Lyura left first for the airport. Lis and Mahya were busy at the computer, looking for a good place to work, and left the next day.
For the first couple of days, I didn’t know what to do with myself. After spending so much ti with good friends, suddenly being alone was tough. I wandered around Lleida a bit, but didn’t even feel like buying anything. I wasn’t exactly down, just lonely. Rue picked up on it and kept clinging to , licking my face, rubbing his head against , reminding I wasn’t really alone.
God, I love this dog.
After two days, I realized I needed to snap out of it and get back to my assigned howork. I headed to Madrid, booked a hotel, toured the city for a couple of days, and then returned to my studies. I delved into the book Mana Constructs for Spell Creation and studied in earnest. My study sessions were brief and inconsistent because of all the other things I had going on, but I had already covered about half of it. It took a week to finish the book and another two weeks to do all the exercises and practice creating the basic mana constructs. The simplest forms were an orb, a cube, a tube (whether small for a dart or bigger for more complicated spells), a sh, and a shell.
The shell and sh were the trickiest since they didn’t have standard shapes. The shape of the shell was contingent upon the spell it was ant to hold or the object in which it was embedded, whereas the shape of the sh depended on the item or area it was ant to influence.
Another complication of the sh construct was that all area-of-effect spells needed an open sh; however, a mana construct couldn’t have open ends because it would cause mana leakage, leading to the collapse of the spell. You couldn’t just “close” the edges together; that would short-circuit the spell, making it collapse. Instead, you had to build a complex lattice at the edges with a single, continuous line of mana that “closed” all the sh lines, sealing the spell. It was like weaving with geotry, as the mana lattice had to have precise, repeating asurents.
The hardest part was that most embedded sh spells needed a shell, but the two would conflict and interfere with each other. I had to learn to balance them perfectly to keep them stable. This made realize that all this magic stuff was fascinating, but way more complicated than I’d initially thought. My initial thought about magic was, “Hey, it’s magic. You wave your hand, and everything you want to happen happens.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case—it had laws and rules like a complex technological device that I needed to follow.
Bumr.
Once I got comfortable with the basic shapes and could create a simple open sh, it was ti to move on to the next step. Before diving in, I toured the city so more, stocked up on food for my future journey, and visited the Prado Museum—couldn’t miss that.
Despite having the mana dart, I couldn’t apply it to my class because of the super annoying “no double benefit” rule. So, I started building offensive spells. I figured I’d start with the classics: fire and ice. There was probably a reason those two showed up so often in the books I used to read.
I didn’t have any fire mana handy, but I had an idea. I rented a one-bedroom apartnt with a fireplace and burned two logs from Tuonela. At first, the mana released was wood and nature, but after about two hours of burning, it converted to fire mana, giving the aspect I needed.
In the middle of my fire experints, Rue approached, his usual heavy paws thudding against the floor. Suddenly, his voice shouted into my mind, making wince, “No! Understand!” The frustration in his tone was unmistakable.
“What don’t you understand?”
“TV.” He huffed, his tail flicking in irritation.
“You don’t understand the TV?”
“Yes! No! Understand!” His ears flattened, and he pawed at the floor.
Curious, I went over to the TV and saw it showed a channel in Spanish. “Maybe we can find sothing in English?”
“No! TV! No! Understand!” Rue barked and shouted ntally.
I was looking forward to the day he would start speaking in full sentences at normal volu. Trying to understand him from a single shouted word was pretty challenging.
I bought him Local Adaptation: Spoken Language—another 5 points gone—and understood why Lis called it the “Starting Package”. It never ends. I spent the 500 mana for Spanish, and he went back to his show.
He must’ve spent too much ti with Lyura; she infected him with her TV obsession! At least he could change the channels with telekinesis and didn’t need to do it.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
I got back to my fire experints and focused on the aspect—and burned my hand.
Ouch!
The next ti, I was smarter. I built a mana sh around my hand, like in one exercise, and continued focusing on the fire aspect. Although I caught it once, I still needed to study it more deeply. After another half hour of trial and error, I finally had a fla in my hand. I had to keep feeding it mana so it wouldn’t go out, but there it was—a fla I’d created!
I WAS A REAL WIZARD!
I just sat there, admiring my fla, captivated for a solid ten minutes. Finally, I called out, “Rue, co see!”
He trotted over and leaned in to inspect the fla. Without hesitation, he sniffed it and imdiately started sneezing, his whole body jerking with each sneeze.
“Bad! John!” Rue shouted, his tone accusing.
