29: Knowledge Seeking

Edward’s view

After entering the tower dungeon, and having some fun solving all the puzzles, David just ignored the griffin boss, and deployed his house on top of the tower. Even stranger: the griffin just ignored us! It just continued to lay in its nest at the other end of the tower top.

“So, what are we doing here, David?”

His first response was just a lengthy sigh. Then, in a weary voice he spoke, “Grand magic requires a grand location. The more a place stands out, the less the world resists large scale magic. It’s as if the grandness of a place, grants it permission for grander impact upon the world.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, and even worse: it leaves me wondering why you are speaking like someone who is being forced to do something they really don’t want to do.”

“It’s not swordsmanship. I don’t want to be a mage as David. I want to use my sword and cut down all problems. If I want to change my fate, I need to do something different though. A sword is only good for cutting. What I want to do is something different.”

“The grand speech is nice and all, but you haven’t explained what you are trying to achieve. If you find it hard to say, that’s okay. I just like to know.”

“Honestly, I’m not quite sure yet… at least, not in detail. What I’m trying to do: is take my fate into my own hands. Humans and demons are in conflict. They’ve always been in conflict. Somehow, I’ve ended up in a position to decide how it ends. I don’t like that. The obvious solution is to pick one side, and have it win. The not so obvious third option is to do nothing, and let things continue. I’m not really satisfied with any of those options. I may not know what I want to do yet, but the best way to figure it out, is to start by learning. For that, I need a spell. A grand spell that will tell me everything I seek to know about this world.”

“What do you seek to know?”

“I want to know why the world is the way it is. To learn that, I plan to study this world’s history in a way that will tell me far more than any history book ever could. A grand divination.”

…

Revenna’s view

As Jess worked on her new project, Osia spoke up:

“Hey, why does this look like it’s just half a spell, Jess?”

“David will be casting the other half.”

“You’re creating a multi-person spell by yourself? Wow.”

“It’s a bit tricky since we can’t cast at the same time, so I need to account for the time delay.”

“A fairly extreme form of extended cast time tricks. Normally that’s just done to extend things by a few hours at most.”

“It’s not really complicated to extend it further. In theory a spell could be made such that it involved one minute of casting per year over the course of decades.”

“In theory, sure. In reality, the environmental changes would be so severe that it’d be impossible to properly account for.”

“Divination magic can be used to compensate for that.”

“At such a high cost that it could not be worth it!”

“Well… maybe a sufficiently well isolated room would enable it.”

“It’s a dumb idea Jess.”

“I just find it fun to think about. Trying to make impractical or impossible things doable can be an entertaining bit of theoretical spell-crafting.”

Hearing the two of them chat like nothing special was going on was a helpful distraction. A dragon was watching. I’ve never been too concerned about privacy before, but… this is a dragon! I don’t really understand how Jessica and Osia can be so calm. Well, I suppose I get why Osia can be, her trust in Jessica is a little absurd. No matter how powerful Jessica may be, this is still a dragon! One of the true immortals in existence! A being of enormous wisdom and age! … and it’s staring at the spell Jessica’s making like a child staring in wonder during their first magic lesson… okay, maybe the dragon’s behavior is even weirder than Jessica’s.

…

Dragon’s view

This spell Jessica is crafting is truly a marvel. Even if it’s only half the spell, it’s not hard to deduce what the other half looks like. The tricks she employs to enable a delay in spell completion might be useful for my own projects. Perhaps I can use it to create a spell that speeds up my growth when I reincarnate so I can skip though the whole growing up phase quicker. 

When I am first reborn, I’m too weak to use powerful magic. If I set up a series of spells to be completed on the other side when reborn, I could speed cast a bunch of spells without having to draw upon my own power at the time. It doesn’t look like Jessica’s figured out that part of what can be done with her tricks yet though. She’s still relying upon her own power at the time of spell completion. It doesn’t take much modification to enable charging up the spell ahead of time though. Perhaps I should publish a new book on magic about pre-casting and pre-charging. It’s been a while since I last published anything under my pen-name: Merlin.