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For your convenience, here's [Ward]: 

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Ward X, instant, short range, 24 hours ~{Favored Spell}~

Create a Small Ward that can have Minor Effects, or prevent Z damage from attackers. 10 MP + Z

Create a Small Ward that can have Small Effects, or prevent Z damage from attackers. 15 MP + Z

Create a Special Ward. Variable Cost

Create a Medium Ward that can have Small Effects, or prevent Z damage from attackers. 20 MP + Z

Create a Medium Ward that can have Medium Effects, or prevent Z damage from attackers. 25 MP + Z

Personal Ward: Any Ward of any type can be made Personal, to move with you. Original Cost x2

Create a Large Ward that can have Medium Effects, or prevent Z damage from attackers. 30 MP + Z

Create a Large Ward that can have Large Effects, or prevent Z damage from attackers. 35 MP + Z

Create a Ward with another Spell attached to the interior. Spell activation based on Z invested into Ward. 100 MP + Z

Your Wards regenerate Z based on your Rested MP regen rate.

Special Wards can be made Permanent. 250 MP + Variable Cost

Minor Effects: Bug Ward, Temperature Ward, Alarm Ward

Small Effects: Visual Disruption, Audio Disruption, Weather Ward

Medium Effects: Area Hostile Visual Disruption, Area Hostile Audio Disruption

Large Effects: Drain Hostile HP/MP, Gravity Ward  

Special Ward: Eschew all other effects in order to shape, color, and illuminate a ward however you wish. Skill level at Mana Manipulation determines final outcome. Variable Cost

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Now, onto the chapter:

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Before Erick knew it, a month and a half had passed him by. Classes came every day, and every day he learned a little bit more. The stability of it all was something Erick had no idea he needed. No monsters outside the walls. No shadows looking at him from darkened corners. No great big problems. And he was learning all sorts of important stuff! About the math and intricacies of [Teleport], about the nuanced, not-magic of Professor Rue Down’s Esoteric Magic. About different spells and different paths to power, and about the truly world-changing spells out there that every mage longed to master. All in all, Oceanside was rather relaxing.  

The most dangerous thing to happen was Erick’s every-other-day beat down in Professor Ulogai Tinawa’s stone arena, where he sometimes won his fights, but not always. Erick’s anonymity in the arena had been ripped away after the third class, just as they were moving on to magical combat. After that, the fights got both a lot harder, and a lot easier. Some of his opponents wanted to give him a polite nod and then scamper off, but some of them were all bravado and power. Erick learned a lot more from those magical fights with young hotheads than he had learned in all his physical combat since falling to Veird. Mostly, Erick learned that he was not cut out for hitting someone with a stick. But telekinetically slapping someone out of the air with a block of stone? That was okay.

According to Poi’s occasional updates and Ophiel’s vision, Spur was doing alright. Erick rained on the farms every afternoon. Mog sent requests every so often for him to kill various monsters headed Spur’s way. Erick responded with lighting and fire and exsanguination. With a bit of math, and some time to think, Erick took the time to count the distance between Oceanside and Spur and discovered the two were not 12,500 kilometers away from each other, but 13,700. It wasn’t much of a difference, though.

He talked to Jane when he could, though she had been off killing unicorns for a while and that extra distance was a bit harder to overcome, not to mention other emergent problems. Every time he tried to contact Jane she was either busy with her new friends, or busy being an ooze, and [Telepathy] didn’t work on oozes. But she had gotten her unicorn form and she had made some new friends, so that was pretty great.

The updates of the last few days were a bit concerning, but Jane was back home in Spur, so that was that. Hopefully Redwood’s story was true, but Erick was glad Jane escaped that situation as fast as possible. Just yesterday she even talked of possibly coming to Oceanside before she went on to finish her Polymage quest.  

Rats signed up for work at Oceanside’s Hospital after the first week of arriving on the island. He was learning a lot about a lot, especially since people from all over the world came to Oceanside for medical help. [Greater Treat Wounds] and [Cleanse] solved a lot of problems but some problems required technique. Cancers in stranger locations, like inside the brain, demanded knowledge of the body and skilled hands so as not to damage the psyche or personality or memories. Parasites of all kinds were also a major concern, but Oceanside had some of the best anti-parasite magics and techniques known on Veird.

There was no way to truly prevent parasites aside from walking around encased in metal and completely cut off from the world. For most infections, this was not a valid strategy. You just had to know how to deal with them after the fact, though identifying the vectors for such infections and thus preventing the infection in the first place was helpful in combating common parasites found in nature. Don’t drink water from strange sources, even if you [Cleanse] it first. Don’t eat meat left out for the flies. That sort of thing.  

The parasites created by the Parasite Mages or Parasite Warriors of the world were best defended against like how you would defend against any insidious attacker; through constant vigilance and knowing your enemy. The problem there, was that not many people knew they were under attack by a Parasitier until they were already infected.

As for Teressa, the grey-armored orcol often accompanied Erick to Rue’s classes. They worked on Mana Sense as a group and individually every so often, but even the other, smaller Esoteric Magics of the world had Teressa chomping at the bit to know more. Teressa would sometimes remark, after classes or back in Windy Manor, that it all reminded her of her tribe’s hunting traditions. She never really spoke past that point. Erick could tell that her past was bloody and uncomfortable, so he never pushed.  

As for his own Mana Sense, Erick was not doing well.  

Poi was ever-watchful, as always, but even he seemed to relax a little as time went on and nothing happened.  

Hocnihai died two weeks after leaving Oceanside. He passed from this world the age of 116, surrounded by his family, friends, and a few other archmages. Daily treatments of [Greater Treat Wounds] and [Regeneration] helped him to dictate three final tomes of his accumulated knowledge, for the use of future generations. Each tome was three hundred pages long and filled with all of the magical knowledge Hocnihai had accumulated during his long life. These tomes were bequeathed to his grandson, who was already an accomplished Warder on the precipice of becoming an archmage himself.  

When ambassadors from the Wasteland Kingdoms came to Erick on Oceanside to tell him this, they also gave him copies of those three tomes and a formal state-backed invitation and an assurance of peace, if he should ever want to visit the Kingdoms. Hocnihai had given the Kingdoms, in detail, every bit of knowledge that Erick had given to him in that singular lecture. They were already developing ‘electricity’ and ‘lightbulbs’, and would love if Erick could see what they had managed on so little information. Erick sent them off with a ‘maybe’. That was good enough for them.  

Kiri was doing fantastically well. Being Erick’s apprentice opened a lot of doors for her, like being invited to classes outside of those Erick chose to attend. She even got an invitation to Professor Ulogai Tinawa’s advanced mage combat classes. She was busy all the time.  

As for Erick himself? He was barely passing almost all of the more ‘important’ classes. The math involved with Spatial Magic was too much for him. He understood the pictures, but when the professor linked those pictures to equations made of squiggles and letters, Erick felt lost at sea with no land in sight. Kiri had no such problems. Kiri helped Erick to understand some of those classes, after class, back at Windy Manor, but not all of it, and Erick was honestly tired of asking for her help. She was way too busy with homework of her own and Erick was not going to hold Kiri back from her own success.  

So Erick read a lot of books. The lessons were all in the books, anyway.

But as it turned out, the math of every single magical class was too much for Erick. From Defensive Theory, to Spatial Magic, to Basic Enchanting, all of it involved math, and all of that math was too much, because none of it involved what Erick would have called ‘real geometry’. None of the math of Spatial magic seemed to be based around real, tangible space; all of the math went off of imaginary, nonsensical insanity. Erick would have called it multi-dimensional calculus, but the professor was adamant that real Spatial Magic never involved other dimensions at all. And besides: Dimensional magic was Banned, after all.  

