Spell Weaver [Book 2 Complete]

Alex sat cross-legged on the rock that was becoming "his spot" during their training. He liked the small ledge, which allowed for some support for his lower back, and, more importantly, it had a great view of the entire cavern.

He'd slept fitfully the previous evening, his dreams filled with large spiders and universe-spanning magical webs. Deciding then that he had things he could do to improve himself, he abandoned sleep.

It was odd to know that it was early morning, just on his body’s internal clock, not having seen the sun for more than a day at this point. The absurdity of his situation wasn’t lost on him as he sorted through his spatial storage items. With Eura’s inheritance, he could abandon his other storage items altogether if he wanted to.

Before letting himself become completely absorbed in the items, he used [Mirage] to create an illusion of himself, letting his second consciousness slip into it and urging that version of himself to continue practicing the unstructured mana shaping exercises.

Won’t be much longer now. Once I can make threads with the illusory copy, things will get a whole lot more interesting.

He stared at his own back as it moved away, and he thought for a moment that he wanted to test more of the combination's limitations. There were so many things to test—so, so many things to test. However, what was most important now was to get the mirage to where it could do something other than scout. All the other questions could wait.

Instead, he turned his attention to the inheritance that Eura had left him. Marveling at the steely-grey item, Alex sent his consciousness into it. Previously, he'd compared their sizes to storage spaces that he could relate to. The ring was similar to a dresser, meaning that it was the smallest of the three items, but it had the added convenience of easily dropping items directly into his hand. It was also the least conspicuous of the items, even if he felt a bit odd wearing a golden ring on his index finger. He decided to keep his more practical and frequently needed items there, such as his wand, jian, and some backup pouches of ritual ingredients, just in case he needed to use them.

His pouch was the one he felt like he might begin to phase out. While it was larger than the internal space of the ring, he roughly compared it to the size of a closet. Not a walk-in bedroom sort of closet, but one of the small ones that people had in their hallways. It was still more than he would be willing to carry on his back, but compared to the bracer, it felt small, more inconvenient to dig through, and much easier to spot. He decided to keep backup goods in the pouch, such as extra leather journals, spare weapons, and armor that he didn't plan to use, but wanted to have just in case.

The bracer was the most interesting to him, though he wasn't sure if that was because it was the newest or because it seemed like a true marvel all over again. The magic seemed fresh and powerful, and orders of magnitude larger than the spatial pouch. It was the easiest of the three items to hide by a large margin. He could wear it under his shirt sleeve, and no one would be the wiser. Not to mention that it was firmly attached to his forearm in a way that made him comfortable in the fact that no one could easily steal it. In the bracer, Alex wanted to keep his more valuable items and survival necessities, like food, fire starters, rope, mana stones, and more.

He glanced over at his friends to see them still sleeping and decided to take a few minutes to test the limitations of the new item. They'd all learned some time ago that items coming from the storage couldn't have any momentum. Even if he threw a rock into the pouch, when he pulled it out, it had no momentum at all. The best he could do was drop it into his hand as he was going through the throwing motion.

What he was curious about with the new one, though, was how he could remove items from it.

Alex picked up a rock in his right hand and pressed it to the bracer to send it into the spatial item. With another thought, he removed it with the same hand, working as it had several times before. This was the baseline for how to use the item so far and how he’d inserted and removed things before. He tried similar deposit and withdrawal methods in several scenarios.

Alex held the rock several inches from his left arm and tried to push it into the item. It didn't budge. He touched the rock to the item to deposit it, then tried to remove it to his right hand while several inches away. Still no result. He knew it was wishful thinking, but moved on to the next test. Both inserting and removing the rock were also impossible when his sleeve was in the way of contacting the item. At first, that thought frustrated him, but then he realized it would likely also prevent others from trying to use it.

How does that even work?

He removed his notebook and took a note to get one of the others to test it with him.

In the end, the main limiting factor seemed to be that he needed to have contact with the item to use it properly. The one benefit to this seemed to be that he could remove items from it into his left hand. He didn't have to touch his right hand to the outside of the bracer; instead, he could drop an item directly into his left hand, likely because it had constant contact with his skin.

