Chương 22: Hey Kid... Wanna Learn Some Magic?

As it turned out, the place that Erik had in mind for Vin's stay was actually the now vacant house that had belonged to the Druid of the Divine before he went missing. The house had been empty for the last three months after all, so Erik apparently saw no problem with Vin using it for a few days. Unlike the rest of the elven village, where it seemed most elves lived in essentially large apartment buildings with carefully grown walls and floors, the house that Vin found himself standing in was actually a house.

Located a few hundred feet from the rest of the village, the missing Druid had clearly been something special. Similar to the Tree of the Ancients, the Druid's house had walls made up of a mixture of various tree species, and the interior was quite spacious.

Seeing as things couldn't be nailed into the walls without damaging the trees the house was grown out of, there were a lot of natural shelves growing from the walls themselves that held a spread of portraits and small wooden sculptures, and the house itself seemed to be lit via a few simple floor lamps that consisted of little more than glowing gemstones. Unsure of how long he had until his magic teacher arrived, Vin decided to kill time exploring the house.

It appeared to have multiple rooms after all, and while it wasn't the first fantasy building he'd had the pleasure of entering, it was certainly the fanciest one. After making his way through the different individual rooms, he was in the middle of trying to figure out what the impossibly comfortable bed in the master bedroom was made of when a familiar voice spoke up from the doorway.

"It's stuffed with shimmerwing feathers," Shia said, causing Vin to jump and spin around. The elf was leaning against the open door frame, a sly grin on her face at catching him unguarded.

"They're small, colorful birds with wings that beat so fast the very air looks like it's shimmering. We don't really use currency here, at least not in the way I understand you humans do, but that one mattress is probably worth more than any other non-magical item within the village." Thinking back, Vin remembered some of the small hummingbirds he'd spotted flitting around the forest. Each one had been small enough to fit comfortably within his fist.

Looking at the human-sized mattress in a new light, he struggled to even imagine the sheer number of tiny feathers it would have taken to fill it.

"No wonder that guy was blessed by the Gods," he said, shaking his head.

"Anyway, what's up? Not that I don't mind the company, but I thought Erik told everyone to stay away from me for the evening?"

"He did," Shia nodded, tapping her chin with a slender finger.

"Though he seemed to think you wanted to learn magic for some reason. I mean, you're absolutely free to send your magic instructor away if that is your desire, but…"" You're my magic instructor?" Vin asked, unable to keep the uncertainty from his voice. On the one hand, he had personally witnessed the effectiveness of Shia's spells, and she was the entire reason he was so excited to learn nature magic.

On the other hand, Shia had made more than one comment implying that she wanted to try eating him at some point, and she seemed to have picked up on how uncomfortable her pointed teeth made him. As though she could read his mind, Shia grinned, showing off her rows of shark-like teeth.

"Believe it or not, I'm actually the highest leveled Druid within the village at the moment. Combine that with the fact that we've already met, and Erik thought I was the obvious choice." Shia heavily exaggerated the name Vin had given the dryad, and Vin realized with a start it was the first time he'd heard any of the elves reference the dryad by anything other than the Ancient One. Shia must have noticed his surprise, because she snorted.

"I told you earlier, I'm one of the very few elves that doesn't see that man as some form of God," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of him and would follow just about any order he gave in a heartbeat. But I would do it out of appreciation for what the dryads have done for us. Not blind admiration." Vin nodded, completely understanding where she was coming from. Not only was Erik clearly powerful, but from the brief time he'd spent with the man, the dryad had seemed like a good person as well.

Stretching, Shia yawned and motioned for Vin to follow her back out to the central room, not even looking behind her as she spoke.

"Well, seeing as we don't have a ton of time before Erik finishes up his preparations and sends you on your merry way…" She grabbed a chair, taking a seat at the table growing out of the floor as Vin did the same across from her.

"... what say we get started on your first lesson?"

"Yes please!" Vin said, nodding excitedly. He'd been wondering how exactly magic was taught from one person to another for a while now. His first and currently only spell had been learned from an artifact designed to teach others after all; it didn't sound like that was the way most people were taught magic. Sure enough, rather than pull out a carved branch or any sort of object for him to study from, Shia leaned back in her chair and raised a finger.

