Contemplating what other spells he should put into the spell-pockets, the mini sun he tested did come to mind. He didn’t really know how much energy it needed, he felt fine afterwards but he hadn’t gotten used to setting rough percentages on his available mana yet. Though shoving the pocket full of gems and seeing how it goes did feel like an appropriate way of handling it. But he wanted to test it at least once first, just to make sure.
Using a pocket for Aether Dart was not a dumb idea, but it was a simple spell that he could get used to in the normal way, should he use all the pockets for complicated stuff, or leave one for more simple spells? Creation spells were super complicated but ‘summoning’ something weird in mid battle did sound like a good way to do things, though since that needed blood instead of mana, how would that work?
He still had questions that he needed answers to, perhaps Jial could help, he seemed to be overly helpful and had a lot of knowledge on these topics. For now, he decided to shelf the thoughts until he got back, he wanted to see how the girls were handling things.
Since he went downhill a bit from the girls for his own testing, he decided to fly up instead of walking, it was more fun, after all.
Casting the flying spell was not different from before and he found himself lifting off the ground in a few seconds. He did consider if this was a good candidate for the spell pockets but since it lasted so long, or technically neverending as long as he was not out of mana or had to spend like all of it, there was no need to consider that.
He didn’t get much more time to consider that before he passed the height of the little platou that made for the mountain’s top. He briefly got to see Angela and Petal in a fistfight, both of them looked winded and worn out, he was just used to seeing them in the dome, which replenished stamina, so he didn’t really know how it was going.
There was no sign of Aeris and Savia, so they were probably about somewhere.
Landing not far from the two he walked the last few steps, mainly to not accidentally get between something and getting punched. They would probably be fine but there was no reason to risk it.
“So, how’s it going here?” He didn’t really know how to start the conversation so why not just ask for an update!
“What happened with her?!” Angela complained as she pointed at Petal, who looked back in a strange confusing expression.
“I’m afraid you need to be more specific...” Gilliam was just as confused as Petal.
“She’s faster and stronger than yesterday, the fuck did you do?” Angela still pointed at her but dropped her hand to emphasise her annoyance.
Gilliam was even more confused, he didn’t do anything. “Isn’t it good that she gets faster or stronger? I mean, you have been training for a while, perhaps it’s th-” He was interrupted before he could complete his theory.
“No, overnight progress won’t reach this much unless you do something weird. Did you cast some spells on her or something?” The blaming tone had calmed down a little bit, it was still there but it was now mixed with a more curious tone.
“No, I didn..t.” Answering honestly he also hesitated when he realised something.
Earlier he found out that she being in the presence of the mana crystals acted like some form of adrenaline or caffeine rush, she was next to him for quite some time when he made all those mana crystals for Harroc. However she had been around him when making mana crystals before, and was not the major thing he came to consider.
Their last-night intimacy was more what he was considering. Her race got stronger and could gain abilities when eating others that had abilities or personal power, basically she could absorb power somehow. Now... this did explain a few things although it was a bit strange for him to consider. Since Savia seemed to perk up a bit overnight due to their bond there might also have been a lot of mana in that room, meaning that Petal might have gotten an extra dose of mana.
“AH! You did do something!” Angela reacted to his hesitation like she caught him red handed telling a lie.
Petal was still confused, she didn’t seem to dislike getting stronger but the conversation had her a bit out of it.
“Well... technically... But I didn’t expect this...” Gilliam was a bit hesitant on the subject.
Gilliam was not one to shy from talking about sexual stuff, however when it came to his own intimate life he preferred to keep it between himself and his partner. It just felt right back when he had a girlfriend earlier in his life and this was no different.
He had long since gotten over the thought of being publicly known to be together with a demon, though true he didn’t see Petal as ‘a demon’, she was just Petal who happened to be a demon.
Though, all that in mind, it seemed that the conversation might have to drift into that area forcefully due to Angela’s questioning. Having Gilliam believe that it might just as well be best to take control over it.
