Chương 7: Magic

Standing outside the magic shop, as if they are guarding it, are a pack of lynxith. They seem to have been coming down the street from the opposite direction of us, smelled us, and stopped and waited patiently for us to finish off with the jewelry store so they could fight us and presumably eat us. There are six of them. Lynxith. Common basic monster, level 6. HP: 60/60. Higher level than before, same as the giant mantis. Maybe they're worth more XP.

We can't out number them, which means that flanking them isn't going to be an option, and means that we have to go with a more secure formation. Which means I'm back on throwing duty, throwing my knives at them for 9 points of damage here and there, waiting for them to get through the shields of my two squire companions and past the whirling blade of the barbarian. The lynxith aren't really that much of a threat, even with six of them.

The high defense of Ashley and Gigi make it hard for them to ever get a hit in, and my high agility makes the daggers I throw at them do at least some damage. I have over a dozen throwing knives, which is potentially enough to kill two of them outright. If I can do that, we can surround the remaining four and take them out. But we don't have to wait to fight them this way; the lynxith may be pack hunters, but they aren't exactly strong tacticians.

They try to spread out and surround us, wanting to just come and kill us all. But we won't let them move that far, and when the try to Gigi bashes her shield and draws their attention again, letting me get a critical hit as I throw a knife and hit one of them right in the eye. It screeches and roars, leaping at me without consideration for the four sets of swords it has to get through to get to me.

The others chop it down before it completes it leap, and I just have to step back a few steps to avoid getting bowled over by the pure mass of the thing. Five on five, we change tactics, with everyone taking on a single lynxith one on one. I pull out my sword and fight defensively, only swinging at its paws when it swings at me. I don't know if I'll be able to take it out quickly, but I know three good solid hits will take it down, so I bide my time to make sure that those hits come before it hits me.

But I'm hoping that one of the others will take care of their opponent and come give me a hand in time for my flanking ability to actually do something. Sure enough, El defeats her lynxith first, and comes and stabs mine in the back leg before it knows she's there. As soon as it turns towards her, I stab forward, slicing it under the shoulder and into the lungs, killing it instantly.

We wipe up the remaining lynxith and head into the shop, though I take the time to pull fangs and claws, which El seems interested in doing, so I show her how I'm doing it and help her get her own levels of animal harvesting. Mine goes up to four, and I'm almost ready to try skinning the thing. In fact, I give it a try, figuring that between the six of them, I should be able to get the pelt off at least one of them.

I use the sharpest blades I have to slice through the layer of fur, pulling as much as cutting, and manage to get what the system identifies as three lynxith hides by the time I'm done. Of course, by the time we finish that, El and I are both completely drenched in blood. But we can also carve off some meat, which Ashley hopefully will be able to cook. I guess that means we'll need to start a fire. I didn't put any matches in my bag when I grabbed stuff from home. I wish I'd thought of that.

Maybe there will be matches or something in the occult store. They sell incense, so it makes sense that they'd have some source of fire while they're at it. I'll go looking for that sort of thing while the others make sure that the store is nice and defensible. We still want to keep someone on watch at all times, but that's more just being awake and aware; no need to actually spend the night staring out at the street and paying attention.

You just need someone who is more awake than everyone else, someone who can notice if glass breaks or something in time to wake up everyone else. It doesn't take long to find the lighters. The occult shop seems to double as a head shop, so there are plenty of them on display. We end up making a fire out of blank journals and 'magic wands' which are really just sticks with rocks glued to the ends. Ashley takes the chunk of meat and slices it up into strips, putting the strips over the very smoky fire.

If there were a smoke alarm still functioning, I'm pretty sure it would go off. But nothing does, not even the sprinkler system. Which is odd; I always thought those were based on heat, not based on having power. Maybe there's more going on than just the power being out. While Ashley cooks, I go looking through the store to see what else I can find.