But not every magic taught revolved around non-real space. For certain disciplines there were diagrams and charts all based in real reality, and all of that seemed rather intuitive. Like how to plot out the best way to place defensive, anti-specific-magic runes around a room, or how to design a dungeon. Basically, you just had to know the rate of mana flow, the direction, and about a dozen other smaller facts based on whatever situation and furniture and lives lived in the space, and the rest was easy.

Defending a house through anti-specific-magic runes turned out to be kind fun. Erick wasn’t able to do a lot of the math that Professor Egallia Stomp demanded, so Erick failed many of the paper practice tests, but by the time physical tests came around, Erick was able to routinely place anti-[Teleport] runes where they needed to be without doing any math. He just sort of placed them were the mana swirled. It wasn’t perfect placement, but it was 90 percent effective, which was pretty good for just looking at a room and feeling the mana therein. It also only took him a minute to rune a room, instead of the ten or twenty minutes it took to do the proper math. Egallia Stomp was simultaneously furious and fine with it all.  

“Some people just have a natural mind for mana,” she would say. “The rest of us need math.”

A real Mana Sense would have helped, for sure, maybe even allowed for 98 or 100 percent effective rune placement, but the barely-there vision and feelings given to Erick by Meditation was enough to allow him to see and feel the flow of mana all around him. It was enough, for now.

Nowhere was this fact more apparent than in Professor Apell Calloway’s class. While Esoteric Magic and Professor Rue Downs’ continual round table discussions of stranger magics was a delight, Dungeoneering was the single class where Erick excelled.  

Professor Calloway’s class had taken Erick and twenty other students into the deeper parts of Oceanside Island to build dungeons that spun the flows of mana into slimes, and in the rare occasion, into ‘naturally’ occurring elementals. Both of the starter dungeons voted on by the students were partial successes, each with their own failures or bounties, but the textbook dungeon was an all around success providing for the growth of two to three slimes for every one produced in the students’ attempts.

All three of those starter dungeons were all dismantled a while ago. Now, everyone in the class had been charged with building their own dungeon in one of several different locations scattered around the Island, from the western coast where mana rushed against the cliffs, to the relatively calm interior with forests and few mountains, to the beaches of the eastern edge, where eddies and swirls produced odd currents and so many water slimes.  

Water oozes were a danger in every dungeon on Oceanside, but the danger was minimal.  

According to Erick’s Monster Ecology class, as well as his dungeoneering Professor, Apell Calloway, different slimes needed to get to different levels, or to fulfill other requirements, in order to transform into an ooze. For water slimes, the level for a transformation was generally around level 45, and those kinds of levels just did not happen around Oceanside, which was naturally between 20 to 37. It was only when students died in their own dungeons to their own slimes that oozes came out, but even then, those oozes tended to rush for the water to hunt more prey. They were water oozes, after all, and the oceans were the largest source of food around.  

(According to Monster Ecology, monsters leveled differently than Matriculated people. Mostly, they gained levels based on how many rads they ate, or how many essences they gained, or any hundred of other ways. Age was a major factor for those monsters which didn’t lose physical power as they grew older. Slimes were one of the monsters that fell into this category. Wyrms were another. Unicorns, were yet another. But really: there was no set path for monsters gaining levels like how there was for people.)

Erick’s own attempt at dungeoneering was not in the western cliffs, taking advantage of the mana river, or the eastern slope to the beaches, but in a relatively calm area north of Windy Manor, in a part of the forest where no one lived for a hundred kilometers. Whereas everyone in the class visited everyone else’s dungeons in order to learn from each other’s mistakes, the Headmaster and Calloway both agreed that Erick’s location should remain a secret. Oceanside was safe, but Erick was an archmage, and certain things were expected to remain hidden. This was fine with Erick.

Erick stood in the forest with tiny Ophiel on his shoulder. The sun shone down from above, scattering light through leaves.  

The land around here was vibrantly green and full of tall, thin trees. Occasional cracks in the ground broke up a monotony of small hills and slight rises, while a heavy undergrowth of ferns, grasses, flowers, and mushrooms accented the forest floor. This was not an ancient forest, barely tread by people where monsters ate other monsters. This was like any forest back on Earth, near where Erick lived his previous life. It was wild, for sure, but there was this feeling that civilization was just over the next hill, or around the bend. If Erick walked for ten minutes in any direction he felt like he would accidentally end up in someone’s backyard.  

This was, of course, a failing on Erick’s part. Civilization was a hundred kilometers away and this might not have been an ancient forest, but there were monsters that lived around here.  

‘Were’ being the operative word.

Right now, there was no one here except Erick, Ophiel, Poi, and the natural wildlife. Erick had already killed the larger monsters that roamed into this part of the forest with a quick application of [Domain of the Withering Slime], as he had done every time he came here for the last two weeks.  

As the white sphere of Erick’s Domain peeled away like flaking ash, Erick gazed upon an inconspicuous bend in the forest floor near a larger tree than most, like the bend in the ground was a present waiting to be unwrapped. This is because it was. Erick glanced at his most recent notification. It had finally happened.  

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You have slain Light Slime A!

95% participation!

+3040 exp

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“It happened, Poi!” Erick said, stepping through the underbrush to the entrance to his dungeon.  

Ophiel flitted off of Erick’s shoulder to hold in the air behind him.

With his face falling a bit, Poi asked, “Really?” He eloquently added, “Uh.”

Erick rushed the entrance to his dungeon, located near the ‘roots’ of the larger-than-most tree. The ‘tree’ was fake; it was completely hollow. Erick had [Stoneshape]ed the land upward into a rather well hidden intake system for both the mana flow from the west, and for depositing platinum rain all the way to the end of the dungeon. Here and there, and all around the rest of the nearby forest, were other intake and exit vents that fed and nurtured what laid beneath.  

Erick reached the bend in the forest floor. Poi followed close behind. With a quick [Stoneshape] he pulled up the ground, revealing a tunnel and stairs and bright sunlightwards. Ophiel flew down first, disappearing behind a bend in the hallway. Erick smiled wide as he walked down the stairs, past twists and turns, to reach the first floor of the dungeon. This room was nothing special—

Poi said, “Uh. Sir. Uh. Maybe we should not be—”

“Oh, Poi. It’s fine!” Erick said, “I just cleaned it out. The whole place. There’s no oozes down there.”

The first floor of the dungeon was a flat, boxy set of hallways and staircases that curved around and down. It was designed to keep slimes from coming up. The stairs were too big for them to roll up, while the mana that flowed though here was made to flow down; nothing should ever spawn on these staircases.   

Ophiel did not wait for Erick to catch up; he never did. Ophiel had already flown down, out of sight, headed to the final room of the dungeon.

Poi walked behind Erick, saying, “But the point is, is that you shouldn’t have been able to make a light slime spawning area.”

Erick just laughed.

Poi amended his statement, “I instantly see the folly of my words. No need for the laughter.”

Erick smiled as he [Stoneshape]d the entrance closed behind Poi, then continued down the stairs.  

He had let slip the nature of a lot of random particle interactions over the last month and a half, like how oxygen was crucial for burning, and how atoms were categorized based on the number of protons in their centers. Iron was ‘26’. Gold was ‘79’. Carbon was ‘6’. Erick didn’t know those numbers, like how he knew Oxygen was ‘8’ and Hydrogen was ‘1’. But other people in the school had started experimenting with strange magics that skirted the Atomic Ban; they had discovered those numbers for themselves, and published the results in Oceanside’s weekly newspaper.  

