Claire took a deep breath, sitting on the ground in her meditation garden. She let her awareness drift downwards into the earth, feeling it beneath her feet, feeling the roots within it, the smaller stones, particles of sand and silt and clay, and beneath that, the soil life - nematodes, fungal hyphae, protists and microbes, all manner of little creatures living and dying. She breathed deep, listening to the earth speak to her, of glacial drift and crushing weight and chemical erosion.
*Huh. Okay, that's neat... Not entirely sure what to do with it, but I bet Sarah will know.* Claire thought to herself, before shrugging and closing her eyes again, returning to her meditation. Back down her attention drifted, listening to the earth speak to her and share with her its mysteries...
"Alright, who's ready to kill some monsters, eh?" Joey said, grinning at Sasha and Maxim, while Miria stood nearby.
Sasha sighed. "Yeah yeah, lets get this over with."
Miria gestured towards the forest. "Certainly. Right this way, please." She said, leading them into the woods and pausing as the first monsters descended on them. "Okay, here we go!" She said, dispatch one, two, three murder squirrels, while Zach darted forwards to take out a razorleaf seedling, and Miria pinned the last murder squirrel beneath a foot. "Alright, one of you come get it."
Maxim sighed. "I ztill do not care for this." He said, quickly and efficiently killing the thing with a spear. "But, let us continue."
Miria shrugged apologetically. "I know. But the monsters are getting stronger - those were all level two or three. So, we'd better make sure you two keep up, or you could be in trouble, yeah?"
Maxim nodded. "Yez. I understand."
Sasha groans. "...Maybe we can move to somewhere with less monsters? I dunno, worth considering..."
"...I have no idea if there even is a place with less monsters." Miria said. "But, we'll see. Maybe if we can level enough, we can rescue the other civilians from the Nazis, and then we'll have enough warriors that there won't be monsters left over to go after you two? We'll see."
"...That is outrageously good in the right circumstances." Sarah said, looking the description for Claires new spell over. "Also, I really, really want to see it in action now."
Claire groaned. "It's soooo expensive! That's like, almost a fourth of my mana pool in one shot. More than a third, if I empower it."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "See, for me it's more than a third of my mana pool even by default."
Claire blew a raspberry. "Yeah, but you have that metamagic that lets you make things cheaper if you want to. So you could at least practice with the thing without blowing so much mana. I bet you'll have it mastered in no time once I show you."
Sarah shrugged. "...I dunno. Maybe? We'll see? I can cut out, like, a third of a spells mana cost I think... which is decent, but would only save me like 6 mana there I think..." She sighed. "Well, regardless, lets go find Zach, I finished working on some spells for him."
"Holy shit, Sarah! These are fantastic!" Zach said, his eyes practically popping out of his skull. "Goddamn. Well, uh. Fuck. I thought I knew which milestone to take, but now I'm not so sure."
Sarah laughed. "I am a generous scholar of magic, I give and I taketh away."
"Think you're ready to start learning?" She asked, smirking at Zach. "Though actually, what are your thoughts on milestones, first?"
He sighed. "Well, the spell options is obviously much less important, if I can rely on you to give me stuff like this. I had been thinking the spell effect, just cause I wanted more duration, and it also buffs my magics direct protective power... But, with these, especially the second one, it might be worth going in for the enlargement metamagic? I could cover our entire base..."
Sarah pursed her lips. "Hmm. Yes... That makes your magic a lot more expensive though, right? So you'd blow through mana painfully fast..."
He nodded. "Yeah, that's the big problem. The spell effect isn't much, but it doesn't cost me mana and it's always decently useful. And increased duration is still pretty good..."
"Maybe try actually using the new spells, once I teach them to you, and see how you feel in practice? Though I'd lean towards the spell effect, we'll probably want to put the spells much further out, so having more of them will beat having them be larger." She offered, and he let out another sigh.
"Yeah that's probably what I need to do." He said. "Still though, these new spells are amazing. I'll probably start scattering the new tripwire one throughout the woods, help me get a sense of whats going on around us... I'll feel a lot more comfortable having the warning."
"Lunchtime! Coooome and get it." Sasha said, waving at Joey and Zach, out grinding essence. "You two are the last ones, I already got everyone else to come eat."
They waved back. "We'll be right over!" Joey yelled, while Zach watched carefully as several monsters rushed in and were blown up by one of Joey's explosive charges. A single one managed to survive, and he efficiently dispatched it, before they jogged over to Sasha. "So what's for lunch?" The teifling asked, and Sasha shrugged.
"More of the same, mostly... We're working on a stew for dinner, though." She said.
"We'll look forwards to it." Zach said.
Rising Stones
They don't like this spell? This spell is *made* for making farmland. Know what people did with the stones they dug out of the ground? Made walls out of them. Crud, it says minimum of 25 lbs., rise quickly and has a range of 500 feet. As far as I'm concerned that can also mean they can raise rocks from deeper down to higher up (while still leaving them underground) so that trees and bushes can wrap their roots around them and dig in harder. It could also be used for building underground bases maybe? Depends on if the rocks leave holes behind them or if they phase through. If nothing else I'd love it simply because of how much easier it'd be to remove crap stone from the ground like leftover concrete junk. And that's not even including what some industriously minded people could do with up to 2000 lbs of stone per cast just for building on the surface. And who knows. Might even accidentally dig up magic stone too.
The teifling asked, and Sasha shrugged.
Should be "tiefling"
?➡️??
- Create a magic area 10 feet in radius, anchored on a physical object that weighs no more than 20 pounds. If the object is disturbed my more than 3 inches,
by*
Thanks for the chapter