Chapter 38: The End of One Journey (Part 2)
The rest of that night after my reveal was quiet, it was a somber quiet. The same silence that permeates and spreads through the air after a loved one dies. Morgana and David didn’t yell at me, they didn’t question my choices or condemn me for not thinking. The both of them were smart enough to guess what could have happened if I didn’t take my goddess’s deal. We ate in silence then the both of them went to bed without another word. I was aware that they weren’t mad at me, but it still felt like I had done something horrible to them. I couldn’t sleep that night, I tried for about an hour but I couldn’t.
I spent the night just quietly practicing my magic while I watched the potion boil down, it was down about half way now and had a consistency of syrup. My shadow tendrils twisted around me as I focused on manipulating my mana and the steam rising out of my cauldron. The cold air generated by my tendrils helped me slowly gather the hot steam into water droplets then small floating ice crystals, this is all I did for the next few hours. Gathering mist, collecting it into more water, freezing it, melting it then dispersing it. It didn’t take long until both the potion and my magic practice finished.
Adept Hydromancy Obtained!
Congratulations! through your extensive practice and understanding of the elements you have unlocked your first upgraded manipulation skill.
Instead of relying on the system as a guide, you put your intellect and skills to the test and proved yourself a true practitioner of the magical arts.
You are now no longer considered a novice mage and by creating a spell for through your own efforts you have elevated your own understanding of the world around you.
New Passive Obtained: Well Learned - New skills and Spells now begin at Adept, studying spellforms take half as much time to learn.
Crafting Completed!
Tincture of Satiety: A magical potion packed full of every nutrient any creature would need, removes the hunger and malnourishment debuff. Though this cannot be taken as a substitute for real food over a long period of time, it can still come in handy in a pinch.
Must be diluted in water before consumption
Rarity: 1/10 stars
3/3 Doses remaining
Huh… This is gonna hurt isn’t it? The sheer amount of knowledge from almost all of my skills improving from my new passive knocked me out almost immediately.
I woke up the next day with my brain feeling like a plate of scrambled eggs, I apparently wasn’t a pretty sight. Morgana told me that my eyes were really blood-shot, I had a migraine banging in my head and a bloody nose from passing out and falling face first onto the ground. I was currently looking through all my skills and seeing the effects of my new passive skill, the passive worked more like an xp boost for any skill/spell I studied or worked on. Of Course the level boost for any new spell is very welcome, the only annoying part is that my passive only applies to spells/skills I develop on my own. Anything that I just bought with skill points is unaffected by the passive.
The new Hydromancy spell I developed was really just an upgraded manipulation skill, it allowed me to manually control water in most states of matter. My fire manipulation skill only lets me control fire but it’s being supplemented with my mana, lightning, and solar manipulations. At some point my other manipulation skills might combine to become something like Hydromancy, an overarching skill that doesn’t need individual skills and levels. There’s also one more feature of upgraded skills that I wasn’t expecting.
Adept Hydromancy: Grants almost complete control over one of the primordial elements, the element known to bring life and take it away at the same time
Gives control over most states of water and allows the user to learn Water-aspect spells
Aspected Spells Discovered: Hot Spring, Healing Spring, Dark Depths, Refrigerate
Further levels will improve mana efficiency and unlock more Aspected Spells
Skill Level 5: 0.00%
Cost: 3 Sp
Aspected Spells! I thought I had been aspecting my mana this whole time but I had been doing things the hard way apparently. I had been following the science I had learned in school and micromanaging my magic the whole time. Using my magic as fuel for a real fire, gathering real water out of the air, making the atoms in the air excited or freezing at my own behest instead of letting my mana do it on its own. That’s why my spells have been so effective and so costly! A sufficient metaphor for what I had been doing is fueling a car with pure uranium where just gasoline would suffice. It still worked but was extremely wasteful and had effects that I couldn’t account for at times.
Knowing that I've been doing magic this whole time is good and all but… I don’t know how to use aspected magic, I’ve been using what I'll call ‘Manual Magic’ this whole time. Ya’know… this is probably why regular telekinesis costs so much for me to use. My previous amazement at Twilight sparkle diminished only slightly… like only by 0.02%. Though I do feel slightly stupid for making everything so difficult for myself, I tried to look on the bright side. Once I figure out how to use aspected magic I will have a massive mana pool to pull from, constantly running out of mana and forcing more magic out of me has probably left me with a massive pool of magic… Although I can’t physically feel it, I'm just aware of it.
With that revelation out of the way I looked at the last newest addition to my status, my new title. Being called a True Mage just because I learned how to use magic the wrong way felt… odd. I had assumed the whole title thing was decided by what the other player called you but apparently not… does that mean my goddess knows pop-culture references? I remember her being able to influence my menu, the thought of an all powerful being sitting down and watching anime brought a smile to my face at the absurdity of it. Then there's the effect of the title, what does it mean that my mana has a physical effect on others?
It was properly morning now and the sun was warming our little camp, it was about time for us to get moving and finish our journey. Shaking myself and rising from the grass I was sitting in, I looked over at everyone else at camp. David was stutteringly wiping down his new sword, Morgana was looking away from me and was blindly dropping our stuff into her bag and Calcifer was… hiding in a cloud? Everyone was acting odd and it immediately concerned me, my question and concern sped across my bond with Calcifer. I watched them flinch from my question and buried themselves deeper in the cloud.
