Chương 15

"Morning," Erden said groggily when I returned to the dungeon the next day. He pushed his feet off and sat on the hammock. He yawned, then stared at the ground with unfocused eyes. That continued with no signs of further movement.

"Did I come too early?"

"Nah, I'm the one who should be awake," Erden said. He stretched.

"Tonir wants to test a new spell preferably right now, and that was days ago."

"Speaking of, where is he?" Behind us, the tall man with messy hair responded, "If I were to guess, he's still in bed with Relly." His name was Norin, the team's watchman and warder, who'd caught the rat I spied with yesterday. The younger man with a buzz cut was Sallir, his younger brother, who actually didn't have a mana core, but had lost his home, and thus lived with the gang. Neither were experts of magic. Well, nobody here seemed that competent.

Tonir had powerful mind magic, and Erden seemed to know a thing or two, but they were far from gods. For now, though, Erden knew things I didn't, and Tonir was more powerful than me, if only because of a level two crimson core. I could grow stronger here.

"Does anyone want coffee?" I asked, pulling out a thermos bottle from my satchel. Erden's head perked up.

"Shit, really? What kind?"

"Some dark roast my dad likes," I said.

"With some syrup added in."

"I'll give it a taste, sure." With a smile, I poured four cups. I figured, bringing coffee early in the morning was a great way to get on everyone's good graces. Just like in the workplace, where the best way to gain a promotion was to be friends with the boss, I'd have the best chances of getting in on gang secrets if people wanted me to stay. Erden slurped a sip of hot coffee. He grinned.

"Maso's syrup, eh. Fuck, your dad has good taste."

"I can bring it every day if you'd like," I said. He snorted.

"I was a fiend for this stuff in school. You better not bring me back to the addiction." I tasted the coffee as well, and I wasn't at all surprised to find that it tasted incredible. It had no milk, yet none of the stale bitterness from the usual American grocery store coffees hit me. I had yet to taste a single bad food in Asterra. With the coffee bribes in place, I moved to the table in the middle, where Erden's spell research was still lying around.

"Can I look at the book?" I asked.

"As long as you don't try casting anything, go ahead." I'd caught glimpses of the spells yesterday, but I'd followed Vora's instincts to not show too much excitement over a spellbook, when he was supposed to be more interested in something else. Keeping that act up was still probably good, but I did need an excuse to start studying these spells. I'd absolutely take the spellbook with me if I could. Maybe I could sneak a copy of it somehow.

"If we learn these," I said, "we can fight Ellaris on even ground." Norin snorted.

"Optimistic, eh?" I added, "If we get some core upgrades to cast this stuff, that is." He drank the coffee, but didn't pretend to smile at me.

"Personally, I have no intention of getting past level two. Sure, a level three core will be strong enough to fight the Ellaris daughters, but what's the plan after? You'll have to spend the rest of your life drawing mana from crystals. If you don't want to move to Gondorra and get drafted to war, that is." Mana thickness, huh, I thought, recalling a concept I read about in the same book that taught me about core upgrades. As mana cores grew, so did the need for resources.

The border between Asterra and Gondorra was the rough line where mana started getting thicker to support higher caliber mages. That prevented any godlike mages from entering Asterra for longer periods, and it forced growing mages to travel north, unless they wanted to keep buying mana crystals from further north.

"Well, even if we don't turn to gods, we'll need to understand the spellbook," I said.

"For our own survival."

"That I definitely agree with," Erden said. He sat on his seat next to me.

"Tonir will kill me if this doesn't get done." I smiled awkwardly, unsure about whether he was joking.

"What's the spell you're closest to cracking?"

"I'm not close on any one of them," he said.

"These three are ones that I'm most certain are traps, but even then, it's a complicated mess. This one I could guess turns mana into sharp whips, but it's also lacking a target parameter, so any destruction will be cast on the user by default. In general, if a target is missing, it's most likely a trap."

"Can we add a target in, then?" I asked.

"If we use something safe as a target, we could test the functions."

"That's the first idea everyone will have," Erden said.

"And it very well might work on some of these. But the more complex ones, these are crafted by professionals. I'm more impressed by them than the actual spells. Even if you add a safe target, you won't know what the actual functions do. It might just bounce back and kill you."

