Spell Weaver: A LitRPG Adventure, page 40
Most of the time, Sam was still unable, or unwilling, to communicate through the link of mana. But he responded better to Alex talking this way, so Alex was often willing to have their one-sided conversations this way.
So, Alex was startled when he received an actual answer to his question.
“Something on your mind?” Alex asked through the mana link.
Sam fidgeted with the hem of his sleeve, then pointed toward the back of the Pagoda. He held eye contact with Alex before looking in the direction as well.
“Can we go there?” Sam sent through the link with his thoughts.
“I… Uhm, yeah. Of course. You just want to go that way?”
Sam nodded eagerly, some of the tension leaving his posture.
“All right, lead on, then.”
They followed a narrower path that curved around the building. The pristine gardens gave way to more practical spaces. Alex noted sheds and covered storage areas, work yards, and several rows of more tightly spaced, small homes.
The buildings were simple and functional, lacking any of the ornate decorations that adorned the Pagoda and many of the houses on the main streets of Tianluo.
Pretty different back here…
Alex looked around quietly as he followed Sam.
A woman hanging laundry noticed them first. Her eyes widened at the sight of Sam before darting nervously to Alex. She gripped a towel that hung from her belt and wiped her hands on it. She whispered something to another servant, who disappeared quickly into the building behind them.
More servants emerged from their homes, keeping a cautious distance. They watched Alex with wary expressions until Sam made his way directly to a small wooden bench and sat down. The teenager waved at a few of those watching, which seemed to spur them into motion.
An elderly man with a limp approached first. “Samuel?” he asked quietly. “Is-is everything okay? We heard about Merchant Master Jing…”
Sam nodded and gestured at the bench seat next to him. As the servant complied, he looked at Alex with uncertainty. Seeing the look, Sam smiled again and patted his leg gently.
Through his left eye, Alex saw Sam’s hand begin to glow. It shifted from blue to a white that had a tint of green to it. He watched in fascination as the man’s expression relaxed, and he let out a shaky breath.
Gradually, more servants approached, each bearing their own ailments. Some had burns, others had sprains or chronic aches. Sam treated them all, greeting each of those that approached with a sense of confidence Alex hadn’t seen from him.
“Samuel,” a middle-aged woman whispered when she sat down. She touched his arm lightly before he could heal her. “Your mana… If you use too much mana—”
Sam was already shaking his head. He nodded at her encouragingly before pointing with his free hand to Alex.
Alex pieced it together then, watching the grateful interaction with the other servants and the way that they all thanked Sam profusely. The old merchant must have forbidden Sam to use his healing like this. So, Sam had done it anyway as a small act of defiance and desire to help others.
The people here seemed to know the danger Sam was putting himself in and didn’t want him to push too far.
An hour passed, and Alex noticed Sam’s movements becoming sluggish. When the teen’s shoulders drooped and Alex saw the mana around his hand flicker, he knew that he must be close to mana fatigue.
“That’s enough,” Alex said firmly. He stepped forward to support Sam as he swayed in his seat. “Time to rest.”
The servants bowed deeply, murmuring quiet thanks as Alex helped Sam walk. Valtherion chirped softly and nuzzled Sam as they moved.
As they made their way back to their assigned home, Alex let Sam lean his weight against his shoulder, and he felt a surge of respect for the teenager. Despite everything he’d been through, one of Sam’s first instincts upon gaining freedom was to help others.
He didn’t ask for anything in return and pushed himself almost to the point of passing out.
They returned without any further complications, and Sam quietly thanked Alex before going to the cot in their room and falling asleep instantly. Alex looked around before deciding to prepare a bath for himself in the magical tub and practice his mana shaping exercises while he soaked.
The next several days progressed the same. Alex made quick progress on his martial foundation in the direction of Master Shen and Master Li while he made slower but steady progress in his magical training with Eura.
Soon, he began to work on evasion techniques with Master Li that were specifically made to work well with Flowing Water and continued to get advice from Master Shen on how to incorporate his movement abilities with the Eight Petal Steps.
44
PROGRESSION
Alex was pulled from his sleep by the sound of Sam’s rustling blankets. His eyes snapped open, and he looked around until he realized it was just the teen making the sheets on his cot look neat. Alex had noticed him doing it in a very precise way each morning.
I wonder if the merchant made him do it like that every morning. Or maybe his parents?
Alex rubbed his eyes and stretched as he sat up. He wanted to get Sam’s attention, and the boy looked over just at the sound of him moving. Valtherion must have heard them as well, since he came floating up from the small nest of blankets he’d dragged under Alex’s bed.
Extending a thread of mana toward Sam, Alex waited to see if he accepted. After the last week, he’d started to realize that Sam was much more energetic and willing to talk in the mornings.
Weird kid.
Sam smiled back at him. Through his left eye, Alex could see a small blue tendril of mana wobble away from his body. It was much harder for Sam to create the tendrils of mana than it had been for Alex. When he’d been explaining the process of how to do it, he had told Sam about his old [Mana Shaping] skill and how much it helped him.
