Chương 69: Chapter 67

The laptop wheezed to life, fan immediately kicking into overdrive like it was trying to achieve liftoff. The built up dust in those fans needed to be cleaned off, but so long as it didn't thermal throttle when opening chrome, Wade was good to go. It couldn't hold a charge anymore, but Wade had the power cable and adaptor plugged in at all times; it would survive. He navigated to Facebook. It started loading, one image at a time.

"Take your time honey." He muttered, watching.

"I just need five minutes of functionality today. You can do this." Finally, the page loaded. Wade quickly set up a bare-bones account with minimal information. Profile picture? Default silhouette. Background? Whatever came standard. Personal details? Absolutely not.

"Now let's find our Scottish friend." Wade said, already typing "Millicent Blackwood-Sinclair" into the search bar. He scrolled through several results before finding her profile. The tiny thumbnail showed an Illy-looking girl, although unnaturally professional looking in what appeared to be… search and rescue gear? She looked very military. Well. Made sense. But that was absolutely the same black bags under her eyes, and messed up black hair.

"That tracks." Wade shrugged, clicking to view her profile. He could see a few public photos - mainly landscapes and… goddamn cliffs and more mountains. Frankly every other picture he looked through were all mountains. No wonder she started salivating outside the shelter-city. She had a problem, but Wade wasn't here to host an intervention. He hit the friend request button without hesitation.

"And now we wait." Wade closed the laptop and checked his phone. He needed to text Jason about their meeting later, make sure the big oaf didn't forget. Behind, from his room, he heard something fall.

"Hey! Don't break anything in there." Wade called out.

"And stay away from the window. Last thing I need is a noisy neighbor calling the cops about a skeleton in my apartment." If something did manage to get sight of Eri, he'd explain he was preparing for halloween early under a contract, but better to just not have to deal with that in the first place. For now, time to crawl out from under his rock and be social. Wade typed quickly: 'Good for 3pm still?' He actually got a text back a moment later: 'Just promise me it's not a powerpoint presentation.'

And another bubble popped up right under.

'Or a spreadsheet.'

'Deal, sucker.' He sent back.

'Also, shouldn't you be asleep?'

'Series of poor life decisions, thank you.' If he tried to answer that one back, he'd be the pot calling the kettle black. Wade wrapped up instead and finalized plans. Despite not having technically slept at all, he still felt oddly refreshed. And his to-do list was being rapidly completed. Social media, check. Jason meeting confirmed, check.

He'd buy stuff for Eri, quit his job, do some boon testing, possibly buy some more stuff including climbing gear and arm floaties, and then see if he could track down wherever Market was. Oh and a weasel cage trap. For a certain weasel. It knows what it did. But right now? Time for the thing he'd been waiting for the most. Wade walked into his kitchen, where he'd left mana potions, and the ring. Everything outside was closed at this hour, he had time to kill. Which meant time to train. He felt oddly nervous.

Doing this all alone, without Zin. Should he just wait? Well…. he needed a quick bit of practice before meeting Jason. Just to confirm he could do something when the time came. Right? Plus he didn't want to wait. Which was 90% of the reason. This was Magic with a capital M. He took out a scratchpad, and wrote down 'This had better work' then ripped the page off and put it down faceup on the window further away from the kitchen.

A few steps back into the kitchen, the little scribbled out scratches were too blurry to read at this distance. There was a method to his madness here. He had a plan. Wade turned to the mana potion next. Right. That part about magic. That horrible, horrible part that would make him gag and choke and probably make a lot of heroic noises. He took a knife, and then cut a small cube of the glowing anathema to everything edible. It did not go down easily the second time.

In fact, knowing what to expect made it even worse. But with one giant gulp of water all at once, he managed to get it down. Power flared within his stomach. And then he realized he'd fucked up. Zin's voice floated through his head. What's rule number 1, Mr. Wade?

"Always have mithril." He quickly opened up the leather bag on the counter, taking out his mithril ring, and the necklace. He didn't hurry or panic, he stayed calm through the process. Mana couldn't hurt him easily, not in this quantity, and it was safely trapped within the mana potion so long as he didn't prod it. His stat screen showed mana remained a fat 0 still. Perfectly safe, he just had to be more meticulous instead of rushing out of excitement.

With great care, he made sure the ring was nicely washed and sanitary. Because the next thing he'd do would be real weird. While healing his neck or his leg would take some time, there was something else he had been thinking of. Something that was probably very tiny to heal, but changed a whole lot. He raised his hand to his face, then with very gentle care, outright touched his eyeball with the tip of the red line. Then sucked the mana out of his stomach and up the side of his body.

