Chapter 39

It would be nice to understand exactly what taking control of other people’s spells felt like.

Identification went to work, and Adrian smiled. The man had only one expert-level spell, and that was a fire bolt. If he fired it at Adrian, then he could just grab it and redirect it back on the caster.

There was more knowledge waiting to dump itself on him, but Adrian held it off.

“Hey?” he yelled at the black-haired magic user. “Fire mage.” The man looked at him, blue eyes reflecting his confusion. “Sorry to disturb you, but I just got a new skill.”

“Umm.” The man and the woman on his side had stopped. “Why would I…”

“I was wondering if you could help me test it.”

“How?”

“Simple.” Adrian smiled. “I need you to fire your most powerful firebolt at,” Adrian pointed at a wall that a homeowner had put in to give themselves a flat lawn pre-event. It was a metre high with solid dirt behind it.

“You wish me to launch a fire bolt at an earth wall? It’s expert-level,” the man told him proudly.

“I know and yes.” Adrian gave his best smile. “It would be super helpful.”

“Why?” the woman next to the fire mage asked.

“I just got a new skill that would be great to test with someone friendly rather than against a monster.”

The man shrugged, pointed a finger, formed a fire bolt instantly and shot at the wall. There was only five mana in it and it slammed home, sending chunks of earth flying. It left a basketball-sized crater.

Adrian winced. “Sorry, I wasn’t ready.” He was surprised both by how fast the spell had been generated and the extensive damage it caused. He shouldn’t have been surprised, expert-rated techniques and spells were on a different level.

The fire mage shrugged and then pointed again. This time Adrian was ready. Internal haste was running at full power and the new fire and ice domain was actively ready to respond. The spell as it formed on the mage’s finger assaulted his perception. There was an intricate internal structure controlling links and loops. It was mind-boggling. He could see the segments forming, the overlapping weaves of force and fire.

Compared to the original cookie cutter firebolt this was—like an F1 car contrasted with a billy cart. A jump in complexity washed through his brain and left an impression, while the important details were faithfully recorded by the interface His domain thrummed.

No one but himself was allowed to control fire within the bounds of his domain. This magic was not under his control, and that was unacceptable. Adrian sunk power into the forming spell on the tip of the fire mage’s finger. His desire and that of his domain being boosted by the interface and to a smaller extent his core running the multitude of calculations to claim ownership. His energy saturating what had been the domain of the fire mage.

The fire mage finished the spell. Tying off the edges and releasing it on a trajectory that, Adrian could instantly see, targeted the newly created hole.

Of course, it was too late. It was fire, and all fire in his domain was his to command, his to own and his to destroy with.

The original spell was of the launch and forget variety, Adrian changed that. He added a little extra into the weave to allow him to direct it.

A single blink of time passed.

Just like the first missile, it shot out the immense destructive power hidden in its small dimension. Casually, Adrian redirected the magic so that it arced into the sky where it exploded into a very hot and powerful firework display.

The mage jumped in surprise and spun to face him. Confusion, concern, understanding and a rejection of authority all crossed the man’s face. The mage’s finger pointed at the ground in front of Adrian’s feet.

The domain screamed at him as the magic once more gathered at the man’s fingertip. This time, the spell felt familiar. It was like the interface already knew how to counter the magic and Adrian, having peaked behind the scenes, recognised that the conclusion was correct. Adrian’s interface understood how the spell was built, and that made a difference. It was easier to control and redirect. This time, his magic preempted the fire mage as he formed the spell. He was corrupting and seizing the power at an early step. It was no longer a weave of complexity that he might struggle to seize control of. Instead, it was a known expert-level fire bolt spell that was his if he matched the required mana cost. The spell shot out of the mage’s finger, aiming for the ground next to Adrian.

By the time it was released, Adrian already knew what was going to happen. It looped around and slammed down in front of the fire mage instead of where it had initially been targeted at Adrian’s feet.

“Fuck,” the mage screamed and jumped back in surprise even as Adrian stood still, having not bothered to move.

Adrian raised his eyebrows in a questioning manner.

The fire mage looked flustered. His finger shot out one, two, three and then a fourth bolt.

Mine .

The word echoed in his head. They were his, and his domain seized each spell effortlessly. Mana drained out of Adrian to support the magic, but Adrian’s pool was many times greater than his opponents. The four bolts shot off simultaneously, he then looped into the air, and they came down ringing the fire mage and his partner in an explosion of flames and dirt.

The man was gaping in disbelief.

He pointed again, but this time the spell was different. A burst of low-level flames flooded out.

Ridiculous.

The more complicated spell, at least the first time, had taken an effort to subdue. This spell was basic and required no effort to subvert. Adrian owned the flames from the moment that they formed, but let them flood toward him, letting the man believe that he had won. The flames roared around him. Had he been a monster, he would have been significantly burnt under that torrent of power or cremated. But these flames were in his domain!