"So, our only option is to reverse each spell to fully understand their functions."

"That, or we can take the gamble and start randomly testing out," Erden said.

"Or as Gondorrans would do it, we'd get test subjects to cast for us to study the effects." Norin spoke from behind.

"Or just capture one of the Ellaris mages and force them into answers." Erden shrugged at that.

"If you guys can do that, great. I'm not getting involved."

"Are you a non-combatant?" I asked.

"For now, yes," Erden said.

"And I'd like to keep it that way. I'm not good at casting magic at all, really." I wondered if my next question was pushing it. I decided to go for it anyway.

"Can I ask… Why did you decide to become a mage in that case?" He laughed.

"Man, you're hitting all of my weak spots, huh? It wasn't a decision at all. Have you heard of the Gift of Mage War?"

"When a wandering mana core goes uncollected and travels south?" I raised my eyebrows.

"I thought that was super rare."

"Not when a full-blown war is blasting in Derinad. I'm a victim of that, I suppose. I've had a core for just under a year now." Norin was frowning as well. I asked, "Did you all involuntarily get a mana core?" I received no response, until Erden sighed.

"It certainly ruined my life. I had a girlfriend and all. Just graduated from Mathematics and Logic as well. I would have had a job interview lined up the day after I woke up with this fucking thing. Quite literally, I woke up and the life I knew was over."

"Wow…" I said.

"I'm sorry." He woke up with it, I thought. That's also how we got our cores. The same day, Trina and I just woke up with them. What were wandering mana cores doing on earth? That mystery wouldn't be solved in a while, I feared.

"My degree helped me with magic, I guess," Erden said.

"And I'm lucky that Tonir saved me from getting poached by Ellaris. It's fucked up, how they make magic illegal, when Asterra is the country with the most mage awakenings in the world. Any wandering cores wind up here."

"So you're fighting against that rule with Tonir?" I asked.

"Do I have a choice?" he asked.

"I could escape the country, I suppose. Try and convince the Gondorran military to train me." He snorted.

"They'd probably kill me and move my core for someone more competent."

"Is engineering magic not competent enough for them?" He blinked at me.

"Engineering magic? That's a funny word choice." Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"Is that not what we're doing. We're building spells. Well, right now, reverse-engineering." I found Erden grinning at me.

"I suppose so. You got any experience with this shit?"

"Only a month of trial and error being dream stuck. I'd love to learn, though." He nodded.

"If you'd like to help me out—" He turned to the stack of papers.

"—a helper or two, or fifteen, wouldn't hurt."

Magic, in my opinion, could be compared to a language of code. I'd never been proficient at coding. I was a thirteen-year-old kid when I got my mana core. Nerdy, sure, but far from the genius type. The more magic I learned, though, the more I began to learn associated concepts. The patterns of magic were like a language, each tiny angle conveying something different. The problem that Erden and I had was that our vocabulary of magical patterns was limited.

Ellaris' spells used instructions we'd never seen, forcing us to either test them out and risk blowing ourselves up, or finding a book or instructor that could walk us through the language.

"Tonir warned me not to go to the library," Erden said.

"Saint Aster's is a trap. They've got mana core detectors set in place. We've sent Sallir in, and he found plenty of spellbooks, but they didn't actually let him out with those books."

"You stopped trying, then?" I asked.

"That was two days ago. We're planning on trying again at some point."

"Leave that to me," I said.

"I'll see if I can steal a book about pattern meanings. I'll have one by tomorrow." He gave me a look.

"If you don't get caught or bring trouble, sure."

"For now, we can do smaller scale tests. Let's grab a pattern and connect it to something simple for casting. I'm talking, we'll cast something tiny, like a burst of mana, and we'll add one pattern to that just to see what changes. That should be better than a purely theoretical approach."

"That's risky, though." I've done it this way for over ten years, I would have said, but instead said, "I can survive a small misstep if I have protection spells on. That's how I used trial and error without spellbooks while dream stuck. I kept a mental barrier on and just spammed patterns until something tried to break my barrier. I also had infinite mana there, so a month gave me a lot of time to practice."

"How did you invent the mental barrier, though?"

