Chương 27: A glimpse of an Archmage

Five tanks. They were larger than the ones I had dealt with at the field's edge, heavier in the hull, with barrels that had a wider diameter and a slower rotation speed that told me they were built for a different category of damage than the lighter ones. The Mimir-enhanced trait showed me the crew concentrations inside each one, three per tank, positioned at specific operational points. I checked my resources. [RESOURCES] [Health: 268 / 310] [Mana: 220 / 300] [Stamina: 31 / 100] Stamina was the problem.

Thirty-one points was not enough for sustained movement against five targets with rotating barrels and reload intervals I had not fully mapped yet. I needed to end this fast or end it from a position they could not easily correct for. I pulled the red spellbook through the Wormhole aperture and opened it to the elemental section. The incantation was longer than the Arcane Spread. Seven lines, with a pause built into the fourth that the notation marked as a breath point rather than a full stop.

I had the Wisdom to run it without significant error margin, and the mana reserve was sufficient for the output the text described. I read the first line aloud.

"By the Light beneath the Inverted Spire, by the mana that remembers the heavens, let the First Radiance awaken." Mimir pulsed from inside my chest.

"That is not a god spell," it said. I read the second line.

"Through Courage, let the light pierce the veil. Through Discipline, let its radiance take form. Through Fortitude, let it endure. Through Justice, let it judge. Through Wisdom, let it know. Through Compassion, let it shelter. Through Selflessness, let it shine." Mimir pulsed again.

"A true divine incantation would not require a book," Mimir said.

"From the heavens above to the roots below, from the summit inverted to the firmament unbroken, I call upon the Sevenfold Light." I took a deep breath.

"By the Arcanist's first flame, by the celestial mana beyond mortal reach, gather unto me."

"You are ignoring me." Fifth line.

"Let the false heavens descend. Let the buried sun ascend. Let the Spire turn upon its head, and let the light flow where no light should be."

"Deliberately," Mimir added.

"You know I can feel when you are ignoring me." I looked up at the sky above the tanks and said the final word.

"Lux Congerere!" The light came from above rather than from me, which was the first time in this run that a technique had sourced its output from somewhere other than my own body or the staff. It came through the grey cloud cover in a column that was wide enough to cover all five tanks simultaneously, and the intensity of it was not a gradual build.

It was immediate and total, and where it hit the tanks the metal did not melt so much as cease to maintain its structural argument, and the shadow-type entities caught in the radius dissipated before the column had reached its full output. The light held for approximately three seconds. Then it stopped. The tanks were not there anymore. I stood in the field with sweat running down my forehead and the red spellbook in my hand and looked at the space where five heavily armoured vehicles had been thirty seconds ago.

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"A god spell," I said. Mimir was quiet.

"Heaven from the sky itself," I said. Still quiet.

"Heresy," he said. I allowed myself the smallest possible smile. I was not going to give him more than that. [Floor Ten Cleared.] [Enemies Defeated: 31] [Level Up: Level 23 to Level 26.] [Experience Gained: 44, 200 / 48, 000] [Attribute Points Available: 88] [New Technique Acquired: Lux Incantation (Divine-Adjacent). Mana cost: 180. Cooldown: 10 minutes.] [Floor Currency: +290] I read the technique classification twice. Divine-adjacent. Not a mage skill. Not anything in the standard class tree.

The system had categorised it separately from everything else I had acquired, and the cooldown of ten minutes told me it was treating it as something that required significant recovery time, which was consistent with how it had felt to cast. I exhaled slowly. The incantation was strange. Not because of the light, but because of the words. Courage. Discipline. Fortitude. Seven virtues woven into a spell meant to reach something above the Spire. I had never seen an invocation like this. That bothered me.

I also noted what I had not spent any stamina on it. The Lux incantation had drawn from mana and nothing else. My stamina was still at thirty-one, exactly where it had been when I started reading the seven lines. That was useful information. I started walking toward the floor ten gate.

"You smiled," Mimir said.

"No I did not," I said.

"Twice," Mimir said.

"Very small. But twice."

"Then you see wrong..." I said.

"I am made of light," Mimir said.

"My perception is excellent." The gate to the between-floor staircase appeared at the field's far edge, and behind it the white corridor would lead to floor eleven, where the trader's checkpoint would be in the standard position, and where I was going to ask for their name. I thought about floor fifteen above that. The dark knight. Or more accurately... the sword saint.

In every run that had reached floor fifteen, the engagement had ended the same way, not always in my death but always in a specific dynamic that the floor architecture enforced. The saint did not fight at range. The floor did not allow range. Every long-distance technique, every traversal skill, every attempt to maintain separation had been countered by corridors too narrow and a fighter too fast to permit the distance I needed. I had cleared it twice.

Both times with a blade, both times through the accumulated swordsmanship from runs that had been dedicated to the craft. As a mage with Spellfist, and a spell that took time to cast because of its incantation, the Sword Saint was not a favourable matchup. I knew that. I had known it since the class selection screen. There were much... much worse foes beyond the World Eater. Even the Dark Knight was not the worst I had faced. The problem with this class was how limiting it could be. And random.

Depending on the situation, I could struggle against opponents I really should not have struggled against. Then, on the other hand, I could tear through an army of metallic vehicles and ghouls with ease, only to find myself struggling against a statue. That was what made this class strange. Yet there was something no other class had offered me. At least, not many. Potential. The subcategories were numerous. The spells themselves were... limiting. But that was only the Arcanist branch.

I knew what I could do as another class. I could shape mountains with this spellbook. I had learned that day that an Arcanist might not truly be a Mage at all. It was a branch. A discipline that drew ambient mana from the air and shaped it through basic incantations. A real Mage could access elemental forces. And other forms of energy. That was where the difference lay.

But there was something about the floor fifteen engagement that I had never told myself clearly enough, which was that the sword saint was not simply a difficult opponent. She was consistent in one specific behaviour that had surprised me on the first encounter and had not surprised me since but had never been something I had been able to fully account for. When the engagement began, she cut one of her own limbs. Not from injury.

But deliberately, a clean removal, traded away at the start of the fight with no expression and no hesitation, and the performance change it produced in her was not a reduction in capability. It was an increase, the removed limb converted into something that the system had never given me a clear classification for, a fuel or a field or something adjacent to both. I had thought about it across a hundred encounters and had not resolved it.

As a mage running at Intelligence one hundred and thirty-four and Wisdom thirty-nine, with Mimir's trait extending my perception range and the Pathfinder read showing me mana structures at a resolution no previous build had matched, I was going to be looking at that opening gesture with better tools than I had ever brought to it before. Maybe this time I would understand what she was actually doing.

Or maybe floor fifteen would end this run the way it had ended so many others, and I would wake at the bottom of floor one with the mage class still selected and everything intact.

'Not yet,' I thought. I pushed the floor ten gate open and stepped into the white corridor.

"Floor eleven," Mimir said.

"What is there."

"A trader," I said.

"Will they have anything useful."

"Probably."

"Will you talk to them." I walked.

"More than usual," I said.

"You do not talk to most people more than the minimum required," it said.

"No," I agreed.

"This trader is different, I have known them for a while now." The floor eleven gate appeared at the end of the corridor. I pressed my palm to it and pushed it open and stepped through, and somewhere ahead in whatever environment floor eleven had decided to be, there was a figure in a green cloak in a clearing, and they already knew I was coming, and they already knew what I was going to ask. Whether they were going to answer it was the only part of the equation I had not solved yet.