"Lesson one… What is magic?" Oh, guess we're covering actual fundamentals before learning spells. Vin deflated slightly as he realized it might be some time before he was slinging around any nature spells. Even so, he was still interested in magic as a whole, and he couldn't help but look forward to hearing the elf's explanation as to what his new obsession actually was.

"Some sort of energy source used to power spells?" He offered.

"That's similar to what a lot of people seem to think," she nodded.

"Personally, I view magic as more of a metaphysical key to unlocking powers beyond our understanding. Lots of people will tell you different answers, but the truth is nobody truly knows what magic is. The good news is you don't have to know. So long as you understand how runes function and have enough mana, you can cast magic." Using her finger, Shia traced a dozen runes in the air between the two of them.

To Vin's amazement, a bright green energy trailed along behind her finger, allowing the runes' shapes to remain visible and easy to read as they hovered in the air.

"This is the spellform for Sense Life; the first spell I'll be teaching you and the most basic one we Druids use." Shia gestured toward the floating structure of runes, and Vin finally noticed that they didn't make up a flat plane. There was some curvature to the way she'd drawn them and a few of the runes even seemed to intersect others in ways that seemed intentional to form even more, smaller runes within the already complicated structure.

"Spells are like puzzle pieces," she continued.

"More complicated spells will have more pieces, but they will always build off of simpler, smaller spells. My Entangle spell you witnessed for example, is far more complicated than this one. But if you look at that structure closely, you'd be able to find the structure for Sense Life hidden within it. I can't very well use magic to command plants to entangle my foes if I can't sense the plants and direct my magic at them after all." Royal Road is the home of this novel.

Visit there to read the original and support the author. Vin nodded slowly, his eyes still hungrily taking in the floating spellform before him. So magic is something like a computer program, and you link smaller spells together to make larger ones. Thankfully, it seemed magic and programming were only similar in that basic concept, because Vin had absolutely no idea how to code.

"So how come I was able to cast Sense Stone without drawing those runes? And I definitely didn't see you stopping to draw any complicated shapes in the air when you used your magic earlier."

"Yeah, magic would kind of suck if you had to stop and draw floating three-dimensional structures whenever you wanted to cast something," Shia snorted.

"And to answer your question, you did draw those structures, you just didn't realize it." Partially standing, Shia tapped two fingers against the strange chainmail-leaves covering her navel.

"When you cast a spell, what you're actually doing is constructing the spell's runic formation within your own mana pool," Shia explained, briefly tracing the runes on her stomach to drive the point home.

"Drawing the runes with your mind is exponentially faster than with your finger, and it's what allows us to cast complicated spells in mere moments. You only have to construct the runic formation correctly at least once for the System to confirm you mastered the spell and ingrain it into your System interface, but even then, the more you practice it the faster you'll be able to use the spell going forward.

"You got lucky that someone decided to lend you that object of power," Shia said, sitting back down and pointing at Vin's bag containing his first artifact.

"The biggest hurdle for new mages is learning how to gain a fine enough control of their mana to construct a spell's runic formation within their mana pool. Learning that fine mana control can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few years, depending on a person's natural talent. If my guess is right, that object of power you possess somehow helped you develop that control while it taught you the spell engraved on it."

"Wow," Vin said, staring at his bag and mentally thanking the stone village elder once again.

"So without that mana control, people can't learn new spells?"

"Not from a runic formation, but they can still obtain new spells from the System itself," Shia explained.

"Most spell focused classes have the option to obtain new spells in lieu of skill points. So they'll still be able to grow, they'll just be limited to whatever spells the System offers them."

"In that same vein, I should warn you now that unless you're one hell of a prodigy, you'll probably never be able to cast more than the most basic of spells," Shia said, giving him an apologetic smile.

"More powerful spells have more complicated runic formations, and they get pretty crazy fast."

"I get that these structures will no doubt get confusing quickly… but it sounds like all there is to learning a new spell is copying the formation, right?" Vin asked, looking once more at the floating runes that made up Sense Life.

