I took a day off to let my channels rest after the overload of the last two weeks. The following day, I couldn’t ignore the spell in my palm anymore. Every ti I looked at it, it bothered . It was a constant reminder that I’d left it half-finished. Half might have been generous. A quarter was probably closer. Yeah, I had other things I left unfinished, but this one bothered more.
I popped it out and set back to work, fingers moving in the air.
Malith stepped out of the house and made his way over. “What are you doing?”
“Improving a looting spell,” I said without looking up.
He blinked at with a blank face. “Looting? Like pirates?”
I laughed. “Sort of. Like in the books. I’ll give you one to read so you get the idea. Essentially, I created so spells that harvest resources. This one turns monsters into crystals—”
He choked on air, eyes going wide.
I paused. “What?”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Please, continue.”
I raised an eyebrow, but let it slide. “As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted…” I shot him a wink, and he responded with a slow shake of the head and an expression that scread, Why am I here? “It’s a spell to convert monsters into mana crystals. My first version pulled out all the polluted mana and condensed only the clean stuff. But your circle gave an idea, so now I’m working on version number two. Instead of tossing out the bad mana, it converts it. Like your circle does.”
I scratched the back of my head, watching the spell hanging in the air. “Well, I’m trying to make one. The placent is giving hell.”
Malith’s eyes narrowed. “You’re using a combination of runes and magic script,” he said in a flat tone.
I waved him off. “Yeah, Mahya said it was impossible. But—” I pointed at the forming spell with both hands, ga-show style, “—clearly not.”
He didn’t look impressed. “No, no, I know it’s possible. My question is different. Why didn’t you ntion you’re an enchanter? I would have just given you the books to copy.”
I stared at him. “I’m not.”
Now it was his turn to stare. “So, how do you do it?”
I had no clue what he ant. Or what kind of answer he was looking for. I waved a hand toward the half-ford spell, hoping that would sohow explain everything. “Ta-da?”
He squinted at . “Are you asking ?”
I shrugged. “Maybe?”
He shook his head, laughed, and clapped on the back—hard.
Ouch!
I rubbed my back and gave him the death glare. Now he winked at .
Are all Travelers nuts, or it’s just my luck?
Well, Lis is normal, at least.
“What’s the problem you’re having?” he asked, eyes narrowing as he crouched beside and inspected the half-ford spell.
I gestured at the tangled ss of overlapping runes and symbols. A few of the conversion filters had gone haywire, thrown off by the fact that the spell was spherical instead of flat. What should’ve been a clean, layered function ended up looping awkwardly in three dinsions.
We spent the next three hours elbow-deep in trial and error—sketching and re-sketching on parchnts, tweaking mana flow, and muttering half-ford theories.
“Try rotating the Fi rune,” Malith said, pointing.
I redrew it carefully. The spell flickered, buzzed like an angry wasp, and then spat a shower of sparks before disintegrating into a puff of smoke and ash.
“That was a terrible idea,” I coughed, waving to clear the air.
“Not all of them can be brilliant,” he replied, brushing ash off his sleeve as if this were normal.
In the next attempt, I mirrored one rune horizontally.
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This ti, the entire array shimred—then shot out a blinding flash of light that left seeing stars.
“Okay. So definitely not that,” I said, blinking furiously.
Malith snorted. “Good to rule things out.”
On the third try, the sequence shot sothing out of the array and hit square in the forehead.
“Ow! Did you see that?” I rubbed the spot, glaring at the sketch.
“I think it objected to your penmanship,” he said dryly.
I waved him off. "Yeah, yeah, don't quit your day job."
He stared at blankly. "I don't have a job at this mont."
I sighed. "I ant that don't stop doing whatever you're doing to beco a codian. You don't have it..."
The huge smile on his face and devilish sparkle in his eyes clued in that I just got trolled. Shaking my head, I returned to the archnt.
No matter what we tried, one particular filter stubbornly refused to work in sphere form. The Belsh rune—a simple square with two diagonal lines crossing it—was a trooper on parchnt, but every ti I added it to the actual spell, everything around it collapsed. The geotry broke the function; it refused to work in a convex shape and wouldn’t cooperate.
That left the spell one point short in its cleanup loop, which ant around 10% of polluted mana would bypass conversion and needed to be filtered out. Not ideal, but the rest of it worked beautifully. After a mont of staring at the remaining spell and rubbing my chin, I decided that an 80% improvent in efficiency was still a damn good win.