Erick had plans for a lot of particle magic of his own this afternoon, but that would come later.  

He walked down the boxy hallway, ever deeper. Soon, the soft, ambient sunlightwards and their soft yellow glows gave way to something brighter. Whites and reds. Blues and greens. Yellows and oranges.  

Erick had let slip a lot regarding Particle magic, but there was one magic that Erick had not spoken about at all: the nature of light.

Well… He had mentioned it to Jane. She knew. But no one else. According to some personal research about Light Magic, Erick finally understood what was going on with Veird’s understanding of light.  

Light, as understood on Veird, was an infinity of color that formed a perfect circle from purple around to all the rest, then back to purple. This spread of color was most clearly visible in rainbows. Artists understood that magenta, cyan, and yellow were the three primary colors, of which all other colors descended. It was from this misunderstanding that all other light-based magic centered their understandings of the world.  

When a light mage enchanted Stat items, they used pools of color attuned to the specific Stat they were going for, then channeled their mana through that color, into already colored stones, like sapphire and ruby. This was one of the main reasons why those Stat items degraded over time; they did not mask off all light except for the proper color, they just drowned out all light except the proper color. Obviously, this drowning was not a full drowning; impurities filled all normal Stat enchantments.  

Erick, instead, used real color masks; lightwards that cut out every wavelength of light except the one he was enchanting. This discrepancy was a fundamental difference in understanding the nature of light. This difference is what allowed Erick to make his rings, and allowed him success in this dungeon, for Erick did not just enchant normal light colors down here, but also ultraviolet; a color beyond the visible.

Erick walked down the stone stairs of his dungeon, but stopped just before the final few turns into the main dungeon floor. Color swirled against the rock ahead; muted this far from the sources below, but bright enough to shine all the way here. Ophiel was already somewhere around those bends in the hallway, giving a performance of violins and his new favorite instrument; the harp. Erick listened for a moment, as song echoed on stone. Ophiel had been growing, too. He liked to sing, now, and Erick liked to listen.  

A small bucket of stone held against the wall. Erick plucked one of several metal bands from the bucket and slipped the band around his eyes, as he he hooked the curved metal ends behind his ears. Everything was darker now; the bands had been enchanted with [Permanent Special Ward]s that blocked out half of all visible light, and all of the rest. They were sunglasses, made by Erick; they were rather necessary to deal with what came next.

Poi grabbed his own pair of sunglasses and slipped them over his own eyes, saying, “These would be nice for people wandering the Crystal Forest in the summer.”  

Erick walked forward, saying, “You sound like the Headmaster pumping me for information.”

“At least he stopped trying to bribe us.”

“Oh?” Erick turned the first of a few final corners, asking, “He stopped doing that?”

“Neither Rats, Teressa, or Kiri have reported an attempt in the last few days. I’m slightly worried.” Poi followed Erick, saying, “But you’re about to start classes with him, so I think he’s just decided to change tactics.”

Erick nodded, as he rounded the last bend, into the prismatic light of the main dungeon floor.  

Erick paused in silent joy as he gazed out over a land of curved white stone and flowing water that glittered under dazzling lightwards of every color. Pillars dotted the rolling land, supporting an arched roof five meters high. The ceiling was layered with a hundred prismatic tiles that gently turned in kaleidoscopic fashion, pouring ever changing magentas and cyans and yellows across the bubbling water below. Masses of huge diamonds, rough carved into people shapes and standing around the room like statues at a Greco Roman Bathhouse, poured water out through hidden holes in their hands, or urns, contributing to a main pool in the center of the room.  

Figuring out the plumbing of this place was a fun diversion. For all the complexity, all of those tiny water streams were a part of a single, fully contained pump system, kept moving by one application of [Gravity Strainer]; a spell Erick had originally created to fish rads out from [Cleanse]d waters. Erick had repurposed the spell here for use as a water pump.

Erick looked away from the wall that hid that pump system, to the center of the room, where the path in the dungeon floor wound around a few times to end up at the main pool in the center. Ophiel hovered over that main pool, full sized and outstretched, wings holding in the air as he held himself in the central downrush of mana and wind emanating from the main feeder tube above. Wind and mana blew across Ophiel, carrying his song of violins and harps across the calm, twisting waters of Erick’s creation.  

But there was no plant life down here. This was in direct contradiction to how people normally grew slimes.

But Erick didn’t want normal slimes. The diamonds were for if gem slimes wanted to grow, while the water was for probably-not-happening water slimes, but both of those would have been failures in the face of what Erick was trying to create. He wanted Light Slimes. And he had done it. The one he killed must have been the largest, oldest one, because as Erick stood on the edge of his dungeon, he saw that the one he killed was not the only light slime in the room.  

Tumbly, plopping, rolling and swimming balls of light, played in the water, undulating in time to the Ophiel’s song above. The light slimes rolled across the white floors, up inclines to rush down slides, to splash water in every direction. Their outside edges were white spheres, while their insides were perfectly clear except for a singular, white orb the size of a human hand. From Erick’s vantage point he saw maybe six of the little guys rolling around the dungeon floor. All of them looked smaller than normal sewer slimes; they were obviously still growing.  

Poi stood beside Erick, watching the slimes play. “It’s an accomplishment.”

Erick said, “There’s records of light slime dungeons in the libraries but the mages who made them were all either absentee creators or tied up with plots and deals after revealing their creation. There’s still one active in Nelboor, but that’s more myth than reality. Though I have been given certain hints that it’s still accessible for those with the desire to learn ‘true light magic’, whatever that means.” He added, “I’m in no rush to learn the answer.”

“These Light Mages must have stumbled upon the same truth that you have.”

“If they did, they chose to never speak of such a thing to anyone.”

“Like you?”

Erick smiled. “I’ve spoke of a vast many things, Poi. Just not this. Not yet.”

“Probably for the best.” Poi gestured at the nearest plopping slime, asking, “What are you going to do with them, now that you’ve managed this impossibility?”

“Pass the class.”  

Poi laughed. “Is that all?”

Erick smirked as he watched the slimes bumble around the room. “At first, that’s all this was. But that quickly changed. I haven’t really talked about the secondary purposes here before, yet. I wasn’t sure if I was right, and this failure to produce a [Gate] has given me back some much needed humility.” He looked up at the intricate, kaleidoscopic [Permanent Special Ward]s he had crafted into the ceiling. “I wanted to make something really pretty with some permanency, and I wanted to study that permanency. Did you know that the ‘Permanent’ option of [Ward] is the only permanent option in the entire Script?”

Poi looked to Erick for a moment. He tentatively said, “Yes.”

“Do you know how it works, though?”

“… No.” Poi added, “But I do know that it isn’t true permanency. The streetlamps in Spur need to be replaced every other month.”

“Ah ha!” Erick exclaimed. “Yes! So you see the problem!”

“… Not really.”

Erick pointed out a few different spinning kaleidoscopes in the ceiling, saying, “These are all different gauges of the effectiveness of permanent [Ward]s, in the controlled mana space of a dungeon. I specifically crafted the mana flows across each of these wards in slightly different ways. Look at these. Can you see a difference?”

Poi stared at the kaleidoscopes for a moment, saying, “They’re the same, but the first is spinning slower than the others. The second one is... degraded… slightly.”

“Yes!” Erick said, “Exactly right.”  

Erick avoided a bumbling light slime as he walked to the left, down a path that wound around this final floor of the dungeon. Poi followed along.

