Chương 22: Trial and Error

Enzo stopped at the door and considered the collar and the leash. Murph had changed a lot over the past few days. Growing to full adult size was part of it, and he had a feeling she was still getting bigger. But mostly it was the change in intelligence that gave him pause. And there might not be a safer opportunity to test whether he could trust the border collie off the leash. He glanced down at the black and white bundle of energy sitting beside him, tail thumping across the floor behind her.

She cocked her head, tongue flopping out.

"Murph, I'm going to let you out without the leash." Enzo watched Murph's face. She sat up straighter, tongue returning to her mouth.

"Do not go too far. Stay close to me or Val, or the others. Kenzo and Sumi. You know them, right?" Murph's tongue flopped out again. She barked, once. Enzo sighed.

"I must be losing it. Thinking you understand me." Then he opened the door, and Murph bolted through and down the stairs, then began racing around the front of the house, stopping briefly to sniff everything. He pulled the door closed behind him and made his way down the stairs, one step at a time, watching Murph rolling across the grass as he did. Down the street to his left, he caught glimpses of Kenzo and Val training. Going down the driveway was an interesting exercise in sideways-hobbling, good leg first.

At the roadside, he checked both directions by habit and noticed there were a few people outside their homes. Some were standing around the improvised barricade at the end of the street, others in their yards watching Val and Kenzo as they trained. The pair had moved on from throwing air punches and were instead technical sparring. Intentionally moving at a slower pace, telegraphing their strikes. Giving their partner time to block or step aside. Given the ongoing explosions, that was probably a good thing.

Even with Sumi sitting nearby, presumably ready to heal, they couldn't afford to actually injure themselves by doing something stupid. But they didn't need him to explain that. He watched Kenzo perform a classic judoka lunge in slow motion. Val responded with a Muay Thai teep, using her foot to stifle his leg movements. Given the size difference, his sister stood no chance of the maneuver actually working. But Kenzo adhered to the rules of the spar and allowed the strike to disrupt his momentum.

The tactic was clear even from a distance. His sister could have unleashed a Burst from her foot, either injuring Kenzo's leg or propelling herself backward. Kenzo had been training judo since childhood, encouraged by his mother. He'd also picked up wrestling in high school and been an absolute menace. Meanwhile, Val had been learning Muay Thai for half her life. That decision, all those years ago, had annoyed him for months.

He'd been forced to let his little sister tag along to karate lessons since she was five years old. And when he dropped it in favor of Muay Thai a few years later, she'd done the same, much to his dismay. While Enzo had stopped since the injury, Val had kept up with her training. Last he'd heard, she'd also picked up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in recent years.

Right now, watching his best friend and sister go through the motions while working their new abilities into the routines, he felt nothing but pride in the little nuisance. Given how dangerous their new world was shaping up to be, he was glad she'd kept at it. On the other hand, Enzo was more worried for Kenzo's future victims than the big guy himself. He shook his head and made his way toward them, raising a hand in greeting when they spotted him. Kenzo waved a big hand back.

"Enzo! I learned how to explode!" Enzo chuckled. Of course the first thing Val had taught him was 'how to explode.'

"I heard. It woke me up." Val planted her hands on her hips.

"You had plenty of rest, Sleeping Beauty." He nodded to Sumi.

"Thanks for watching over these two violent miscreants." She smiled.

"It's been interesting. I had no idea Val was such a bully."

"Oh, she's always been that way. Ever since she could walk."

"Can confirm!" Kenzo said. Val glowered at him. Enzo changed the subject.

"Have you tried teaching him to convert mana yet?" Val turned back to him.

"Of course. That was the first thing I did." Kenzo chuckled.

"She got really annoyed when I couldn't make fire. Earth worked, though. After I'm done getting used to Burst, she's going to teach me Reinforce."

"Good," Enzo said.

"I'm going to work on my own spells over there. I was thinking we might head into town later and check on the supermarkets after lunch. Then, when we get home, we can figure out what to do."

"Sounds good." Kenzo rolled his shoulder.

"Matt will be happy to see you two."

"Murph is off the leash. I'm testing if she can be trusted while it's safe." He glanced over his shoulder at where she was busy chewing on a bush.

