It took several minutes for the Witch to begin arranging meetings between potential students and teachers. She already had a list of who was interested in who, but everyone still needed to roughly agree on the schedule of when to meet each person. So she hopped from one teacher to the next, giving them a list of which students or teachers were interested in each other, double checking that no one was booked for the same time slot, and okaying it with everyone. I did see her speed increase several times as she moved from one person to the next, and absently wondered if she was using some sort of speed enhancing spell, but right now I just didn’t know enough about magic to confirm it. Either way, about half an hour later, everyone had a schedule they could agree on.
Sallie, Felix, Anise and I broke apart, since all four of us had found at least one potential teacher who interested us besides Lauren. Sallia, Felix and I were still largely leaning towards him, because he seemed like the best option for maximizing our potential in this world. However, that didn’t mean we were going to ignore any other potential teachers, even if Lauren seemed to make the most sense. For Sallia and Felix, in particular, they seemed interested in a few teachers. Sallia, for example, was rather interested in Callum’s teaching style, even if she admitted that she would probably end up going with Lauren.
Anise also went her own way. From what I could see, as I headed to my own meeting with Ellen, Anise was focused on manifestation essence teachers. Perhaps it was due to her desire to be a ‘super witch’? I shrugged to myself as I walked into a small side room, and then sat down on a table across from Ella. She spent a few moments studying me. She had a slight grin on her face, but she spent some time just examining me, taking in my build, the way I sat down, and seemingly everything she could glean from my actions.
Finally, she spoke.
“Your name is Miria, right? Nice to meet you!” said Ella. Her tone was neither enthusiastic nor unenthusiastic. It sounded measured and calm. However, she did give me a very slight grin, to let me know that she was glad to see me here. “I’m glad that you’re at least considering me, even if you might not stick with me. May I ask why you’re considering me? After learning that all of the potential shapers this year are shaper-casters, I figured I had probably already lost to Lauren. I might as well know what advantages I have here, so that I can talk more about them.” Her grin turned a little more mischievous, and I got the feeling that she wasn’t necessarily as calm and collected as she was portraying herself to be. I felt my lips also twist upwards a little bit at her words.
“Your attunement is pretty close to the one I want to form,” I said. “I’m thinking maybe I’ll go into either the ocean, or madness. It’ll be a good way to support Sallia and Felix when we go later. And your life experiences also sound quite valuable to me.”
“Go? You said that you, Sallia, and Felix are going to go somewhere?” Ella paused for a moment. “I recall that Sallia and Felix are two of the other shaper children, right? Are the three of you planning something?”
I nodded. “The three of us are planning on eventually becoming adventurers and going on a journey to the surface. You have experience as an adventurer, which would obviously be of great help to us. And while I don’t really know what an attunement is yet, I want my attunement to be something that helps our group..”
“I see,” said Ella, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “You say that you don’t know what an attunement is, but you want to go into ocean or madness? Hmm… odd. May I ask why?”
“I just feel like it fits me,” I said. I didn’t really know how to explain that I wanted to activate the Keywords for my Ability. However, I did also quite like the mental image I had used for my fourth through sixth runes on the islands. If I could make my attunement give me similar abilities, I would probably be able to use them well, and I was more than a little interested in seeing what happened if I dropped images of eldritch abominations from the deep into this world as well.
Ella paused, before chuckling. “Fair enough, I suppose. If you end up becoming my student, we can talk a bit more about what attunement you want to form and how to grow it.” She paused, before shrugging. “But I think that’s a discussion for another day. It’s a very in-depth subject, and a lot of the more complicated details are easier to understand if you actually have an attunement. Right now, you’re completely unattuned, which makes it harder to relate some experiences to you. Well…” Ella paused again, before shrugging. “Let me tell you a bit about myself, first. As I already mentioned, I’ve raided two spellcasting compounds, and I’ve spent a fair number of my younger years journeying through the wastes above. Obviously, I survived, and I was part of one of the groups that found supplementary materials on how to form an attunement, which is one of the cornerstones of shaping today. While there’s always a little luck involved in surviving above ground, there’s a lot more skill involved. If you want to become an adventurer, I’m probably one of the shapers with the most experience in the city. So I can definitely help you there.” Ella seemed to think for a moment.