"If all I need to do is make a structure within my mana pool, that doesn't sound so bad." Grinning, Shia leaned far back in her chair, putting her feet on the table and gesturing for Vin to give it a shot. Shrugging, Vin studied the runic formation carefully before grabbing hold of that seemingly intangible plasma floating within him that he now understood was his own mana.

Carefully, concentrating as if he were tensing tiny, specific muscles within his core, he condensed portions of his mana into fine lines making up the structure floating above the table between them. Piece by piece, he did his best to get every single angle right and make sure that the entire structure was curved correctly. He got to about the halfway point before he slotted another small chunk of condensed mana into the structure. And Shia exploded.

Screaming, Vin toppled out of his chair at the sudden explosion, rolling to his feet and bringing up his hands in front of him defensively. After a moment, he realized not only had Shia not exploded into a million pieces, she hadn't even moved from her spot.

"Congrats on your first runic backlash," Shia grinned, gesturing for him to sit back down.

"What did it feel like?"

"I… I could have sworn you just blew up," Vin said sheepishly, righting his chair and taking his seat, his hands still shaking from the sudden vision.

"What the hell was that?"

"When you don't have a magic artifact holding your hand, you have to worry about constructing the structure incorrectly," Shia explained, still grinning at his sudden outburst.

"You're trying to construct Sense Life; a spell designed to help you detect life energy. You messed up the structure, and thus ended up crafting the spell, just incorrectly. If you had cast the spell correctly, you would have obtained a soft but definitive sense of myself, as I am a living creature. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what runic backlashes cause, but in this case, I'd guess your incomplete spell didn't have a cap on the amount of life energy it brought back to you.

At my level, I have a lot more life energy than anything else around, hence it literally looked like the energy exploded out of me."

"Damn, magic is harder than I thought," Vin admitted, pulling up a notification he'd received from the System. Spellcraft increased to lvl 6! 600 exp gained. I guess failure is really the best teacher, he grinned, dismissing the notification.

"Runic backlashes are the primary reason few people dare trying to manually learn anything more than basic spells," Shia explained.

"Obviously there's no telling what a backlash will entail, but the more dangerous the spell, the more dangerous the potential backlash. Until you get a high enough Spellcrafting skill, magic attribute, and focus attribute, I'd be very wary of trying to manually learn anything above a basic sensing spell unless you have an instructor capable of healing present. A lot of spell focused classes offer a passive that diminishes the strength of runic backlashes, but I doubt your Explorer class will have the same."

"Got it," Vin said, pulling up his interface and dumping the three points he'd earned for hitting level 8 into magic, bringing it up to fifteen. Briefly, he went over his personal stats, grinning at the fact that he was already nearing the experience needed for level 9 after meeting Erik. He didn't know how many sentient races there were in the universe, but he hoped for his sake every single one of them had been brought to this new world. Vinnie Stone Explorer: Lvl 8 Titles: Human Vessel (Minor) Exp.

34, 160/36, 000 Strength: 13(5) Dexterity: 14(3) Endurance: 27(2) Vigor: 15(2) Focus: 14(1) Magic: 15 Attribute Points: 0 Skill Points: 2 Passive Points: 0 Passives: Mental Map, Polyglot, Distance Runner Skills: Tracking lvl 4, Spellcraft lvl 6 Spells: Sense Stone"Luckily, for a spell as simple as this one, you shouldn't experience any sort of backlash more severe than what you just did," Shia said, yawning once more and getting to her feet.

"Now, I was already ten hours into a hunting trip before running into you and the Trunkback and everything else that's happened since then. I put enough mana into that runic structure of Sense Life for it to last a couple of hours, so I'm going to go experience the wonders of that shimmerwing mattress while you keep practicing. Sound good?"

"Works for me," Vin confirmed, already working on his second attempt at copying the spell's structure. He thought he heard Shia chuckling as she left the room, but his focus was entirely on the floating runes before him. He wasn't sure if it was his newly increased magic or the level he'd just earned in Spellcrafting, but he was feeling more and more confident by the second. He'd have his second spell memorized before the night was through!