He pointed to lightwards he had set up near two weeks ago, saying, “They’re all in different mana flows.” He said, “Dungeoneering is really fun, but I don’t think I want to keep around any slimes, no matter how cute they are. But I’ve been reading practically everything there is on [Permanent Special Ward]s and how they work in different mana flows.

Erick said, “There’s a problem in your schools—”

“They’re not my schools.” Poi said, “You do that a lot, you know? Conflate individuals with all of civilization on Veird.”

Erick amended, “Okay fine. Yes. You’re right.” Erick said, “The point is, is that I’ve come to a conclusion, Poi. The books of those learned people who came before? The ones upon which all Magic is taught? They all say the same thing. You guys— The professors here, I mean. They’re either teaching the millennium old material, but in a new volume, or some other person’s take on the knowledge of those who came before. Even those books from Hocnihai; all of it is knowledge laid down with the expectation that people follow it exactly.” He stressed, “No one is actually experimenting! And I mean proper experimenting.”

Poi frowned, as Erick continued to lead him around the room.  

Erick continued, “There’s a vastly good reason for this, of course. The old ways work and they work well. The problem is with the tiers of magic. I know why Rozeta and the other Relevant Entities decided to do it this way, but this decision has affected everything that came after.  

“Even if you only stick to tier 2 spells, you can only try to combine them once every day. Experimenting with tier 3 or above that takes a personal commitment for weeks, or months, or years, to try again. So every mage does what came before, because it works, and then they stop experimenting further, because monsters need killing and they can’t afford chancing a bad combination. There are a few instances outside of magic where this reluctance to experiment is frowned upon, like with Alchemy. There’s some proper experimenting there, but still, there are books with knowledge that works, so people make the potions how they have always made them.”

Poi looked around as they walked down the winding path toward the center of the room. He asked, “Did you make this place bigger since last time?”

“A bit.” Erick turned to Poi, saying, “Anyway: Now we have Particle Magic. Aside from a few personal contributions to the Script, namely [Exalted Storm Aura], no one is making tiered Particle magic beyond Aurify or Shaping.” Erick quickly added, “But I guess you can’t do what I did without the Class option— But still! People should be making higher tier Particle magic, using different Particle spells, together! But no one has. This is a tragedy.  

“So when I get back to the Manor, Rozeta willing, I’m going to try for some actual Particle Magic tier magic, to help set the stage for what could happen with tiered Particle Magic. You know: Rozeta willing.”

Beneath the shaded glasses over Poi’s face, his eyes went a little wide. He said, “I feel that Kiri would want to be here for this.” He looked out across the room, saying, “This talk seems to be going all over the place.”

“I wanted her to be here too, and she’ll be there for the experiment if you decide this is a good idea, but I honestly have too much power over her. You’re a much better sounding board.” Erick added, “Sorry. The ideas are kinda jumbled and everything seems to be coming to a head, especially since I was able to do yet another ‘impossible’ thing down here, and make a Light Slime spawning zone.”

Poi just nodded as both men continued to walk slowly across the large, large dungeon floor.  

Erick continued, “But tiered Particle Magic isn’t even that big of a deal. Whatever happens with that will happen. What this room was all for, was for real experimenting. Not just for doing things how the book said, but for discovering if they books were right at all.” Erick stopped. “Here we are.” He gestured outward, saying, “The purpose of this dungeon.”

They had arrived at a jut of stone that poked out over the shallow waters of the central pool. Ophiel floated above, still thrumming like a violin harp. From here, seeing the true purpose of the room was as easy as looking out across the space, and turning on Meditation.  

In every direction, the same scene played out, primarily along the ceiling but also along the distant walls and the pillars of the room. The same kaleidoscope hung against the ceiling, each one slightly different, either spinning slower or faster or damaged in some way, each in slightly different flows of mana that poured against the [Ward]s from hidden inlets above. Some of them were not in flows at all, but in calm areas of mana; these ones were the least damaged of all. They were the control group.

Erick said, “So I’ve gone on a bit ramble, but the first thing I have seen that really needs to change is that Oceanside teaches from books and practical experience, and not much else. There is no method for magical study. There is no scientific magic. Maybe I’m missing something with the math; I admit that all of that is evading me, but I don’t think I’m missing anything at all. The Scientific Method is missing on Veird. But that’s another problem for another day. Hopefully I will prove the importance of such a protracted methodology by the creation of what this room was also meant to create: A [Renew] spell.”

Poi suddenly looked out at the kaleidoscopes of the ceiling again. He said, “This Permanency effect. It’s a [Renew] effect, isn’t it?”

“Yes!” Erick said, “It’s not perfect, but it is if you give it some space! If you were to close off any of the tiny vents on any of those kaleidoscopes out there, the damage you see here —the dimmed lights or the altered colors— all of those issues would go away. This bombardment of mana is what gradually decays the permanency, but in a calm space, the lightward will reconstitute to wholeness over a period equal to density of the ambient, calm mana.” He said, “The reason that lightwards in the streets have to be redone is because there’s ambient mana everywhere.”

Erick said, “To sum it all up. This dungeon works, it makes light slimes.” He added, “It also allowed me to test some theories regarding the scientific method and to see if what they said in the books really was the best for creating slime-producing dungeon environments. Spoiler: The books are pretty darn spot on about slime generation, but no one talks about why their ideas work; they just want the students to read and know the material, and never have any deeper understanding other than that.” He said, “This dungeon also allowed me to investigate the permanency effects of lightwards and what they really mean. So far, I think it means that there is some sort of [Renew] effect inherent to permanent [Ward]s. But even more than that...” Erick laid it out there, “I think this [Renew] effect is what makes [Ward]s regenerate at Rested Regen, in the first place. [Renew], in some intrinsic way, is a part of [Ward].”

Erick went silent. He waited for Poi to say something.

Poi looked out over the waters. He watched the light slimes bumble across the dungeon floor and play in the prismatic light from above. One bumped into another, sending both of them plopping in opposite directions.  

Poi said, “There’s a lot to unpack there. [Ward] is already a very large blue box.” He asked, “What’s the ‘Scientific Method’?”

Erick answered, “Ask a question. Do research. Form a hypothesis. Test that hypothesis. Analyze the data. Draw a conclusion. Repeat.”

Poi said, “I was taught to do what I needed to do. It works well enough.”

“Yes! But there’s no advancement, there!”

“I get it.” Poi said, “But I don’t think all of what you said is true. That part about [Renew] already being in [Ward] seems… suspect.”

“Maybe.” Erick looked across the room, to say, “It’s hard to keep it all straight. Spatial Magic is still going poorly. I thought I had a breakthrough a few times in the beginning, but as time goes on, I think I’m actually missing something rather crucial.”

Poi asked, “Like what?”

“Years of study, mostly likely.” Erick added, “Or something else even more fundamental.”

Poi looked down as a light slime bumped into his leg, then rolled away. He asked, “Are you going to do anything with these guys?”

“I’m not sure. Jane says that [Lightwalk] is pretty good. She’s even offered to give me that giant horn she got, but I don’t think I should take it.” Erick looked down at the slimes, saying, “She said Liquid and Killzone still have no news about what happened to her in Killtree, either about the fight between the dark and the light, or the discrepancy in the size of the Queen. Have you heard anything new yet?”

Poi said, “No updates since I last checked. That was this morning.”

Erick frowned. “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“I heard the story from multiple angles and I still don’t believe it, even though her Mind Mage teammate, Marric, verified her story.” Poi added, “The whole thing seems like a trick of the light. Ancient Unicorns are like that, you know.”