“You know, actually, I’d also like to say something about your potential as a spellcaster. I can easily get some learning materials for spellcasting ready for you, if you become my apprentice. I won’t have the hands-on experience of using it, obviously, but if you want to teach yourself, I can certainly get you some books. And I have enough influence in the city to get a couple casters to sit down and teach you some lessons from time to time as well. They won’t formally be your teachers, but you can rest assured that if you take me as your teacher, you won’t totally waste your potential as a spellcaster, either. You won’t get teaching from me on how to make your two spellcasting systems synergize with each other, since I have no idea how to make them work together, but you will still be a competent spellcaster and an excellent shaper at the end of my tutelage.”
That actually made me think more carefully about Ella’s offer. I still mostly leaned towards Lauren, but if she could find ways to get me training as a spellcaster as well, I would be wasting far less of my potential than I thought I would under her teaching. Furthermore, her experience as an adventurer would definitely be valuable, and her attunement was pretty similar to the one I wanted.
“What can you tell me about attunement and spellcasting?” I asked. I had rough ideas how this world’s magic system worked, but my understanding was pretty shallow so far. If Ella helped me understand how each system actually worked, I would have an easier time deciding who I wanted to learn from, when the time came to make a final choice.
“Hmm…” Ella stared at the table for a moment, pursing her lips in thought, before she sighed.
“So, for spellcasting, there are three things you need to cast a spell. First, you need essence to power the spell. No essence, no spellcasting.” I nodded. That was quite easy to understand.
“Next, you need to know the spell you’re casting. While I haven’t ever used the spellcasting magic system, I know that their magic system is kind of like putting together math equations using magic symbols. If you put together the same set of symbols in exactly the same way, the same spell will form, every single time.
“However, their spellcasting system is very… mathematical. If you mess up while putting together a spell, you can just as easily fling a fireball towards your face instead of whatever enemy you’re trying to target. This tends to be rather bad for one’s health, so until someone really knows what they’re doing it’s generally better to stick to spells other people have already discovered and used before. That way you know the spell is safe and won’t melt your arm or turn you into charcoal. After all, nobody is like an Orukthyri these days; us sane remnants of the Ortha all have unfortunately fragile bodies. So spellcasters can’t survive messing up a big spell at a critical time.
“Finally, spellcasters need spell circles inside of their mind to let them cast spells. I’m not really sure what this looks like, but I know they aren’t that hard to form, and most casters usually form four or five circles of magic within their mind within their first month or two of learning. This is what lets them turn their magic symbols into actual spells, although I can’t say I know the details beyond that. Well, I can also tell you that more magic circles used in the construction of a spell makes the spell stronger, but I bet literally everyone in town could tell you that much,” said Ella, grinning again.
I chuckled. More magic circles being equal to a stronger spell was something I had learned without even really trying, and I was still considered a child in this world.
“How about shaping? Spellcasting requires magic symbols, essence, and spell circles, but what about shaping? Is there anything fancy associated with attunement, or the way we reach into alternate timelines and bring elements of those timelines into our own?” I asked, quietly deciding not to poke at my thoughts on this visualization system yet. There would be time for that later.
Ella’s eyes shone for a moment. “The requirements to make our magic system work is where shapers get a huge advantage over spellcasters, at least when it comes to using our attunement. You see, shaping is actually divided into two major subtypes of spellcasting. First, we can do the alternate-timeline manipulation. This is ‘general’ shaping, and allows us to do almost anything. However, it’s also heavily environmentally dependent. The exact same action can vary wildly in how much mana it costs, based on how similar an action is to our current circumstances. For example, you know how in the shaping test, we provide you with a jar of orange paint and a paintbrush, right? Well, if you move the jar of orange paint farther away from the blue cube, the cost of making the blue cube turn orange will start to increase, based on the distance between the two. And if you take away the paintbrush, the cube will either turn partially orange and partially blue, or will eat much more essence before turning orange.
