Episode: 2.8

--- Molly ---

She held her wrist with her free hand, feeling the magic building in the palm of her other, something made more apparent by both the tune of her magic playing in the back of her mind, as well as the steadily growing ball of light in her hand.

(That should be enough…)

She lessened, (not cut off,) the flow of her magic to the baseball sized sphere.

Slowly, (very slowly…) she moved her palm towards a can sitting about five meters away from her.

(Okay, breathe…)

She slowly inhaled and exhaled, steadying herself.

(Aim…)

She double checked her aim, before holding her breath.

(And Fire!)

The ball of light shot forward, hitting the side of the can and sending it flying off the roof top.

“Finally!” she laughed as the tension that had been building with each miss for the last hour finally fell from her shoulders.

“Not bad, but you still need to hit three more, before I consider it a pass.” Graves informed her, without even looking up from (my) phone.

She glared at him, before sticking her hand out.

Again, without even looking he caught her wrist the same way he had the other three times they done this. And just like before she felt a surge of cool-warmth surge from her wrist to her chest, as the tune in her head became just a touch louder than it had been a moment ago.

(Current MP.)

132/132

She nodded to herself, with a smile.

(That proves it, fully spending my current Max MP increases it by one.)

Part of her knew she could’ve just asked Graves about that little detail, but at the same time the one or two little secrets of Magic she’d managed to figure out on her own, left her all giddy inside, because even if someone else discovered it first, she still managed to discover it for herself.

(And the whole unlimited Mana battery doesn’t hurt either.)

She couldn’t help but chuckle at that, especially when Graves gave her questioning glance, as he cut off the magic refilling her own supply.

“Don’t worry about it.” She waved him off, before turning back to the cans and restarting the process of charging a mana bolt and shooting it at the (stupid) cans.

It took her half an hour and two recharges to hit the next can.

“Better,” Graves nodded, as he actually glanced up from the phone, “but this time try firing with a weaker charge.”

“But won’t it just fall apart without enough power to hold it together?”

Graves was quiet for a moment, “What’s your current Mastery at?”

She flowed a bit of magic into her ring.

(Open: Grimoire, Mana Bolt)

Spell: Spell Shot

Nickname: Mana Bolt

Difficulty: E

Mastery: D+

Cost: (D-)-(C+)

Attribute: None

Description: An extremely versatile spell commonly taught early on when learning Offensive magic, due to its simplicity in the Arcane basics of gathering, condensation, and movement of a controlled point of magic. Depending on use and adaptability can be used as a stepping stone towards more complex spells.

“D+, like the Nightlight spell.” She grinned.

(Two, almost three, full letter ranks in an hour…)

Even if it was an easy spell, seeing her progress made her just as giddy as discovering a secret. Though she knew it was largely because Graves kept refilling her magic whenever she reached the half way point on her MP, something she was more than grateful for since it kept away the (wrongness).

A shudder ran down her spine.

“Right, okay…” Graves tilted his head side to side, before nodding and going back to her phone, “Let me know what it is after you hit the next one.”

(Maybe he has some trick to teach me when I hit C-?)

Smiling at the idea, she turned back to her practice, with renewed vigor, not at all bothered by the twenty minutes it took to hit the next can, especially since she only had to recharge once.

And doing as he’d asked earlier; she checked her spell Mastery excited to see that rank up.

(Open: Grimoire, Mana Bolt)

Only to frown at what she read.

“It’s, it’s still D+…” she explained to Graves questioning glance.

“Thought so.” Graves sighed, before standing up.

“You know what’s wrong?” she asked as he approached.

“It’s both nothing, and something.”

(That’s not reassuring…)

“Normally, I’d just have you keep practicing until you could hit the cans each time you tried, and then explain this, but since we’re doing things the hard way and there’s more I want to cover today…” Graves trailed off, before glancing to the side and shaking his head.

“Okay this is a pretty common problem for new comers to magic,” he continued with a clap of his hands, “You see, the reason you didn’t rank up, despite casting such an easy spell so much, is because you’re misunderstanding what ‘Mastery’ means in spell work.”

She frowned at that, “Isn’t Mastery how good I am at a spell?”

“Yes, but I think you don’t quite get what that means.” Graves rolled his shoulders and raised his hand before forming a small glowing green spheres of different sizes above each digit, save his thumb, “Mastery is how good you are at using a spell, that said just firing the spell the exact same way over and over won’t raise your Mastery beyond a certain point, because you’re only mastering the spell in that way.”

Graves raised a foot before stomping the ground, an action that very likely caused the four small pools of black that appeared on the other side of the roof, as well as the skeletal figures that rose from each.

She couldn’t help but take a step back at the sight of each hunched over figure staring at her with their empty black eyes.

(Okay… so that wasn’t just a part of his musical thing…)

She also remembered that her ‘Touched by Death’ trait gave her passive bonus to Necromancy, and that the Half-Life trait she very likely shared with Graves described itself as, ‘Forever touched by death, but forever bound by life.’ Meaning he very likely had the other trait as well.

She tried very hard not to think about the implications of any of that. Especially in relation to the four undead figures in front of her.

“For this spell the key principals of its mastery are: Gathering, or in use, Firing rate.”

The sphere above his middle finger shot towards the skeleton on the inner right, before being replaced with another sphere that did the same, as well as another two still, all in the time it would take her to simply form a single shot, let alone fire it.

