MiP B2 Chapter 37: Advanced Documentation

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"You called, boss?"

Carlos looked up and gestured for Trinlen to join him and Amber inside the tent. "Close and seal the door behind you, please."

"Sure thing." Trinlen triggered the locking and privacy enchantments on the tent with expert finesse and took a seat, resting his chin on his hands. "What's this about?"

[Secret house business.] Carlos smoothly switched to telepathy. [You've seen all the progress we've made in deciphering the hidden enchantments in the royal guards' gear, but there's something we're missing, and we think you might be able to help figure it out.]

Trinlen raised an eyebrow. [Me, not Felton? And how is this house secret stuff? Wait, wait, I think I get it.] He smiled. [A house secret that you're using to analyze those things isn't working quite right, only someone who knows the secret could help you find the problem, and you don't want to reveal the details to the Crown. Am I right?]

Carlos and Amber both laughed, and Amber grinned cheekily at Carlos. [See? I told you he's clever!]

Carlos smiled back at her. [And I agreed! I've lost count of how many times he's surprised us in training!] He turned back to Trinlen and slowly smoothed his face. When he resumed, his mental voice carried a serious weight. [Jocularity aside, Trinlen, the secret in question is one of our greatest; one that I am reluctant to trust anyone with.]

[Whoa, now! You're not talking about one of the house soul structures, are you? And if you are, isn't it a bit late to be telling me now, after I already refilled back up to platinum rank? Three times?] He paused. [I don't actually want to be a noble, you know!]

Carlos kept his mental voice completely level. [It is not a soul structure. It is possibly our most important secret short of our soul structures, however. If not for your reaction to glimpsing Purple's notes, I still might not be willing to trust you with it. You must understand the seriousness of its secrecy: If this secret gets out, it could quickly become nearly impossible to contain it.]

Trinlen nodded solemnly. [I meant the oaths that I swore to you and your house. I will not share this secret with anyone.]

[Very well. Here it is.] Carlos spoke the single-word spell, "`help`," and simultaneously pushed his conceptual understanding of it at Trinlen.

Trinlen's jaw dropped open, and he stared with wide open eyes. [What the– What kind of spell effect is– Wait, the whole spell is one word?! How– Why– Wait, it does different things depending on what specific non-incantation words you speak after casting it? It… gives information about… You– You're kidding. You have to be… You're not kidding. Are you.] Trinlen sat up and took a few deep breaths. [Um. Wow. Give me a minute.]

Carlos just kept the concept of the spell in the mental link and waited calmly.

Trinlen blinked several times, shook his head, and muttered under his breath for a while. Finally, after a few minutes, he looked straight at Carlos and cast the spell himself. "`help`." His eyes almost bugged out of his head.

"Huh? What? 'Version 3'!?"

Carlos hastily shushed him. "Keep this quiet, remember."

Trinlen breathed heavily for a moment, struggling to get himself back under control. "Right, sorry." He switched back to telepathy. [So, what's the issue with it?] He projected casual levity, as if this were completely ordinary for him, but his still-shaking hands betrayed his continuing surprise at the revelation.

Carlos shook his head. [Take some time to familiarize yourself with this first. Once you're more accustomed to it, you'll be better prepared to actually help troubleshoot it.]

[Uh, sure. I'll do that.] Trinlen leaned back and put his hands down to support himself. [You know, people have tried to find an effect for gaining arbitrary knowledge about incantations before. It's one of the classic stories of failure the academy teaches about in Speculative Incantation Research. Heh.] He chuckled aloud. [They even have it written into the lesson plans that they wait for a student to ask about the possibility first. It's always happened within the first few weeks of the class.]

Amber leaned forward, shifting excitedly in her seat. [Oh? What do they say about it?]

Trinlen snorted. [That it's a fool's errand. That countless people smarter than any of us have tried and failed, and we shouldn't waste our time on it.] He cocked his head and looked back and forth between Carlos and Amber. [And now that I know what it actually is, I understand why no one ever found it – or at least, few enough that no one ever leaked the secret. How the hell did you two figure it out? This thing… It utterly breaks how incantations work! No `spell begin;`, no `use mana`, no `spell end;`, no `spell cast;`, hell, you don't even put it in an `effect` statement! It's just… itself. And then it watches for what you say afterward, separate from the actual incantation, instead of having parameters declared up front? Spells just don't work that way! No trained mage would ever guess even half of the details of how this works!] He paused, and his eyes widened. [Wait, is that it? You were a pair of uneducated novices before you met me, so you could guess it because you didn't know how "wrong" it is?]

Carlos laughed. [No, I had a different advantage. Another house secret, which I will not describe, let me discover the correct verbalization first, to combine with an inexact conceptual guess. In any case, get on with the familiarization already!]

[Sure.] Trinlen rolled his eyes, but his grin never wavered. [Alright, let's see here…] He hesitated, then spoke boldly. "`help paraminfo paraminfo`." He paused to review the information the spell fed him, then spoke again. "`help paraminfo advanced paraminfo`."

Carlos blinked and blurted aloud in surprise. "Wait, what?" Then he slapped his forehead and groaned. "I can't believe I missed that!"

Trinlen looked at him quizzically. [Missed what?]

Carlos sighed and dropped his head into his hands. [I never used `paraminfo` on itself, so I didn't learn of the `advanced` option flag.] He slowly raised his head to look at Trinlen again. [You might have already solved the issue we had. By accident. I'm guessing that the keywords we've found in the royal guards' enchantments are classified as advanced, and that's why we couldn't find them in `help`'s catalogue.]

They all sat in silence for a few moments. Trinlen shifted awkwardly. [Huh. So… now what?]

