced spell.
Given those choices, I decided to go with a more advanced spell. The outer ring was something I could keep as it was, because all it did was captured and store my mana for the later stages of the spell. The second ring I would have to modify to allow more advanced images. The third ring, though, I would have to completely rewrite, and possibly add in a fourth and fifth ring that would pause the spell to allow me to make adjustments before it completed.
I walked over to my desk and grabbed a piece of paper, as well as a pen. It wasn’t necessary to immediately draw the diagram for the spell, so I took a little while to plan it out, writing each stage as a line on the paper. As I had intended, the first step would be gathering the mana for the spell. That was the first line at the top of the paper. The second line I began writing out runes in a similar style to the second ring of the spell. Every now and then, I would replace a rune with a more advanced one before moving on. I continued this process until I had a full four lines, which would become the four rings of the spell. Once I actually drew them out in the form of a diagram, adding the connecting rings and lines to enable the spell to function, I received a message.
Create Intermediate Object has been added to your Spell List.
Smiling, I opened up my grimoire to check the information about this spell. As expected, I was able to use this spell to create more complicated objects, though it was still impossible to create magical items. Perhaps that would be the ability of the Greater version of this spell. Though, that would take several more layers to properly make that spell. Also, with this spell, even if I couldn’t create a magical item, I could engrave a spell on it to handle the first step of enchanting.
Moving back to the stone tablet I had used yesterday a
s an enchanting table, I quickly carved my new spell into the surface with Sculpt Earth and Stone. Just as I was about to activate it, an unexpected message appeared in my view.
You have fully mastered the Sculpt Earth and Stone spell! You may now bring out it’s full potential. From now on, this spell will function with greatly increased speed and accuracy.
Nice, another mastered spell. Well, I guess it is to be expected since I have been using it so much these last few days. And I didn’t get a special feature like my other spells, so maybe that doesn’t happen with all of them.
Back to what I was doing, I put my hand on the completed spell diagram, and began channeling my magic into it to activate it. Previously, all of the swords I had made were general mass-produced quality, so I decided to try making a more advanced looking one this time. Focusing the image in my head, I allowed my mana to be drawn out of my arm to fuel the spell.
For a while, the spell was functioning exactly the same as the lesser version, until the item was practically complete. At that point, the spell froze to allow me to make corrections where the image in my head had been incomplete. The result was a spectacular scimitar with a serpent carved into the blade and an emerald in the hilt.