24: New Boss

Osia’s view

“Um, Jess, David’s already heading off to the next dungeon. Aren’t you ready to leave yet? You’ve spent forever on the boss now.”

“It’s no good. It’s no good! I gotta fix it, Sia!”

“Well, it is rather weak to dispelling.”

“It’s not just that, but no one here can replace it! I can’t keep coming back to fix it when it breaks!”

“Sorry, I can’t help. What you’ve made is already way beyond my understanding.”

“I’m just using the water as a mirror to create a reflection as a monster.”

“Yeah… normally that kind of spell gets broken or distorted by anything that disrupts the reflecting surface. Yet you are using the water of the arena itself as that surface. The reflections should be getting disrupted with every step people take.”

“Eh? Really? That seems… frail.”

“That’s why those kinds of spells aren’t used. I’m not sure what you’ve done, but your spell isn’t actually anchored to the water.”

“It’s… anchored to the idea, I guess.”

“Hmmm… if you’re using conceptual anchoring… I guess that explains what these pieces are… You probably don’t even realize conceptual anchoring was merely a theoretical idea no one’s figured out how to do yet.”

“Is it really that hard?”

“No one knows the formula for it.”

“I just did this… here, look.”

“... that’s five layers of spellcasting.”

“Oh, that’s just because I’m using a library. It’s easier when I can reference my old collections of commonly used functions.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Oh… I suppose they never taught this in class, huh. It was pretty basic stuff in programming classes… Oh, but I had to invent the spell for storing libraries… hmmm…”

… I know that look: Jessica’s off in her own world again. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d probably get frustrated with how hard it is to understand her when she tries to explain herself. Instead I just find myself getting lost in her eyes…

Anyway, this spell she’s been making for the boss is truly ridiculous. I’ve been trying to copy it into a book to study later, and I’ve already filled over a hundred pages. 

*sigh* Conceptual anchoring huh? This goes way over my head. It was an interesting idea when I found out about it, but understanding the theory requires a better understanding of spell anchoring than I possess. 

… one day later…

“Finally done. Here, Sia, this is for you.”

“Eh? Weren’t you working on the boss?”

“I thought I should do this first.”

Jessica handed me a strange looking book. However, upon opening it, I realized this was no simple book. 

“This… is this a living spell?”

“Huh? It’s just a connected terminal. It will link to the reader’s mind to figure out what you want to see, then search through my records to find it.”

“This… is every spell you made in here?”

“Almost. I didn’t start my records until middle school I think?”

“Before we met then… that’s when multi-layer spells are first taught, isn’t it?”

“I think so. Pretty sure that was when I got the idea to build a record.”

“... wait, this means you’ve had an active spell that stores data, for the past six years?”

“Yeah? Is that weird?”

… but powering a spell like that for so long… oh… oh!

“Your horns. They’re the backup, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“No wonder you made such a weird brittle thing. Mana and enhancement aren’t even their primary purpose!”

“Eh? No, I put a lot of work into that!”

“Maybe you did, but their design is clearly not optimized for it right. You have them active at all times, and proper optimized design doesn’t do that, because it’s wasteful. If they are tied into a spell that needs to be sustained forever though, it makes sense.”

“I feel like you aren’t really understanding me here, and just jumping to your own conclusions.”

“Maybe. Or maybe you don’t understand your own reasons well.”

“... I can’t say you're wrong about that… wish I could.”

“Jess, I love you.”

“...”

“I know you worry that I’m in love with some imaginary version of you that isn’t real.”

“How-”

“I know you better than you think, Jess.”

I held her close as she tried to make sense of everything I’d just said.

“I’ve always used my buffs and enhancements as continuous use effects.”

“I know. It’s very inefficient, Jess. You have a lot more mana than most. Enough that you can afford the waste when casting spells yourself.”

“Are all my spells inefficient?”

“Probably. I don’t understand how all of them work, so I can’t be sure, but even your smaller spells tend to have enormous mana costs for what they do.”

…

Jessica’s view

Such an out of nowhere statement. Took me a while to piece it together but… she said it to convince me she’s right. Osia knows me better than I’d realized. Maybe I should consult her more on magic… oh, but that would make it take so much longer to create new spells if I need to explain it all to her every time.

Ah, I’m already running late, I need to hurry up and finish this boss room spell.

…

Revenna’s view

Jessica somehow created a boss that doesn’t even exist in our world properly. It exists only in the reflection of the pool. A giant artificial lake that acts as the boss room. The boss exists only in the reflection it casts of the world, and the boss casts the spells that create mirror copies. Because of this, if a mirror copy is dispelled, it can just make another, and even if someone defeats the copies, the boss remains untouched. Most won’t even realize it’s there… honestly, I don’t even know how it could be defeated. Maybe I should ask Jess, she should have an idea.

“A dimensional anchor can pull it into the real world.”

A what? … *sigh* I should’ve known I wouldn’t understand her answer.