Chương 24: Ohhh Tingly!

Vin spent the next hour getting berated by his new magic instructor. Apparently, what he'd done had been 'idiotic,' and 'reckless,' and 'liable to get himself killed.' According to Shia, reverse engineering a spell from an artifact was already a dangerous thing to attempt, and to do so without a more experienced mage watching over him to make sure he didn't accidentally melt his own eyeballs was practically suicidal.

While Vin didn't one hundred percent agree with her, he was quick to apologize and promised he'd ask a mage to watch over his future attempts… so long as there was one nearby. Shia didn't look all too pleased with that answer, but she seemed to accept it in the end, sending him to grab a few hours of sleep before their study continued.

Vin considered that a victory, and he grinned to himself as he took a turn on the shimmerwing mattress, staying conscious just long enough to allot his three new attribute points into magic. His actions may have been reckless, but they had also driven his Spellcraft up to level 10, his Meditation up to level 4, and gotten him two new spells. The experience from all that had been more than enough to get him to level 9. Hell, learning one more spell would knock him up to level 10!

His daydreams of wandering the new world in search of new spells to hunt down didn't last long however, as the shimmerwing mattress seemed to physically drag him into a deep sleep within seconds of lying down. When he finally awoke, Vin was horrified to discover it was already midafternoon, and he wasted no time rolling out of the universe's most comfortable bed and rushing back out to the main room.

Thankfully, Shia was sitting at the table already, working her way through what looked like a plate piled high with bacon and sausage.

"Finally up then?" She asked, using her sharp teeth to rip a particularly thick slice of bacon in half. Her mouth full, she gestured for Vin to take his seat, and Vin finally noticed the second, seemingly smaller plate she'd prepared for him. Like hers, there was a decent amount of meat, however there were also a few small berries he didn't recognize that looked like some sort of blend between strawberries and grapes.

Realizing he was in fact starving, Vin didn't waste any time taking the offered plate and digging into a late lunch. Popping one of the curious berries into his mouth, he was surprised to find it tasted tart, like a grapefruit, rather than sweet as he'd expected. Getting to work on his own meat, Vin did his best to watch the elf eat without staring as Shia continued to quite literally tear her way through her meal.

Her teeth made short work of even the thickest of pieces of meat, and he honestly didn't understand how she chewed her food without shredding the inside of her mouth. They ate for a few minutes in silence before he finally had to ask.

"Are elves carnivores?"

"Hm?" Shia mumbled, currently working her way through the last of her sausage. The elf had been seemingly lost in thought as they ate, but Vin's question brought her back to the present. Swallowing, she raised an eyebrow.

"Our people essentially worship a living tree. Shouldn't be all that surprising that we prefer to eat meat over plants whenever possible."

"That makes sense," Vin nodded, glancing down at the last of his oddly tart berries.

"... My eating these wasn't disrespectful or anything, right?" The last thing he wanted to do was run off his new magic instructor. He hoped he hadn't failed some sort of hidden test.

"No, you're fine," Shia snorted to his relief.

"We're not complete carnivores. Meat does make up the vast majority of our diet, but we'll eat whatever the Sacred Forest provides us. Some elves will even go so far as to magically grow their own gardens, but public opinion is a bit divided on whether or not such a practice is ethical."

"Huh," Vin mumbled, finishing off his plate as he tried to wrap his head around the ethics of forcing plants to grow just for you to eat when you technically worshiped the mother of all plants. He guessed he shouldn't have been surprised to learn that elves weren't just a simple race that all shared the same feelings and ideas. Humans certainly didn't, so why should any other race?

"Anyway, if you're done eating, we can continue your magic lessons," Shia said, showing off her teeth with a large grin.

"... or we could continue our current discussion, and I can tell you all about the Forestry Party; a small group of elves that have declared quite loudly that our true diet should be nothing but leaves and have gone to extreme lengths over the years to magically alter their anatomy to make such a thing possible."

"That is actually an extremely difficult choice," Vin admitted, imagining a dozen elves parading around the village with picket signs and teeth that had somehow been magically filed down.

"... but I'll choose magic for now!"

"I figured as much," Shia chuckled.

"Alright, let's see how well you handle this." Using the same trick she'd shown him yesterday, Shia wrote out a new runic formation in the air; only this one was nearly three times larger and far more complicated than the previous. Immediately, Vin recognized the Sense Life runic structure located at the bottom of the spellform.

"This is the runic structure for Renewal. It's about the simplest healing spell there is, because all the spell does is convert your personal mana into life mana and direct it at an injury, allowing the life magic to do what it does best. Luckily for us, life magic on its own will work to return a person or creature back into the optimal, original state. It's basically brute forcing the healing process, which makes the spell extremely inefficient."

"Still, magical healing sounds fantastic!" Vin said, his eyes already eagerly scanning over the new spell structure.

"Does it have any limits?"

"Well obviously the spell is powered by your mana, so the lower your magic attribute the less healing it will provide," Shia said.

"But it is also a bit limited. If someone is blind from birth for example, a Renewal spell won't do them any good, because that blindness is considered their original state. It also struggles with more complicated healing like regrowing missing limbs or organs."

"Got it." Vin was only half listening to Shia at this point, pushing his focus attribute to the max in order to memorize the structure's complex shape. I really need to start splitting my points between focus and magic instead of just dumping them all into magic, he thought as he closed his eyes and settled into his new meditative state. Vin had taken a risk spending a skill point on the Meditation skill, but it had quickly proven to be an excellent choice.

