Save Scumming

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Eight - Getting Gooder

The next week was... interesting.

First, there was living with Fran. Fortunately, she wasn't insatiable. After that first night, things became a lot more casual, though even though I was staying at her place, I still felt like I didn't know her all that well.

The woman just didn't open up easily, which was fine. I wasn't looking for a long-term thing, and a part of me knew that this was ephemeral. I'd be reloading, and then everything would be gone.

So yeah, I enjoyed what I could, but was aware of the persistent sense that this was fleeting. Still nice to live in a luxury apartment though. Every time I thought I had seen the last fancy thing, I'd discover another.

There were two bathrooms, but that didn't count the fucking sauna. The toilets were smart, and for some reason connected to the internet. So was the fridge, and just about every other appliance. And that was just the stuff in the apartment, it didn't count the concierge services and the car elevator and the rooftop pool. Shit was top. No wonder the point-one percenters shat all over the rest of the world; they had private golf simulators and helipads. I'd stomp on the proletariat too if I could get that.

The week wasn't spent luxuriating in Fran's apartment and in her company, however. She had work to do which kept her surprisingly busy. It was a wonder she had time to go out on occasion to hit up a random dungeon with me.

So, most of my time was spent in training.

Professor Sawyer was surprisingly patient with me, even if he pretty consistently gave off the impression that he wanted to be anywhere else and that he wished my IQ wasn't stuck in the single digits.

Dark magic was complex. All magic was, but in the opinion of the professor (who was incredibly biased) Dark was particularly complicated. It didn't lend itself to conceptually simple things. A Fire mage burnt things. Easy. A Dark mage had a wider breath of potential spells, but their effects were often particular and strange. At its core, the magic was good at denying things. That often meant, in gamer terms, 'debuffing.'

Spells like Shadow Bolt were tricky. Dark wasn't a magic that was good at physical manifestations, so a kinetic damage spell wasn't something that came natural with the magic.

It was doable, but tricky.

The first couple of days were spent working out a baseline. That meant casting the same spells over and over again, then letting my magical energy recuperate back to nearly full. That was helped by drinking these atrocious high-energy mixtures. They were a bit like protein shakes, only chalkier. They had flavours like 'strawberry' and 'chocolate.'

The strawberry tasted like expired gummy bears found dipped in rotten meat sauce, and the chocolate tasted brown. I wasn't sure how else to describe that. It was bland, and brown, and not good. But damn, it boosted my regen like mad, and that meant more practice time.

Since I couldn't carve out new spells, the focus was on learning how to manipulate magic post-cast. That was a pretty high-end trick.

The idea was simple enough, but it took some time for me to wrap my head around it anyway.

"What happens when you cast a spell?" Sawyer asked. We were both leaning against some desks in the same training room. He had his arms crossed and looked a little bored.

"I... take the magical energy in me, and I push it through the carved spell sticking out of my core," I said. I could feel the magic in me, I could kinda move it, a little, but it was strange and slippery. Squeezing my core, however, was easy.

It was a bit like letting go of my bladder or something. Probably not the best analogy, but the sensation was kind of the same, only I could direct that feeling through one of the carved spell formations jutting out of my core. When that happened, the magic would do stuff and then the spell would be cast.

I didn't know how it worked, I only knew how to work it.

If someone asked me how my motorcycle worked, I'd have the same response. I could make it go fast and I knew where to put the fuel in, but the engine and all that? Might as well be sorcery.

Professor Sawyer, on the other hand, did understand. Or at least, he knew a whole lot more than I did about it. "That's a plebeian response, but it's good enough. What we need to do, based on the criteria we have, is teach you how to change the properties of a spell after it has been cast. I've spent some time thinking about it, and I see two solution."

Taken from NovelFire, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Go on," I said with a gesture for him to continue.

"The first is as I said, we teach you to modify a spell at the time of its casting." Sawyer frowned, looked around, then moved towards the whiteboard at the end of the room. He tested a marker, then started to draw something. It was a complex, squiggly line. I though it was just a scribble at first, but then I recognized that it was straight up the carving formation for Shadow Bolt. Did he memorize it?

He circled the space at the end of the spell, right where there was a small sort of 'hook' shaped thing that I think was designed to hold onto the spell as it was cast? I wasn't sure, but the spell could be stalled to cast a little faster or slower.

"This is where the modification would have to be, since we can't change the prior spell carving. The first option, as I was saying, would be to grab onto the fully-formed spell, hold it, and insert modified half-formations into the spell."

He illustrated how to do this by drawing a few strange squiggles near the end, then drawing arrows to where they would be inserted.

"Is that doable?" I asked.

"Yes. But it's complicated. You'll have to learn a few dozen modifiers, and they won't be applicable to every spell you learn in the future, though some might be. Think of it like... music? The carved spell is a scroll piano, playing certain notes in a certain order to create a song. What you're doing now is playing a second song on the remaining keys in accompaniment. That same second song could fit other music as well, as long as the beat and tone is the same, but it would require some modification to work elsewhere."

"I think I follow," I said. "I play the guitar though, not the piano."

"Hm? I'll... keep that in mind when coming up with analogies on the spot."

"What's the other option?" I asked.

"We give up on all of this," he said, tapping the butt end of the marker on the board. "And immediately learn how to cast spells without carving them first."

I blinked. "Isn't that a little of what I'm doing with option one?"

"A little is the important part. To continue with the music analogy, this would be learning how to play on a fretless guitar, blindfolded and deaf."

"I think you could actually do that," I said. "But yeah, it would be harder."

"Exactly. I would suggest learning it at some point, even if it's just for small, casual spell effects." He raised a hand and there was a sort of soft pop as a burst of pure black smoke appeared over his fingers.

I tilted my head a little. "A party trick?"

"Not much more than that. But it's a spell, technically. You need good control, however, and practice. An unbelievable amount of practice. But with the constraints we have, that's all I can offer you."

"So, either learn to modify spells on the fly," I started.

"Which will let you use an existing, already-carved spell as a foundation. You'll only need to learn spell modification. The 'only' there is carrying a lot of weight."

"Or I can learn to cast without carving at all," I continued.

"Which is an expert-level skill, but it would allow you to cast anything."

I started to pace as I thought about it. Freecasting sounded cool. Given that I had loops to practice it in, time wasn't that much of a concern... only it was. On the other hand, I could also spend a lot of time learning how to carve more spells.

Once the situation with Seraph was resolved, I was going to take some time to carve out a few more spells. Freecasting sounded like trying to learn surgery with a spoon and a YouTube tutorial.

"What would you do?" I asked.

Sawyer's expression shifted a little. Not much. He still looked like a man who had been born bored. "I would learn the modifiers first," he said. "Not because they are easier, though they are. Because they will teach you the shape of magic while still giving you a frame to work within. Freecasting without that frame would be a waste of time. You'd be guessing in the dark."

"I'm a Dark mage. Guessing in the dark sounds thematic."

"You're not funny enough to make that land."

"Ouch."

***