Chapter 98 – Trash Spells

Tom did nothing for a moment and absorbed everything that had just happened. The trait stone was clutched in his hands. Everlyn had clearly stated that he could use it and had even gone as far to physically block Dimitri to give him that opportunity, but despite her assurances he had some doubts. “Should I?” he asked the older man, ignoring Everlyn for the moment. Because of her erratic behaviour, he wasn’t confident in her judgement.  Fifty years could do a lot to change a person and he was worried about who she was now.

“Open your fingers, Tom,” Dimitri ordered gently, gesturing as he did so at the hand that held the trait stone. “Let’s see why Eden thinks this is a good investment.”

Mutely he did so. The gleaming, beautiful stone lay in his hands. While the other two could identify it, Tom, without the ability that came with access to using experience, could not.

Slowly, the big man nodded. “I can empathize with Everlyn’s decision. She’s right.” He frowned. “Those conditions really limit its utility to most.”

Tom instantly went on guard. “What restrictions. Can you tell me what it does?”

It was Everlyn who answered. “Ten mana cost reduction for every unique spell you cast, with each of them getting their own six-minute cool-down.”

“Six minutes,” Dimitri questioned.

She shrugged like it was inconsequential. “For Tom yes, unless reincarnation changed things.”

“Ah… I see. It can but rarely by very much. Usually seconds and very occasionally tens of them. I’ve never seen anything larger than twenty.”

Tom was lost by the conversation, but then he suddenly realised that they were discussing his mana recharge rate. Six minutes was what he had in his previous life and he hadn’t bothered to check since then. Relative to others it had been a good value, but not exceptional. His mind puzzled over what the trait offered, and he rapidly did the required mental calculations. “So, if I’m understanding this right then If I used a hundred spells on rotation in a fight then this is worth a thousand mana.”

“Theoretically,” Dimitri agreed. “But practically no one uses that many.”

Tom understood exactly what Dimitri was saying. “I concur, but I’m right in suggesting a mage could easily use ten spells in their rotation and that’s a hundred mana reduction.”

The big man chuckled. “Are you trying to talk yourself out of a trait stone?”

“No, just making sure it’s not wasted.”

“It’s not.” Everlyn told him firmly. “Do you know how much mana a powerhouse has?”

“Probably around fifteen hundred.”

“How about a mage?”

“Three times that?” He guessed. Between investing more heavily in magic and supporting traits to boost their spell number and power they would have far more dedicated to magic than the more balanced build than Dimitri and Everlyn were probably pursuing.

“Yes. Close to five thousand mana. An extra hundred mana against that is nothing.”

He wanted to claim it was still two percent and that could be the difference between life and death, but there was an easier target. “But a hundred mana to you, increases your reserves by what eight percent? Why wouldn’t you take it?”

“This trait is only a bonus for people who use multiple spells and run out of the mana. I’m not sure there are any humans in the competition who fight like that. Personally, I tend to use one spell in battle and that’s chaining power shots until they’re basically free to cast. It’s worthless to me.”

Tom felt a thrill of excitement at her comment. He remembered sitting on the wall when they had both been around rank ten. Back then she had been theorising that synergies between her titles might make such a feat possible. She had not known if it was going to work and had been worried the GODs might see it as an exploit and shut it down. “Did it work! You’ve got to be kidding me. I can’t believe the GODs let it through and the titles worked as expected. Are you serious that you can actually get free and instant Power Shots. That’s so broken.”

A genuine, beautiful smile crossed her face. Tom liked seeing that and realised it was not something she did often anymore. Her world had become dark and depressing, but now at least she was happy.  “Oh yeah, and against the right monster it’s spectacular.”

“A continuous stream of death,” Dimitri agreed. “It’s exhilarating, but even as an ally, it’s terrifying. You can’t imagine without seeing it what a power shot a second from someone as powerful as Eden actually feels like. Words can’t describe it. She can vaporise a charging army. It’s amazing. But Tom, she’s right about the trait. Warrior types,” he gestured at himself and Everlyn. “We rarely use even half our pools as for spell users. Well, a typical mage has a couple of big hitting options and their highly levelled base spells. Once you take into account, the vulnerabilities of the enemies, they only use three to five spells per engagement.”

