Chapter 10, Arcane

Now that I have a body and class I need to hone my skills. There isn’t anything new on my part except for more power at my disposal. Ari has to readjust to the changes brought by [Passive Power] but once she does everything becomes easier.

“We need something more than our basic [Manabolt] general skill, Ari.”

“Yes. That skill is practically worthless to us as of now. It’s the most basic arcane attack spell we could ever dream up since it’s only sending a volatile mass of unstable mana at our foes.”

“Ari, you know our [Mana Manipulation] general skill was insufficient for anything more complex at the time. I think we should start with taking the same approach but refining it into a more efficient mana structure.”

“Any structure is more efficient than no structure at all, Zel. But alright, let’s do it.”

We place ourselves in one of the corners of the chamber, giving ourselves a bit of room to work with, and raise our hand in front of us at chest level palm up. Expelling mana through our hand I try forming the shapeless cloud into something more deadly.

The first shape that comes to mind that might fit our needs perfectly is a tall and slim hexagonal pyramid. 20 centimeters tall and 4 centimeters wide at the base. Giving it the penetration power of the popular ice mage skill [Ice Lance].

The shape I’m manifesting isn’t as efficient in its conservation of space and therefore costs a little more to create than if I had used a basic cone. I rather like the look of what I have now and therefore ignore the small wastage of mana. Aesthetics are important to any proper mage after all.

Next comes figuring out the mana structure. This takes quite a bit of trial and error on our part, bombarding the chamber walls with our mana construct and measuring how much damage it does before making modifications. In the end the most efficient structure we manage to find is a new variation on the crystalline structure of our Soulcore.

The mana structure is not as dense but still has enough structural integrity to retain good penetration without taking long to form. Our soul core took an hour to form at the fastest while this mana construct can be completed in just over a second.

When the shape and internal structure is decided on I disperse our last attempt and start recreating the construct above our outstretched palm. This time however I compress as much arcane mana into the construct as I possibly can. It gives our semi-transparent and wickedly sharp crystalline hexagonal pyramid a slight azure glow.

It looks amazing and after admiring it for a while I fire it straight across the room towards the wall opposite us. It makes the 10 meter distance to the wall in a flash, trailing a short lived glowing line as an after image to mark its path.

Crack, Boom!

The vibrations can be felt in the floor below us as the construct penetrates the hard stone, cracks it and then explodes. The explosion isn’t anything too special. Just a bright flash of arcane discharge generating noise from displaced and compressed air.

Inspecting the newly made wall crater shows us how shallow it really is. Most of the damage came from the construct penetrating the wall about 2 centimeters and the following explosion only managed to dislodge the rock in a radius of half a centimeter.

This doesn’t spoil our mood though. Doing any real damage to the bedrock at the depths we’re currently at is a huge achievement at our level and it seems the system agrees with our performance assessment.

Ding! You have learned the general skill [Arcane Missile].

[Arcane Missile]

Manifest and manipulate an arcane construct designed for high penetration and blast damage. Maximum skill cost at this level: [100 + Skill Level * 20] Mana.

Ding! General skill [Arcane Missile] has leveled from [1] to [2].

Ding! Do you wish class [Mana Machine] to claim general skill [Arcane Missile]?

“Woohoo! We got a new general skill. You did it, Zel!”

“Amazing. But what’s with the notification? It is giving us a choice if we want our class to claim the new skill? Why didn’t we get to choose when we accepted the class if that’s the case?”

“That’s simple. You need specific skills to get a class and when you’ve met those requirements those skills should naturally be included in it. That’s why they get claimed. In this case we created a skill of our own and the system sees a compatibility between our class and the new general skill. It gives us the option because our class skill slots are limited.”

“You could say that again. We only have one available skill slot left in [Mana Machine]. Should we let it claim the skill?”

“I think not. We should save that skill slot for our class provided skills whenever they show up. It doesn’t really suit the class either in my opinion. It might work in theory but the class is about wielding the arcane and improving our body. Not casting ranged magic.”

“You said it.”

Ding! You have declined [Mana Machine] skill claim.

I continue training with the skill and practicing my aim against the walls. At a cost of 140 MP I can use the skill 17 times before getting emptied out if I ignore our mana regeneration. The maximum mana cost increases by 20 MP with each level and I can see a steady increase in damage during our first days of practice.

Ding! General skill [Arcane Missile] has leveled from [2] to [12].

Once I feel like I have a good grip on my aim and the skill itself we move on to getting our next general skill. Having a ranged attack like [Arcane Missile] is a good start but I don’t want to fight at range only. Having a magical machine as a body to move in Ari and I feel like only standing still while attacking from range is a waste of potential.

I also want to experience the thrill of close up melee battle once more. I had never really picked up any real skill with melee weapons but my limited magical abilities had led me to wielding a hunting knife. Now though? I feel like [Small Blades] could use something a little more impressive and we had already experimented a little with manifesting daggers.