There are a bunch of materials for spells here, which I suppose might help with spellcraft, though we'd be kind of guessing blindly with things in a way that might not be safe to try. It's hard to become a spell casting class when you come from a world that doesn't really have magic. I mean, how are we supposed to know how it works? My scrounge goes up to three as I look around, but I don't really find much of use.

I see that Vinny has found a book of spells, and is diligently reading through it, trying to get the gist of it. There's a whole shelf full of those books, so I figure I might as well try it myself. The book starts off talking about the flow of mana around us, the rush of magic in the world. It talks about feeling this magic, about how to do it and about what it means to get in touch with your own magical core.

I realize pretty quickly that it's talking about meditation techniques, and it makes sense why I would need meditation to become a mage. I don't know why I'm so focused on this. I already have a class. I qualify for the fighter class now. I'm part way to qualifying for a bunch of other classes; why do I need to qualify for mage? Maybe I'm just trying to qualify for the classes because they're there. I want to be a jack of all trades, but I still want to be a master of one.

I just want to be well spread out, skill wise. I've always thought that skills are the most under appreciated part of any roleplaying game. Everyone wants powers, disciplines, magic, abilities, whatever you want to call it. No one ever wants to have the skills to back it up. It reminds me of that old TV show where people randomly get super powers. There's one guy in that show who has no powers, but he's a total badass because of the things he can do without super powers.

He's smart, he's efficient, and he has backup plans. He's got the skills. And when the super powered people all lose their power, they can't even hope to stand up to him, because while they put all their points into powers, he put his into his skills. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. I want to be the skilled guy. I want to be the guy who could do anything he wanted, but who decided to go with one class because it was the most interesting.

But if we can't multiclass, I want to be able to change classes on a whim. I want to be able to unlock the weird classes. That's what it really is, I think. Ever since I went back into the building and killed the lynxith who couldn't detect me, I've been looking for other secret quests. A secret quest comes with a boat load of experience, and I want to get as many of them as I can. But the whole point of them being secret quests is that they have to be things that people wouldn't normally think to do.

If everyone did them, they'd just be quests. So what if I qualify for all the basic classes at once? Would that be a secret quest? Maybe if I can qualify for five different classes, that would be a secret class. Maybe I need ten. But something in my gut tells me that the more classes I qualify for, the more likely I am to get a secret quest. So I want to learn spellcraft. I focus on the magic around me, trying to feel it, meditating as best I can to feel the flow of mana all around us.

It doesn't take me long to get into that state where I can feel it. My meditation already being at three means that I'm able to focus pretty well on nothingness, and that's just one step away from focusing on mana, apparently. Two notifications come in as I get a feel for it. One of them tells me that my Alertness has increased to two, and the other tells me that I have gained my first level of spellcraft. Awesome! That must mean that Vinny is doing the same thing, and probably getting the same results.

I notice, as I stop meditating, that El and Gigi are sparring while Ashley cooks and tends the fire. We don't have enough fuel to keep the fire going all night, but that's okay; I don't think it's going to get cold in here, and we're protected from the wind. The smoke is gathering up at the front of the shop – the rest of the shop is down a flight of stairs – so the air isn't getting thick and hard to breathe. That's good. I go back to the book on spells.

The next step, after being able to feel the mana, is to focus that mana within ourselves. Magic is about convincing the world to work in a way it isn't meant to work, and that means giving it a new pathway to follow. The book I'm reading talks about feeling the heat that pumps within my veins, the heat of my body, and focusing that heat to my hand. It talks about willfully spending my mana to make sure that the heat focuses and doubles, then redoubles and redoubles again, in the palm of my hand.

I keep focusing on it, using all my willpower to try to imagine the heat as a little ball of fire in my hand. It takes about twenty minutes, but there's a flicker of light in my palm, and then a tiny gout of flame.

"Hey!" I say, drawing everyone's attention.

"Look at this!" Everyone comes over and sees the little flame dancing in my palm. I display it proudly. I'm doing magic. Like, actual, real magic. A flood of notifications comes in. Your spellcraft has increased to 2. Your spellcraft has increased to 3. You have gained the spell flame ball. Flame ball. Common spell 1/5. MP cost: 5. Casting time: 1 second. Cooldown: 1 second. Create a ball of flame in your hand.