Already the mana bar started going up, but Wade was focused on something else and couldn't split his focus on the ticking number. He could feel the mana flow up his armpit, through the skin by his biceps, down his forearms, and then leak into his hand. Not his pinky where the mirthil ring lay waiting to eat, but to this index, where the healing ring was equipped. It began to glow the moment he infused it with mana. And then he could sense that same mana radiate outwards. Different. Less dangerous somehow. Golden.

He couldn't control the mana as it re-entered his body. He could feel it there, but not quite like mana anymore. It was like holding onto sand slipping away. The holy magic it was evaporating, until nothing remained. Probably used up by his body in healing his eye? The mana bar steadily filled. He stopped after the third round of treatment, then rubbed his eye under a stream of water. It really hadn't been too bad keeping a ring pressed against his eye.

Every now and then he had to blink away a bit of tears, but it's not like it hurt or anything. Even felt a little warm. The world looked a little different. Wade cupped his experimental eye, and looked out with his other non-touched eye. Further past the kitchen things started getting slightly blurry, and his chicken scratch writing was just as illegible. Then he swapped hands and checked to see how the other eye saw.

'This better work' was clear as daylight. In fact, it looked like he'd put on a pair of glasses or something. But like, really good glasses. Which was a good thing. Because the reason he'd wanted to heal his eyes up right now, was that he didn't have his glasses anymore. He'd brought them to Azdrial. And they hadn't come back with him when he woke up. Which was a problem, because those were expensive as hell. Of which, they were probably on the floor of hell somewhere among the sand down there.

However the desert world under the mithril sea looked. Probably very dark given the sea obscured light. And the land was filled with blackrot. Nope, he wasn't getting those back. Which is how he got this idea in the first place. Just a simple realignment of his cornea or something, it wasn't a lot of healing needed. Well. That was the control. It had taken three cycles of healing required. Three times he'd pulled a standard chunk of mana out of the potion within his stomach, and pulled it through his system.

"Part two. Experiment time." Wade opened up his stats menu. Then took a deep breath and clicked the little plus icon next to Intelligence. One point upgraded. He held his breath, but nothing came over him. No sudden realization about the world or philosophical discoveries about himself. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. No real change at all. Odd. Maybe it really was purely focused on mental control over mana?

Wade focused inward and started the process again, this time aiming to heal his other eye. Now felt the difference. First, he could pull at lot more mana out of the mana gel. The ease that he did so made him realized the mana potion itself tried to cling onto the mana this whole time. He just hadn't anything to compare to prior. Now that he was aware of it, it felt obvious. He took his pen and scribbled out some notes. Ability to control mana itself, and pull it out of things was improved by intelligence.

That he could even do this was already an improvement. Ability to multitask scales with intelligence. Wade added next, last time he couldn't even pay attention to the mana bar while hyper-focused on the mana. Which meant running around while casting spells required some intelligence points. A future mage build would probably need a minimum set of intelligence to be viable. Next, he checked the mana bar itself. No increase in overall mana, and the numbers ticked upwards at the same rate as prior.

Intelligence does not improve resistance to mana, only vitality does, he scratched out. That made sense to him so far, resilience to mana was a body thing, part of the Vitality stat. But Intelligence could have affected mana in the opposite direction. Intelligence does not make mana itself less lethal, or shield the user more. Could he move the mana through his body faster? It had acted a little like a mouse using an eye tracker.

It would follow the general direction, but there was a moment of lag where it caught up. Last time it hadn't moved too fast and if he forced his attention too far upwards where the mana should go, the dredges behind started to dissipate through his skin, fading away from his control. He tested to see if he could will it to flow faster once it hit his arm and had a full straightway. Not hyperspeed fast, but it did move faster. Traversal speed through body affected by intelligence. Man.

Intelligence was really affecting a ton of smaller details all for the price of one point. Good purchase. He finally reached his healing ring and dumped the mana within. Once more it started to glow and he felt holy mana radiated from the ring into his eye. Same amount, no change there. It also lasted just about the same number of seconds before the ring stopped functioning, mana spent. Intelligence does not affect healing ring in any noticeable way. Maybe items don't scale with intelligence?

On his second cycle upwards, Wade drew out a lot less mana this time and channeled it through. He did notice it responded and moved faster, so less mana meant he could cast spells faster? Amount of mana affects overall speed, larger chunks move slower than smaller chunks. Could mean higher intelligence lets casting larger spells at the same speed of weaker versions? When it reached the ring of healing, once more the holy mana started to do its thing, but the ring died off not even a second after it had started.