“Got any ideas on design for our new arcane daggers?”

“I’m thinking curved and double edged. Maybe having an edge for slashing and one for tearing? That might look cool if nothing else. What do you think, Ari?”

“Sure, let's just start shaping something and I’m sure we’ll get something usable with a few tries.”

The design we decide upon has a blade with the thickness of 2 centimeters in its spine and going razor thin towards its edges. The blade has a slightly steeper upwards curve than the average rogue's curved dagger and a width of 8 centimeters at its base. The blade itself is about 25 centimeters long.

The blade is double edged and the outer edge is for slashing and perfectly smooth while the inner edge is for tearing flesh. The inner edge has one triangular cutout, placed with its point away from the blade’s spine and the center aligned where the edge would have been.

The triangular cutout has a base width of 6 centimeters and the opening in the blade’s inner edge is 4 centimeters wide. The cutout depth only reaches half ways towards the spine. The cutout is placed 12 centimeters up the inner edge's length and the wickedly sharp fangs will hopefully get stuck in and tear out cut flesh but that will have to be tested.

The crossguard is nothing more than two small bumps at the top and bottom, with a height and width of 1 centimeter and designed to look like shorter arcane missiles. The dagger’s handle is form fitted to match perfectly to our right hand and ends with a small pommel in the shape of a dodecahedron. A small tribute to our old home, the dungeon core.

“We’ve always used one dagger when practicing and I used one hunting knife with our old body. Do you think we should try dual wielding two daggers instead? It would be the most effective use of our body in close quarters.”

“That would probably be fun. We’ll need to create the second dagger at the same time as the first if we do this as they’ll have to be form fitted for each hand.”

We create a copy of our right hand dagger and change the handle to fit our left hand instead. Creating the shapes of both daggers at once with slight differences takes a few hours of practice. We want them to manifest in the correct hand with our fingers arranged to grip the handles when the daggers take form.

“How about the mana structure? Do we use the same structure as with [Arcane Missile]?”

“It would probably work but they would probably deteriorate super fast and even break under heavier load.”

In the end we decide to modify the mana structure used for [Arcane Missile] to become much denser and structurally stable at the cost of mana and time. We dynamically mold the density of the new structure to strengthen parts of the daggers which need it the most. This makes the daggers go less transparent and more opaque along the blades and especially their edges.

Using this method has the added benefit of looking cool as hell. The core of the dagger is a semi-transparent azure crystal getting less and less transparent along the blade and crossguard tips. The thinner areas get a higher mana density which creates the effect of solid and strongly glowing azure arcane light at the edges tapering off into a more transparent and less glowing core.

“They’re beautiful, Zel. And they look so wicked, like a criminal might use them. They’ll look so cool being dual wielded with skill.”

“I love them too. But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. We first need to get a good enough handle on manifesting these daggers to be able to do it in the middle of battle. We might get a new general skill for it but we must not also forget that we’ll need to acquire the [Dual Wielding] general skill as well. These daggers won’t look good in our hands for a while yet.”

We set to practicing pushing mana out from our hands while using [Arcane Manipulation] to manipulate that formless power into shifting mana structures flowing into the shape of the daggers we’d designed. It took almost 2 weeks to get a full manifestation done in under 5 seconds but it was enough.

Ding! You have learned the general skill [Arcane Daggers].

[Arcane Daggers]

Manifest an arcane dagger in either the left or right hand or both at the same time. Each dagger requires a minimum of 1200 points of mana to be manifested. Manifestation cost may be increased by [Skill Level * 10] for added durability and sharpness. Each dagger has a mana upkeep of [Manifestation cost / 10] per minute.

Ding! General skill [Arcane Daggers] has leveled from [1] to [3].

It’s quite the expensive skill but it works exactly like we need it to. Manifesting at 5 seconds every time with much less needed concentration. Using both daggers at once puts a considerable strain on our mana regeneration in keeping them from dispersing but it’s well worth it in our eyes.

We practice in earnest with dual wielding our new daggers and keep at it for 1 whole year before deciding that we need opponents to progress with our skills any further.

Ding! General skill [Running] has leveled from [14] to [16].

Ding! General skill [Sprinting] has leveled from [7] to [10].

Ding! General skill [Jumping] has leveled from [6] to [9].

Ding! General skill [Dodging] has leveled from [3] to [4].

Ding! General skill [Small Blades] has leveled from [14] to [21].

Ding! General skill [Arcane Daggers] has leveled from [3] to [12].

Ding! Skill [Arcane Manipulation] has leveled from [312] to [315].

Ding! You have learned the general skill [Dual Wielding].

[Dual Wielding]

Aids in coordinating two melee weapons at once.

Ding! General skill [Dual Wielding] has leveled from [1] to [15].

