It was another long night of discussions. The food and drink continued to flow as plans became more and more abstract. The discussions were moving further down the line as to what we could do as the Empire grew. The unsaid reality by either Pryte or me was that we had already had this conversation once, and everything had already shifted thanks to the Reltleons. The future was too hard to predict with any certainty, and the best we could do for now was just to lay out the ideas of how we wanted to proceed.
Despite Laura’s initial thought that they were close to getting the gate running, their side had suffered a further complication involving the lack of mana flow. Quarilyn hadn’t been used to working in those environments, and while it was only a two-day delay, that did mean we were cutting it very close to our departure time. With nothing I could do to rush it, I resigned myself to forcing a sense of patience, or at least a distraction.
That was exactly how I had found myself back with all the spare mana orbs we had on hand. Considering how many of the Orcs we had slain during our time out in the world, we were nearly overflowing in the base six they handed out, which was good, as I had already decided I wanted to add two more elemental orbs into my repertoire.
I quickly discovered a problem with that plan, though. The vast majority of them had already been set to Elemental Mixture. And to make it worse, all but one of what were left had been set to fire. I had been hoping to add an earth-aligned one after what I had seen the Pachydresti pull off during the last Arena floor, but my only option at the moment was an air one. Since I was currently running low on spare skill ranks, I only invested enough into fundamental forces to make sure I had clear access to the air-related magic. The orb itself was only the first rank, so until I managed to rank it up a few times, I wouldn’t be able to do much with it anyway.
What I would have liked was the same mana siphon orb Elicec had earlier mentioned, but as we still didn’t have one or anything like it that was out as an option. There were the environmental orbs to consider, though. It was possible one of them could be useful around here. We had added deep cave, bog, and tropical rainforest to our selection of biomes. The only one I considered overly useful currently was the deep cave one, and that would be far more for construction than anything else. I noticed the streaks of yellow in its otherwise solid gray color as I socketed it.
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While several of the abilities were tempting and would be useful in future underground work, at the moment, I didn’t want to waste my dwindling skill ranks on them. Instead, it could sit socketed into my mana channels and hopefully start gaining the energy it needed to tier up until I actually needed it. I pushed aside the thought of what would happen if I paired a dungeon core with a Golem and looked through more of the orbs.
Of the other new orbs, both enthrall and telepathy weren’t things I wanted to dabble in. I didn’t like the idea of manipulating another person’s mind, and that was what both seemed primed for. On the other hand, there was one last very interesting orb among the bunch. It was a growth orb. For most people, it wouldn’t be that powerful, but for me, it was the type of thing that would compound with my body-enhancing orbs in a great way.
Those were the largest scaling requirements for ranks I had ever seen on a mana orb, but I could entirely understand why they existed. By the time I’d be able to add Grow! into something I could activate and combine with my other training skills, the leaps and bounds of progress I would start to see would be amazing. I put in all the ranks needed to max out Do a Little Better and spent the rest of the free time doing some extra training.
The added drain of the growth orb on top of everything else was impressive, and I could only maintain it at my current load for about an hour before I needed to recharge my core energies. But that time was well worth it. I had spent it just moving lumber with the villagers, and I could feel my muscles building faster than I ever had before. I was going to need to increase my core regeneration speeds further if I could, especially once I unlocked further tiers on the mana orb.
As I finished the training, Gamma flew near my head suddenly, their compass vibrating as it neared. “Dave, can I try something?!” Gamma asked, more excited than usual.
“Probably, but can you be a bit more specific?” I asked, only slightly concerned with what they had in mind. For the most part, I was no longer worried about how Gamma had acted in the past. Gamma seemed much more collected than before they had served as my core.
“Well, since you socketed the air mana orb into me, I want to try to directly cast a spell. Think how useful that could be if it works, and each of us had our own elemental orbs,” Gamma responded. They weren’t wrong. If each of the cores could be flying around a battlefield unleashing their elemental assaults, it would be incredibly powerful.
“Go for it,” I said, hoping it worked.
Gamma hovered in place, silent for a moment before words erupted from them. “Lighter than a feather, but able to tear down a mountain, slicing winds release!” One of the nearby logs was chopped in two by an unseen force.
My mana channels surged with a flow toward Gamma, and at the same time, the tool dropped from the air and started to laugh as it hit the ground. My momentary panic resolved itself as they flew back into the air. “I take it you enjoyed that?” I asked them.
“Yes! I can really become a wizard now!” they shouted with glee.
Earth elemental magic tends to be the most defensive of the five. It primarily focuses on walling yourself and your allies away from the enemy, but it can also be used to clear paths as you advance on them, or to drag them down beneath the ground. As an Earth Mage grows stronger, they soon find themselves able to move stronger stone alongside the dirt. Some have even gone so far as to form their own planets.
Earth a Tremor into a Quake by Henjen Klank
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by Daniel Newwyn
He can’t conjure grief, can barely levitate a pebble, and once submitted a stanza instead of a spell schematic.
Fabrisse Kestovar: aspiring thaumaturge rock collector, confirmed pastry enthusiast, and perhaps the least emotionally competent student in the Order’s seven-hundred-year history.
PRAXIS NODE, a long-dormant, possibly AI-driven interface that delivers cryptic quests, sarcastic prompts, and calibration objectives measured in light-years. He has a Legacy Token, no combat thresholds, and a growing collection of useless rocks the system insists are ‘historically significant.’
He’s also the only one who can see any of it.