“Good enough,” I said.
While we worked, I took the opportunity to ask him about sothing that had been nagging at since he introduced himself. “You said you’re a stone mage earlier.”
“Yes?”
“What’s the difference from a regular mage?” I waved my hand, then paused. “No, never mind. I get the gist. What I really want to know is why. Why stone mage instead of going the regular route? You’d have more flexibility. And how did that even happen?”
“I have an affinity for stone,” he replied, finally straightening. “Not a Stone or Earth affinity, mind you. There’s a difference.” He t my eyes. “You’re an Elental. You know what I an.”
“Oh, I definitely do.”
He nodded once and continued. “I got so spells from dungeons. For so reason, the stone spells clicked. Easier to cast and cost less mana. So I kept using them. When I reached level 25, I received the class change option to Stone Mage, and I took it."
“So what does that actually do? You could already cast stone spells before. How does the class change show up, besides the na?”
“All my older spells converted to stone-based versions,” he said, flexing his fingers as mana gathered around him. “So even rged into higher-tier ones.”
“Like what?”
A pulse of mana rippled from him, and two shapes rose from the ground at our feet. One was a stubby, tiny figure that resembled a snowman missing its carrot nose; the other was a sleek stone fox with sharp lines and predatory grace. The fox padded over and bared its teeth. They looked like a line of jagged, polished diamonds.
“This one bites through almost anything,” Malith said, tapping the fox’s back with his boot. Then he pointed at the snowman. “That one’s my little spy. I can see through its eyes if I’m close enough. I can also shrink it. Make it small enough to crawl into places no one expects. If it’s about to get caught, it just falls apart. Looks like three random stones lying around. No one ever notices.”
I squatted next to it, curiosity piqued. The thing was maybe six or seven centiters tall. “How does it move?”
“The bottom stone rotates like a wheel.”
I leaned in, eyes tracing the subtle grooves along the base. A moving spell—actual movent, not just flying at a target—was new to . And being able to see through it? That opened all kinds of possibilities.
“Damn,” I said, letting out a low whistle. “That’s impressive.”
Malith dipped his head in agreent. “Yes. Specialization has its perks, but also its drawbacks.”
I tilted my head. “Like what?”
He rested a hand on the stone fox’s back, eyes distant. “Spells I already had, and even most of the new ones I learn, tend to convert into stone versions automatically. Not all of them, though. The telepathy spell you gave stayed the sa, obviously. But others… not so lucky. I had Wind Blade; now it’s Stone Blade. Vine Whip turned into Stone Whip. Those still work and are even stronger now.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And the ones that didn’t?”
He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Gust, for example. Used to be a powerful burst of wind I’d use to push back monsters, buy myself room to move. Sotis, I used it to launch myself with the glider.”
He crouched and traced a line in the dirt with one finger. “Now? It makes a thin ripple of stone—like a wave rising up, almost like a curtain. It pushes forward a little, but since moving stone takes way more effort than wind, it loses montum fast.”
I frowned. “Is it at least good for defense?”
He gave a flat look. “It’s too thin to block attacks, and worst of all? It hides the monsters from view, so I can’t see them coming. And, of course, it’s completely useless for the glider.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, wincing. “That does sound like a pain.”
By evening, I had finalized the upgraded spell. Having help was aweso. The last version took days. This one? Done in a few hours.
When I channeled mana into it, nothing new popped up in my profile. Instead, the existing spell simply received an [Upgraded] tag. Whatever. I still didn’t fully get how the system worked.
“Can you make one too?” Malith asked. “I’ll pay you.”
“You don’t have to pay . You helped make it.”
He rubbed his neck again. He did that a lot. I was starting to suspect the skin there had to be raw by now. I gave it a discreet glance, just in case. Looked normal. No angry red patches or peeling skin. Still weirdly frequent, though.
“I won’t feel comfortable taking it without so kind of compensation,” he said.
“Are you kidding ? The first one took days. I got this one done in hours.”
He was quiet for a mont, then gave a small nod. “I accept.”
I grinned. “By the way, why did you assu I’m an enchanter when you saw combining runes and script?”
“I have a skill for it through my class,” he said. “I figured you had the sa one. I guess in your case, it’s a wizard thing. Wizard magic is strange, so it makes sense.”
“Oh, co on, not you too!”
He laughed. “You can’t argue with the truths of the universe. So things are just facts.”
I shot him a death glare, let out a loud harrumph, and marched off to make dinner.
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