“I hear you, but are you really claiming that forty mana is nothing?”

“Compared to five thousand, yes.” Dimitri shrugged. “I agree with Eden. this will add more in a reincarnator’s hands. You have a mana pool bottleneck you need to defeat”

“Let’s face it I’m never going to have enough mana the way I fight.” Tom joked.

“Everyone has learned to fight more conservatively. What we did when we came to Existentia showed incompetence. You should never pick a battle where you go close to having to use all your resources. Never, because eventually you’ll fail. They don’t have issues with magic. You do. Use the trait stone.”

Everlyn nodded in encouragement, approving of Dimitri’s words.

With both of them blessing him, he raised it to his head and absorbed it. The stone crumbled away to nothing.

The trait was a passive ability, so there was no download of information on how to use it beyond an extra feeling when he thought about casting a spell. When he did so, he could feel that the first section of energy would be free. 

He clicked his finger and without any warning a blaze of lightning shot at Dimitri.

Tom was too close, and the spell was too fast and it struck before Dimitri could consciously react. The automatic magic defences of the large man did not have the same restrictions.

A shield flared up and countered the magic he had sent.

Dimitri rolled his eyes. “Was that necessary?”

Tom chose not to answer and checked his mana total. Just like the trait promised the spell had been free.

Once more, he clicked his fingers. The same bolt of lightning erupted, but this time it fizzed away to nothing before reaching Dimitri.

The other man smirked at how effortlessly he had countered the spell.

Naturally, Tom didn’t care. He was focusing internally. This time his mana had bottomed out as he had stripped the full ten mana from it. Gingerly, he touched his forehead and winced at the slight headache that the empty pool had caused. “The trait works.” He declared.

“Of course it does.” Dimitri rummaged in his bag and brought out the portable status ritual screen and placed it on the desk. “Use this so you can see the exact wording. It’s unlikely, but it might have changed from what mine and Everlyn’s identification showed.”

Tom touched the controls and then focused on getting a description of the trait he had just received and almost immediately the text appeared on the screen.

Trait: Flat Mana Reduction

This trait covers the first ten mana of any system recognised spell.

A cooldown equal to your mana recharge time will apply to each unique spell.

Tom read it and frowned.

It was exactly as the other two had promised with a single issue. He was certain that it wasn’t going to help him create new spells from scratch. The wording of ‘system recognised’ couldn’t mean anything else. “Damn it.” He cursed angrily.

“What’s with that face?” Everlyn asked.

“Give me a moment. I just want to check,” he muttered. He formed the raw mana lines of the spell form he was currently practicing and then spent two points of precognition mana on it. A lightning spear crackled into existence and struck the far wall. It was weak and malformed but it had worked at least to an extent. The new trait did not activate, and his mana levels dropped. “Yep, exactly like I feared.”

“What’s wrong?” Dimitri asked.

“It’s nothing. I shouldn’t sound so disappointed, but I guess I had an unrealistic hope that I could use it to grind my spell learning faster.”

“A clever idea. But no, it won’t do that,” Everlyn agreed.

“That would definitely be overpowered,” Dimitri agreed with a chuckle. “Through ten mana, for every spell you possess should increase your effective mana pool by five to ten times.”

“A lot less,” Tom corrected, knowing that the other man was assuming that he only had access to his primary pool and heaps more spells than he had managed to learn. “With my thirty mana in my precognition pool I can currently only double it.” Tom agreed. “Though maybe,” he mused. “Maybe I’ll relearn all of my tier zero trash stepping stones. They were lost in the evolutions and usually I wouldn’t even consider it because the new spells they formed were just superior at every level. But, but with this trait, the maths of it changes.”

Everlyn, for a moment, looked confused and then nodded as she realised what he was talking about. “Yes, you should,” she agreed firmly. “Under normal circumstances you’re right, Spark and Touch Heal are more efficient than their precursors, but with the first ten mana being costless you might as well rotate through the lesser spells and presumably as you’ve done a perfect cast once it’ll be quick to do it again.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“It could be a lot of work,” Dimitri said quietly.