Intellect does not seem to amplify mana in items. What he had to work with, was what he had to work with. Drat. A few more cycles of healing remaining before he'd need to eat another cube. He pulled out his phone and called up a newly added contact. The phone rang twice, and then got picked up.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't my favorite little running disaster calling at absurd hours of the morning. Wait-wait, let me guess: You have a new shopping list of horrors you want me to drag out of my magical bag with under a day's worth of warning. Well? Let's hear it, what kind of christmas miracles are you expecting today from Santa Zin?" Wade looked down at the phone. Fine. Two could play this game.

"Hello Mr. Cronox! We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warr-" The phone immediately hung up, beeping a few times. Wade snickered to himself, then dialed again. Zin picked up.

"If you continue talking warranty options, I'm hanging up. If you try selling me a credit card, I'm hanging up and changing my number."

"How do I actually cast a spell?" Wade asked, skipping the jokes to go straight for the heart of his situation.

"Ah! I see what this is about now. All right kiddo, I'm thinking... two more potions. Maybe three. Plus a nice bottle of wine for calling me this early in the morning. For you it might have been a few minutes since last we saw each other, me on the other hand, it's been a few hours of undisturbed beauty sleep. You getting me here? So, bottle of my choosing plus the potions, deal?"

"No way, this is still part of the general magic lesson." Wade said.

"Not teaching me any would be skipping fundamentals, right? There's got to be a tutorial spell." He'd paid one whole mana potion for these lessons, he was going to get the entire mana potion's worth out of these lessons. There was a deep sigh on the other side of the phone.

"Fine, fine-FINE. I'll throw you a bone here with the basics. But we pick the rest of this later today - at a civilized hour when normal people aren't still in their pajamas. And Play doesn't count, that over-caffeinated menace to my bank account is the furthest thing from civilized."

"Sounds good, let's start." Wade said.

"How do I cast a spell?"

"You know how you can boss around your mana after it's attuned? Even when it decides to take a little field trip outside your body?"

"Yeah, sort of vanishes in a puff outside my skin but slowly." The longer it moved through his body, the more time it took for him to lose control over it once it wasn't in his body anymore.

"Boss it around like it owes you money. It's a source of power, and you've got power over it, if you get my drift here. Demand it to do something, and it'll comply."

"Uh, more details?"

"Use your imagination kiddo. And I mean that literally. So picture it turning into something, like a little ball of light, maybe add some sparkles, whatever floats your boat. It's wizard stuff, act like a wizard. Boom, magic."

"That's it?"

"Of course not Mr. Wade, this is just instant magic. Basically instant ramen in the mage circles. Try the light spell first, we'll talk more lessons later." Wade held his hand out, and decided to give that a shot. He pulled mana out of his core, feeling as the little slice of mana gel was starting to feel very small now, but nonetheless he dragged it out to the palm of his hand and lifted it up. So long as he kept a focus on the attuned mana, it didn't float away from him.

He pictured it condensing together, forming a light, and quickly found it did exactly as he commanded it to. A ball of light. Slowly burning away as energy radiated out of it, but at a trickle. There wasn't any heat that he could feel, just light in his palm.

"I take it from your stunned silence here, you did exactly what I suggested?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah it's... wow."

"Well done, yer a wizard now Mr. Wade!" Zin cleared his throat over the speaker, then dove into a small lecture.

"Academically, that little cantrip you just did is called Free Magic. Because you're doing it with zero restrictions besides what you can imagine. Free, get it? Very versatile. Shape it however you want, easy to do, and extraordinarily inefficient. Try to picture fire floating over your hand now." Wade did that, changing the mana he felt over his hand into fire. And it winked out almost immediately. It burned, it radiated heat, and then died off. There simply wasn't enough power being fed into it.

"You're thinking there wasn't enough power, eh?"

"Uh, yeah." Wade said, "It just burned itself out. I'm going to take a wild guess I'm wrong in thinking it's a power issue?"

"Correct! In that you're incorrect about the power thing. How much of that fire is actually fire, and not just mana whisking away unfocused? Spoiler alert: A lot."

"If it's a power thing, isn't there just a finite amount to start with?" He felt internally at his stomach where the mana potion portion remained. He could feel there was still some in there, but weak. He had cut off a very small sliver after all.