“Given that me and Petal became intimate for the first time last night, I think that might have something to do with it.”
Bluntness was his way to handle it.
This caught Angela off guard, he guessed she got some ideas during breakfast about their evening, but it seems this part caught her off guard:
“Yeah, considering that her race can absorb energy and grow powerful from their food... I suppose it can stretch out to this as well?” Gilliam was also confused, his gaze changed towards Petal in a weird hope that she could answer this.
She returned the confused look and shook her head. “I don’t know how this works either. I haven’t heard of sex affecting any of my kind but as far as I know nobody has tried it outside of our own.” She seemed oddly calm about this but given how loose their species were with boundaries it made sense that she didn’t have a problem talking about things.
“That might be because we don’t have our own mana, so we cannot pass it on. My Lord has a lot of mana?”
The end of her sentence strongly hinted that she was speculating, however it made a bit of sense put in this context.
If her people didn’t have any innate mana, they couldn’t pass it on to others, it needed to come from external sources. Since Gilliam was an external source, both physically and genetically, it could make sense that this was only possible that way.
Gilliam wanted to make a joke about her getting even stronger in the near future, but that was treading back into private territory again.
“Well... Fuck... Pun not intended but..” Angela’s frustration faded into a defeated expression. As well as making a dumb pun accidentally.
“I kind of hoped it was something you could share with me, but that’s not going to work.” She seemed deep in thought for a moment but seemed to ignore whatever she was considering.
Gilliam sighed, he was both glad and disappointed that this was a Petal-only thing, mostly glad as he felt that it could delve into exploit territories, not something he wanted.
“Well, I think that we s-FUCK!” Trying to change the topic, his sentence was suddenly interrupted by Savia manifesting in the air in-front of him, flying badly and turning towards him after a split second, shouting “Master!” at him happily.
He didn’t expect anyone to manifest around him at all, and in-front of him like this was even more startling.
“Savia? How?” Gilliam lifted out his hand to let the still wounded Savia land. “And you can fly again?” He was surprised at her suddenly popping up in front of him but he was honestly glad that she could fly again.
Angela seemed to be laughing at Gilliam’s reactions.
Instead of landing normally Savia just stopped flapping while still in the air, she landed in his hand without any noticeable sound besides a little squeak.
“Master, master!” She seemed incredibly happy. “Savia can teleport!”
“Oh, that was you teleporting?” Gilliam put pressure on the word ‘you’ as he asked to confirm, she did appear just in front of him but he somewhat assumed this was Aeris’ shenanigans.
“It seems that she can.” Aeris’ voice confirmed as she came walking over, Gilliam didn’t notice her arriving. “She needs some training, though.” She added as she got into proper conversation distance.
Savia was practically bouncing with her huge smile in Gilliam’s hand during this conversation. Gilliam was a mixture of happy for her but also still confused.
“How... When...?” Though these weren’t specifically asked of anyone, it was the only thing he could properly ask.
Aeris chuckled as she responded. “I have no idea when she got the gift, but we found out just now when you were training. This teleport was her first successful one.” She seemed interested in this event, possibly from being a teleporter as well.
“I took her on a few teleports and gave her some tips, her first teleport was to you.”
Gilliam looked back at the happy creature in his hands, who returned a bright smile. “That’s amazing!” He let her sit in his left hand as he used a few fingers on his right hand to pet her. “I suppose we’ll have to get you some training as well, then.”
She just smiled even wider at the weird compliment, their shared bond was practically exploding with a mixture of happiness and pride.
There were two main reasons in his mind for doing that, first of all there was no good reason not to nurture any gifts like this, the second was a bit more logical and insulting; but she was now showing a reason to be a part of the upcoming war. He had his hesitations of bringing her into that without any way of protecting herself or doing anything to enhance their capabilities, and as he knew very well that she wanted to come with this gave him a slight dilemma.