“I don’t think it will be,” Everlyn disagreed. “It’ll be a fraction of the time it initially took.”

“I’ll find out, but for now I agree with Everlyn. If I have fate to invest, it shouldn’t be too hard. All I’m doing is trying to duplicate something I’ve already done once in the past. That doesn’t sound that unlikely to me.”

“Still, it does nothing for your long-term build.”

“Yes, but short term it’s better. Once I have reacquired them and grown the breadth of my spells, I might be able to churn through five or ten times my normal mana pool in a fight. That’s a massive advantage even if the spells are less efficient than most. Volume has its own quality.”

Dimitri made a point of looking at his wrist. There was no watch there, but they were all from earth and knew what he was referring to. “We’re almost out of time. Tell me about this million points.”

Tom sighed as he remembered the likely reason. “I got into the Divine Champions Trial at the expense of someone else. Their civilisation was apparently doomed by that result.”

“That’s it?” Everlyn asked in stunned surprise.

He shrugged. “Evidently. But,” he thought about the disks he was making. Their value suddenly extended beyond the personal benefits. If they worked, then they were going to be great for humanity as well.

“But what?” She asked.

“I think there’s a good chance I’m about to make a mountain of points.”

“How?” she questioned suspiciously.

“Passively and without risk.” He told them the cliff notes of everything he had done to get into the trial and the actions he was taking from within it.

“Wait hold up there.” Everlyn demanded. “Did you just say Maurice gave you the critical trait stone.”

“I did, but why are you asking?”

Everlyn laughed. “I almost killed her when I found she had given away the perfect trait for you. If I had of…” she chuckled again. “Damn. That would have been bad. I can’t believe you got it, anyway. That’s some luck.”

“It was.” Tom agreed. “It’s not the first luck of that type I’ve gotten as well.” There was no point elaborating further. He knew she and Dimitri talked, and he was sure he had told her about the other random gifts he had received. “Do you know anything about that?”

“Nothing explicit. But I have an idea.” Everlyn said carefully. “But I don’t know why DEUS stripped you of your memories, but if she wanted you not to have them, then I’m not going against that.”

Tom hit the table in mock frustration. “I knew you’d say that.”

She just shrugged, and then his time was up

He left and met up with the others, but it was clear something had snapped within Briana.

It was horrifyingly obvious to Tom, but he doubted any outside observers could notice. They still played in the same room, sat together at the dinner table, but joy and trust had switched off inside of her. The playful, overly competitive girl was gone and replaced with a shadow of her former self. They were existing in parallel with each other; they were no longer a team, and it was dangerous.

It was tension that would eventually bubble over and create a scene.

“You have to stop.” Tom said quietly.

Kang looked at him like he had grown horns and then significantly at the obstacle courses around them. His look seemed to scream at Tom, ‘We’re not in an isolation room! What are you thinking?’

Tom chose to ignore the inherent warning in the other man’s reaction. After all, this had to be said and dragging Kang individually into a protected area was just as much of a risk. “You’re being a meanie to her.”

“She started it,” Kang said, playing up the childish expression for any audience that might be out there, but the attempt was only halfhearted. Underneath his acting, he was feeling despondent as well. “But I’ll try to be nicer.”

“Good.”

Conversation done Tom launched himself into the course and hoped it would be enough.

It wasn’t.

Briana did not respond to their more friendly overtones.

Tom couldn’t help it at dinner. He went and sat next to Eloise. She glared at him suspiciously. Then kept eating the vegetables as if they had personally insulted her. She was not a reincarnator as he had checked, but she certainly acted like it at times. “Eloise?”

“What do you want?”

He tried to ask her if she liked Briana, but Social Silence triggered to stop him. That threw him for a loop momentarily, as it was the first time it had activated around children, and he wondered why. He checked Danger Sense, but there wasn’t even an inkling of a threat.

“Well?” she asked through a mouthful of food while glaring at him. He saw mashed carrots and chewed up pees.