"Semi-right on that part. It is a factor. Your Earth machines here lose power as wasted heat, friction, all that thermodynamic mumbo-jumbo, am I right? Same thing here. You think you're picturing fire, but are you really imagining every lick of flame? Every wisp of smoke? Every degree of heat, down to how it actually is in reality? Or are you just phone-booking it with some generic 'fire goes whoosh' half-baked memory?

There's entire magical fields of study on what happens the instant raw controlled mana turns into an actual spell. Leave any gaps in your imagination and poof - there goes half your power, straight off your hands, and you won't even notice." Wade wrote down on his paper: Check if intelligence increases imagination detail? Also find out more about 'attunement'? He only had two points left, and when he used them, he wanted to have as many tests running simultaneously as possible.

"All right, point taken." Wade said to the phone. Now he did feel less like doing drugs with a drug dealer and more like casting actual magic.

"Your imagination is a magnifying glass, and the time mana spends in your body getting further attuned is like... letting more light pass through the magnifying glass, or something like that - work with me here, I'm an archdemon, not a poet. Metaphors will only get me so far here. But a magnifying glass is a simpleton's tool. Good for soldiers and non-mages, easy grab-and-go, very 'point finger make boom.'

Most soldiers use free magic to strengthen their body, shield themselves, feel things coming around them, the works. Training can polish that lens up real nice, like upgrading from the cheap plastic ones from a gift shop to something off Amazon - still not great, but hey, if they need an emergency quick arcane bolt, they can do a passable one on demand. But the real magic, the good stuff, the premium package? That's done in a lab. With a microscope."

Wade nodded along, then wrote another note on his paper: Test if mana gets attuned faster with more intelligence? Less time spent in body needed? This was good stuff.

"So what's the microscope in this metaphor?"

"Ordered Magic. Runes and all that jazz. Basically focuses your magic into doing one very specific thing without any messy thoughts like imagination doing it. Can't improvise with it, but hoooo boy is it efficient. Less 'artistic freedom,' more 'assembly line.' Does come with trade-offs, naturally - pros, cons, the whole song and dance. Sometimes a wide lens magnifying glass really is a better choice. Like that magical binding contract you signed? All Free Magic done by yours truly.

Far too esoteric, too nuanced for runes to pull off. You need an artist for that kind of work."

"So when you mean runes, you mean the symbols on gear? Like those on Leon's hammer?"

"Yep. You got some right now on hand. Literally. Look at your ring. Notice how after you toss mana into that sucker, what comes out isn't easily controlled or shaped anymore right? That's because it's been magnified by the runes inside. Don't ask me why that works, artificers talk about a trinity between air, metal and flesh. It's a cosmic game of rock paper scissors."

"Uh, more detail?"

"Why explain anything when a demonstration is more practical? Try and use mithril to suck out mana already inside your healing ring, you'll see the rock-paper-scissor things real fast." Wade brought his hand and ring up to his throat, where the mithril tab necklace was. Then focused, sending just a little bit of mana into the healing ring. It began to glow as usual, and he pressed it to the mithril. Nothing happened. Which was odd, because the mithril was right there next to the mana.

But for some reason the healing spell continued to work without issue, and the mana within didn't react to the presence of mithril. Almost like the magnetism effect had gone inert, or been turned off like an electromagnet. He did a sanity test and nope - the puff of mana he'd moved near the necklace was sucked out of his control. So the metal was still working, but the moment mana was pushed into the healing ring, mithril no longer had a hold on it.

"Is this rock paper scissors thing something to do with control over mana?"

"Getting hotter."

"So... mithril overpowers my control, mana-conducting metal overpowers mithril's control, and I 'overpower' the metal?" He was able to pull mana out of the ring after he'd put it inside, so long as there was still some that hadn't been used up in healing yet.

"Bingo-bango kiddo. The rest of this touches on being an artificer, and I would be just delighted to explain in more detail. For a price. At reasonable business hours. The whole pajama thing is important - I like wearing my suits, thank you. Paid quite a bit for the custom tailoring." Wade thought about his options. It would be nice to know more about magic gear, but there were some things he could test for himself ahead of time. And they had materials to test it on, not just his ring.

like Selena's gear, come to think of it. He could do some separate research on his own first before having to pay an arm and leg again.

"All right, we'll leave that on the table for later."

"Lovely! Now, I have a date with my bed I'm contractually allowed to return to, thank you. Anything else champ or are we done with the morning lessons?"

"Yeah. I do have a more Earth-based request for gear."

"What's the order this time Mr. Wade?"

"Theoretically speaking... how fast could you get me some grenades?"