“Alright, what’s going on… you’re all acting strange?” David flinched at my words and forced himself to put his sword down, Morgana continued to stare at the ground. I watched David take a deep breath then stand up and slowly and almost cautiously trot over to me. I was way past concerned now and was genuinely confused about what was happening, I didn’t move out of fear of making whatever was happening worse. David began to tremble slightly as he drew nearer and a strained look started to grow on his face.
“M-markus… you gotta stop whatever you're doing… it's like there's this massive pressure on my body and it’s only getting worse” I was getting scared for my friends, David’s words came out heavy and labored. He spoke as if every word was a fight in itself, but I wasn’t doing anything to them! I’m not using any magic and there’s nothing nearby, we're camped out in the middle of a field. What’s changed from last night and toda- my new title! The answer snapped into my mind like lightning, this is what it meant by my mana having a physical effect on others.
I don’t know how to turn it off, I can’t choose which title I have active at the moment. I stood and frantically backed away from David which seemed to reduce the strain on him slightly judging by the sigh of relief that came from him. I couldn’t sense any magic around me, how do I turn this stupid title off! I’m starting to panic, I need to calm down. Deep breaths, In and out. I still felt Calcifer trembling in the corner of my mind which sent another spike of panic into my head. I sat back down in the dirt and concentrated, there is one thing I could do to help me sense what’s going on. I started gathering my magic and instead of feeding it into my horn, I started to trail it over to that particular spot in my brain which I knew connected to my 6th Sense.
The familiar buzzing feeling of 6th Sense activating greeted me and grew stronger and stronger as I fed my mana into the intrinsic skill. It was like gaining feeling back in a limb after being numb for so long. I didn’t see with my eyes but I could see just as well, maybe even better. The world around me swirled with color and light, naturally occurring magic ebbed and flowed in the air, in the ground, it pulsed in my heart and in my mind. Small see through silhouettes of animals woodland creatures prance about, ghosts. One thing was very different though, surrounding me in almost a perfect circle was a sphere of attuned mana. Mana attuned to my personal signature, the natural mana flowing through the air automatically attuned itself to me whenever I drew near then went back to normal once it got out of range.
I didn’t think too much about it, I didn’t try to over analyze my abilities. I just tightened the metaphorical grip of my magic and let all of my magic swirl back into me, the sphere quickly shrank to nothing. I let my sight drop out of my mana enhanced 6th Sense and took a breath, it felt like I was constantly tensing a muscle. I can tell that this is gonna be incredibly annoying until I get used to this. I watched David and Morgana tentatively approach me as the weight on their shoulders disappeared.
“Are you… alright now?” Morgana was possibly the most affected by my magical pressure, while physically strong Morgana doesn’t have much defense against magic. I nodded to her question and returned to the campsite to continue packing up while I explained what happened.
“I gained a new title last night while I was practicing my magic, instead of increasing a skill it instead made it so my mana has a physical effect on anyone exposed to it. I’m sorry about this, I didn’t know it would do this and I can’t change it. I might be stuck with it too… “ My explanation brought confused looks from everyone, I cracked a smile at Calcifer’s cocked head and his confusion.
“I thought titles only had effect while you had them, my title just gives me a few points to my Earthbending?” I nodded along to Morgana’s question, I already had an answer to that.
“Does your title say that I'll be in effect as long as the title is on?” I waited for Morgana to check and confirm my words, the moment she nodded I continued speaking. “My title doesn’t have that, I think that as soon as I get another title that it’s effect will get stacked right on top of this one” This changes things when it comes to titles, it’s not too far-fetched to guess that there are plenty of other titles that have persistent effects like this. After a while of stacking up titles and effects… the possibilities are endless. Though we don’t know how to reliably get titles, at least we know that they can do this now and won't be blind-sided by the effects next time.
I was already getting annoyed by keeping a constant grip on my magic like this, there’s gotta be a better way than this. I’ll figure it out on the road, we finished packing up camp and I scraped the concentrated goo that was the Tincture of Satiety into one of the empty spice containers we had. I probably should have made that Annealed Flask first instead of the tincture but it requires space magic to make and I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.
We didn’t trot in silence as I expected, Both Morgana and David were in pretty good moods now that we were extremely close to Mt. Canter, I was walking a bit behind the two for now while I figured how to fix my whole debacle with my magic. I had slipped back into my enhanced 6th Sense and was tinkering with my sphere of influence. The ghosts avoided my sphere of mana and paid me no mind, they still mimicked their routine as if they were still alive. I watched a see through rabbit try and chew on some grass to no effect then hop along like nothing was amiss. Looking ahead I saw David and Morgana, they glowed softly just like everything else around them except they were solid. The mana flowing around David was a sky blue with a smattering of darker stormy gray, Morgana left a loamy trail of brown earth magic that gave a feeling of comfort while Calcifer was like a crimson comet streaking through the sky.
I was only barely able to stretch and mold my sphere of influence, this was going to need a lot of practice I could already tell. I was in the middle of trying to disperse my sphere when I almost tripped over Morgana and David, they had stopped without me realizing.
“What’s wrong- oh… “ We had finally crested the last ridge and Mt. Canter was now in sight except… it didn’t look like we expected. Instead of the sprawling magic capital of Equestria we expected we were greeted by… a massive crater taking up over half the mountain.