Bog Standard Isekai

Lumina only stayed a single day and left the next morning before dawn. Their parting was brief and drama-free, because it didn’t really feel like a good-bye. He knew he’d see her again soon. They had only enough time for one last chat about his magic where he asked her opinion on his current project of trying to brainwash himself into becoming the blade.

She flatly told him that he was being silly to avoid human testing. His level of Mental Manipulation wouldn't come close to driving someone crazy as he feared, and his lack of testing meant that he might not be able to use [Say What's True] effectively when the time came that he actually needed it.

Their conversation was brief, because as much as she wanted to spend time with him, she sorely needed a good meal, a bath, and a night's sleep. She had one last gift before she left, for Cid. She gave him a technique he could use with his new [Meditation] Skill to lower his own mental resistance.

That evening, when the Lance were back at the dueling grounds, Brin reluctantly did his first experiment on a Lance-mate. He chose Govannon, and showed him a mirror seeded with the same spell that had driven Jake 18 out of his mind. To no one's surprise except possibly Brin's, it didn't do anything. Govannon dismissed the lie with a blink and a shake of his head, and claimed that he didn't feel much at all except a brief notion that the reflection in the mirror wasn't really his own face.

He wasn't discouraged; it was actually a bit of a relief that he couldn't drive people insane with a simple glance at their own reflection. Instead, he'd come up with a few more ideas over the last few days and he was ready to put them into action.

First, he put a Mirror Image of himself on top of himself, an illusion that just copied the truth. Because he cast it through his Lightmind, it took him a minute to figure out how to imbue it with Wyrd, but it was worth the time to solve the problem. The solution wasn't any trick or technique, just a perspective alignment in the Wyrd. The magic was being guided by the Lightmind, but it was still his.

Then he asked Aeron for a duel. Since he had an unaltered [Blade Mastery], he was the ideal candidate for testing out if a new trick really worked. Knowing that illusions would have to be a part of this, he reserved a tall tent for those who wanted to practice Skills they weren't ready to reveal to the whole world yet.

Brin used [Say What's True] on his Mirror Image to project the idea I'm going to swing from the left. Then he swung from the right–at least, that's what he tried to do. Even though that was the original plan, after saying he was going to swing from the right, it felt like a betrayal to not actually do that. He swung from the right, Aeron blocked easily, and then followed up with a solid strike against Brin's helm with his mace.

"Whoa! Are you alright?" Aeron asked.

"Yeah. Let's try that again."

They tried again, twice, and Aeron rang Brin's bell both times.

"I'm not sure I understand what we're doing here," said Aeron.

"I'm working on a new technique," said Brin.

"Ah yes, the ‘getting smashed in the head with a mace’ technique. There are not many who can master that technique," said Aeron.

The problem was that [Say What's True] wasn't just straight Mental Manipulation–it used the Wyrd as a vehicle, and the Wyrd didn't like lies. It liked claims and posturing and was comfortable with exaggeration, but the arguments that really worked were the ones that you really believed in. But wait, hadn't he been using the Wyrd to lie all over the place? What was different here? Maybe it was the simplicity of it. When he messed with his own brain, he'd really only changed his perspective. He hadn't turned himself into something he wasn't. Then again, I am the Sun and I am the Blade were more than just perspective shifts. Except, those hadn't been him, they'd been separated threads controlling distinct illusions. An illusion could be the sun or a blade.

He had an idea.

"Let's go again," said Brin.

This time, he told the illusion to project in the Wyrd that it would move left. Then he let the Mirror Image move left, while he moved right. He slammed his spear into the side of Aeron's helm.

Aeron shook his head. "Again."

Again, Brin slammed his spear into the side of Aeron's head. Even though he'd been expecting it, he was too slow to react. Fighting wasn't all mental, not at the speeds they were working at. Each muscle in the body had carefully honed instincts, ready to move at a moment's notice. Now those reflexes were working against Aeron.

"That will work once, until I throw down an Eveladis," said Aeron. "But I thought you meant to conceal the fact that you're an [Illusionist]."

"I do," said Brin. He'd taken precautions to mute their sound, but he still winced to hear Aeron say it out loud. "Let me try something else."

This time, he had the Mirror Image project I'm going to stay still. Then he dismissed the Mirror Image at the same time that he lunged forward. He scraped the front of Aeron's breastplate before the [Knight] managed to parry his spear away.

"Lucky shot," said Aeron.

When Brin repeated the trick, Aeron said, "How are you doing that? You haven't gotten faster. I can tell you're not faster. So why does it surprise me each time?"

"I'm using [Meditation] to remove all of my tells. Normally someone flexes their muscles, or changes their breathing or squints their eyes right before they move, and your reflexes pick up on that. I'm completely free of any give-aways."

"No way. That can't be true," said Aeron.

Brin shrugged, because no, it absolutely wasn't true. "Let's try again."

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit NovelFire for the authentic version.

This time, Aeron successfully blocked, but only because he'd been priming himself to react.

He tried varied approaches. He told the Mirror Image to say it was going to go left, then dismissed it before it could diverge from the real Brin, who was moving right. It worked, and that opened up a whole new world of movements. Using a quick blink of a Mirror Image to project a false intention worked wonders to disrupt Aeron's flow, and Brin scored hit after hit against the other man's armor.

"I feel like I've completely forgotten how to fight. I feel like a page again," said Aeron. Despite saying that, Aeron adjusted quickly and in their very next duel he managed to predict his tricks and get a tap on Brin's shoulder.

That was all the training Brin could squeeze in that night, but it was just the beginning. Over the next few weeks, the army marched all day and the Lance trained by night. They slept little, all of them knowing that when they reached the capital, their time to prepare might well be over.

