Chương 364: B6—Chapter 14: [Upgraded]

I took a day off to let my channels rest after the overload of the last two weeks. The following day, I couldn't ignore the spell in my palm anymore. Every time I looked at it, it bothered me. It was a constant reminder that I'd left it half-finished. Half might have been generous. A quarter was probably closer. Yeah, I had other things I left unfinished, but this one bothered me more. I popped it out and set back to work, fingers moving in the air. Malith stepped out of the house and made his way over.

"What are you doing?"

"Improving a looting spell," I said without looking up. He blinked at me with a blank face.

"Looting? Like pirates?" I laughed.

"Sort of. Like in the books. I'll give you one to read so you get the idea. Essentially, I created some spells that harvest resources. This one turns monsters into crystals—" He choked on air, eyes going wide. I paused.

"What?" He waved a hand dismissively.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Please, continue." I raised an eyebrow, but let it slide.

"As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted…" I shot him a wink, and he responded with a slow shake of the head and an expression that screamed, Why am I here?

"It's a spell to convert monsters into mana crystals. My first version pulled out all the polluted mana and condensed only the clean stuff. But your circle gave me an idea, so now I'm working on version number two. Instead of tossing out the bad mana, it converts it. Like your circle does." I scratched the back of my head, watching the spell hanging in the air.

"Well, I'm trying to make one. The placement is giving me hell." Malith's eyes narrowed.

"You're using a combination of runes and magic script," he said in a flat tone. I waved him off.

"Yeah, Mahya said it was impossible. But—" I pointed at the forming spell with both hands, game-show style, "—clearly not." He didn't look impressed.

"No, no, I know it's possible. My question is different. Why didn't you mention you're an enchanter? I would have just given you the books to copy." I stared at him.

"I'm not." Now it was his turn to stare.

"So, how do you do it?" I had no clue what he meant. Or what kind of answer he was looking for. I waved a hand toward the half-formed spell, hoping that would somehow explain everything.

"Ta-da?" He squinted at me.

"Are you asking me?" I shrugged.

"Maybe?" He shook his head, laughed, and clapped me on the back—hard. Ouch! I rubbed my back and gave him the death glare. Now he winked at me. Are all Travelers nuts, or it's just my luck? Well, Lis is normal, at least.

"What's the problem you're having?" he asked, eyes narrowing as he crouched beside me and inspected the half-formed spell. I gestured at the tangled mess of overlapping runes and symbols. A few of the conversion filters had gone haywire, thrown off by the fact that the spell was spherical instead of flat. What should've been a clean, layered function ended up looping awkwardly in three dimensions.

We spent the next three hours elbow-deep in trial and error—sketching and re-sketching on parchments, tweaking mana flow, and muttering half-formed theories.

"Try rotating the Fi rune," Malith said, pointing. I redrew it carefully. The spell flickered, buzzed like an angry wasp, and then spat a shower of sparks before disintegrating into a puff of smoke and ash.

"That was a terrible idea," I coughed, waving to clear the air.

"Not all of them can be brilliant," he replied, brushing ash off his sleeve as if this were normal. In the next attempt, I mirrored one rune horizontally. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. This time, the entire array shimmered—then shot out a blinding flash of light that left me seeing stars.

"Okay. So definitely not that," I said, blinking furiously. Malith snorted.

"Good to rule things out." On the third try, the sequence shot something out of the array and hit me square in the forehead.

"Ow! Did you see that?" I rubbed the spot, glaring at the sketch.

"I think it objected to your penmanship," he said dryly. I waved him off.

"Yeah, yeah, don't quit your day job." He stared at me blankly.

"I don't have a job at this moment." I sighed.

"I meant don't stop doing whatever you're doing to become a comedian. You don't have it..." The huge smile on his face and devilish sparkle in his eyes clued me in that I just got trolled. Shaking my head, I returned to the parchment. No matter what we tried, one particular filter stubbornly refused to work in sphere form. The Belsh rune—a simple square with two diagonal lines crossing it—was a trooper on parchment, but every time I added it to the actual spell, everything around it collapsed.

The geometry broke the function; it refused to work in a convex shape and wouldn't cooperate. That left the spell one point short in its cleanup loop, which meant around 10% of polluted mana would bypass conversion and needed to be filtered out. Not ideal, but the rest of it worked beautifully. After a moment of staring at the remaining spell and rubbing my chin, I decided that an 80% improvement in efficiency was still a damn good win.