Erick frowned, saying, “There’s a 9 meter long horn sitting in the Interfaith Temple back in Spur. 20 meter tall Ancient Unicorns don’t have 9 meter horns. They have 4 meter horns. That’s irrefutable proof of Jane’s story.”

“I also can’t believe that Jane almost had it stolen from her.” Poi added, “And that she needed to stock it with High Priest Darenka. Though Darenka is rather happy to have it sitting in her own prismatic cathedral.”

Erick looked to Poi. He stared at the sapphire scaled man, then said, “You’re avoiding an answer, Poi. Is this some internal Mind Mage politics, or something?”

“… Something like that.”

“Fine. You can keep your secrets.”

“Thank you, sir.” Poi said, “I shall.”

Erick gestured to the slime bumping up against a nearby pillar. “Is light slime a good Familiar Form?”

“Not around Ar’Kendrithyst. Shadows that strong love a strong light. But for everywhere else? [Lightwalk] does alright since almost everything needs light to see.” Poi said, “Whatever you choose, know that Light Essence is rare. If I were you I’d show this place to the Headmaster and see about working out a deal for some larger plot of land. This dungeon is big, but it could be a lot bigger. Perhaps you could start a light slime farm and sell the rights to someone, or even the Headmaster himself.”

“I was already considering that, but it’s good to know that it’s a decent option.” Erick said, “Anyway. Gotta get back home. Work on that tiered Particle Magic.”

Poi frowned. “Maybe work on not invoking gods so casually, either.”

“Oh, Poi. That wasn’t a casual invocation at all.”

- - - -

Erick stood on dry, rocky land, east of the mountains of Oceanside. All around him lay dips and crags and broken rock, old streambeds and dried ponds. Small brushes and scraggly trees dotted the sunswept stone. A sheen of sweat layered Erick’s skin, but his billowy clothes made in Spur were good attire for this sort of location. This land didn’t get much rain or water at all, aside from when the Autumnal rains swelled all the rivers and streams of Oceanside for a single month out of the year. When that happened, this land washed away.  

Which is why Erick was here. He planned on some very large explosions and this rocky land was well acquainted with flooding rains and complete destruction. Some of the students came out here to experiment with big, damaging spells, but most students at Oceanside just unloaded into the ocean if they had to level a spell, or practice with higher tier magic.  

Erick, Poi, and Kiri had already scouted the area; they were alone. Five Ophiel also kept their eyes open for other people. Ophiel knew something was up since Erick had summoned four extras and set him to generally keep his eyes open for others, but mostly, the five of them quietly trilled in violins as they watched Erick work.

Erick began with [Stoneshape], carving a dry streambed in front of him into something deeper. The land dipped down, then flexed into an oval five meters across at its widest point, and two meters deep. This size was the beginning of ‘Large’ sized spells, so Erick was the only person on Veird who could make spells this big. He would have liked to have done this experiment on a smaller scale but several of the pieces of today’s magic had already been discovered, and Erick’s Particular Insight with Phagar revealed that Rozeta was cracking down on the massive variety of spells coming out of Particle magic. Kiri had had some luck with her [Hermetic Seal] line of spells, but only the truly unique Particle Magic was being allowed into the Script.

That crackdown was one of the reasons Erick decided to try for this kind of magic, to see if he could help bring Particle Magic more in line with what had come before, and to cut a path for others to follow.  

And he was going to do it with a highschool-level experiment.  

Erick looked up at the blue sky.

[Weather Ward].  

A Shaped white glitter filled the air above Erick, forming a funnel to channel water into the pool in front of him.  

[Exalted Storm Aura].

Mist lifted from the land. Tiny flashes of white light skittered here and there in the air as fog turned to clouds then rose into the sky like a pillar, directly above; a line of clouds straight up. Platinum rain fell from that pillar, crashing down against the [Weather Ward], crushing down into the rocky pool. Erick cut his aura. Platinum rain still fell, but tapered off. The pond filled and overfilled, spilling platinum waters down the rocky land but turning nothing vibrant. The land remained dead. Erick wasn’t about to [Grow] the nearby plants just to destroy them later.  

Platinum water sloshed in the pond in front of Erick as the last remnants of his [Exalted Storm Aura] tapered off. He dismissed the [Weather Ward] hanging above.

Erick turned around to see the supplies he had brought for today’s experiment: two dozen bars of wrought-quality copper, a few bars of iron, and bags of salt he hoped he wouldn’t have to use. Erick looked back to the pool of platinum water. With a rod of [Treat Wounds] in his pocket, in addition to Poi and Kiri each having their own rod of [Treat Wounds], Erick prepared for a long day of rhyming.  

He spoke to the water,

“A time of rest, all parts to their places

“Cheer remains alongside good will

“But separated thus does purity grace us

“As water shifts, revelations [Distill].”

Ophiel hummed around the edges of the pool, as white flashed across the water. Countless bubbles rose to the white surface for one rushing second, as magic flashed downward. Platinum glows and muddy swirls and everything that was not pure, clear water, sank down, to the bottom of the pool. Notifications appeared.

--

Congratulations!

You have created a new Basic Spell. Your spell has been added to your skills for free!

The spell you have created will appear in the Script after a year and a day.

Your spell is the alpha version, and will shift with time and use.

The spell that appears in the Script might be different.

Here is your spell:

--

Distill 1, instant, medium range, <10 mana>

<Separate out all impurities from a large area of water>.  

--

Rozeta thanks you for enriching the Script.

+2 ability points.

--

Continue. ~Rozeta

--

Erick smiled at the notifications.

Poi said, “Use the wand, sir.”

Erick said, “It was only 10 mana.” Erick tapped himself with the rod of [Treat Wounds] anyway, saying, “But you’re right.” Erick felt the healing spell wash through his body, fixing tiny problems that he barely even recognized as problems, leaving him relaxed and whole. He put the rod back in his pocket, then looked down at the water. Piles of metal and dirt and debris held on the bottom of the unmoving pool. He turned to Kiri. “Help me get this stuff out.”

Kiri quickly stepped to the side of the water, saying, “Of course!”  

Together, Kiri and Erick used combinations of [Metalshape] and [Stoneshape] to pull the metallic debris out of the large-sized pond, or smooth over the broken, muddy bottom, keeping the water clear. When they were done with the first pass through the pool, Erick threw a [Cleanse] at the water, eliciting practically no thick air. Then they trawled the pool again with another [Distill] and [Cleanse] and more Shaping, ensuring the water was as pure as it could be.  

Soon, Erick stood at the side of a perfectly clear pool of pure H20.  

Erick said, “Pure water is a piss poor electrical conductor, but this is a good starting point.”

Kiri, eyes wide and voice hopeful, asked, “Is that what copper and iron are for?”

“Not exactly. The salt is the backup plan.”  

Ecstatic, Kiri said, “Right! Sorry. Water needs dissolved solids to transmit a current. Iron doesn’t really dissolve.”  

“Well. Uh. I don’t really know about that.” Erick said, “I did this experiment for some highschool students as a substitute teacher and we used something else besides salt because salt produces chlorine gas. But I forget what that mystery substance was. Mainly, I didn’t want to do this with unknown materials in the water and possibly produce toxic gasses. We’re pretty well ventilated here out in the open but there’s no need to take the risk.” Erick looked to the metallic piles Kiri and he had [Metalshape]d into a pile to the side. Erick threw a 50 mana [Dispel] at the piles. Nothing happened. “They’re not magical anymore.”

