Loopshard

Adam watched the needle on his compass as it tracked the direction of the riders, which were somewhere to the south-southeast of the city. Chien was meditating, Seo-Yoon played with her staves, and Natalia and Diwa were taking quick naps.

Adam had made a minor breakthrough during the recess in activity, thanks to discovering the Blood Spider spell.

He lifted his right gauntlet in front of himself. The waning sunlight caught on the thin lines of red silk that were wrapped around the fingers.

With a simple nudge, Adam fired a finger into the air, before remotely triggering the Snare spell pattern wrapped around it. Vines and thorns instantly sprouted from the finger projectile, shooting out to anchor it to a tree, where the vines continued to spread, ensnaring the trunk and digging in the red glassy thorns.

The gauntlet finger regrew and he shaped another tiny spell pattern for Snare, wrapping it around the new finger.

Unlike with the spidersilk needle, it was much easier for him to manipulate the silk when it was made out of blood, and as a result he was able to make them much smaller, enabling him to turn every finger of his gauntlets far deadlier than normal, since they were each carrying a payload. His elementalist’s skirt had triggered the Magical Disturbance twice during the tests, which had allowed him to load up two of the fingers with snare and push spells that were wildly unpredictable. These would be part of his opening attack against the black riders.

If only I had upgraded the summoner down the Elementalist evolution route, then it might’ve taught me ways to adapt the spell patterns to include elemental damage like fire and ice.

Given that he’d obtained another wand, thanks to the ritualist, he felt incentivised to try and fuse it with summoner once he returned to Interim Island.

I’d like to mess with the Librarian spell-tome as well, but I think the wands are a much better investment in terms of what they can teach me about spells.