While meditating, he was able to shut off nearly all outside distractions and turn all his attention inwards. This made trying to recreate a runic structure within his mana pool a much more manageable task, as he was able to devote the entirety of his focus on the task at hand rather than his surroundings. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The main downsides of his new skill of course being that entering such a state would be rather dangerous anywhere where a monster could stumble upon his inattentive body, and the fact that he somewhat lost his sense of time while he was Meditating. So it was that when he finally managed to construct the complex structure, without creating more than a small handful of runic backlashes, he opened his eyes in triumph only to realize the sun had already started to set.

Noticing the change in his posture, Shia got up from the couch she'd been lounging on, walking over and giving him an eerie grin.

"Well, how did it go?" Rather than answering her, Vin raised a hand, closely examining his fingers as he cast his new spell." Renewal." With his higher magic attribute, he was able to feel the life magic flow out of his hand before dissipating into the air when it found nothing to target. To his surprise, he quickly realized Shia's warning about the spell's inefficiency hadn't been an exaggeration as his seemingly massive mana pool compared to when he'd started out began draining at a concerning rate.

In only a few seconds, he'd burned through nearly a quarter of his mana to keep the spell powered, and he quickly willed the runic formation to dissipate inside him, ending the spell before it ran him dry. Grinning from ear to ear, he turned to share his excitement with Shia before a strange thrum resonated within his body.

Vin started as a small wave of energy seemed to pulse outward from his core all the way to the tips of his extremities, before quickly snapping back and flowing straight into his center and vanishing.

"Woah…" He muttered, staring at his still tingling fingers.

"What's wrong?" Shia asked, looking concerned.

"Runic backlash?"

"No… I just had some sort of… pulse shoot through me or something," Vin tried his best to explain, shakily getting to his feet. The Meditation skill did wonders on preventing cramps and keeping his limbs from falling asleep, but it was far from perfect.

"Never felt anything like that before."

"Oh, is that what happened?" Shia asked, her concern quickly replaced by her usual grin.

"Well then, congratulations on hitting level 10! You should check your System notifications." During his first few uses of Meditation, Vin had continued to be snapped out of the skill every time the System oh so helpfully informed him he'd increased his Spellcrafting or Meditation skill.

After the disruptions had finally caused a thankfully minor backlash during his attempts at recreating Sense Life, he'd finally figured out he could will the System to enter something of a silence mode, removing even the minor buzzing sensation informing him of each new notification. Free from his Meditation skill, Vin willed the System to return to normal and took in all the notifications he'd received over the past few hours.

First were the skill notifications he'd earned for the hours of Meditation and work on the complicated runic structure within his own mana. Meditation increased to lvl 5! 500 exp gained. Meditation increased to lvl 6! 600 exp gained. Spellcraft increased to lvl 11! 1100 exp gained. Meditation increased to lvl 7! 700 exp gained. Spellcraft increased to lvl 12! 1200 exp gained. After those came the one he'd been most excited for, signaling the reward he received for all his hard work. New spell discovered! Renewal.

5, 000 exp gained. And last but not least, the apparent cause for the freaky tingling sensation that had just swept throughout his body. Level up! Explorer lvl 10. +3 Attribute points to spend. Capstone awarded: Runic Recalibration Vin stared at the new notification he'd never seen before. Instead of the additional skill point and passive point he'd been expecting, he'd received some sort of Capstone ability? Shia must have noticed the confused look on his face, because she immediately broke out laughing.

"Ancient One's sap, you look like someone just stole your favorite tree!"

"I'm just confused," Vin admitted, feeling his face heat up slightly.

"I was looking forward to picking a new passive when I hit level 10. What's a Capstone?"

"Sorry, it's easy to forget you came from a world without the System," Shia said, sitting down and shaking her head.

"Every 10 levels that don't involve prestiging, the System rewards you with a Capstone ability. It's often something like a skill and passive rolled into one, which is why you didn't get either for level 10. Unlike skills and passives however, a person's Capstone is awarded directly by the System based both on your actions up until this point and your inner desires.

Nobody is really sure what exactly that strange pulse is, but I always assumed it was the System running some sort of full body check before awarding a person their Capstone."

"You seem to have something of an almost unhealthy obsession with magic, and I'd be willing to bet a large chunk of the experience you earned getting to level 10 came from messing with runic formations or magic items in general," Shia said, raising her eyebrow as if daring Vin to disagree.

"That said, you probably received some sort of magic based Capstone. Am I right?"

"Yeah… Runic Recalibration," Vin read off his notification, enjoying the alliteration.

"Any idea what it does?"

"Nope," Shia shrugged.

"But you'll probably figure it out easy enough. My level 10 Capstone is Friend of Nature. Same one I got before I lost my levels in fact. It does a few different things, but the one I appreciate most is empowering all of my nature aligned spells to a certain degree."

"That does sound useful," Vin agreed, his hopes rising. Focusing on his mana, he quickly put together the runic structure for Renewal and cast the spell; not having to speak the spell out loud when manually casting a spell he'd painstakingly put together. Previously, whenever he'd finished a spell's structure, the runes had turned almost rigid inside his mana pool as the spell activated and the mana flowed through the carefully arranged runes, like electricity through hardened wires.

Now though, the structure seemed almost… malleable. The runes felt like they still had some give to them despite the mana flowing through them. Examining the structure's new feeling with his magic sense, Vin was surprised to realize he somehow instinctively knew what a few of the previously unknown runes within the structure were in charge of. If he adjusted the angle of this one in just this way for example… and thickened a few lines here and there…

Shia's eyes widened as the uncontrolled flow of life magic from his hand suddenly narrowed. Instantly, the mana drain from the spell was practically cut in half, as Vin found his wide cone of life magic he was spewing into the air transformed into a far more controllable line. Forcing the amount of life magic he was shooting off to widen and shrink like he was covering a running hose with his thumb, Vin gave Shia a big grin.

"I think I figured it out!"