"Oh… The man I killed… He had it active. When the core transferred to me, it remained active for a bit. I saw its patterns in my mana core." That was, of course, a lie, but it was honestly quite close to the truth. When I woke up with my mana core on earth, a spell was already active within my imagination, constantly drawing mana, while showcasing active patterns for young me. If not for that, I would never have understood the concept at all.

It still took me a month to learn that the active spell in my head was a very simple version of Mind Protection. Its presence was just as much of a mystery as why I got the core in the first place, but it gave me the stepping stones to get started casting mana, and it had saved my life countless times when testing out mind magic.

"How convenient," Erden said. He looked slightly suspicious, but it wasn't like he had anything to prove me wrong.

"I'm not going to cast any random patterns, but I'll help you out if you decide to risk it."

"Bring me to a good spot."

"We should wait for Tonir in case a monster comes."

"How bad are they here? For reference, I can beat three mage officers at once." He eyed me.

"Well. I suppose we'll be fine. Down that way."

Erden made me lead the way, telling me which turn to take as we passed more caverns of mana-eating moss and beautiful blue flowers, until we reached a larger dead-end cavern. Dead moss had fallen from the back-wall, having turned black after mana no longer kept it alive. Magic had clearly been fired here before.

"Our testing grounds," Erden said.

"Or Tonir's testing grounds, rather. He tends to blow his core empty here before sleeping every night. He says it expands his core, but I haven't seen proof of that."

"His core probably won't grow, but his casting will get more efficient," I said. As in, that was what happened to me over ten years, when I gradually learned to waste the least amount of mana when forming a spell pattern.

"We'll also spend as much mana as we can. The safety spells put us on a timer. Be prepared for a tedious process." I activated all of my protective spells, and began my usual process of head-butting patterns to figure out what worked. Going into it, I smiled wider than usual. I wouldn't be spamming random patterns anymore. I had a lot of new ones to try out that were confirmed to do something. My simple method was to take an existing spell and add in an unfamiliar pattern, seeing how it affected the spell.

A very similar strategy as what I'd used with Barrier Breaker, and just as boring. After the first few tests, Erden's cautiousness turned back to an analytical mindset as he grabbed a piece of paper to write down the effects of each pattern we tested. Most of them didn't do much, if anything at all. Some broke my spell outright, refusing to cast properly. But a few, like the very last one we tried, immediately showed their functions from just simple tests.

I added the odd zig-zag pattern into my Cloud of Mana spell, which normally pushed out a harmless cloud of mana that didn't transform to the physical realm at all. What now came out were a cluster of smaller clouds, like a hose on spray mode. To confirm the effect, I tested it on a more solid Mana Dart. The spell sucked in a lot more mana than usual, and out came a sparkling burst of little darts, all sharing the defined shape of my Mana Dart.

The small darts scraped deep into the cavern wall, leaving behind black marks. Erden scribbled notes.

"A scatter command or something?"

"A violent one. That required much more mana than a regular spell."

"Is that a good or a bad thing?"

"It means that the pattern is effective, but it costs a lot of mana," I said.

"Good power for a higher mana cost. Maybe it's already looped?"

"Looped?"

"Repeating itself to amplify its own effect."

"Right." He wrote more notes. It turned out, Erden wasn't really an expert either. He was smart and surprisingly passionate about magic, but it showed that he'd gotten his mana core only a year ago with no actual education behind him. I smiled nonetheless, excited to have a partner to work with. I'd missed having one ever since Trina went missing. Sadly, we could only run tests for half an hour more before my level one core started to empty.

"That's all the mana I can spare today," I said.

"I'll need to save some for emergencies."

"Only a hundred or so patterns to go, huh?" Erden said.

"So now we just need to convince your brother to give us more time." Looks like Erden likes to work with me, I thought. That was good, though it could get problematic if I started taking command. Vora used to be scared and incompetent. I had a very different personality in that regard. I had excuses about why that changed, but the month stuck in a dream could only bring me so far.

"I'll leave you to it," I told Erden.

"For now, I'd like a copy of the spellbook for myself. I'll keep studying outside the cave."

"Will that be safe? Any risk of your parents finding it?"

"I'll be fine," I said.