Kiri looked at the metallic silver piles, and said, “I’m not even sure what these piles of metal dust are.”

“Me either.” Erick said, “So I’m not putting them back in the water.” Erick looked to the metal bars. “Gotta do this part first, anyway.” Erick picked up a copper bar with [Metalshape] then said, “If you please, Kiri, I need long, thin, wires.” He pulled on the metallic orange copper, turning a corner of the ingot into a thin tendril the thickness of his pinky. He waggled his finger at Kiri, saying, “About this size.”

Kiri joined Erick in pulling wires out of ingots, as she asked, “You’re making an electrical circuit through the water?”

Erick continued to pull copper into wires, as he said, “The usual way to make electricity is to spin magnets in wires, but I won’t be doing that.”

Kiri smiled.  

When Erick was sure they had spun enough copper, he took the wires and began laying them out around the pool about where they needed to be.

With precise applications of [Metalshape] to join the wires together, and [Stoneshape] to bury all of them in stone, Erick buried the cable into the experiment. Soon, the only parts of the copper visible in the water were two, one meter copper prongs, each two meters apart, standing up from the bottom of the crystal clear pond. Outside of the pond, on the northern side of the pool, two more copper prongs stood up from the ground, two meters away from the water. These dry prongs had their ends split into U shapes to hold what would come next.

And all the while Kiri’s eyes were wide in anticipation.  

When Erick was done, and everything looked proper, he turned to Kiri, asking, “Can you guess what happens next?”

“Yes! You try to enchant another copper pipe to be electrical and then you will make a completed circuit for the electricity to travel on, with the water acting as a conductor for some reason.” Kiri added, “And you add salt if it doesn’t conduct electricity well.”

Erick [Metalshape]d the iron ingots into the air, molding them into a meter long rod, two inches thick, and perfectly shaped to slot into the copper holders, saying, “Very close. Iron for this part. It’s thematically important for reasons I might explain later.” He looked toward Poi, who stood a ways away, saying, “You might want to stand back, too, Kiri.”  

Kiri quickly retreated to stand beside Poi. Poi flashed a blue [Weather Ward] around both of them. Kiri stared at what Erick was doing, but Poi only had eyes for their surroundings. All five Ophiel had more than enough eyes to look at everything, everywhere, though most of his eyes were now focused on Erick.  

Erick turned back to his experiment. He [Stoneshape]d a pair of hands out of the ground, away from the copper and everything else, and with a gentle touch, locked the iron rod into the stone fists. He put his own hands on the rod for a brief moment. Then he stood up, and stepped back, giving himself two meters of distance from the dark, iron rod. He cast a small [Weather Ward] over himself, glittering the air around him in white, as he lifted his head to the sky.  

Ophiel floated around the land, backing up, watching the sky and Erick, humming the tune of [Call Lightning].

Erick spoke,  

“A primal force, a titan touched, an ancient life carved from stardust

“now metal rod, electrons clutched! Release thyself with flattery                

“become a spark you’re meant to be, like water but, duly trussed.  

“Your current brightens all that comes, in this new form; a [Battery].”

The bright blue sky flickered with white lighting, high above. A gentle boom echoed across the stone land. Ophiel backed away from his inquisitive positions, all five of him going silent as he moved behind Erick and turned tiny.

The meter long iron rod, held in place by two stone hands, flickered. Sparks stretched out into the air from one end of the rod, and then the other. The sky cracked bright. Lightning touched down seven feet from Erick, sliding into the dark iron rod, crawling over the stone hands like too many snakes, flickering, trying to reach for anything at all.

Notices popped up on the side of Erick’s vision but he stared at the glowing iron rod.

Kiri shouted, “Holy shit!” and followed that up with, “What’s a [Battery]?”

Erick laughed. Ecks had no real word or concept of [Battery], so he had to use the English word.

“You okay, sir?” Poi asked.

The iron rod zapped the ground with an arc of bight, skittering lightning. Poi mumbled a curse, and a prayer. Erick just paused to feel if he was actually okay. He felt sore all over— Ah. Right.

“I’m okay, Poi.” Erick pulled out the rod of [Treat Wounds] and applied it to himself. His full body soreness went away after a few moments. He put the rod back in his pocket, and checked his mana. His eyes went wide. “That was a lot of mana, though.”

Nothing else seemed to be happening with the iron rod, so Erick checked his notices. The first one was just the congratulations for creating a new Basic Spell, so he dismissed that one.

--

Battery 1, instant, medium range, <500 mana>

<Electricity flows>. Lasts for 1 minute per spell level.

--

Rozeta thanks you for enriching the Script.

+2 ability points.

--

I don’t even know how to put a damage number on that. Continue. ~Rozeta

--

In the middle of reading his notifications, the iron rod discharged once more, then went quiet.  

Erick looked back to the rod, then said, “Now comes the fun part.” He gave a tiny command to three of the five Ophiel hovering around the experiment.  

Perfectly clear cubes of [Crystalline Air] popped up around the experimental site. Two of them stacked up, one inside the other, seven meters west of the pool. This is where Erick, Kiri, and Poi would stand for the real experiment. A flat layer of [Crystalline Air] popped up between the copper holders for the iron rod, and the pond itself, further separating the sparking rod from the calm water. Three Ophiel had spent all 4000 of their remaining mana to do this; they vanished into dust. The remaining two tiny Ophiel hovered around Erick, flanking him like fluttering parakeets.  

Erick looked over to the cubes of [Crystalline Air], saying, “You two might want to—”

Poi was already walking through the fractal air, into the center of the protected space west of the pool, on the narrow end of the oval waters. Kiri followed him, but she kept her eyes on Erick.

Erick nodded, then turned back to the iron rod. With [Stoneshape] and his Handy Aura, Erick unlatched the rod from the stone hands and placed it upon the copper holders on the north, wide side of the pool. It didn’t look too secure, so he [Stoneshape]d up another pair of hands to hold the iron rod in place against the copper. That looked better. With everything probably secured, Erick sent one Ophiel to float near the rod, while he stepped through [Crystalline Air] to join Kiri and Poi in safety.  

Erick cast [Battery] through Ophiel.  

Several things rapidly happened. Ophiel exploded as lightning struck him from the iron rod. Lightning arced from Ophiel to the piles of silver metal, whereupon the silver metal caught fire and exploded. Not a very large explosion, but more than enough to send shrapnel flying. Erick yelped. Kiri laughed.  

But the iron rod, still sparking, was still there, still held in place by the stone hands. The explosion wasn’t that strong.  

He said, “Maybe I put too much power into [Battery].”

Poi casually said, “Undoubtedly.”

Kiri laughed again.  

Erick just frowned as he cast a 3000 point [Crystalline Air] himself, shaping the spell into a U, but without any curves; the walls remained flat and nearly invisible, near perfectly see-through. Erick placed one boxy end of the U to the wide, north side of the pool near the iron rod, while the other wrapped around to the other side of the pool to the south, to give him a good view of whatever might be happening inside the water. Erick walked to the south, around to the pool side, first, watching the iron rod on the other side the whole time.  

The iron rod was still sparking into the air.  

That wasn’t right. It shouldn’t be sparking like that. It might not have a complete circuit in the water, since the water was [Distill]ed but there was still a circuit down there—

Erick stood still, looking at the sparking rod on the other side of the pool. He said, “I fucked up.” He added, “Oh yeah. I fucked up, hard.” He [Stoneshape]d away the stone hands securing the iron rod to the copper lines. The iron rod fell to the ground, sparking the whole time. The copper wasn’t there. “The copper melted?” Erick looked at the stone itself. “And the whole thing isn’t insulated!” He asked himself, “How could I forget about insulating the wires?” Erick mumbled to himself, “Now that’s just poor planning, Erick.” He said, “I don’t have a rhyme for this one.”