Now that we made use of the [Arcane Manipulation] skill to empower my abilities it’s time to do the same for Ari. The skill [Passive Power] is great for lowering the burden on Ari but it removes a bit of flexibility we had before when controlling the power output at all times.

To combat this issue Ari came up with the idea of adding a high performance mode to use in battle. We modified our [Manabody] to contain two different sets of mana spine marrow for the production of two different versions of mana blood.

The original mana spine marrow would continue to produce our normal mana blood while the new mana spine marrow, which Ari named celestial spine marrow, would produce another type of mana blood called celestial blood.

The difference between the mana blood and celestial blood is a difference in concentration of power in each blood cell. Our skill [Passive Power] would continue to produce mana blood at its current concentration while Ari would regulate the output of celestial blood. In situations where we are lacking in normal performance mode we would be able to quickly flood our system with high concentrations of power.

The reason for our naming scheme was simply that we made the new mana blood structure both more potent and turned it the same golden shade as our eyes. It was fitting in a sense. Ari was also adamant that she would always produce a little celestial blood during normal performance “to make it sparkly”. Honestly…

“I know we have already tested our sense of pain to some extent by pinching ourselves but we might want to do a little more in depth testing with that.”

“You mean you want to see our ‘sparkly blood’ stain the walls for the first time. Don’t you, Ari?”

“I won’t deny it. But we really must collect the data on more serious wounds so that you can get accurate information in battle and for me to repair the damage before we spill all our mana blood and empty ourselves of power.”

“We’ve been putting it off haven’t we? Well let’s do this. Where do I start?”

“Make a long and deep cut in your forearm with a dagger. It should be enough to get started.”

“To get started, yeah right.”

I send Ari the equivalent of a pathetic whimper.

“Come now, we can calibrate our sense of pleasure by fucking ourselves with a manifested arcane cock after we’re done with this. How does that sound?”

“Wha-, never mind. I won’t ask how you came up with this since it actually sounds exciting.”

That was the beginning of a very bad week with a very good day afterwards.

“Mmmm…”

“Alright Zel, that’s enough.”

“Can’t we just spend a little more time like this?”

“You know as well as I do that overindulgence is unbecoming of us. We’ve got better things to do.”

“Like wh-, ooh fuck yeah, Mmmm, -what?”

“That’s it. I’ve filtered out your sense of pleasure.”

“Hmpf. Well what’s urgent enough to warrant this treatment? Spit it out.”

“Clothes.”

“Oh... Yes, I had forgotten about that. Modesty wasn’t useful when we first moved in.”

Designing clothes made out of mana is a treat. It is fun mixing different mana structures and creating different styles of clothing. Making armor did occur to me but it felt wrong somehow. Armor would only slow my development of my own vessel. If I need more protection I should figure out how to increase the resilience of myself.

I don’t have a high enough [Wisdom] to continuously spend power on keeping a lot of complex constructs active and therefore settled on 5 simple garments that I could repair and stop from deteriorating even when dual wielding my daggers.

Firstly a simple tight fitted crop top made in a white, slightly, stretchy, cotton-like, arcane material. The sleeveless garment that stops almost 10 centimeters above the navel shows a generous amount of skin and cleavage. It’s both to save on mana with less fabric and to accentuate my well developed firm bust and slim waist.

Secondly, relatively loose-fitting worker’s pants made in a comfortably thick, black, cotton-like, arcane material. They’re tightly fitted around my waist but the extra fabric makes sure I retain my full range of motion while highlighting the curves of my lower body. It even has deep pockets.

Thirdly a silky smooth, white, thong pantie might not be necessary but that could be argued with everything I’m wearing. Making the mana structure for the most soft and silky arcane material I could come up with was a fun project however.

Fourthly a pair of socks and I used a slightly thicker version of the arcane material in my crop top. Keeping it white to match my panties.

Lastly, a comfortable pair of boots. They were a bit tricky as I didn’t want to use too much mana but still make them comfortable. I settled on a very basic look for the boots. A thick rubbery sole made from a new mana structure and a much thicker and more durable variant of the arcane material from my pants used to cover the foot, ankle and half the calf.

There isn’t any need to be able to take the boots on or off since that will only cost more mana in arcane materials. I only have to manifest the boots on my feet to solve the issue.

After every garment has been put on I create one last item. A springy, black hair ribbon to manage my hair. I tie my hair up in a simple swirling bun behind my head and let a few locks loose to move as they please on the right side of my face while not getting in the eyes.

I could have just remade the hair on my body to naturally keep that way but it felt like cheating. Doing my hair has always been a simple pleasure.

Now dressed in minimalistic clothing that accentuates every deadly curve to an unnecessary but visually alluring degree and with white hair tied in an elegant if simple style I feel almost human, or elf, again. It’s strange to wear clothes after such a long time spent incorporeal and then nude but it feels good nonetheless.