“You should play with Bri… um… I mean us more.”

“I do.”

He was completely flabbergasted by that response. It was nonsensical, but she didn’t care, and the conversation was clearly over. She kept shovelling the food into her mouth and ignoring him.

She finished, and he had eaten only about a quarter of his own plate. She had technically started before him, but not by much. It wasn’t a surprise Eloise out of all of them spent the least time eating. He had assumed that it was to avoid Joseph, but maybe there was more to it. “We’re doing the dodge pits after dinner.” He said hurriedly as she was about to get up.

“I know. I saw you doing obstacles earlier.”

Tom shut up. Eloise was very much a free spirit and would do whatever she wanted. Any more pushing would be counterproductive. She left, and he finished his food in silence and then linked up with the other two.

The three of them were once more there, but they were not together. Tom, as usual trained three levels down from the other two, who were taking turns alternating in the same pit. The typical mock battles they would carry out between themselves while laughing uproariously were missing.

He was in the ring once more and Danger Sense was blaring at him. He knew the combat dummy was coming from his front by the shape of his skill. Dampen Senses was running so he couldn’t actually see, which made the training so effective. His skill had improved against the combat dummies and worked most of the time now. While the threat component functioned perfectly, the directionality he was trying to train into it did not. It had an error rate of about one in forty, which unless he got unprecedented luck was not enough to last a full round. Yet, every day was better and within a month his ability would improve sufficiently to make fighting these dummies while blind trivial. Then he would challenge a harder pit and the skill would fail again.

Tom leapt to the side.

Force smashed into his chest.

It felt like the living daylights had been punched out of him even with the enchantments reducing the impact. The blows of the dummies were designed to be partially blocked and not leapt into. Tom had not only not done one of the damage mitigation techniques he had actually effectively thrown himself into the strike. The combined outcome he knew would leave him firmly in the internal burst and broken organ territory. The thoughts flittered through his head while he was airborne, then he crashed hard onto the ground and got dirt in his mouth. Tom considered leaping to his feet, but Danger Sense had stopped blaring its alarm. Which meant he wasn’t about to get hit and therefore the impact must have knocked him clear of the pit and so he knew he had lost. 

He cancelled the gravity effect and his reduced senses and then groaned as his body finally started transmitting the pain signals. Kang, at some point, had come over and offered a hand, which he gratefully accepted. It hurt a lot and with his new trait there was no need to suffer. Touch Heal activated for free and removed most of the discomfort he was feeling.  He deliberately left some of it because the pain was there for a reason and while the free mana could have been better spent directly healing him he had to keep appearances. Especially in the context of everything else they had done recently. Any observers had to see him being hurt and watch him limp over to the healing crystal.

“Good job.” Kang said quietly while indicating to his right with a slight jerk of his head.

Tom looked over there he saw that Eloise had joined Briana and they were currently wrestling.    

“Let’s go.” Kang said. “I think there’s an unarmed class that I’m interested in trying out. I feel like I need more of a challenge than this place offers.”

They left the room via the healing crystal and Tom felt his heart warm at the high-pitched squeals and laughter that they were leaving behind.

He accompanied Kang all the way to the gym, before making up his mind. Right at the entrance, he pulled away. “You go. I have something else to do.” Once more he got an annoyed glare, but there was nothing the boy could do.

Kang went into the class, and Tom entered the nearest isolation room. He understood how risky what he was doing was and if he didn’t have his ridiculous precognition affinity and his Danger Sense skill, he would never have risked it. But with those defences active and having missed his usual session due to the interview with Dimitri he decided on the balance of probabilities that the danger was worth it. All those factors and that everyone knew that the three of them were fighting so any weird behaviour would be overlooked supported his decision.

Today he could get away with this, even if a long-term pattern of extra isolation room sessions would cause problems.  

The moment the privacy wards locked in place he retrieved both the healing and lightning domain folders. At the end of the conversation with the others, he had a very specific idea, and it was time to put that into action.

For a moment, he considered his approach. Did he want to get all the precursors or just the critical ones that had fed directly into Spark and Touch Heal, respectively.