The fact that she has this gift changed all of this, he was still hesitant but now she could become an asset in a fight.
Parts of him really hated himself for thinking like this, putting value on anyone like that, but the logical side of him kind of had to; you don’t bring a non-combatant into a war without a good reason.
“I can train her.” Aeris said from the side. “I’m already better than my teachers.” Smiling proudly, Gilliam couldn’t help but believe her at face value. She had teleported him a few times and it had always been perfect as far as he knew. And based on her efforts in the first gate event, she could clearly handle a stressful situation.
“Are you sure? I don’t know if I can pay you or anything.” For a moment he had forgotten that he had a sizable pile of money stored in his ring, as well as how easily he could make more money with his mana crystal creation if he needed it.
“Don’t worry about it, it’ll be fun having another teleporter to spend time with.” She seemed honest about this. Which was good but it made Gilliam wonder how she was doing. He had only seen her spend time with Nolis, that isn’t mentally present at times, he also hadn’t seen Nolis much around. Given her young age and that he didn’t know much about her he didn’t really know her situation.
Turning his focus to Savia in his hand, he lifted her up towards his face. “What do you say, you want to learn teleporting from Aeris?” He spoke in a tone strongly suggesting that he knew this was a yes, much like most other rhetorical questions.
“Savia will learn teleporting!” She sounded happy but there was an odd feeling across their shared bond, there was a sense of relief and pride mixed together.
He had some ideas on what this might be but he decided to not bring it up.
Looking back at Aeris, he did wonder how he could repay her. Monetary payments might not be that important to her, given her ability and how that can be used to easily earn money, and what kind of an asset she could become to merchants alone, she would probably do well once she graduates. Manually putting this down as owing her a huge favour would be enough for now.
The rest of the day went to further testing. Angela and Petal sparred some more, Gilliam hadn’t seen them fight much before so he didn’t have too much of a benchmark to track Petal’s improvements. But based on Angela’s earlier outburst they were apparently enough to cause some reaction. He didn’t dare be a part of that fight without the safety of the Dome, his fighting style was harder to hold back, especially since he was still working on that.
Aeris and Savia started teleporting around, according to Aeris’ explanation, it helped a lot to get used to being teleported to sort of get a feel for things. There were also safety concepts that only another teleporter could properly do when training to increase the safety net, so to speak. This meant that if Aeris was with Savia alone through a teleport, it would be safer than if anyone else came along. She explained it as an instinctive feel that was hard to actually explain in detail. Aeris seemed to know what she was doing so he let her do her thing.
Gilliam read up on his coat a bit more and did some more testing. Mainly in swapping the stored magic circle, this was easily enough done by putting in a new one, overwriting the old one on its own. The manual also explained that there was no limit to the complexity of the magic circle put in, the only warning is that the coat doesn’t confirm if the spell circle will work or not. The most wondrous thing is that if a multi-circle creation is part of the same spell, it can remember those as well as they are technically just different levels of the same circle.
Gilliam realised he needed more knowledge on these things... It was a strange feeling being able to use it all to a weird instinctive level yet, not properly understanding them.
In the end he decided to put the mega fireball into the coat, it was his newest creation and though he hoped he never had to use it, parts of him really, really wanted to. It took quite some time to draw it again and to make sure it was done properly, if he had to use it later it would be catastrophic if it failed.
So he double and even triple checked every single line with his notes, though during this he realised that the spell was not named.
The brief moment it was in mid air it looked like a spear with the pointed glowing head and long tail, but it was clearly a sun as it was being created. Considering names that made it sound neat in his head as it would make it easier to remember when he needs to cast it.
Star Lance.
That was the name that popped in his mind when he thought about it a bit more, the core of the spell was basically a star, a sun, and he had read in the modern world that one of the differences between a lance and spear was that a lance was a one-use kind of thing.