Kiri, who had followed Erick out of the bunker-area and now stood beside him, asked, “Do you need to make a new spell for this?” Kiri quickly added, “I’m all for making a new spell, but this one— Just shape a [Weather Ward] around the copper. If that doesn’t work, [Hermetic Seal] makes really good insulation. Though [Weather Ward] should work. [Battery] is a Particle Spell effect.” She added, “I think.”

Erick paused. He said, “Oh.”  

Kiri added, “As for the melting problem: Just make a [Spell Ward] with [Mend]. Layer that through the whole way, too.”

“Right!” Erick smiled. He dismissed the [Battery] on the iron rod, then said, “That’s very smart, Kiri. I hardly ever use the [Spell Ward] function. Thank you.”

Kiri said, “I’ll help.”

It took the two of them ten minutes to get the new set up completed. When it was done, the copper lines ran across the ground instead of under it while glittering green and white [Ward]s surrounded the orange metal. Two [Spell Ward]s charged with [Mend] layered both sides of the copper circuit, both [Spell Ward]s infused with a thousand mana. This time, there were no stone hands holding the iron rod in place upon the copper, but Erick had Sculpted a [Hermetic Seal] to perfectly fit the space. Without Meditation, the iron rod looked like it rested on copper cups, but with Meditation, Erick saw that the iron rod was almost completely encased by immobile, white, insulated air.   

Erick and Kiri moved back to the [Crystalline Air] shelter with Poi.  

Ophiel hovered beside the iron rod. There was just enough of an opening in Erick’s [Hermetic Seal] between the rod and Ophiel, for Ophiel to have a good line of sight on his target.  

[Battery].  

Sparks flowed across the iron rod, splashing against tight, immobile air. Copper turned radiant for the briefest of seconds, before the [Mend Ward]s kicked in, repairing the almost-melting copper back to where it needed to be; touching the iron rod.

Moments passed. A minute passed. [Battery] had already leveled to a multi-minute spell, so it would last for a while longer.  

Kiri quickly left the safety of the main [Crystalline Air] room, walking through the secondary shielding to the south side of the pool, saying, “I need to see.”

Erick followed her to the south side of the pool, opposite the sparking iron rod. He looked down in the pool, at the spikes of copper under the water. This is where the circuit should have been completed by electricity passing through the water. But nothing happened. No bubbles came up from the copper spikes.  

“Oh!” Erick said, “Right.”

He threw a dozen [Heat Ward]s deep into the water, spreading them out to heat the entire five meter by two meter deep pool. They weren’t very strong [Heat Ward]s, but they would soon raise the temperature of the water to just below boiling.

Kiri asked, “Why the [Heat Ward]s?”

Erick said, “Because reactions occur easier when the temperature is higher. If this doesn’t work, I have a backup plan.”

Kiri just nodded as she watched the water. The [Battery] stopped sparking. Erick renewed that spell.  

They continued to watch the water. After a while, the [Battery] quit again.

Erick said, “Okay. New plan.” Erick said to Kiri, “You might want to go back.”

Kiri took off, back to the safety of the triple layered [Crystalline Air].  

Erick spoke to the water,  

“Bend and break, join and snap

“careful now, young alchemist

“tear and shake, quake and zap

“watch out for this [Catalyst].”

The pristine, [Distill]ed water of the pond flickered white. Bubbles appeared in the hot water, alongside notifications.  

--

Catalyst 1, instant, medium range, 50 mana.

Molecules and objects suffer minor disintegration in a large area.

--

Rozeta thanks you for enriching the Script.

+2 ability points.

--

Okay? ~Rozeta

--

A headache threatened behind Erick’s eyes. He tapped himself with the rod of [Treat Wounds]. The headache never materialized.  

Erick looked down at the water, then back up to the [Solid Ward] all around him. He rapidly removed ‘air’ from [Crystalline Air]’s permissions. He had forgotten to do that before, but now seemed like a good time. Erick sent Ophiel over to the iron rod again. From the wide, south side of the oval pool, Erick watched the water.

[Battery].

The rod flickered with renewed sparks.  

Down below, in the oval pond, one meter long copper spike began to simply bubble. It wasn’t much of a reaction, but it was a very clear indication that something was going right. That spike wasn’t very important, though, because the other copper spike absolutely fizzed, sending up a torrent of bubbles to the water’s surface.  

Erick laughed loud. It worked!

Kiri was beside him before he knew it, watching the water, asking, “What’s happening?”

Erick explained, “Electrolysis. By using electricity, heat, and particulates already in the water, these spells, all together, are ripping water apart at the molecular level, producing 2 hydrogen on that really fizzy spike down there, and 1 oxygen on that spike over there. This next part is going to be the explosion. It’s going to be loud and big. Let’s get back to the bunker.”

Kiri quickly led the way back under the triple layer of [Crystalline Air] to the west of the oval pool. Erick followed. Soon, all three of them were under [Solid Ward] protection.

Erick turned back to the bubbling, steaming water. He had planned on doing this next part a little bit differently, but thanks to a few other spells, courtesy of Archmage Tasar and the Headmaster, this would be a lot more elegant than just putting a bubble of [Weather Ward] over the hydrogen-pouring anode or cathode, or whatever it was; Erick had forgotten the proper name.

--

Condense Hydrogen 10, instant, close range, 25 mana

<Collect all ambient Hydrogen in a medium area, into a small area>. Lasts 10 minutes.  

--

Condense Oxygen 10, instant, close range, 25 mana.

<Collect all ambient Oxygen in a medium area, into a small area>. Lasts 10 minutes.  

--

Using his last remaining Ophiel, floating in the air above the experiment, Erick cast through him, adding an Extreme Mana Shaping to both [Condense Hydrogen] and [Condense Oxygen], ballooning both spells as large as they could go as he placed them over their appropriate fizzing spikes. He made sure to keep both spells separate; he didn’t want an accidental reaction before the appropriate time. He then wrapped the whole pond in a [Weather Ward]; this would keep out the slight breeze blowing across the rocky land. Soon, three glittering white areas held in the air above the pond.  

[Battery] failed; Erick had Ophiel renew the spell on the iron rod.  

The [Mending Wards] and the insulating [Weather Ward]s and all the [Crystalline Air]s from several Ophiel and Erick, all held, as they continued to do what they were set to do. Erick stood beside Kiri and Poi, hoping his defenses would be enough. Erick hoped he had overestimated the reaction, but he doubted he had.

Erick said, “This is going to be a massive, very loud particle explosion. So.” He covered his ears with his hands.  

Poi just looked at him with a little bit of a frown. He popped off a [Cleanse] inside their [Crystalline Air] fortress, turning the air thick for a moment. Everything smelled a bit nicer.

Kiri asked, “Can I see...”

“Oh! Right.” Erick handed her copies of everything he had made, then put his hands back over his ears.

Kiri just smiled as she read. But her smile waned. She hummed, then asked, “None of these have a damage listed?”

“None at all.”  

Kiri frowned a little, but she said nothing. She dismissed Erick’s blue boxes.

Erick and Kiri watched the experiment from behind three layers of flat, clear [Crystalline Air]. Poi watched everything else.

After renewing [Battery] again and letting it run for the time limits of the Condensing spells, Erick said, “Okay. Here we go. This is going to be loud.”  

