To most people, even most adventurers, David Smith was an example of an invincible warrior, with the strength of a giant, the durability of a steel golem, and the speed of an aviost, able to move faster than the eye can follow while powdering stone with each blow, while ignoring anything anyone can do to stop him.

However, that was all because the man was a force attuned sorcerer, and an experienced one, so despite being pretty terrible at magic, he had the raw power to fuel barriers with the strength of castle walls, strike with the impact strength of a meteor, and fly with the speed of an arrow.

This did not, to be clear, improve his ability to actually hit people with that stick of his. That isn’t to say that he was unskilled at staff fighting, but it was his weakest area. Well, besides his general incompetence at anything that wasn’t combat. But maybe he’s improved.

Casimir twisted out of the way of the jab, focusing his mana senses to get a better image of what David was doing. “Hello, David.” Casimir said, pretending to be bored as he ducked under his follow-up swing, flipping away when David transitioned to a sweep.

“I told you I was going to kick your ass the next time I saw you, Toomes!” David said with a sneer as he continued to attack. Casimir drew his stiletto, focusing force mana into the verenium blade to make it into a weapon capable of parrying his monster of a staff.

“I remember that.” Casimir replied. “But I also recall correcting that you were going to try to kick my ass.”

David roared at the insult, Casimir remaining silent as he leapt and jumped around the town, avoiding David’s attacks with the slimmest of margins. Normally, this kind of thing would swiftly end up with both of them in jail, but around here the buildings were significantly more durable than most places, and life was boring enough that Casimir’s biggest worry was that the spectators would get too close and end up getting their heads knocked off.

“Isn’t that the big-shot adventurer everyone’s talking about?”

“He’s not landing a single hit!”

“Who is that nimble fucker that he’s trying to kill?”

“What metal is that he’s using as armor?”

“Is this guy an even bigger bigshot?”

After leading him on a merry chase all the way back to the Adventurer’s guild, Casimir figured David had plenty of chances. Meeting the man’s eyes with his own, Casimir used an old trick that he didn’t use much, as it didn’t work one whit against monsters. His eyes flared with mana, and to David’s eyes, the world exploded in colorful lights. It didn’t stop him from swinging his staff, but the opening bought by that trick gave Casimir just enough time to strike exactly once.

“Urk.” David looked down at Casimir’s knife embedded in his heart. “You suck.” He said before Casimir withdrew the blade. Blood was kept inside his body with a glittering force barrier, and he stood there while Casimir healed the otherwise mortal injury. “Okay, let’s get inside.”

“After you.” Casimir said. He wasn’t falling for that one again.

With an insufferable smirk, David sauntered into the adventurer’s guild like he didn’t just lose the fight.

…Prick.

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David was greeted like a guy who bought the whole place drinks last night, which was Casimir’s guess on how he got so popular so quickly. Seeing his students still at a table, Casimir tapped David on the shoulder and gestured over to them. “Come on, one last thing before we get down to business.”

David sneered at the prospect, but went along without any other complaint.

Now, Casimir looked like a pretty ordinary guy, if you ignored his adventurer gear. Even with it, he didn’t look too special if you were too much of a layman to know quality armor when you saw it: a little tall, brown hair. Fit, but with no muscle group standing out over the rest. David, on the other hand, was built like you imagined a hero was: tall with large shoulders, with just enough facial hair to seem rugged rather than something he was deliberately growing.

His students were going over a quest notice that they had selected, but Casimir deliberately did not look into it. This was their best chance to prove they could do things without him holding their hand. “Teach?” Asked Peter.

“This is David Smith.” Casimir said, gesturing at his old teammate. “He’s Luci’s little brother, and we’re going to check some stuff out, see if we can track her down. You’ll be on your own, but…” He took out a crystal from one of his pouches. It was scored in the center, easily broken into two. He did so and tossed one to them. “Channel mind mana into that and it’ll open a connection to me. Just keep in mind I’ll be days away before you do, and it’s fragile.”