“That one, is what you’ve technically been mastering but, the highest you can achieve with just Gathering is a (C+) at best, and that’s with around that firing rate.”

She nodded more than a little speechless as the skeleton collapsed due to a missing kneecap, a hole through where its heart would be, another severing its spine half-way between its ribs and its hips, and one final hole through its skull.

“Next would be Condensation.”

The sphere above his pinky became a pin prick of light before firing forward, so fast she couldn’t even see it. Hell, she didn’t even see an entry wound on the leftmost skeleton’s skull, though she sure as hell saw the exit wound, given how it made up the entire back half of the skeleton’s skull.

“I should point out that Condensation works both in making shots smaller, as well as making larger shots more stable.”

The light above his ring finger rose a little higher before growing to the size of her head. This shot was slower than the other two, but given how it continued to grow until it consumed both the inner leftmost skeleton, as well as the two that had already fallen, it didn’t really lose any of its ‘awe’ factor.

“And lastly we have Control, like Condensation there are technically two ways to look at this I like to think of them as Trick and Trap shots.”

He moved his hand and the light above his index finger moved with it before hanging in the air as he lowered his hand.

“A Trap shot, is one that hangs in the air until you fire it off at the desired target, simple in theory, difficult in practice, especially when you start applying the other principals. Keeping up?”

“Y-yeah…” she nodded, more than a little humbled, even as she realized he’d missed something, “But w-what about Trick Shots?”

Graves glanced at her for a moment.

“The name’s kind of on the tin, for that one.”

He swiped a finger towards the ground, causing the last light to shoot towards the ground half-way between them and the last skeleton, before bouncing off the ground and through the skeleton’s skull.

“Ten points.” She faintly, heard Graves cheer to himself with a whisper, and couldn’t help but laugh.

“What?” Graves asked defensively.

“Nothing.” She waved him off.

“Mm-hmm,” he nodded with a suspicious glint in his eyes, “You think you can get up to C Rank, now? I wanted to break for lunch before teaching you a second spell.”

She blinked before glancing up at the afternoon sky and realizing, that they had been at this for a fair amount of time. This also led her to the revelation that, yes, she was getting fairly hungry herself.

Her eyes drifted to the last standing can, surrounded by scorch marks from her various missed shots, as well as bits and pieces of the skeletons Graves had summoned and destroyed.

She raised a hand and began flowing magic to form another sphere and began trying to compress it into a smaller size without making it explode the way it did when she first cast it.

“Yeah, just… give me a few minutes…” she nodded, more focused on her spell than her words.

After a moment the spell began to vibrate, a sign she recognized as the sphere getting ready to detonate, and on instinct she fired the spell before it could hurt her.

(Damn it…)

Her next few ‘mana bolts’ all ended the same way.

“Try adjusting the tune.”

She glanced at Graves who was now sitting next to the door to the roof.

“What do you mean?”

Graves let out a sigh. “You can ‘hear’ your magic, right?”

She nodded.

“And you can’t see, feel, taste it or anything else, unless you’re casting a spell?”

She nodded again.

“Okay, then that’s how your brain is processing the Spell Code.”

“Spell Code?”

“Right… Typically people don’t cover ‘Spell Codes’ until they’ve hit about C on their Arcane ranking… Which is like a certified magic rating from the magical community.” Graves ran a hand down his face before giving a frustrated sigh, “And it’s something we definitely aren’t touching any time soon.”

Graves shook his head, “But back on topic, a Spell Code is essentially the magical formula that lets you cast a spell, now you’re nowhere near the level of skill necessary to screw with an actual formula, but there’s no harm in you messing with the variables.” Graves paused as if considering something, before smirking, “Well, as long as you don’t do anything too extreme at least.”

“Okay, so… I’m guessing the variables represent the Speed, the Condensation, and the Control?” she asked, trying to follow along, “And the song I keep hearing from my magic is the spell itself, or my brain’s way of processing at least?”

“Sort of,” Graves tilted a hand side to side before explaining, “The song you hear by default, the actual song stripped to its most basic elements, is your song, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It may change into a remix of the song, based on your current emotional, physical, and or spiritual state, but that basic song will be found on all spells you cast, it’s essentially your magical signature, and therefore out of your control beyond purposely thinking a certain way.”

“Now, continuing with the music symbolism… Whenever you cast a spell, you’ll notice a secondary song playing alongside your own, that is the song you can control, a few tweaks here and there and you’ll change the spell you’re casting, but if you tweak it so much that it becomes a distinctly different song, well… it’ll act like a different song.”

She thought about what he was saying, before closing her eyes and listening to her magic for a moment, paying attention to the song that was her, memorizing it in a way where she actually knew what she was hearing, rather than simply recognizing it the moment she hears it.

Slowly she raised her hand and began forming a Mana Bolt in her hand.

Her song kept playing, but bit by bit she heard something being added to it, and while not a part of the song itself, it didn’t necessarily take away, almost as if adding an additional instrument to the song, but playing it in just the right way to keep from ruining the entire piece.

Delicately she reached out with her magic, before gently stoking the instrument willing it to be just a little louder, just little faster, just a little stronger, but not so much so that it overwhelmed her natural song.

After a time, the spell’s tune shifted ever so slightly, and she risked opening her eyes.

Floating above her hand was a stable sphere of magic twice the size of what she’d been able to manage thus far, glowing twice as bright.