"Hmm... I wonder if this is why Eura always stood with his hand clasped behind his back or in his robe sleeves. Was he always keeping a hand on a similar spatial item?" Alex mumbled to himself.

It wasn't long after this that Mark woke and tapped Sam on his way over to join Alex. The young healer grumbled once, but within a few seconds, he forced himself to sit up, look around, and join the two of them.

"No Sarah?" Alex asked as Mark sat down across from him.

He shook his head as he rubbed his face and clicked the knob on the top of the lantern next to Alex, letting out just a bit more light for their normal vision. "No, she was up late last night trying to work on that passive skill idea she's got."

"What about you and Sam?"

“Sam already got his movement skill, so he’s helping me with that.”

“And Mark already got running, so he’s helping me with that,” Sam said with a tired smile.

“Perfect. Keep working on those. I would have died quite a few times already if it weren’t for my movement skill.” He was about to tell them how well they were working together, but one of the mana spinner hunters approached and caught his attention. “One sec.”

He moved over to the spider, who was already extending a mana tendril to communicate. The flash of images that came across the link was quick and hard to understand.

Frustration? Frantic? Panic?

The last two seemed too drastic for the emotions he felt from the mana spinner, but he parsed out the message best he could. He nodded and asked for a little time to prepare his team.

It only took the team ten minutes to get up, and Alex was surprised that Sarah was much easier to wake than expected. He had them pack their gear and come to the entrance to prepare to leave.

“What’s going on, dude?”

“Did they find Olivia?” Sarah asked.

“No, not yet. Apparently, the tunnels aren’t naturally safe. They’re not overrun because the spinners have been holding them off with the layering of web traps and rituals.” He felt a bit of pride come into his voice at that.

“They need you to help fix them?” Sam asked.

“Yes, I’m going to help fix the rituals and show them more about the barrier spell circle. But you guys are coming to get some experience,” he said, turning to them with a grin.

All three of his friends seemed to realize what he was saying at once. “They’re going to boost us, too, huh?” There was a glint of greed in the tank’s eyes as he clearly thought about Alex’s early and rapid growth.

Alex laughed and had to prevent himself from rolling his eyes as he just knew that Mark was rubbing his hands together in his head. “They’re going to let you kill the creatures in the webs. Get ready, though, they’re going to want you to drag the corpses that were caught back with us. We’ll consider it part of your training. Mark, you can drag them behind you and practice [Running] while Sam and Sarah try to keep up to get the skill. Whenever one of you gets it, you can take some of Mark’s load and join him.”

They all nodded seriously in response, though it was clear Mark’s excitement at the outing was dimmed with the prospect of cardio.

It wasn’t long before a group of four spinners returned and motioned for them to follow, but the lead spinner did make a point to have Alex dissolve his mirage. It refused to move or budge until Alex did so. The group moved quickly through the dark cavern, using only one lantern with one of the plastic, dome-like covers that went over it, meant to dim the light to a smaller radius. The spinners moved ahead, gliding easily along the webs of mana that they spun. The way the movement worked looked similar to his [Feather Step], but they had much more control over their direction. Alex led his small group from behind the spinners, able to follow the recently laid mana webs with his mana sight.

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Even though they lagged behind, his group pushed hard. Sarah even gained the [Running] skill before they reached their first trapped monster. Mark seemed relieved when she announced it. From there, Mark, Sarah, and Alex continued down the tunnel using the channeled [Running] skill until they ran out of mana, allowing them to get used to the increased speed. Sam jogged behind them, trying to gain it as well. He would use his own [Dash] skill to catch up to the skill-enhanced runners periodically. Valtherion rode on Sam’s shoulder, which added weight to his run, but also allowed the bond to push mana into Sam so that he could continue to practice.

“How much mana does yours use?” Alex asked the other two suspiciously.

Mark replied first, speaking words between heavy breaths. “Mine uses three mana every second. That’s why I can only go in short bursts.”

“Mine is the same,” Sarah added.

Alex nodded and thought to himself that it confirmed his suspicion. He pulled up the description of Willpower, which he hadn’t looked at for quite some time.