Sam then did something Alex didn’t even know was possible: He shared a System screen with Alex, letting him see the description for an ability.
[Mana Sensitivity] - An innate ability to sense and slightly manipulate mana in the environment, aiding in spellcasting efficiency.
After Alex had gotten over the idea that screens could be visible to others, he’d been surprised to see that Sam had a sort of sensory skill. While it wasn’t as easy to sense as Alex’s ability to visually see mana, Sam was able to sense where it was outside of his body, which gave him a minor boost to manipulating it. Without the skill, Alex wasn’t sure if he would have been able to learn to make the tendril at all.
Twenty-one days left until the assault. How are you doing, Sam?
“Good, Mr. Moore. I want to go home.”
Hey, knock that off. I told you to call me Alex. Mr. Moore is my dad, and I’m not even that old.
Alex sent some mental feelings of encouragement to Sam, along with the thought of ruffling his hair.
Sam simply nodded, and their quiet conversation was interrupted by Val, who used his own mana to join the link.
“Home!”
Both Alex and Sam laughed again, breaking the connection.
Alex got up and walked to the kitchen to make some food for them both.
Sam is way too polite. I wonder what his parents are like; he seems like a good kid.
As he moved around the kitchen area, he practiced the mana shaping exercises that Eura had taught him, quickly making different complex shapes in the air in alternating patterns with his [Mana Thread]. He could already tell a huge improvement over where he’d been a week ago.
Sam quietly joined him a short time later and began to practice his own meditation at the table.
They continued with their normal routine. His morning training with Master Li exhausted him and pushed him to his physical limits. Master Li told Alex that it was time to begin the next phase of his training, which was learning to read opponents’ movements. The Master invited Sam to come onto the mats to observe.
At first, the boy was nervous, but when Master Li told him that he was just to observe and not join in on the training, he was more willing. It wasn’t long before Alex realized why this training could be beneficial for Sam as well. Master Li went through a wide range of movements and began to explain to Alex what to watch for. A large part of the explanation was to show where feints would come from and how to recognize subtle shifts in stances.
A short time later, Alex was lying on his back on the mats, panting heavily. Even while gasping for air, he used his [Mana Thread] to practice his drills in the downtime.
“You’re ready for the next step, little human.”
“Huh?” Alex asked, sitting up. He wiped the sweat from his eye and turned to Eura.
“Your speed and control over your mana have improved enough to more efficiently utilize your Willpower. You should keep working to adapt, but for now, this is adequate.” Eura turned to the Martial Master, who had been waiting for Alex to finish catching his breath. “Master Li, are you done with him for the day?”
Master Li bowed and nodded his head. “Yes, we are done for the day. The next step will be to go on to the more advanced form of Willow Branch Sways, which will allow you to evade attacks more easily. While focusing on this isn’t normal, in the Celestial Lotus Sword Style, there is a branch that does. That’s what we’ll be doing with your training moving forward.”
Alex tilted his head, curious to know more. Master Li was the least talkative of his trainers, so it wasn’t normal for him to get such an explanation.
“The goal will be to improve on the style you were using naturally with your magic. We’ve focused on grappling and throws up until this point, but it was just so you understood how they worked. As we move into the next stage, the point will be to move to trips and sweeps, using your new knowledge of weight distribution and reading opponents. Together, these things combine into something more, allowing for a very frustrating fighting style.”
“Thank you, Master Li,” Alex said while standing to give a slight bow. “Why don’t more people use this branch of the style?”
Might as well capitalize on his talkative mood, right?
“Hmm… mainly because it requires much higher mental Agility. You need to be aware of your surroundings and constantly analyze your opponent’s movements for it to work. We don’t teach it to young disciples because they lack battle experience and the mental processing speed to fully use the style. Sect Head assures me that you will be able to use this style better than most, so we put our trust in his judgment.”
Eura winked at Alex when he looked over. Soon, the martial instructor left, leaving Sam and Alex facing Eura with Val zipping around between the garden plants.
“Let me clarify something for you both. Stats of the System have layers to them. There is how they affect your body, and then there is how they affect your abilities. Both physical and magical stats tend to affect your abilities in obvious ways. Those skills that are physical or that require some amount of physical action are enhanced by physical stats. At the same time, those dealing with magic and spells are enhanced by the magical stats. So, don’t put too much thought into this layer.
“Where things get difficult is how they affect the body and mind. Physical stats, of course, directly alter your physical body. Whether that be muscle size, speed, longevity of life, or more. Most races tend to acclimate to these quickly, and their bodies adjust quickly.
“Magical stats, though, affect the mind. And to a lesser degree, parts of the soul. Because a human’s mind governs their body, which can confuse people who see minor improvements in areas where they might not have expected improvement. The magical stats can have some lesser effects that others might not account for.
