“So, can you see that?” John asked Lydia, who was not in his group for the moment. He was pointing at a symbol at the ground, lines of softly glowing light purple that formed three different sized rings that interlocked, forming a triangular shape with a rune in the middle.
“Without any obstructions,” Lydia confirmed and then, as they discussed, stepped on it. The resulting explosion engulfed everyone, a wave of blue and pink energy that passed over John and his familiars harmlessly but made Lydia’s face contort with pain.
Standard arcane damage was closest described as magical burning, so the explosion carried no physical force that would have forced Lydia to move or be blown away otherwise. Where her skin was exposed, it was seared with pure power that marked her outer layer of skin with minor arcane burns, small bolts of purple lightning dancing from one darkened spot to another.
“Sorry and thank you,” John said as Undine wobbled over to treat the princess’ wounds.
“It is of no concern, I can stand a minor amount of pain,” Lydia said as the wounds shrunk down and soon healed completely, mended by the ocean elemental’s healing skills.
John didn’t like testing his skills on his friends and/or lovers, but if he wanted to do it in a controlled environment, he had very little choice in the matter. “Now, for the second test,” John said and conjured another Arcane Echo.
The grapefruit sized ball formed in his hand, swirling with the typical arcane colour pattern of blue and shades of purple, and then was launched at the ground. The text said that it was supposed to be a slow-moving projectile and, by context, that was probably true. Compared to the almost instantaneous travel speed that Mana Ray had had, Arcane Echo did move slowly, having about the speed of a ball thrown by John’s old school bully Frank.
The fact that John had thought of that as fast a couple of months ago was both absurd now and slightly discomforting. He could dodge a projectile of that speed with ease and probably have enough time to check his phone in the process. ‘I am not even using a Strength build,’ John thought, thinking about Thana. The blood mage would probably be about as interested in a projectile of that speed as a cheetah was afraid of getting caught by a snail.
‘I either need to replace this again later or find a way to speed the projectile up,’ he thought as he created a second Echo Point next to the one he had just made. “This one,” he pointed at the first one, “I made while thinking of you as friendly, the other…” he pointed at the second circle, “…I thought of you as an enemy.”
The experiment here was whether enemy was defined by ‘everyone who wasn’t in John’s group’ or ‘everyone who John thought of as an enemy’. Lydia stepped on the first circle, the explosion happened as per usual. “Okay, so no trickery here,” John mumbled. Then he sent Lydia a group invite, and after she accepted, she stepped on the second circle. That one didn’t fire.
“So, an enemy is whoever isn’t in my group, that’s annoying,” John mumbled. “Oy, Gaia, if you are already busy patching, can I have a friend list or something? Just to put people on there who I don’t want to blow away in the middle of battle?”
He was answered with silence. Which, as far as John was concerned, wasn’t a no.
“Okay, next one has less variables, just want to know if it has friendly fire or not,” John said and used Shardbound. A sound like two wine glasses getting pushed together echoed over the small arena. Full, pure but interwoven in that noise was also the dangerous sound of ice cracking under pressure.
The four shards hovered behind John’s back, creating a semi-circle while pointing at his shoulders. Light blue, translucent surfaces broken into a sheer endless number of facets of differing size, they slowly turned, glinting in the sun like the half molten remains of a broken diamond.
John could feel the shards as if they were an extension of his own body. The pale colour was an indication for their weakness; John had used a mere 20 mana for this. The more mana he used, the darker they became until they hit a purple that rivalled the latex like layer on Siena’s skin.
Interestingly, they became this dark when he invested 100% of his mana, so that either meant that the colour was in relation to his maximum mana or that there would be other colours in the future. John would need to keep an eye on that.
For the moment, however, he did not feel like throwing more stuff at Lydia. He hadn’t felt like throwing stuff at her from the start, but she had been the only one who had the time to experiment. Everyone else had vanished somewhere else shortly after breakfast. John would spend some time checking on all of them over the day.
Instead, he flexed his mental muscles a bit, and in response the shards went into motion. They hovered over his body like compass needles, one of the two tips always pointing at whatever part of his body was closest to them. Unable to float further away from his skin than half a metre, they kept slowly spinning as John moved them around.
He positioned the four shards around his right hand. Each of them was the length of it, from the wrist to the tip of his middle finger. With the ease of a thought, they changed into a cloud of energy, only to reappear as one hundred small spikes, the size of a fingernail. Another moment later and above John’s hand hovered a single spear tip the length of his forearm.
Test one… Aclysia, sorry, but can you become the dummy for this one?” John said with a frown. “Most certainly, master,” Aclysia bowed and took position in front of him. The shard stopped rotating as John aimed at the position his artificial guardian stood at. Like a piece of metal that found itself next to a suddenly activated electro-magnet, the shard pointed at Aclysia.
John took several steps back. The limitation of the maximum distance had been removed the moment he aimed, it seemed that part was in place to prevent him using the shards as sort of guided missiles.
‘Speaking of guided missiles,’ John thought and gestured for Aclysia to take a step to the side. The shard’s tip kept pointing straight ahead. ‘So, what I set is the direction it aims at, not an actual target,’ he noted and nodded at the weaponized maid, who went back into place.