"Keep an eye on her?" Val and Sumi nodded.

"Thanks." Enzo turned and made his way back down the road, putting enough distance between him and the others so that their training wouldn't interrupt his thoughts too much. He stopped back outside his family's driveway and turned, gauging the distance to the nearest redwood on the other side of the road. Houses on this street were only on one side, as the other had quite a steep drop-off. Balancing his weight slightly on his good leg, he considered the three design modifications he'd drafted.

His take on the Library's recommendations. Piercing. Guided. Charged. Guided interested him the least. With the limited range of his spells, and the speed at which they traversed the distance, even if he could nudge their trajectory, there would be few instances he could think of where a second bolt wouldn't simply be superior. Piercing and Charged both promised similar value. Increased damage potential from the same spell, though delivered in different ways.

Given arcane mana's penchant for delivering pure force to the target, the two options would do considerably different things. Though he couldn't be certain yet, Piercing seemed the simpler of the two to implement. It would likely be the more efficient of the two as well. At least until he figured out mana conversion and had to factor in how Bolt might change with the addition of typed mana. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

But Charged promised greater value in the long term. He could already see how it might apply to other spells. Plus, if Charged worked, adding the structural changes for Piercing would be straightforward by comparison. And there was the nagging concern that the guide might somehow restrict his options to add more modifications to the spell once he succeeded at one of them. So, Charged it was. Bolt in its current iteration was easy. Three threads.

A containment circle, and two additional lines bent at ninety-degree angles and forming the conceptual vector before connecting back to the circle. Every element served exactly one purpose, and the form accepted exactly as much mana as those elements required and allowed within the shape. To make it expandable, each line needed hinges. Points in the form where the structure could flex outward under sustained mana input, creating additional volume within the containment without breaking the circle or the vector.

And if it were possible, maybe even collapse back down, compressing the stored energy and launching the projectile with the accumulated force. The concept was elegant. But entirely theoretical. Enzo drew the first thread from his reserves and shaped the base containment circle. The first component of a spell form he'd ever used, achieving an entire spell with just that single geometric shape. Not that it was special. It was apparently the first idea most people had.

The thread settled into place, and he pinned it with a fraction of his focus, the way he always did. Each thread required a piece of his awareness dedicated to holding it steady while building the spell form, line by line. The second thread followed. He fixed one end of it to the north cardinal direction of the circle, drew it out, then folded it at ninety-degrees halfway along its length, connecting the other end back to the circle at its south cardinal direction.

He repeated this process with the third thread, using east and west points. Bolt was complete. But instead of releasing it as he always had, Enzo drew a fourth thread and began shaping the first hinge. And immediately ran into a problem. He released all the threads, allowing the visible threads of mana to dissipate into the atmosphere, returning to ambient form and disappearing from sight. Enzo didn't know of a way to break his own threads along the line where he wanted to install the hinge.

Which meant for every point in the design he wanted to add a hinge, he would need to break the original thread, doubling the load. Bolt had three threads. Each of the V-shaped lines needed two hinges. And the circle would need four to compensate. That meant the circle went from being one thread to being four. And each of the two V-shaped threads became three in order to accommodate two hinges. Which took Bolt from being a spell form requiring three threads to one requiring ten.

Before the hinges had even been added. Six of them. Sixteen threads. Telekinesis had taken twelve threads. And that had taken him hours and half a dozen attempts, depleting his reserves several times over. He swallowed. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

If even relatively minor adjustments to spell forms increased their difficulty exponentially, and there were mages out there capable of fighting monsters that ate stars and wrapping shields around solar systems and creating things like the Guide, then that meant only one thing. His eyes opened. Magic was going to be so fucking awesome. Enzo focused. Pushed the excitement to the back of his mind and began threading again. Four separate, smaller threads for the circle.

Three separate pieces for both V-shaped directional components. The back of his neck itched from the sweat. He pulled another thread from his reserves, fixed one end to a part of the circle, and then tried to fold the mana in half. It resisted. He frowned. Tried again. It bent fine until it reached a ninety-degree angle, and then it resisted. He pushed at it harder with his mind, and the thread shook. Then the end he'd fixed slipped, and the thread snapped free of his control. Enzo's focus wavered.