Kiri and Poi did not cover their ears.  

They were probably right not to worry. Erick still covered his ears, though. He looked up to see Ophiel, still flying around of the experiment. In one moment, Erick ended both Condensing spells, allowing the oxygen and hydrogen to mix under the [Weather Ward]. Then he nudged Ophiel. Ophiel cast a [Fire Bolt] into the center of the—

The ground cracked as everything became fire, and light, and loud. Three of the four [Crystalline Air]s around the pond instantly shattered as sound and heat burst from the experiment. The iron rod flew off somewhere. Copper tore from the ground, but continued to [Mend] as it broke against the last [Crystalline Air] then tumbled past.  

Erick, Kiri, and Poi all fell to the ground after a massive, flexing crack broke across the final [Crystalline Air] surrounding them. Erick flashed completely white as his [Personal Ward] absorbed a lot of damage. Poi flashed blue. Kiri flashed green. Moments passed. The air cleared. The explosion had passed.

All sound was the same, high pitched whine.  

Erick’s ears were not doing well. He was also sitting on the ground. He touched the sides of his face. His hand came away bloody. Ah. No big deal. The old him would have been worried about an injury like this, but he was in shock, and he knew this, for there was barely any pain at all. Or maybe he didn’t worry because of all the magical healing floating around Veird; hard to know the difference, sometimes.  

As Erick tried to stand, he stood; he wobbled, but he still stood. Kiri and Poi struggled to stand, trying and failing to get their feet under them. Erick smiled as he watched them fall back on their butts. He had warned them! And he had been right.

Kiri’s face moved like she had cursed loud. Poi opened his mouth as though yelling. Erick couldn’t hear them, but he didn’t need to. They looked fine, and the experiment was a great success! Laughter filled his body, setting his chest to swell with every boisterous guffaw. He could almost hear himself, but the world was still a ringing, silent thing. Poi took out his rod of [Treat Wounds] and jabbed Kiri with it, and then himself.  

Blood dripped from their ears and eyes.  

Erick stopped laughing. Poi and Kiri did not look good. As Erick blinked his own vision turned red. Poi jabbed Erick with the rod, then said something, but Erick’s hearing was still gone. Poi poked him again. He repeated himself, his lips moving but nothing—

Poi yelled, “—port. [Teleport] Windy Manor!”

Erick winced, saying, “Okay. Okay. [Teleport], yes. You don’t look good.”

Kiri groaned as she fell back to the ground, saying, “Fuck.” She held her head. “I think I need the infirmary. I’m still wobbly.” She held out a free hand, trying to steady herself, but all she could do was flail a little. She said, “I can’t think.”

“That’s—” Poi almost nodded, but he cringed and held his head. He said, “Infirmary. Erick. I can’t think either.” He held his free hand out, almost reaching for Erick, but he stumbled, groaning as he struck the ground. He looked up at Erick; his eyes were crossed.  

Erick blinked out blood as his heart beat hard. He grabbed Poi’s hand, then snatched Kiri’s hand as she tried to stand again, holding both of them steady as he said, “We’re going back.”

Blip.  

They landed on solid stone in the intake room for the hospital.  

Events happened rather fast, after that.  

Aids on duty saw them fall to the stone. They immediately took over. Nurses in cream-colored robes surrounded them, pulling them into the proper direction down stone halls. As Erick blinked out blood and a nurse asked him if he was okay, Erick waved her off, saying that his friends were worse off than him, and that they had already used [Treat Wounds]. But as he answered more questions, his head pounded. The nurse talking at him set him down in a wheelchair and sent him off with Poi and Kiri.  

Rats showed up, also wearing cream-colored robes. He took over for the nurse.

Time passed quickly. Soon, Poi and Kiri were asleep in beds, in a private room.  

Erick watched over them from his own wheelchair, worrying, gently petting a tiny Ophiel in his lap.

Rats stood next to Erick, saying, “Big experiment.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be. I told them it would be loud, but...” Erick said, “I had no idea this would happen.” He added, “I thought it might. But… I didn’t really think, I think.”

“They’ll be fine.” Teressa stood on Erick’s other side. “They’ve both been through worse.”

Rats smiled. “I’ll have to poke fun at Poi for this, though. You told him it would be loud?”

“I did.” Erick said, “I told them to cover their ears.” He said, “I covered my own ears, too!”

Rats nodded, knowingly. “They got a brain rattle, but they should be okay.” He asked, “You did this inside a [Crystalline Air], too?”

“Inside three of them!” Erick said, “I removed ‘Air’ from the permissions, too. [Solid Ward]s don’t flex— Shit. The concussive force came through the ground.” Erick mentally added ‘Air’ back to [Crystalline Air]’s permissions.

Teressa said, “It shouldn’t have. You wrap that spell through the ground, too, don’t you?”

“… Yeah. … I…  I always do that, don’t I? Sorry. Not thinking… well.” Erick looked over Kiri and Poi. He asked, “So what happened?”

Teressa said, “Force enough to break two [Crystalline Air]s and damage a third, is what.” She added, “All the Health in the world won’t save you from a mountain falling on you or an uncontrolled fall from the sky.” She glanced to Erick, saying, “Usually. Luck plays a bigger part in those kind of scenarios.” She continued, “Physical effects hurt a lot more than Health can negate. This explosion was a physical effect. Therefore: actual damage. Professor Rue talked about this once. Some people like to call it ‘True Damage’.”

Rats said, “Best that you denied ‘Air’, sir. If that explosion did this much through a few [Solid Ward]s then it would have absolutely ripped a normal [Absorption Ward] apart.”

“...I could have prepared more.” Erick said, “They were only 4000 point [Wards].”

Teressa asked, “How’d the actual experiment go?”

Erick thought for a moment. He said, “I have all the parts I need to make a Particle version of [Death Spiral Fire] or something similar.” He paused. He added, “Maybe. If you look at it from a certain way.” He said, “But I don’t know if it’s going to happen that way or not.”

“What’s stopping you?” Rats said, “Besides tiered Particle magic evading literally everyone.”

Erick looked down at Poi and Kiri, both of them sleeping soundly in their beds.

Rats said, “Besides that, too.”

“… I have to level the spells I made today.” Erick added, “And I need to talk to the Headmaster. I need to talk to him about Jane, too.”

Rats asked, “Is there something we should know? I had a pair of cute nurses ask me if the story of the Unusually Large Ancient Unicorn was true. Jane’s story is making the rounds.”

“There’s nothing to know right now.” Erick said, “She might be coming here but she’s got to work out some mess first. She wouldn’t tell me what.”

Rats’s eyes went wide. He whispered, “Did she get her hands on some Dragon Essence fighting the big unicorn?”

Erick looked to Rats. “If she has, she hasn’t told me. Is there a problem?” Erick quickly realized what dragon essence meant. He didn't need Poi to answer. Jane had told him about it months ago, about how taking in any dragon essence at all meant that person was now a part of the hidden dragon societies of the world. “If she has some, would that make the Headmaster target her?”

For a moment, the only sounds in the room were the sounds of Kiri and Poi gently breathing.

Rats said, “Tell her she can’t come here.” He added, “The Headmaster welcomes all people with unexpected dragon essence in them, but they have to openly prostrate and kowtow to him, at all times, and follow him around Oceanside as the world’s most docile servant. This kills their dragon essence very, very fast, but it still takes a week, and if they fuck up, he eats them.”

Teressa quietly said, “I don’t see Jane kowtowing to anyone.”

Erick felt a rushing cold settle into his core.