Brin used his new Wyrdic trickery on the rest of the Lance, one by one. Rhun countered him so well that Brin thought the new trick he'd discovered would only work on those with [Blade Mastery]. But when he sparred against Anwir, he overpowered him so thoroughly that it was clear that Rhun was just talented. Or more likely, Rhun's defensive Skills were helping out.

He had mixed results with Hedrek. The big guy was still trying to refine his dueling abilities by actually thinking through his movements and actions, and Brin could absolutely crush him when he tried that, with or without the Wyrdic fakeouts. When Hedrek cut loose and fought like his normal self, he didn't do much countering or blocking. It didn't matter if you swung left or right when your opponent was spinning around like a helicopter.

He demolished the rest of the Lance, beating them again and again until they started to expect his trick, all until he got to Govannon.

Govannon had clearly been studying Brin's other fights, because the first time Brin tried to use his trick against him, he moved into the perfect counter and stabbed a clean hit right in the middle of Brin's chest. The follow-up fights weren't any different. Brin won three out of five, which was exactly normal for how their previous duels had gone.

Govannon still had those learning Skills from [Page], and apparently they were not to be underestimated. Give him enough time to prepare, and he could overcome nearly anything.

Along with dueling, he also had time to look through his Lightmind. There were hundreds of different spells and instructions to look through, and it was overwhelming at first to even begin to understand it. Of immediate utility were all the things stored in the memory. Animals, plants, landscapes, household items, and everything else an [Illusionist] might need. He saw filters for the skies to add or remove clouds or make it look like rain. There were moving programs to gradually darken an area. He found a nice spell called Face In The Crowd that would create several dozen Mirror Images all at once and have them move all around randomly. Their movement paths were optimized for maximum confusion, and he couldn't wait to find a private place to test it out. Normally that kind of spell would cost him two dozen directed threads, and now all he had to worry about was the mana cost, which was frankly minimal.

He also found there were a couple movies, along with the spells to project them. Cid forbade it, flat out.

"I could also make a fake [Illusionist] to take credit for the movie, you know," Brin argued.

"Have you seen any other [Illusionists] out here, entertaining the troops? We should have a tactical advantage on [Illusionists] right now, but we aren't really using them, or have you not noticed? No open illusions, Brin. None. Those are my orders," said Cid.

"Wait. Why aren't we using illusions more?" asked Brin.

"I'm sure you can figure it out. This is the end of this discussion."

Even without openly projecting his illusions, there was still a lot he could learn just by reading, and Cid didn't order him to stop peering at his orb.

Working on a computer was strange, though, because it hadn't evolved the same way Earth computers had, and he kept reaching for tools that weren't there. He expected a file directory, but they just lined up every single spell on the "Catalogue" with no other organization. But then he found an option called "Fello's Fabulous Tools" and inside there was a new catalogue, this one organized with folders. Apparently, Fello had rewritten many of the standard spells and when Brin tried them, he found they were objectively worse. Good for him to figure out file directories, though.

After some exploring, he was able to drill down to the way the spells worked, to the places that it stored page after page of words in the Language, and how those spells were connected to the commands on the Catalogue. It wasn't straightforward at all, because this had clearly been made by dozens of different people over a long period of time, and they all had different ideas on the way things should work.

He developed a deep desire to go through all of it, to organize it with good coding practices, to refactor the entire thing. But that would be the work of years, and not something to start in a warcamp.

Sometimes, when he was done looking through his Lightmind he'd open his eyes and he would still be Mark, coming off a day of programming. He'd blink around dumbly at the grim and fascinating world he was living in, and it would take a second to remember that, no, he was Brin, and his main job right now was killing things with a spear, not endlessly rethinking the right way to iterate through a list.

He also trained his Strength. He was coming up on the next threshold, and hoped he'd be able to hit it while it was still safe to be worn out and exhausted all the time. It all came with some benefits from the System.

Strength +5

Dexterity +2

Mental Control +1 Official source ıs N0veI.Fiɾe.net

With the modifier bonuses, that was enough to put him past the next threshhold.

Alert! Your Achievement has advanced.

Strong V (Rare) -> Strong VI (Epic)

You have reached 273 Strength.

+50% -> +60% speed with Strength-intensive activities. +50% -+60% Strength attribute growth.

Maybe he could've worked even harder, but their rations were getting slimmer. Their portions were half the size that they'd been when the war began, and they were allowed into the mess only twice a day now.

There was one exciting improvement, though.

[Call Light through Glass] leveled up! 59 -> 60

Alert! You have gained an Achievement!

Light Caster

You have reached level 60 in a Class Skill, [Call Light through Glass]

Your range for light projection is doubled.

[Light Caster] has been merged with [Call Light through Glass]. Benefits of each remain the same.

It was amazing. He could now send his Invisible Eyes so far ahead that saw the city of Arcaena a long time before the army reached it.

It was strange. There was nothing blocking Brin from seeing the city, and he saw it. He saw the walls, and nice pearly white buildings and the clean streets. He saw the black pebble beach where he'd spent so much time with Aberfa in his dreams. He saw Arcaena's massive black fortress, a monolith rising above the world. He saw something else, too, and it was important, but he couldn't... think about it and when he looked away again he couldn't remember what it was.

No use of directed threads or [Memories in Glass] could help him work around it. His threads could not report on what they were seeing. His memories were erased the second he stopped recording them. Arcaena was hiding something, and he could see what it was, but he couldn't remember what it was.

When they reached the city, orders came down to every soldier telling them not to look at the city. They were told that Command knew what was going on and that they had a plan for it. Brin didn't know if that was true or not.

He turned his gaze away from the city, to his Prime who had their orders.

"No training tonight. Get a full night's sleep tonight. Tomorrow, we're going on patrol."