Getting the really weak spells, he decided after some thought, even if they were free didn’t make much sense. He would only reacquire ones that could be used regularly in battle. Blood Restore, for example, was useful to have available whenever he got cut up in a fight. It was two steps under Touch Heal, but in its niche role, it was almost as good.

That was a definite yes.

The path forward slowly crystallised in his mind. The hierarchy sheets were in front of him, and he identified each of the abilities he wanted to relearn. With the spells selected all that was left was to decide the order and given how fast he died in the duels it was obvious that focusing on offense was the superior choice. Being able to heal better didn’t matter if you never got the opportunity to start healing. 

He flipped open the lightning domain folder and went straight to the most immediately useful of Spark’s precursors.

The complicated wire frame diagrams of Electricity Explosion were spread out in front of him. There were two pages for this particular spell and after consulting his fate reserves, he spent only one point. Then he painstakingly recreated the manual mana lines. He had already done a perfect cast of this once and at one point had held the system spell for it, so in theory it should be easy. The multiple dimensional structure felt familiar, and it came together easily.

He focused the manually created spell on the combat dummy and released it with a single point of mana. The result was instant. There was a spurt of uncontrollable sparks along with a simultaneous ding.  

Tom smiled and recast it. This time, rather than an uninspiring trickle, it was an explosion of sparks. Ten mana being invested into the spell instead of only one made a significant difference. Briefly, the combat dummy was covered with lines of visible electricity before it faded.

In the greater world, it was more showy than effective. If he hit a rat with it, then he would kill it, but he doubted it had the power to eliminate anything more powerful.

But at the cost of a single point of fate, it was free to use in every battle from now on.

He smiled and moved onto the next spell on the list, Physical Shock. This one had to be channelled through his body, so he walked up to the dummy. After creating the spell, he slapped his helpless opponent. His hands tingled and there was a crack as the energy discharged but there was no ding.

Mentally, he cursed, but he kept going. It was foolish to think he would get a perfect cast first time without fate support. But this was one of the simplest spell forms, so he knew that eventually it would come out perfect. And at one mana per spell he had hundreds of attempts available to get it right this evening.

With his next effort, he channelled Precognition Mana into the mix instead of relying on unattributed personal mana. Every thirty seconds, he hit the dummy. With each strike, he tweaked the spell form and recast it with minuscule adjustments, which moved it closer to perfection.

Ding.

The noise echoed in his mind.

Grinning, he smacked the dummy. This time, visible lightning crackled from the point of impact to briefly ensnare the entire construct with significantly more power than the Electricity Explosion had achieved.

The attack had used his full allocation of ten absolutely free points of mana.

This was great. He already had two of the seven upgrades he was aiming for. 

He knew he was grinning manically, but he didn’t care. The individual spells were nothing to write home about. Physical Shock would probably knock down a horse and permanently end anything smaller than a miniature pony, but that only applied to earth animals. Its effect would not be so pronounced against most monsters, but it would have an impact. It would hopefully stun enemies it was used against long enough for Tom to use a spear to finish it.

Buoyed by his success, he kept going. Two points of fate, because the spell was important got him Heal Organs. Purge Foreign Contaminant, Blood Restore, Ionised Air and Plasma Path were all obtained through hard work and repetition. That was the full set of precursor spells he had wanted, and it was almost bedtime.

He stepped back ten paces from the dummy and then smiled.

Physical Shock, Ionised Air and Plasma Path were used in unison, and lightning snaked from his fingers to smash into the combat dummy across the room. There was a loud bang like thunder going off. Thirty mana invested, and the significant synergy between the skills had produced a blast almost as powerful as what Spark, with all of, the precognition pool could have unleashed.  

That wasn’t only taking down an earth animal. It had been strong enough to kill actual monsters. He was getting closer to becoming competitive in the duels.

It was two hours well spent, and he decided that he needed to get more spells like these. First earth, but potentially even from different affinities.

He left the room, and his good mood evaporated almost immediately. The corridor was empty, but his mind leapt to Bri. He hoped she was okay and had enjoyed spending time with Eloise.