“Attunement is different. It’s one of the old shaping systems, and existed even before the Dawn of the Black Sun. It’s much more efficient, but takes a lot more training to use properly. Instead of screwing around with magic symbols like a spellcaster, or reaching into alternate timelines, we just… pick an object nearby and change what it is. Of course, in exchange for that increase in speed, we need to spend lots of time building up an attunement to a certain element or idea of our choice first. It usually takes a long time to build up. For the sake of simplicity, we also tend to rank attunements on a similar scale to spell circles. I would be a ‘fifth circle’ mental state shaper. Even though shaping has literally nothing to do with magic circles. It’s just such an easy ranking system to use that everyone uses it, because it’s so simple and easy to reference. ” Ella paused.
“Shaping also has a lot more noncombat utility than spellcasting, since our attunements are much more… freeform than spellcasting. Comes with the fact that we don’t need to be afraid of turning ourselves into charcoal when we try new stuff, you see.” I nodded.
“Two of the most well known shapers in the city, for example, don’t do combat at all; instead, they just directly turn rocks into gold. It takes them a while, but it’s best to have a good gold reserve prepared just in case the white dragon wakes up and gets hungry. If we don’t have a snack ready for it, it might get grumpy and start eating our houses instead, and we can’t have that. Besides, if we wanted to ask for a blessing, it’s naturally best to offer something in return first.” Ella chuckled. “By contrast, while it’s probably technically possible to turn stone into gold with the spellcasting system, nobody has figured out how to do it yet. So far, there has been a new spell created recently that lets spellcasters turn a very specifically shaped kind of container of stone into water, which can help if the river ever starts running low. However, if the container is too differently shaped from what the spell is designed for, the spell will instead turn the rocks into partially liquified rocks, making them very… messy. There are a lot of weird eccentricities in how spells work if you don’t make them correctly, and shaping doesn’t have that problem. As long as you have enough mana, anything around you can be altered to fit your attunement.”
Since Ella had mentioned that attunements were one of the old methods of using alteration essence, from before the Dawn of the Black Sun, I got the feeling that it was closer to the correct way of using alteration essence. I decided to pay extra close attention to whatever my teacher said, whenever we got to the part about attunements and shaping. I decided to summarize Ella’s good points one more time.
“So basically, your knowledge is mostly centered on adventuring and mental attacks?”
“Indeed. I’d say those are my main upsides when compared to having Lauren as a teacher,” said Ella, grinning at me. “Not sure if that’s enough to take away one of his potential students, but think fondly of me either way, all right? I hope you at least give me a proper consideration.”
I grinned. “Believe me, I’m very tempted. But I’ll still see what Lauren has to say as well. I haven’t made up my mind yet, after all.”
Ella shrugged. “That’s about what I expected. Let the witch running this year’s meet and greet know when you make up your mind, and hopefully I’ll see you again soon.”
“Thank you for your time, Ella,” I said, giving her a quick curtsy before I shuffled out of the room.
I left my meeting with Ellen with a far more positive view of potential tutelage under the woman. If it weren’t for the fact that there was potential synergy between alteration and manifestation spellcasting systems, I would have probably felt that she was the best possible teacher I could have asked for. Of course, the fact that there were ways to combine alteration and manifestation essence and have them improve each other also meant that Lauren had a huge leg up as a potential teacher. However, I would also need to see what he specialized in, and how well I thought he would fit me.
When I walked into Lauren’s room, I realized he had opted for all four of us to see him at once. Which wasn’t really traditional, but given how much white thread he had sewn into his clothing, he was probably able to break a few rules and get away with it. I gave Sallia and Felix grins, and then gave Anise a smile as well, before I sat down next to my friends.
“Did the four of you enjoy speaking with the other shapers and spellcasters?” Asked Lauren.
I nodded.
He smiled. “Good. The other shapers and spellcasters of our town are good people, and if we don’t fit each other well, they are excellent potential teachers. Even if they won’t be aware of how to make shaping and spellcasting work together, you will still grow into exceptional men and women of the city if you learn under them. However, you didn’t come here to listen to me praise my competition,” said the old man, chuckling. “I think it’s best if students ask the questions, especially since by now you should have a rough idea what you’re looking for in a teacher. Ask away!”
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NOOOO I BINGED TOO FAST- thanks.for the chapter, you're definitely going on my bookmarks for well made serial transmigration stories
Shame she can't ask for both teachers, a couple hours a day
TFTC