Communication spells were… troublesome. Each method had glaring flaws, and while most of them could be addressed by just making specific places to send and receive messages, if you wanted something portable, that was an entirely different kettle of fish. Range issues, throughput limitations, interception vulnerabilities…

This twofold telepathy crystal’s limitation was primarily cost and durability. It was only good for three minutes or so of messages, either one medium-sized report or a dozen exchanges of sentences. After that, the connection between the two halves frays from the strain. On top of that, it’ll decay over time even if unused, only lasting something like ten days after separation.

But if you wanted something portable with a range measured in hundreds of miles, it was the best you could get.

After some perfunctory greetings between David and the kids, David went to fetch his stuff that he stashed in one of the guild’s rooms. After they left and started hopping back and forth along the buildings over the street to escape the crowds, David finally spoke up: “So where, exactly, are we going?”

“First, we need to stop so I can bind mana. You’ve gotten better.” Casimir said. “I’m pretty spent from that battle. After that, we’re headed to where Luci died. The giant enchantment’s started back up again, so there are good odds there’s something going on there.”

David grunted as he absorbed the information. “But is it related to Luci?” He said rhetorically.

“We’ll just have to find out.” Casimir replied.

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The Wounded Wastes was over a day away even at elite speeds, so they had plenty of time to catch up.

“Those tentacles creep me out.” David said, shuddering. “They kept wrapping around my waist and thighs when I got close.”

Casimir hummed as he cooked lunch for the two of them using Magnus’ cookware. “I didn’t have that problem, but then again I wasn’t there long.” After a beat, he added: “Also, they’re not tentacles. They’re arms. There’s a difference.”

“You can just go screw yourself.” David replied. “No one cares.”

“Hana cares.” Casimir corrected.

“She can screw herself with her tentacles then.” David said with finality.

Casimir grunted as he served the mealbread. “You know, there’s a reason I never hesitate to jab my knife into your vital organs whenever we spar.” It’s because he’s a prick. “Lunch is on.” He finished with a glare, daring David to criticize the food.

After the blissfully silent meal, David’s bravado seemed to vanish, bleeding into an exhausted melancholy. With a deep sigh, he said: “Luci would have knocked us both on the head by now. Twice at least.”

“We’d deserve it.” Casimir agreed. After another moment of silence, he put his hand on David’s shoulder. “We’ll put her to rest. I have a plan.”

“Oh? We’re the weakest two of our team.” David groused. “How are we supposed to deal with two people who are both stronger than us? We don’t have backup that’s up for the job. The environment’s going to favor them, too.” He was correct, assuming they were in the wastes.

Casimir snorted. “It’s not about strength. I couldn’t match the raw magical power you four could throw around, that’s true.” He patted the crate of potions. “But I’m a wizard. If my current strategies aren’t enough, I read up on new ones.” Sixty top-quality domain bombs was a lot of mana, after all.

“Sure.” David said, skeptical of the crate of potions. “Let’s keep going.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Casimir said as he finished packing up the mess kit. Glancing in the distance, he paused. That cloud formation... “Hm. Get your coat, it’s going to rain.”

David looked in the same clouds. “I guess that looks kind of rainy. You sure?”

Casimir nodded. “You still have the enchantment against lightning strikes on it?” At David’s negative response, Casimir cast a curse on him to repel lightning.

“Shouldn’t you use a stronger curse for lightning strikes?” David asked. Even he could sense mana decently if it was entering his system. “That shit’s powerful.”

“Nah.” Casimir said. “I’ve been reading up, remember. Natural lightning will always strike the easiest target. It doesn’t take much protection to make literally anything else around you an easier target.” That book on weather was useful for more than one reason. Actually… “I hope you brought a good tent.” He added. “We’ll be sleeping in that storm.”

“We can’t avoid it… why?” David asked.

“Reasons.” Casimir replied. At David’s raised brow, he elaborated. “Wizard reasons.”

David gave up on that line of questioning. “Let’s just go.”

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The Wounded Wastes was… a wasteland. It was kind of difficult to describe without going into petty details. The land was cracked and pitted, crumbling to dust at the faintest touch. It made it quite difficult to walk, with your feet sinking a foot inside. The wind was still, the air thin and choking.