"It's much harder to hide a mana core than a few pieces of paper, and I'm doing the former." He eyed me, with what I felt was a hint of suspicion. Maybe I was being too confident for a kid who just joined.

"Well, it'll be good to have a copy regardless," Erden said.

"You better bring more coffee, though." I laughed at that, and we moved back to the little hideout. Before any work, however, we found that Tonir had finally returned.

"There you are," he said to us. With an annoyed frown, he wiped his forehead from sweat and shook the drops out of his hand.

"What have you been up to, Vora?"

"I joined Erden in deciphering the spellbook," I said.

"We're using a different approach to solve patterns one by one. We should have the first spells deciphered in a week or so."

"We'll need spells fast," Tonir said. He grabbed a piece of cloth and wiped the rest of the sweat with that.

"That fucking tree man again, we ran into his ward." I raised my eyebrow.

"Tree man?"

"Right, you don't know. If you think Ellaris is our only headache, you'd be wrong. We're sharing territory with a goddamned tree right now."

"Like a magical beast?" I asked.

"Nope, it's intelligent," Tonir said.

"And it has a strong green core. We've been trying to kill it for that. And we almost had it today. Tenacious little fuck."

"A literal tree man has a mana core down here?" Tonir snorted at that, some of his annoyance turning to amusement.

"It's a monster from further north. People are born in weird shapes up there. But regardless of what that creature is, we're in desperate need of green core upgrades to actually have a healer mage with us."

"Is the tree evil? Has it done anything to us?"

"It's cut the arms off from two of our mages," Tonir said.

"It's a fucking treant, Vora. It's a monster, except it has a mana core, so we actually have an incentive to hunt it. I could use your mind attacks to break its barrier."

"Alright," I said, but felt like something was off.

"I also had one worry about Ellaris I wanted to talk about."

"Go ahead."

"You mentioned that Ellaris might not keep the records at all." I used the word like some mystical puzzle. I hoped by talking about it, I'd either unlock Vora's memories or get information from the gang members.

"Maybe it's too valuable for them to let us steal, so they just don't write records at all."

"It's possible they don't keep written records, but I find that unlikely," Tonir said.

"It's all just logistics and transactions. People like keeping track of those. Ellaris definitely deletes old deals, sure, but we don't need every listing. A few will be enough to show people what they're doing."

"Do we even fully understand what they're doing?" I asked. Tonir snorted.

"It's pretty damn obvious that they're selling to Gondorra if any thought at all is put into it. I can't imagine anything else. The records would prove that, and they would confirm whether Ellaris had anything to do with Qani. But I suppose that hasn't been a mystery to you for ages." Relly entered from the lower tunnel, calling, "Tonir?" He continued speaking to me, "But before worrying about that, we need to eradicate this tree. It's strong enough to attack the hideout if I'm not here to protect us.

Just be careful alone in the dungeon. Get through that spellbook quickly, you two." He smiled at me, then turned to his girlfriend.

"Oh, and Erden. We found a new weakness in Ellaris' routes. I have a mission tomorrow. If you guys can get a spell done before it, I'd appreciate it."

"No promises," Erden said.

"But yes, sir." With a nod, Tonir disappeared after his girlfriend. Erden glanced at me.

"You are nothing like your brother, by the way." I laughed, and we moved back to the drawing board.

Copying the spellbook turned into a longer hurdle than expected due to the sheer number of spells. Erden and I spent most of the day copying each spell from the book onto pieces of parchment. I used Strength Enhancement on my hands to continuously draw without a single break. For lunch, everyone ate dry rations. Cooking would technically be possible with a portable mana stove, but Erden said it just wasn't worth the time and effort. He instead used a nutrition extension spell to survive with minimal food.

By the end of the day, two thirds had been copied over. I stacked the papers into my satchel, and thankfully nobody objected to me bringing them home.

"I'll see if I can solve one of these tonight for Tonir," I said.

"Probably too much to ask, though." Erden leaned back and sighed.

"Wouldn't be the first time he gave us an impossible deadline. Remember not to get mana in any of the parchments."

"I thought we were using mana repelling paper."

"We are, but it never hurts to be safe." I smiled, then promised, "I will. And I'll bring coffee next morning." I changed clothes to not smell like the sewers and departed home after yet another tough day of "job hunting."