A chuckle escaped , I couldn’t resist. “I’m not bad, John; I told you to look, not sll.”
“Bad! Friend!” He insisted, his eyes narrowing as if to show he was serious.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “Next ti, don’t sniff fire. But look, I created a fla with my magic! I’m a real wizard!”
He shook his head, shouted, “Strange!” and went back to the TV.
It was ti to move to the next stage. I filled a bucket with water, created a sowhat thick dart construct, filled it with mana, applied the fire aspect, and pointed my hand at the bucket. The dart just sat there on my palm, not going anywhere.
Huh?!
No matter what I tried, it wouldn’t budge. The only thing that worked was physically throwing it into the bucket. Clearly, I was missing sothing.
As I began checking through Lis’s books, I ran into a snag. I’d paid the mana to learn the spoken and written languages of so of these books, but I hadn’t actually read the languages to learn them; I’d just paid the mana. So now, I had to read a page or two of each book to recognize the title and figure out if it would help .
Unfortunately, none of the books I’d paid the mana to understand had the solution I needed. So now I had to spend a thousand mana on each language, read a page or two, identify the title, and move on to the next book. After 8,000 mana, I still had found nothing useful.
I needed to up my regeneration. Looking at my wizard spirals, I rembered I fixed one to 95% but still had an old one at 93%.
Maybe that would help?
Unraveling the spiral was fast; building a new one was harder. But finally:
Second Spiral Completed
Quality: 95%
Checking my regeneration, I saw it went from 7 mana per minute to 8 per minute. Not much of an improvent. Then I rembered the mana levels had risen.
So maybe not an improvent at all?
I built another spiral, and this ti, it was an actual battle—I didn’t know why, but each spiral got harder to create, and the difficulty jump was significant. After I finished the third, I knew there was no way I was attempting a fourth; I’d definitely fail.
Third Spiral Completed
Quality: 95%
My mana regeneration rate increased to 12 per minute.
Needing sothing to do while my mana regenerated, I sat at the computer and started looking for workshops. I needed to refill the points I spent on Rue.
Paella and Sangria Workshop with Dinner and Drinks10 Tapas 2.5-Hour Cooking ClassFlanco Class ExperienceWorkshops were a lot more fun with friends.
Sigh!
After another eight books, I still didn’t find a solution.
Latin Dance & Salsa Class ExperienceUnique Traditional Cooking Class of SardinesLeathercraft Workshop in the Rastro of MadridAnother eight books—still no solution.
Private Bachata ClassVelázquez Tech Museum Paint your nina WorkshopStone Carving in Cercedilla/MadridSmall Group Make Your Own Bird Feeder Workshop in CercedillaYes! Success!
After three more books, I finally found Action Aspects for Spell Creation. I also had another 9 points—my total was back to 150.
I celebrated by touring the Royal Palace and checking out the Royal Collection for an extra fee. The next day was Sunday, so I went to the El Rastro flea market to see what I could find. It was huge and in the historic center of Madrid. Initially, I took Rue with , but when he saw the crowd, he wanted to go back ho to watch TV. He was binging on so cop show in Spanish.
After returning to the market, I wandered around the stalls and bought quite a few things. At so point, my red light started blinking, but I didn’t want to stare into space with all those people around, so I waited until I got back ho to check it.
Level up
3 wisdom, 3 perception, 2 luck, 3 free points
Profession: rchant Level 7
My lowest stat, not including Luck, was Agility at 37, so I added the points there. I agreed with Lis; we needed all the stats.
I got back to my studies and was halfway through Action Aspects for Spell Creation when my phone buzzed. Lis’s na flashed on the screen, and I answered with a quick swipe.
“Are you still in Spain, or have you left for Italy?” His voice ca through the line, calm and straightforward as always.
“Still in Spain, in Madrid.”
“Fly to Toulouse airport in France, rent a car, and drive to Balma. Call when you get there, and I’ll give you further directions,” he instructed.
“Why?”
“We’re done with the project and want to show it to you.” There was a hint of excitent in his voice.
“Okay, see you in a couple of days,” I said, doing cartwheels in my mind. I was super excited since I missed both of them.
“Rue! We’re flying to see Lis and Mahya,” I called over the noise of the TV.
“Friends!” he shouted back.
I needed to practice talking to him telepathically. It would at least save my throat. He was blasting the Tv at an insane volu—he liked to hear the gunshots loud, and I had no idea why or how. I always thought dogs’ ears were sensitive.
I booked a flight for the next day and went to bed, excited to see my friends soon.
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