There was a massive mana void in the center of the place, sucking in mana from a great distance. If this was a natural formation, this would be nigh impossible to survive, every living thing adding to the dust of the land as they suffocate from the toxic air.

Fortunately, it was not. The massive enchantment that sustained that void was created, which meant that each mana type that it drew in had to be added to the array separately. The Soul-Devouring Dragon was a master at his specialty, so he covered pretty much all of the usually used sources, and most exotic aspects could be partially drawn in by similar aspects that were more common, as they represented mixtures of other kinds.

However, there was one flaw. Casimir theorized it was a challenge that was eventually left to be a deliberate backdoor. Cold aspected mana was kind of strange, one of the closest things that existed to being ‘natural’ negative magic. It was incredibly difficult to generate, as you could only create it through fire mana, and you basically… twisted it into a mirror image of itself. It was difficult to explain, but when you drew out spell matrices that used cold magic and compared them to fire magic versions of those spells, the mirroring was much clearer. As a side-effect to this, it was thaumaturgically impossible to create a negative magic enchantment that drained both kinds of mana, and no one with any sense makes a protection that can be defeated by fire.

So, one of Casimir’s proudest accomplishments was the Negative Shield curse, a carefully calibrated cold curse that significantly interfered with negative magic attacks in your immediate area. It didn’t do much to protect your spells from being broken up, but against the passive draining field of the Wounded Wastes? Easy. It did have the problem of draining your mana fairly steadily, and the chill was kind of uncomfortable. But it sure beats being sucked dry from a dragon’s masterpiece.

“Hate this place.” David said grumpily.

“Everyone hates this place.” Casimir said dismissively. “You’re getting it easy.”

The pair of them were flying above the dusty wastes, as the ground was too fragile for any kind of rapid movement. The only thing aboveground that resembled a landmark was the central plateau, a hidden fortress inside the most inhospitable terrain in the known world. The stone was black, crafted from coal that was inured to the mana void through necromantic techniques. Casimir always thought it a little odd that the flammable rock was as receptive to necromantic enchantments as much as plants or old bones were, but it was, so it was what the Soul-Devouring Dragon’s lair was crafted from.

David settled down near a dust pit adjacent to the plateau. “This was the entrance, right?” He asked.

“It was the one we used the first time, yes.” Casimir agreed. “But I’m not going through that again.”

“It was awful.” David said. “You wouldn’t think that dust could be sharp, but this shit proved that wrong.”

“The fucker mixed glass into his entrance pit.” Casimir explained. “He was a dragon, he didn’t care.” He shrugged. “We cleared it out on the second go around, but they probably refilled it.”

“So where are we going inside then, if you’re so smart?” David said sarcastically.

Casimir pointed upwards. “There’s a freight entrance midway up the plateau. You’ll need to break it open, but it’s a heck of a lot better than digging through that shit.” They were only able to thoroughly explore the place after killing the dragon, after all. David missed that bit.

“Now you’re speaking my language!” David said, dashing up the wall.

Casimir followed him, and focused his magical senses. “It was this high! Go around!” He shouted. He brought out an incense stick, packed densely with mana, and set it ablaze as they ran around the circumference of the plateau.

“Where is it?” David shouted.

“Shut up! I’m trying to concentrate!” He shouted back. He paid close attention to the trail of fire mana he was leaving, the smoke freezing into dust while being drawn into the coal walls. He listened carefully to the flickering light and crackling sounds of the mana as it was absorbed by the ritual. After moving around three-fifths of the way around, his mana senses picked up the telltale sound of the fire mana being moved around something. “There!” Casimir said, turning around instantly with some force magic and going to the right spot. “David! It’s right here!”

“Took you long enough!” He shouted back. Unslinging his staff, he jabbed it at the spot Casimir was pointing at, creating a focused and directed explosion of force on the designated spot. The hidden door exploded inward, revealing exactly what Casimir expected: a bunch of random crates that were going to slowly rot and turn into dust now that they broke containment.

David’s eyes lit up. “Loot! I knew this place had to have loot.”

Casimir chuckled. “Never change.”