The entire spell construct exploded in a spray of purple. Pure force smashed into him. His vision went white. He felt the back of his head and shoulders slam into something. Then his vision went black.

When Enzo came to, he was lying on his back with his head resting in Sumi's hands, green energy pulsing at the edge of his vision as she cast her healing spell. Kenzo's face hovered above him, upside down.

"There he is." Enzo blinked. The sky was very blue. The redwood canopy swayed gently overhead. Something warm and wet pressed against his cheek, and he turned his head to find Murph licking his face.

"What happened?" Val demanded. She was standing over him with her arms crossed, jaw tight. He tried to sit up. Sumi held him down with a firm hand.

"Not yet." Enzo settled back. The world tilted slightly, then steadied.

"I was working on a modification to Bolt. Then I lost a thread and the whole thing collapsed."

"Collapsed," Val repeated flatly. He thought about it for a moment. Replayed it in his mind. Then he laughed.

"I think I blew myself up." Val pressed her lips together, then held up her middle finger.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Kenzo turned away, his shoulders shaking.

"One," Enzo said.

"And it's rude." Val stared at him for another long moment, then shook her head and walked away without a word. Sumi's healing pulsed once more, then faded.

"There was a cut on the back of your head. It's closed now, but you're going to have a headache for a while. The spell doesn't fix anything instantly."

"Thanks, Sumi." She helped him sit up. The street wobbled, then settled into place. His cane lay a few feet away. The spellbook was on the grass, open and face down. Kenzo clapped him on the shoulder.

"You good?"

"Yeah. Just need a minute." Kenzo glanced down the road toward where Val had gone, then back at him.

"Val was scared, you know. She always thought you were invincible."

"I know." He did. That had changed after his accident. Kenzo gave him a nod.

"I'll check on her." Then he jogged after Val.

"Thanks, big guy." Sumi sat there quietly for a few moments, studying his face.

"You're going to have some odd-looking bruises. Looks like you got punched at least three times in the face, each one in a different place." She paused.

"What exactly happened?" Enzo held out a hand toward his spellbook and cane.

"Telekinesis." First the spellbook, and then the cane floated over to him.

"Lost control of the threads. I tried to bend one beyond ninety-degrees, but it resisted. And when I pushed harder, it snapped free and the whole thing exploded, I guess." Sumi looked thoughtful. Then she frowned and conjured a single purple thread and slowly folded it in half. It stopped moving at the same angle his own had, then began vibrating as her frown deepened. Enzo tensed. Then she released the thread, allowing the mana to dissipate.

"Interesting. But at least you weren't using fire mana." She pulled out her own small notebook and began scribbling down her thoughts.

"That is going to make some ideas I was working on much harder. Maybe even impossible."

"Yeah, I had an idea for mana compression to increase Bolt's power. No way I can make it work now." He calculated quickly.

"The ninety-degree limitation turns it from sixteen threads into twenty-two."

"For your breakthrough?" Enzo nodded. The pair fell silent. Murph stayed, pressing herself against his side as he sat in the grass, waiting for the headache to settle and the world to stop rocking gently beneath him. A few minutes later, Enzo flipped open his spellbook and started going over his notes. He slid the pen from the spine and quickly wrote his observations about the Charged spell form and the issue with fully bending mana threads. When he was done, he sat and studied the page.

And realized he'd failed to anticipate another problem, even before the hinges had derailed the idea. There was no way to compress the mana. The design allowed for the form's expansion, but failed to solve for how it would collapse back down. To be fair, he'd been very tired. And watching over his best friend, while worrying he'd wake up and try to eat him. He flipped back and forth across the three designs, looking for other flaws. Enzo frowned. Went still. The book lay open at the Piercing design.

Reinforced design. Curvature rather than rigid V-shaped lines. Threads to pull, adding rotation. He flicked quickly to the Guided design. A spiral trailing thread, with the idea that it might carry intent or a controlled mana pulse. Even at the time it had seemed like a stupid idea. It still did. He flicked back. And forth. Repeatedly. The spiral could serve a different purpose. A dual purpose. Enzo turned to a new page, pen racing across the page as he sketched a completely new design.