He activated the skill, and it launched at a speed that was impossible to follow. For all intents and purposes, to John it could have been instantaneous. It cut into Aclysia’s shoulder, dealing next to no damage against her resilient form. John barely noticed her HP actually taking a hit before she had regenerated it.
“Okay, so Shardbound has friendly fire… a bit annoying, but you can’t have everything,” John announced. The skill was still tremendously useful, and it wasn’t like Mana Ray hadn’t been able to harm allies.
The sad truth was that this was reality and that disabling friendly fire in reality was already pretty OP. A bullet didn’t care whether it was accidentally fired at a toddler or at an invading soldier, why wouldn’t the same be true for spells? The fact that John possessed 1 spell, area based no less, that broke that rule was already insane.
‘It does, however, set a precedent, so the question is how I can get it for everything else I do,’ John was already tinkering with the thought. The way he saw it, there were three possibilities: either it would be patched in at a later date, he would get it if he evolved it further or it would be a perk in the Arcanist class for this spell specifically.
He hoped it would be the first one, because that would be basically getting it for free, but John didn’t get a lot of stuff for free. For cheap? All the time, that was kind of why his ability was such utter bullshit. For free? Not after the first week of getting these powers. It had been a grind since.
“Well, one more thing to test,” John said and conjured another set of shards. Earlier testing had already led to him finding out that he could have as many sets as he wanted and they would not disappear. Problem was, however, that they would have to hover around him somewhere, so having too many out would lead to the problem of them cutting into furniture.
It was like strapping blades all over your body. Sure, you could be cautious, but eventually you would hit someone or something, so why not dodge the risk? However, the fact that he could drop mana into it before a fight he knew was coming was nice.
The last test was also related to that problem. The shards formed a tight formation at the back of his hand. “Aclysia, if you would?” John asked.
After a submissive, “Certainly,” she stepped closer. Without hesitation she pushed her open palm against the bed of arcane needles. Once more, she took damage.
That they were ready to deal damage even if not fired was the logical conclusion to the fact that they damaged things like door frames when John passed them. He had wanted certainty on this, however. When Aclysia pulled back her hand, only a few of the shards were still there.
A negative of Aclysia’s hand in a frame of light blue splinters of arcane might. The shards that had dealt their damage had disappeared. “Did you feel any resistance?” John asked the artificial guardian.
“No, master, it was only a slight prickling,” she answered. “Like the feeling you humans get when one of your limbs starts to ‘fall asleep’. Not painful, but irritating.”
“Without a doubt that will be different at higher mana expenditure,” John noted.
So, he couldn’t use this as an actual defensive layer. Or, well, he could but it wouldn’t protect him but simply damage the enemy. He would have loved to combine Shardbound with Mana Protection and get something REALLY mean for melee fighters. Sadly, their ranges didn’t sync up. Mana Protection being a constant bubble that surrounded him at a 1-metre distance while Shardbound had that half-metre from skin limitation.
“Okay, so this took way too long,” John said and looked over the arena; “How is your training going anyhow?” The arena had several markers for where Lydia’s zone of control was.
“It is going well, but compared to what you do to get stronger, it is unspectacular,” the princess reported. “Sieh selbst.”
John bit his lip to not make fun of her sudden language change as Lydia stepped into a circular carving in the ground. A dozen pieces of metal rose from the first marker, a little stone pillar John had put up for her, less rose at a second marker further away, and at the third and last marker, only a singular piece of metal was lifted off the ground.
The three markers were where the borders of her control zones roughly lay. As her goal was to push these further out Lydia needed them to have a physical way to keep track of her progress.
The metal progressively moved about five centimetres before a strained look appeared on Lydia’s face and one of the pieces at the second marker started to sink down. After another two centimetres, it fell to the ground, and Lydia stopped the exercise, letting out a held breath.
“Looks good?” John presumed. He had no idea.
“It looks okay,” Lydia told him. “It’s like using muscles I know I have but I can’t quite control yet. All I am doing is repeating this process of moving a set amount of metals beyond my old boundaries, resetting them, getting more pieces and pushing to the new boundary again. Once I have reached a satisfactory amount, I go back to fewer pieces and push for a higher distance.”
“Methodical,” he commented.
“Indeed, but nothing greatly interesting. Luckily, I don’t mind repetitive tasks,” Lydia raised the pieces again. “I don’t need you for this, so you are free to go.”
“Don’t you enjoy my company?” John asked, taking the chance to tease a little bit of emotion out of the steel-faced royal.
“I do,” the princess admitted, “but you staying also stands in conflict to my interest of maximizing my odds at winning the tournament. Therefore, I must ask of you to see after the others. Especially…”
Hesitation, the metal pieces cluttered to the ground as Lydia thought. “Especially…?” John probed after she went silent for a bit longer than a standard pause in a conversation.
“I don’t know who to suggest. Your girlfriend I can see doing completely ineffective brawn over brain training. Nia might be lost trying to pat a rodent, and I would not be surprised if Nathalia is currently screwing Thana or the latter is just punching the air uselessly. They all need to be checked on,” the princess sighed. “Please do that for me.”
“Can do,” John promised.