This ball can be thrown up to your Willpower in feet, and does your Awareness in fire damage if it hits an enemy target. I look down at the book in my hand, ready to share it with someone else so that they can get the same spell. But as I look down at it, the words curl in on themselves, draining down the page and dripping out of the book as a black sludge of ink. Which I get all over my hand because I'm an idiot and somehow want to stop it from dripping onto the floor.

Within a few minutes, I'm left with a black stained hand and a blank book that we can add to the fire to get a bit more flame to cook the lynxith meat with. Looks like one spell per book, and one use only. I wonder how Vinny is doing with his. Vinny smiles at me and holds up his hand. As he does, a shimmer in the air above his palm becomes a small spike of ice, and with a flex of his fingers, the spike of ice flies across the room and slams into the wall.

Then he puts the book aside and takes another book off the shelf, immediately diving in to read more. He's going to get that mage class by the end of the night. Which is good for him; it means we all have a class. But I'm determined to qualify for the class while I'm at it, so I watch him as he focuses on the magic. It seems to come easier for him to learn the second spell than it did the first. Which makes sense; he doesn't have to learn to meditate all over again. I think that's what made me get the spell first.

I try to feel the magic flow around and through him, trying to pay attention to the torrents of mana without trying to manipulate them myself. I'm rewarded with that third level of Alertness for my trouble, qualifying me as a mage as well. So I'm currently qualified as a rogue, a fighter, or a mage. Those seem like three basic starting classes. How close am I to the others? I need a level of tracking and a level of scrounge for the Hunter class. That's the last of the basic classes that I started with.

I'm also close to thief, rpathfinder, and investigator. I need more pick locks, scrounge, sneak, throwing, and bow to qualify for all of those. Okay. What can I work on right here, right now? I can get more scrounging just going through the store looking for things that I can use to make armor. I can try to make better armor with all the leather, metal, chains, and hides that we've gathered. Maybe I can put together something better than my leather jacket, or something better for one of the girls.

Hell, I might be able to add some leather panels to the pants and make better armor for Vinny and myself. It all depends on what I can find to help put things together. I go through the store, finding thread and thick needles that I might be able to get through leather. I have that leather hole puncher so I don't have to actually pierce the leather. I can just go ahead and make holes, then lace them together.

I get another level of scrounge, putting me up to four and making me one level of tracking away from Hunter, and I get the materials that I think I need to make the pants I'm wearing a bit better protection than they already are. I add a pair of leather chaps onto my pants, sewing them together with thick thread, then add an additional panel of leather to each of the thighs, figuring there are a lot of arteries in the thigh, especially the inner thigh, that I want to make sure we're protecting.

It doesn't take me long, but the result is nice. Armored leather pants. Common 3/5. Armor: +3. Your Armorer skill has increased to level 2. New class: Crafter. Progress: Armorer 2/3, Smithing 1/3, (Anycraft) 0/3. I take another set of chaps and borrow Vinny's pants for a while, adjusting them the same way and making the same thing for him. I then make sure that the lacing is tight, the two pieces are bound together right, and the adjusted material won't chafe.

This increases the rating of the pants up to 5, giving a +5 to armor. I do the same for my own pants, and get a second level of smithing for my trouble. I use leather to make bracers for everyone who needs them, recreating my bracer of claws twice just for El. I also fix my own bracer of claws, tightening the leather around my wrist with leather cord replacing the wire, adding in a few more claws and solidifying where they are in the bracer.

Soon enough, I've improved it to level 8, and it now does 1-8 damage against unarmed strikes and gives +8 to armor. My smithing goes up to 3, as does my armorer skill for making El a set of the things. I end up taking first watch, finishing with my bracer as I do. I go up to the front door and sit down with another book, hoping to get some more magic before calling it a night. There are different monsters at night.