He paused, but seeing that neither had questions, continued. “Willpower is one of the more difficult stats to explain to the newly Awakened. For your abilities, it will increase their activation speed. It will also increase your control over Qi, or mana, as you call it. This increased control can aid you in completing more complex spells or techniques. A smaller byproduct of this increased control is often efficiency when Qi, as there is less wasted, with the greater control. How Willpower affects the mind is unique. It is the mental equivalent of the physical stat: Agility. Similar to how Agility increases speed and physical control over muscles, Willpower does the same for the mind and magic. Your thoughts will come faster, and your brain will be able to analyze a situation and make a decision quicker as the stat increases.”
Hearing the last part allowed the explanation from Master Li to fall into place.
“I see, so this fighting style capitalizes on my high Willpower stat. What did Master Li call it? Mental agility?”
Eura nodded. “Yes, precisely. Since you told me your Trait after the assessment, I’m well aware of how high your stat will become over time. It’s likely that you will be able to utilize this fighting style better than anyone in our sect’s history.”
The thought excited Alex.
“But,” Eura said while holding up a finger, “you need to continue practicing. While our physical body might adapt to increased stats rapidly, the mind is very different. If you’re not training and practicing, it will take much longer to adapt. It could be the difference between reaching your capabilities within months with practice or decades without it. You saw how even when you released me from my restrictive bindings, I was reduced in strength. It took me several days to return to my original power, and I have had many years to adapt to my own levels of power before being bound.”
Eura steered the lesson to his next steps. The sect head instructed Alex to begin applying some of the theories that they’d been working on in the last week on how to make the ritual circles smaller. Now that Alex’s speed and control over the threads had increased, the next step was to make the rituals at least half of their current size.
This meant that Alex would need to effectively restructure all the rituals he knew to allow the mana to flow properly in their new dimensions. While this had seemed like a daunting task to Alex at first, he soon fell into the project. Up until that day, it had all been theory. Now he would begin to do the actual magic.
Also, Eura wanted to coach Alex through different methods of using [Mirage]. He pointed out that Alex had barely used the skill in his fight in the market or in his assessment spars. He started out the lesson that afternoon by explaining some of the various ways that the illusion skill could be used and how the Shadow Sect’s warriors had become masters of illusions.
From years of clashing with the enemy sect, Eura had seen many creative applications of the skill. He passed these concepts on to Alex and instructed the younger man to begin thinking through his own variations on the skills used.
Master Shen must have gotten the same memo as Master Li because when he came to Eura’s office for their evening lesson, he immediately began working on the next training phase. He pushed Alex hard, and in the next lesson, [Empowered Step] broke through the bottleneck.
Once again, Alex was given the option to choose between advancing the skill or evolving the skill. He, of course, chose to evolve. After spending long hours with Master Li and Eura, Alex felt confident that the new skill would be much better for him.
The System didn’t disappoint.
Analyzing skill usage…
New Skill Learned: [Feather Step] (Novice - Level 3)
[Feather Step] - Move as light as a feather toward your destination.
Alex had been elated about gaining the new skill. He used it in that very same lesson with Master Shen, who was astonished at the sudden leap in improvement. Since he knew that most people in this Rift didn’t understand the System and thought in terms of Qi and techniques, to the master, it appeared that one moment that Alex was struggling to use the movement variation, and then the very next, he was using it flawlessly.
Master Shen had been fascinated by Alex’s sudden understanding, saying that he must have reached a bit of enlightenment. Alex could swear that the old man was looking at him with some reverence for the rest of the training session.
The lesson for that day changed; instead of working on learning to slip and dodge different incoming sword attacks, Master Shen had Alex practice the Eight Petal Step combined with the new [Feather Step] ability repeatedly. While this was boring for Alex, he was thankful that he was made to do it. The use of the ability through a movement he already knew so well helped him to get a much better understanding of the skills, capabilities, and limitations.
[Feather Step] wasn’t necessarily a direct upgrade to [Empowered Step]. It was more of a lateral upgrade. The skill was more refined in many ways than his old movement skill, and it had one big benefit that he’d been striving to work into his variation. Point-to-point travel. By combining his new levels of mana control with his increased willpower, the knowledge he had from studying the [Shadow Step] ability from the manual, and his own experience with [Empowered Step], he was able to come up with something perfect.
Alex and his teachers had noted that even in a fight where he was using rituals, most of his mana was expended through the movement skill. [Empowered Step] had several benefits, but by far, its largest downside for someone like Alex was that it was wasteful in mana consumption. Because of how he had created the skill, he was able to push as much mana into it as he wanted, which often led to far too much mana being used just to get from point A to point B. In stressful situations, he had a tendency to do this even more. While Alex wasn’t feeling his mana issues as much as he once did, he knew that was mostly just because of his titles. He wanted to continue to make sure that he was being conservative with his mana, and [Feather Step] helped accomplish that goal.
Now, to use his movement ability, he simply needed to focus on a destination and activate the skill. His entire body and clothes would become lighter, and he could push off in that direction. His traveling speed depended on how hard he pushed off of the ground, which seemed to delight Master Shen. The older man had immediately gone into a rant about how Alex could begin to learn how to change his travel direction and speed at a moment’s notice to throw off his opponent.