It ended up as one of those weird things that just clicked in his mind, it just made sense... to him. And his inner 14 year old loved it, so...
The next thing was that he didn’t really know how much mana ‘was’. He could make the mana gems and he had figured out that he could make several ones of the fist sized crystals before his boundary was empty. Based on how fine he felt after casting the improved Star Lance, rather than doing it with unstructured magic, a few of those fist sized ones would probably be enough. Right?
Focusing on the Aether Dart pocket he could feel that there was plenty of energy left, he couldn’t tell how many casts but there was no danger of running out for at least a few casts.
He mentally planned some further testing later where he cast the Sun Lance but then use the gems to recharge himself, to see if there was still any missing mana in his pool.
It was a crude but simple test.
With this in mind he tried to put a fist-sized mana crystal into the Star Lance pocket, but as he did so it didn’t go in right, it felt... weird.. Wrong.. The pocket didn’t stop him from doing it but the process was not correct.
Considering this for a moment it made a lot of sense, the spell used Fire as the dominant spell, the only usage of Aether was the support circles. In that case it made a lot of sense. He had fuelled up the support magic but not the main spell, he needed to make some elemental focused mana crystals!
He wanted to fill the other two pockets with spells, but he wanted at least one of them to be a summoning spell. Though those took a lot of pre-planning and he wanted to test them before he put one in there, this also needed its own fuel, and he had not tried to make any Darkness aligned crystals yet.
He had plenty of time to make the Fire gem whenever he wanted, and it shouldn’t be too problematic based on the gems he made for Harroc, some of them were elementally aligned, but he didn’t test any Darkness crystals.
Since the others were doing their own thing he could test a few more things.
First, he needed to know what it felt like if the pocket didn’t have enough power to the spell, this was easily tested by taking out the crystal for the Aether dart and putting in a tiny fragment, something he knew didn’t have enough juice.
Trying to cast the spell he realised that as soon as he focused on the pocket, or rather the spell in it, there was an odd connection made to him, he could refuse it easily but it wasn’t there the last time. The spell seemed to seek out and connect to him for fuel.
This was incredibly lucky that there was a way to make sure you have enough power in the pocket. Swapping the gems back out the same connection was not there when he focused on the spell again.
Test successful!
Now he just needed to give the other spell what it needed. He started with what he knew and used the following moment to create a few fist-sized crystals imbued with the fire element. This took a few moments as the gems hold quite a lot of energy, not enough to deplete him but enough for him to feel it after a few.
After the first one was completed he put it in the Star Lance pocket, leaving one of the Aether ones in there for now to test. Focusing on the pocket had the same connection as before requesting access, so it was not enough:
Gilliam sighed as he started focusing on the next Fire crystal.
The second Fire crystal took a bit more time, he had used a lot of energy and he was not fully recharged yet, so the strain was a bit harder until he was finally done. Luckily it was not enough to put him into mana starvation mode but he was starting to feel a bit worse for wear.
However, mentally he perked up after he put the second sphere in the Sun Lance pocket and focused on it, the connection attempt was not present!
Feeling invigorated, mentally and not mana wise, he took out the Aether crystal and tried again, as expected the connection attempt returned. Putting in one of the smaller marble sized aether crystals seemed to satisfy the pocket, and now with two fist-sized Fire gems and one marble-sized Aether crystal in-pocket, it seemed like it was ready to go at a moment's notice!
A satisfied, if not sadistically excited smile formed on Gilliam’s face, this was going to be fun, he was looking forward to the first excuse to let this one go!
Though it would need one hell of an excuse to be used, he felt a bit trigger happy to say the least. Ideas, both good and bad, formed in his head for any reason to cast his new tactical spell.
Though his mana pool was not at its current best, it was enough to start testing smaller things; Darkness magic.
Since Darkness magic used life essence, blood and whatever you wanted to name it, he didn’t need to have too much mana available, just enough to heal himself.
It was time to try to make a Darkness mana crystal!
