100 - Spellcraft
When Alexandra walked up the central staircase and exited onto the second floor of the tower, she was surprised at how different it was from the first. The Bronze floor of the Iron Library was a lot smaller than the Iron floor. However, it was only relative to the Iron floor. Here, there were no ladders, no labyrinth, no stacks upon stacks reaching up to the ceiling.
It was a simple room with neat, parallel rows of shelves. The perimeter close to the outer walls of the tower was reserved for study tables, and many Bronze rank students were already seated there. Alexandra even spotted a few Silvers.
She checked the note Tristan had written for her and walked to the curse section. It was a lot easier to find than on the first floor. But it was small, not even a full row on a stack. The professor had made it clear that information on curses wasn’t so easily accessible. All she’d find on the Iron floor were generalities copied by a thousand different authors. The first floor had volume, but little substance. At least, when it came to the more dangerous subjects.
The Bronze floor was where things started to change. Unlike the Iron floor, it wasn’t accessible to any new student. For a dedicated youth, reaching Bronze rank was a matter of a few months. Enough for the Iron Library to vet them.
That said, it was only Bronze rank, and Tristan made sure to temper her expectations. He doubted she’d find anything on her particular brands of sicknesses there.
Alexandra located the two books Tristan had named: Cursed Patterns and Compendium of Known Curses.
Neither book was large. She eyed the rest of the curse section. Only seven more books. Tristan didn’t mention them.
Why? Probably because he didn’t want her to read them. He wanted to stop her from removing her sicknesses. She was sure of it.
She pinched her cheek. Fucking paranoia. I asked for references. It’d be stupid to just have me read the entire section.
She exhaled and took all nine books to an empty table. The second floor had windows, so she could peer down the hill. The table she’d picked was on the west side of the tower. She could see fields, woods, and more hills rising in the distance.
Alexandra turned her attention to her books.
*
A few hours later, she closed the last one, disappointed. There was no mention of empathy or paranoia anywhere. She did learn a few things and gathered a few ideas she could try later on.
The closest she found was a paragraph in Cursed Patterns on emotional resonance curses. It was described as a class of affliction that fed on the victim's own cognition to self-reinforce. The author noted that the victims often failed to find the patterns because the curse convinced their subconscious that the curse acted in their best interest.
Alexandra leaned back in her chair and fiddled with her fingers. This didn’t feel good.
She was starting to feel like she had reached an impasse. Curse Unraveling was close to level fifteen, the maximum for an uncommon skill, and now her Training Quests required her to unravel sicknesses to progress it. She believed that leveling the skill on regular curses through sheer repetition was possible, but it would take a long time, and it was only two levels.
Would it really make that much of a difference?
She leaned on the table, resting her head in her hands as she looked through the window.
All she could do was keep practicing. Skills weren’t magic. Well, they were, but it didn’t mean they would solve all of her problems.
She summoned her journal and let it fall open on the table.
Quest Journal
Daily Reset: 06:00 | Streak: 50 Days | 5% All Stats, 5% Skill experience
Next Milestone: 100 Days
Daily Quest:
- Cast a mana-based spell while perfectly restraining your mana (0/1)
Casting spells inside the library was a sure way to get into trouble with the Keepers in charge of protecting the books, so she stood up, went down the stairs, and found her way to the roof of the academy. Through the clouds, she converted the sun’s warmth into energy with Photosynthesis.
She sat and homed in on her mana core. With practice, it didn’t take much effort to gather all the threads streaming out and shove them back inside. That was the easy part. She could do it in the back of her mind nowadays.
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The complicated part was casting a spell while restraining her mana. The way she learned spell casting was by manipulating the very threads she couldn’t take out.
In theory, the solution was simple: cast a spell inside her core. In practice, it was a lot more complicated.
She stuck her tongue out, her attention solely focused on the threads she was holding.
Casting inside of one’s mana core was difficult. There, the concentration of mana was high, and the threads sometimes dissolved into each other, making it hard to weave a spell.
She thought of the spell she had in mind. Mana Regeneration was a basic spell, something Irons learned in their introductory courses. The principle behind it was simple: it used ambient mana to hasten the recovery of a core.
The professor had warned against actually using that spell. In fact, they’d spent an entire lesson going over spells that sounded like a good idea but actually ranged from impractical to dangerous. Mana Regeneration was the latter.