"Good enough," I said. While we worked, I took the opportunity to ask him about something that had been nagging at me since he introduced himself.

"You said you're a stone mage earlier."

"Yes?"

"What's the difference from a regular mage?" I waved my hand, then paused.

"No, never mind. I get the gist. What I really want to know is why. Why stone mage instead of going the regular route? You'd have more flexibility. And how did that even happen?"

"I have an affinity for stone," he replied, finally straightening.

"Not a Stone or Earth affinity, mind you. There's a difference." He met my eyes.

"You're an Elemental. You know what I mean."

"Oh, I definitely do." He nodded once and continued.

"I got some spells from dungeons. For some reason, the stone spells clicked. Easier to cast and cost less mana. So I kept using them. When I reached level 25, I received the class change option to Stone Mage, and I took it."

"So what does that actually do? You could already cast stone spells before. How does the class change show up, besides the name?"

"All my older spells converted to stone-based versions," he said, flexing his fingers as mana gathered around him.

"Some even merged into higher-tier ones."

"Like what?" A pulse of mana rippled from him, and two shapes rose from the ground at our feet. One was a stubby, tiny figure that resembled a snowman missing its carrot nose; the other was a sleek stone fox with sharp lines and predatory grace. The fox padded over and bared its teeth. They looked like a line of jagged, polished diamonds.

"This one bites through almost anything," Malith said, tapping the fox's back with his boot. Then he pointed at the snowman.

"That one's my little spy. I can see through its eyes if I'm close enough. I can also shrink it. Make it small enough to crawl into places no one expects. If it's about to get caught, it just falls apart. Looks like three random stones lying around. No one ever notices." I squatted next to it, curiosity piqued. The thing was maybe six or seven centimeters tall.

"How does it move?"

"The bottom stone rotates like a wheel." I leaned in, eyes tracing the subtle grooves along the base. A moving spell—actual movement, not just flying at a target—was new to me. And being able to see through it? That opened all kinds of possibilities.

"Damn," I said, letting out a low whistle.

"That's impressive." Malith dipped his head in agreement.

"Yes. Specialization has its perks, but also its drawbacks." I tilted my head.

"Like what?" He rested a hand on the stone fox's back, eyes distant.

"Spells I already had, and even most of the new ones I learn, tend to convert into stone versions automatically. Not all of them, though. The telepathy spell you gave me stayed the same, obviously. But others… not so lucky. I had Wind Blade; now it's Stone Blade. Vine Whip turned into Stone Whip. Those still work and are even stronger now." I raised an eyebrow.

"And the ones that didn't?" He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Gust, for example. Used to be a powerful burst of wind I'd use to push back monsters, buy myself room to move. Sometimes, I used it to launch myself with the glider." He crouched and traced a line in the dirt with one finger.

"Now? It makes a thin ripple of stone—like a wave rising up, almost like a curtain. It pushes forward a little, but since moving stone takes way more effort than wind, it loses momentum fast." I frowned.

"Is it at least good for defense?" He gave me a flat look.

"It's too thin to block attacks, and worst of all? It hides the monsters from view, so I can't see them coming. And, of course, it's completely useless for the glider."

"Yeah, okay," I said, wincing.

"That does sound like a pain." By evening, I had finalized the upgraded spell. Having help was awesome. The last version took me days. This one? Done in a few hours. When I channeled mana into it, nothing new popped up in my profile. Instead, the existing spell simply received an [Upgraded] tag. Whatever. I still didn't fully get how the system worked.

"Can you make me one too?" Malith asked.

"I'll pay you."

"You don't have to pay me. You helped me make it." He rubbed his neck again. He did that a lot. I was starting to suspect the skin there had to be raw by now. I gave it a discreet glance, just in case. Looked normal. No angry red patches or peeling skin. Still weirdly frequent, though.

"I won't feel comfortable taking it without some kind of compensation," he said.

"Are you kidding me? The first one took me days. I got this one done in hours." He was quiet for a moment, then gave a small nod.

"I accept." I grinned.

"By the way, why did you assume I'm an enchanter when you saw me combining runes and script?"

"I have a skill for it through my class," he said.

"I figured you had the same one. I guess in your case, it's a wizard thing. Wizard magic is strange, so it makes sense."

"Oh, come on, not you too!" He laughed.

"You can't argue with the truths of the universe. Some things are just facts." I shot him a death glare, let out a loud harrumph, and marched off to make dinner.