I had to chuckle to myself, the final edit of the advertisement I had filmed looked quite good. I was having some second thoughts about my actions, but from a purely artistic point-of-view, I was quite happy with my creation. And not just artistically - it was also what I had intended from a meta-gaming perspective and even, to use an overused label, from a propaganda point-of-view. What I had created pointed clearly to the darker aspects of Road to Purgatory, something I wanted to, well, advertise, even with the advertisement featuring a slave-gladiator, but it would also serve as a great red herring.

The previous clips of me mostly featured the times I had used my ice-magic to create mist and a few clips of me using my weapons, only the one of Sigmir and me saving Lenore all that time back and one or two of those I had uploaded had any actual Ice-Magic, meaning icicles and similar attacks or more than a slight hint of Darkness-Magic. Especially Darkness-Magic was nigh impossible to spot from recordings, even I had difficulties seeing the hints of its use, and that was with me knowing what to look for and knowing that it was there to look at. No, an outsider looking at the clips and would likely assume that I was a necromancer, using some sort of mist or gas to carry the necrotic effects of my magic. It seemed that some sort of delivery mechanism was quite important for necromantic magics, similar to my blood magic, needing either direct application or some carrier. Additionally, I hoped that most would look at the advertisement and assume that it was made to show off, featuring my biggest and baddest magic, instead of a failed experiment.

Because, sadly, that was what it was; the magic Lenore and I had used had a limited purpose, a very limited one at that. It was great to kill far weaker beings and spread terror, especially the second part - in that, it might be the supreme magic. The only thing worse I could imagine was some sort of wide-range, mind-altering effect that added cannibalistic and berserker-effects to those afflicted while leaving their memories intact. But even that might not bring the same amount of terror as to see your loved ones, especially the weakest ones, meaning the children, be snuffed out by a cold mist only to rise again, hungering for your flesh.

Other than as a terror-weapon it was useless, as two survivors in the village proved. Luckily Adra and Rai had been vigilant and killed them before they could flee, but even those two hadn’t been stronger than Lenore and I, they had been mid-level fifty, failing to wipe them out in the area-of-effect attack was just that, failure. So, Lenore and I would have to look at the magic again, either discard it or change it further to make it useful.

But I wondered if we should even try to make the magic stronger, more useful.

After Lenore and I had recorded the speaking-clips for the advertisement, we had waited for night to fall and snuck into the village under the cover of darkness. While Lenore had been unaffected by what we had found there, I was not. Even now, in the real world, without the much more intimate feelings for the world of Mundus I had in the game world, I was asking myself if, maybe, just maybe, there was something like “evil” magic. Sure, I could argue that magic was just a tool and all that, but the images of young orcs, not more than children, killed and raised by the magic, it made me wonder. Was there a good application for that tool? Or was that particular tool a purely evil one? I had shied away from going into the buildings, knowing that, if there had been younger children or toddlers, they would be there, dead in their cribs and beds, maybe gnawed on by their zombified relatives.

Outside the game, I could argue with myself, that if we strengthened it, we would be able to use it as an actual attack, against enemies that were of similar strength to us - that it was an attack that would work great against enemies that believed that quantity was the only quality they needed, but just remembering what I had felt in that village, made a mockery of that.

With some mental effort, I forced my mind away from the memories of that place and of the nightmares I had suffered, not only directly after the ritual but in the night after, the nightmares that had made me log out, just an hour ago. I had edited the advertisement, arguing with myself that I already had the footage and it would be foolish not to use it.

Maybe there were better ways to use my magic, maybe I could find something better.

With those thoughts, I immersed myself in the hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours recorded by beta-testers. I could only access what was open to the public which was a lot less now that it was generally known to be possible to block access, but still quite a few had uploaded things.

As my only search-filter was that I wanted to see magic, the amount was reduced but not by much. There were still thousands of clips, but I was looking for inspiration, so I picked one, more or less at random, and started watching.

The first clip I saw was rather simple, the viewpoint was of a guildmage, according to the title, and he simply moved after some sort of knight or paladin and fired small, flaming spheres that clung to the target, like some sort of magical napalm. They didn’t splash around, making them good single-target attacks but sadly, the whole casting was done with a simple command of “Flaming Orb” and a glowing wand, making it rather pointless for me. I watched a little longer, but other than a flaming sphere, which was the bigger, area of effect version the mage used when multiple enemies went for them, there was nothing more to find.

The next clip was of another guild-mage and I only watched about thirty seconds of him repeating Water Orb, firing a - who would have thought - water orb at his enemies, that looked just like the Flaming Orb, though the additional damage-effect looked slightly corrosive, like some sort of acid.

I had a feeling that I would be at it for quite a while.

About five hours later, I waved away the screen and wanted to hit my head against a table, wall or any hard surface, really.

The vast majority of clips I had seen used similar methods, they had some sort of tool, like the wand of the guild-mages and used an activation-command to cast their magic. Others used only a chant, which was similarly just an activation-command, just in another language, wasn’t it? Maybe with some sort of gesture, but not always, and much longer than the simple one-word commands used with wands and the like. Which explained why the longer chants were used for non-combat magic, things like warming food, lighting a campfire or mending small tears in clothes, for those it hardly mattered if the cast took a second or two or if it took a full minute. But in combat, that made a difference.

However, that vast majority was not what made me feel like an utter moron. No, that was reserved for one of the few Sorcerer-clips I had found, a clip featuring some demon in the desert, hunting with fire-magic. The magic was not vastly different from the magic used by guild-mages, just that he wasn’t using a wand, or activation-words. It had taken me a minute to realise what he was doing and only because I had seen something similar before.

He had a bracelet, made from leather and stones around his hand and used his magic simply by pointing his right hand at the enemy and a fiery projectile shot out. After a few of those, I finally realised that the stones in his bracelet were Rune Stones, like those I had gotten right at the beginning, when I had landed in Mundus. Just that mine had strict limits on how fast they could absorb Astral Power, making me unable to use them for more than completing a single spell before they needed to be recharged.

The sorcerer in the clip was obviously not hampered by that, maybe due to better rune-stones, maybe due to better skills, I wasn't sure. But he was able to complete his magic with only a tiny delay, something that would improve my combat-capabilities by a lot, if I could copy his style. I had been too tunnel-visioned on using some great, eternal-ice made spell-focus that allowed me to use all my spells without effort. And I would love to have some sort of universal-focus, that allowed me to safely use attacks like the one I had used against the end-boss of the glacier-dungeon, but it was just not realistic with my current skill.

I made a mental note to acquire some rune-stones in the next city, enough to inscribe my favourite Icicle-Spell and maybe some darkness, anti-magic effect for the other arm.