Ambient mana was fundamentally different from one’s own mana. It couldn’t be controlled the same way, and absorbing it into one’s core would lead to potentially permanent damage. The only reason it was taught at all was to avoid reckless students thinking they’d discovered a cheat everyone else had been too blind to see.
But it was the only spell Alexandra knew how to cast directly inside her core. The process was very straightforward. Ambient mana went where there was space. All she had to do was create a vacuum of mana in her core, and it would come naturally.
Of course, Alexandra wasn’t so far gone as to cripple herself for a daily quest. It was only early afternoon. She kept Mana Regeneration as a last resort she’d only use close to quest reset.
What she had in mind was to use Mana Regeneration to create her own spell.
With the spell weave in mind, she looked inward and observed the energy from Photosynthesis as it fed her body. There wasn’t much, courtesy of the cloud cover, but her perception was high enough that it wasn’t an issue.
Holding the mana threads with a sliver of her mind, Alexandra followed a tiny portion of the sun’s energy as it flowed from her skin toward a specific section of her core that had opened up with her evolution.
When she reached Bronze, her bloodline, too, had evolved.
Blood of the Verdant Lord - Platinum Bloodline
Iron: Photosynthesis - The sun feeds you.
Bronze: Solar Core - Hold the dawn captive.
Silver: Locked.
Gold: Locked.
Platinum: Locked.
Since then, a small portion of what she absorbed with photosynthesis had been directed toward that section in her core: her Solar Core. As far as she could tell, it acted as a battery of sorts, feeding her in the night. Only it wasn’t filling up fast enough.
She turned her attention to the Solar Core.
The logic was clean enough. Mana Regeneration pulled ambient mana into empty space. The Solar Core sat inside her mana core, partitioned. A separate chamber. If she could hollow it out, creating the vacuum there instead of in the main body of her core, the solar energy would flow there.
She tried but soon realized her mistake.
While she could weave mana to create a vacuum in her core, she couldn’t do the same with solar energy. The sun’s warmth feeding her was doing it automatically, with no input of her own.
She frowned. Now that she thought about it, even if she could move solar energy, it wouldn’t count for her quest.
She had to find a way to manipulate her Solar Core with her mana.
Solar energy fed into the Solar Core automatically, like blood pumping from her heart. She had no hand in it. It was partitioned from the rest of her core, but it was inside her core.
And mana threads could reach anywhere inside her core.
She held the threads coiled, careful not to loosen a single one. She needed to extend threads without releasing the others.
She tested it. Slowly, she peeled two threads loose from the bundle and let them extend inward, toward the Solar Core. The rest she held.
The threads reached the partition and entered the Solar Core. No resistance. There was simply nothing to grasp. Solar energy wasn't mana. The threads passed through it.
She almost retracted them.
Then she thought: Mana Regeneration didn't move ambient mana. It created conditions for ambient mana to move itself.
She didn't need to touch the solar energy.
She began to weave. Two threads, one on either side of the partition wall, close but separate. She layered them into a loose helix, a conduit weave she’d seen her professor demonstrate.
The solar energy didn't move.
As expected.
Her mana core fully encompassed the Solar Core, which meant that for a brief moment, the energy from photosynthesis was traveling through her mana core. She focused, located the path it was taking, and adjusted the conduit’s position.
She tightened the helix. Drew the threads closer together until the channel narrowed and the energy density inside it shifted. A pressure differential.
The solar energy started being sucked in. She felt the current climb back through her core, then her body, her skin, pulling the energy inward and freeing her to absorb more. The sun’s energy was endless, everywhere. Even through the clouds, it was only a difference of density, and the vacuum she had created pulled everything toward her.
It took only a few minutes for her Solar Core to fill up. Alexandra released her spell, then all the threads she’d been holding back.
She smiled and summoned her journal.
Cast a mana-based spell while perfectly restraining your mana (1/1) -> Quest Completed: +10 exp, +1 INT, Skill Quest Unlocked: Mana Concentration.
Daily Quest Streak: 50 -> 51
Mana Manipulation Training Quest: Learn a new spell (1/1)
Mana Manipulation 8 -> 9
She flipped the pages.
Mana Concentration – Uncommon:
Your mana will naturally concentrate inside your core instead of radiating outward.
Each level increases your mana density.
Then the quest.
Mana Concentration: Restrain your mana for ten days without letting go (0/10)
Alexandra’s smile vanished, and with a sigh, she gathered her mana threads once more.