Not even the latent heat reached him after a moment. Flaunting his ability, he gathered the power the fire mage had expelled into the palm of his hands, presenting a ball of flames with forty mana caught in them. Casually, he tossed it at the earthen support wall, it left soot marks over a wide area but did no actual damage. What could burn flesh and blood was a lot less impressive against wet dirt and rock.

Adrian deliberately raised his eyebrows once more, this time as if asking, ‘what else have you got?’

The man’s face flashed with anger and once more a finger pointed at Adrian.

Another firebolt, this one took a full second to form as the man pumped a hundred mana into it. Now that the spell was mastered, Adrian did not even need to consciously direct the capture of the spells.

It was just his before it was formed.

The mage fired it, and Adrian grabbed it. This much power hitting one spot would do a significant amount of damage, so as he sent flying into the air, he peeled off sections of the energy, and in seconds, the single firebolt had been converted into twenty-five. They fell in a circle around the couple. It sounded like a car crash, but this time, besides holding off the fire Adrian also used his air domain to protect them from shrapnel. That much mana in an expert spell would make it go—

Boom!

The noise and light had people a hundred metres away looking at them. Debris flew five metres in the air before coming down, guided by his air shielding.

The mage blinked and assessed how Adrian had altered his spell. The destruction was impressive. Starting one and a half metres from the couple was a perfect circle blasted out of the ground. It left a trench that was thirty centimetres deep and even wider than that. The surface rock was still glowing and the smooth sides made it clear that the attack had liquefied the rock.

“Bloody oath!”

The man stared at Adrian in stunned silence.

“Thank you,” Adrian responded. “I am sorry if I scared you. You helped a lot.”

“Adrian the World Saver,” the woman next to the man said, finally looking him over. A crowd had gathered and he saw nods from them as well.

“Yes.”

“He’s the World Saver?” The fire mage asked.

“Yes,” Both Adrian and the woman answered at the same time.

“Is this?” the man asked, his voice trembling. “Is this something that you got as a reward for that?”

“No.” Adrian shook his head. “This was from a level up.”

“But… I can’t do anything like that?”

“In your terms, I am over level sixty.” Adrian wasn’t sure that was correct, but it was close enough. “And I have acquired some pretty powerful powers outside of levels in my adventures.”

“How did you do that?”

“I have a master fire ability,” he told the fire mage, choosing not to share just how overpowering it truly was. “It lets me subjugate expert spells.”

The man shook his head. “And lower.”

“Of course.”

“I thought with my extra levels I could beat anything.”

Adrian laughed despite himself. “That spell is powerful, but the first truly dangerous animal I killed after the event would have been able to eat three or four in the face before dying.” He was thinking about the Alpha mud wolf that he had beat because of the burning house. “And you would only get one or two off before it ripped your throat.”

“How did you survive?”

“I just got really lucky,” Adrian admitted without hesitation. “It was a mud wolf. I killed it with environmental damage. It was completely immune to my magic. And while expert magic could hurt it, it still would have resisted most of the damage from your missiles.” It would still be partially immune against his new master-level attacks, Adrian realised. It probably wouldn’t survive, but it had sufficient resistance that he would stab it to death rather than waste the mana.

The man’s eyes were wide. “I’m glad you’re a good man.”

Adrian’s breath caught in his throat at being described like that. It wasn’t a particularly glowing term of reference in the old world. But post-event, everything had changed. Might ruled now if it wanted, and so being a good man meant something.

“Excuse me,” Adrian apologised. “I have…” He wavered unnecessarily and walked off, not wanting to face any more compliments. Especially as it was clear some of the crowd was getting up the courage to talk to him. He always hated compliments. Now he might have been able to kill monsters single handily but the thought of anyone praising him. Some parts of him had not changed.

As we walked away, he felt the world with his new senses. Using active pulses of energy to see what else was around. The calculation engine interpreted the results in the background. From an herb and plant perspective, there was nothing interesting. Adrian pushed the spell wider and found an intense source of dark energy. He focused on it, a fungus and probably valuable, but not to someone of his wealth. It would almost certainly be under someone’s house or in a garden and he could not be bothered.

Monster sense came back and there were two non-human concentrations of energies just a few hundred metres away from him.

Adrian was instantly running toward the energy, getting ready to fight, and then he stilled his feet. There were no monsters, as there were no screams. His skill was unequivocal that they were not human, either. What? Then his Mind went through the alternatives. Domesticated animals, pets, traders. He kept walking and settled on that final guess, traders. Traders were too close to humans to be monsters. So this sort of sensing would present them as monstrous.

Sure enough, when he turned the corner he saw the familiar shape of a trader cart superimposed over where his senses had identified the strange creature. Then his eyes caught the trader itself behind the cart.

A smile broke out on his face.

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