Tom and I were walking towards the gates. I was looking forward to finally getting to try out some of the new [Mana Augmentation] I had planned out. As we closed in on the gate there seemed to be a big crowd of people gathered.

My first instinct was that there had been a vampire attack. Being at the guard compound for the last six days I heard some rumours about some supposed vampire incidents but nothing concrete.

“You think this is a vampire attack?” I asked Tom.

“What made you jump to that conclusion?” Tom said.

“Well I heard that there have been instances that have happened in the city already.”

“And where exactly did you hear this oh so reliable information” he looked at me with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.

“In the guard compound, I did spend the last six days there.”

“And let me guess, you also heard them all in the afternoons.”

“Yeah, how did you know?” he had taken the wind out of my sails and I could practically feel myself stepping into a trap with that confirmation.

“Because, all we had so far has been two missing people reports with no lead, nothing to point to a vampire. This of course won’t stop the new recruits from coming up with a thousand theories on what is happening.” He said laughing.

As we reached the gate we found out that the commotion seemed to be a line for a new inspection for both leaving and entering the city. This new bottleneck has caused a backup of people with busy mornings.

We patiently waited for our turn in line, after all we weren’t in such a hurry, but as we reached our turn Tom made straight for the person in charge of the whole operation.

“Morning Captain! Any chance you can tell me what’s happening here?” he said while offering a salute.

“Hi Tom. There has been a third disappearance. The eight performed a rather pricey ritual last night after the news broke. They confirmed that the vampire is still in the city. They just don’t know where.”

“Ok, that still doesn’t explain all of this.”

While Tom and this captain were speaking we both had our skin scrubbed with an odd looking leaf.

“Oh, this? The plant is toxic to vampires, we are making sure it doesn’t leave or enter back into the city if it does somehow get out.” he then carefully showed a small baggie with similar leaves. “Not expensive but rare so we have to be careful with it. What are you doing this early on your day off?”

“Taking my little brother out to hunt a little. We want to be back home before dark for obvious reasons.” Tom gave another salute as we were waved through.

I waited until we made it a bit of headway into the woods before I decided to pester my brother with questions.

“If they have this plant why don’t they just go through everyone in the city and find the vampire?”

“Because there is no reason to do so.” Tom said.

“You mean no reason besides the level 70 vampire loose in the city?” I was a bit outraged at that revelation.

“No, the vampire is a good enough reason. The problem is with monsters this intelligent there is no guarantee that you could catch it with something like this. Not to mention that any and all shady networks in the city will enter panic mode with the search.” he let out a sigh.

“So far we have two, no three, disappearances with no connection to the vampire. If we go through all that and still don’t find it, which we most likely won’t, it will cause mass panic.” he shook his head. “Anyway, nothing we can do about that, we should be far enough away now lets see what your magic can do.

And so the hunt was on. I started using my earth augmentation to move faster through the forest. It was good practice but I couldn’t wait to find a new target to try some new things out. For today I had a long term fire application of my axe, similar to the wind one on my sword. My other innovation to my fighting style was going to be a blast of cold water.

It wasn’t much but that's as much as I could grasp from the mages for now with the exception of light and shadow, and whatever that weird light-ish affinity I had felt, but I didn’t have any way to use those in spells yet. At least I didn’t think so.

This time through my hunt I was on the lookout for stealth predators. This was also mostly what we met. I think my brother intentionally took me to a spot with less game so we wouldn’t attract a lot of attention if we found too much game in a good spot.

“ That red hot axe and the cold bath are new?” my brother said as we drew to the end of our hunting day with no game to show for it. “ They don’t seem as controlled as your other attacks.”

“Yeah they are, I also got a very good look at shadow and light affinity but I couldn’t find any use for them without a spell to force the mana to be offensive by itself.”

“You do know enhancing damage isn’t the only way for spells to be useful. Shadow ones especially are made not to draw attention.”

Drawing attention, this idea made me think. What could light or shadow be good for if they didn’t directly deal damage. It then occurred to me, all the times when I was playing video games my parents would always warn me again and again, this was something I could use out here.

As a plan came together we stumbled upon another feline and I could also make out the deer tracks it was following. Instead of drawing my axe I pulled out my shield and spear. Me and the cat circled each other while my brother took a step back. He has seen me kill more than eight of them today and seemed to realize I wanted to try something new so he gave me space.

As the feline closed in for the attack I infused about three times the amount of mana I usually use into my shield, I also tried my hardest to recreate the light element. For once I could actually feel the spell have the effect I wanted.

I split my big rectangular shield in 7 equal horizontal sections. I then had each light up with a different color of the rainbow. The finishing touch was making each section switch to the color of the one below it every 0.05 second. The spell lasted for about three quarters of a second but that was more than enough to massively disorientate the cat as it practically squared itself onto my spear.

Being beyond pleased with the success of my spell I looked past the impaled prey to see my brother standing there and vigorously rubbing his eyes. Apparently the cat wasn’t the only one caught in my little light show.

“What the hell was that?” he said as he closed in on me with bloodshot eyes. “I’ve never seen anything even close to that from any of our mages.”

I couldn’t give him the truth here, after all the idea came from those seizure levels that were so notorious in early video games. “Well, I thought about what you said about using magic in a way to do something besides damage. I thought the lights would distract it. It worked better than I expected.” I gave him a toothy grin at that.

“Better than you expected…” He mumbled under his breath “That little trick of your left me so dizzy I almost tripped while not moving. How much stronger is it than your usual spells?”

“I put in about three times the mana I usually use.” He nodded at that. “Anyway it’s going to get dark a bit and I finally have some deer tracks. Let's go bag that and head back home.”

The quick following of the tracks brought us to one lone deer. I took out an arrow, before drawing I finally thought of a good augmentation I could add to an arrow shot without sacrificing my aim.

Air water fire and earth would all affect the arrow physically. While wind might have the potential to make it stronger I didn’t have the control I needed for that just yet. Light was something I could have added on but all that would do is work as an early warning system that someone was shooting at you. Shadow on the other hand could work to diminish the presence of the arrow

After drawing the bow I used the usual amount of mana I put into a swing and let the arrow loose. I didn’t hear anything from when the arrow shot. I even had problems seeing my arrow until about halfway to its target when the mana ran out and the arrow became noticeable again.

As I watched the deer get hit without having even raised its head in warning I felt a lot better about the progress I made today. These four new applications of mana will quickly make their way into my training rotation.