Amber put a hand gently on Carlos's shoulder and nodded to Trinlen. [I think you should go off and tinker with this by yourself for a while. Privately, remember. Carlos needs some time to get over his embarrassment and dig into whatever new information this brings to light. When we've sorted through it enough to have a good grasp on things, we'll call you back. Hopefully, you'll be familiar enough with it yourself by then to be helpful.]

Trinlen looked at Carlos, who had gone back to hiding his face in his hands, and quietly smirked. [Heh. Alright, fair enough. See you later.] He carefully closed the tent's entrance behind him again as he left.

Carlos slowly raised his head, sat up, and let out a heavy sigh. [Thanks, Amber. But… Yeah.] He looked away, his cheeks blushing fiercely. [I really, really, should have found that myself. I should have found it weeks ago! Hell, I should have found it a month ago, right when I first discovered `help` itself! This is a rank novice oversight!]

Amber extended her arm around his shoulders and pulled him a little closer. [You're being too hard on yourself. Don't forget, you did discover `help` in the first place! No one else would have done that. And you still know… so much more that I'm still struggling to even comprehend the barest beginnings of it all. You have a whole world of information to consider; it's completely understandable that you missed one small piece of it that happened to be right in front of you. I've missed things right in front of my face more times than I like to think about.]

She laughed, the lively sound of her humor filling their tent. [So has Kindar, and a lot of other people, too. Embarrassing him by pointing it out was one of the common things he used to bully me about.] She hugged him one-armed for a moment, then turned to face him squarely. [Now, are you going to keep wallowing in your embarrassment and shame over not being perfect, or are you going to engage your formidable expertise to properly capitalize on this new discovery?]

Carlos looked at her, and the red slowly faded from his cheeks. He took a deep breath and nodded. [Thank you. And you're right, I really should get on with using this.] He paused for a moment. [Actually, no. We should get on with using this. You are just as important a part of this team as I am. Now then, shall we?]

Amber smiled and nodded. [Yes, let's.]

They cast in unison, echoing each other. "`help paraminfo paraminfo`." Amber gave Carlos a wide-eyed startled glance. [You too? I was just being thoroughly systematic.]

Carlos chuckled and nodded. [Me too. Not being thoroughly systematic is exactly how we missed this in the first place, and it's what we should have done originally. Turns out that the "`advanced`" flag is the only new information for this one, but I didn't want to just assume that. That kind of assumption is exactly how I made this oversight before, and I didn't want to risk repeating the same mistake.]

Amber nodded, and they moved on. Adding "`advanced`" to the parameters turned out to not reveal anything more. Carlos hesitated and raised his hand before the next one, though. [Wait, we should be using our reference catalogue soul structure to do this. We already got that to bypass the need to speak the parameters out loud.]

Amber's eyes widened briefly. [Oh, right. So, reading it all that way, the basic "`usage`" information is… Huh.] She stared blankly at nothing for a while, skimming through the information in her mind. [It's organized differently, and it has a different example spell, but the actual information in it is approximately the same as Sandaras's introductory textbook for novices.]

Carlos nodded. [Yeah, explanations of the 4 basic mage soul structures, the requirements and process of learning and casting or preparing spells, and some fundamental principles of spellcasting. Do you think he might have discovered "`help`" too, or is it probably just a coincidence?]

Amber shook her head. [He's legendary for a reason, but he didn't discover any of that basic knowledge. There were plenty of mages before him, and the basics are, well, basic. It's kind of hard to even be a mage at all without them.]

[I cast my first spell with nothing but learning the spell itself, but fair point.] Carlos shrugged and smiled. [I wouldn't have been able to scale up my spellcasting at all well without the supporting framework. Now what did the system designers consider "`advanced usage`?"] He took a couple seconds to review the list of "advanced" things he could get usage information about. [Ohoho! Now isn't that interesting. Various advanced mage soul structures, and enchanting! Oh my!]

Amber started outright cackling. [The Enchanters Guild would throw a truly epic fit if they knew about this! Let's see now…] She lapsed into silence as the two of them quickly read through the detailed step-by-step instructions. They finished in a few minutes, then sat digesting the information. [Seems pretty simple, conceptually. We already knew about having to write the incantation down in the form of runes, of course, and we saw plenty of connections to sources of mana in all the enchanted gear we've inspected. The tricky parts are just that we didn't know the right keywords and commands for creating an imbued mana reservoir, connecting to and using it, and perhaps most importantly, the "`spell enchant;`" command.]

[Yeah. Completely straightforward, as long as you actually know the requisite keywords.] Carlos cocked his head for a moment. [You know, we should generalize our spell activator soul structure a little. Expand it from casting, preparing, and activating spells, to executing spell-related commands. It wouldn't do to leak this secret to an eavesdropper just because we had to actually speak the "`enchant`" command.]

Amber nodded. [Agreed and done. Now, in the "`advanced commands`" information… There's the ones for enchanting, with a bit more focused details. Basic and advanced "`syntax`"... Aha, there are some of the keywords we were missing!]

Carlos grinned broadly. [Makes sense given how those ones are used. Aaand… The rest of them are indeed listed under "`advanced effects`." And apparently you have to specify "`advanced`" even for the single-"`effect`" option to get info about a specific effect that you already know of. Seems redundant, but whatever. Now we know.]

[Yes, now we know. And now… I'm not sure if we can actually truly fix the existing sabotaged enchantments. But maybe we can replace them!]

Carlos chewed his bottom lip for a couple seconds, then nodded. [I think we'll need another 13 levels first, but once we reach that point… Yes, I believe we can.]

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