The tricky new enchantment was good enough for the System. He felt himself lifted up again to contemplate the new powers he might get.

[

Congratulations on your fourth level of Mage! Select a feat as your reward.

-Updraft Mastery: Maintain an upward wind spell efficiently, at half the Mana.

-Scroll Glyph: Create a symbolic, wordless drawing that conveys detailed instructions regarding a spell.

-Magic Analyst: More easily gain skills from the study of others' magic.

]

Updraft, eh? Selen and many magically inclined Aves had that one. The System certainly knew his interest in flight. But he couldn't rely on it to run an aircraft or even as much of an emergency spell, since it was really more of an "easier flight for birds" power. Scroll Glyph was presumably what Zovvah had used on him to help explain a light spell, and Vonn had found it unnerving due to being surprised by it. The light barrier spell was a good one, though, tuned for strength beyond the way that seemed most obvious. He supposed if he were going to spread the knowledge of magic he should get that one -- and run headlong into the existing magic trainers who guarded their secrets. At best he could work with Ralator and hand out bits of super-charged learning under his protection. Spells without the theory behind them. As with the Engineer version he'd used before, the feat had limits too, like not being mass-produced and only usable once a week. What about the third option, Magic Analyst It was good for continuing to learn for himself, but he was already doing that well enough.

So for the first time he wasn't thrilled by any of the choices. What did he want to accomplish? He had trained this season to be better at magic because he wanted to support Tazo's big project, but he was also stalling. He wasn't ready to try for Engineer 7 yet and figured he could scrounge up some way to hit Mage 4 this season and Mage 5 in the fall before moving on. Stalling was a lame way to think of his advancement, though, and it had gotten him lame options.

He pushed the decision aside for the moment. As for stats, he had been training in a similar way to something Selen had done. Stay up all night until he was miserable and exhausted, but still keeping watch as his friends tried to sneak up on him. He earned a skill called Vigil that way. Then before he'd even gotten a full rest, he trained in the Focus skill, involving intent studying and watching. He took excessively detailed measurements on a steam device Birb was working on, every few minutes, and learned to practice music on his latest mediocre xylophone while ignoring cruel attempts to distract him. (The worst of it was an unexpected visit from the barkeep fox Iveline.) In the end he had these two skills plus Consolation, all with the Sanity stat. He now traded those in, giving him both Stamina and Mana.

It was all sensible progression. The System accepted the skill sacrifice and made him a little more magical and energetic. His thoughts turned right away to the next upgrade, the next achievement. He was an Engineer 6, Mage 4 for now, and was sure he'd get beyond those in time.

As he looked ahead, the System asked him, [Would you like to reserve your choice?] It was a rare offer, and he accepted it for now. There was more to see before he knew how to grow from here.

#

Tazo

Tazo was the most powerful spellcaster in Shieldpoint, but right now she felt dwarfed. Here in this eastern village lived Ralator, whose name struck fear into the Scaled Nation many miles away. A distance that had felt very far, not long ago, but was now just days of flying away. As her brother had said, having new tools and ideas meant seeing more of the world, but also more of its problems.

Right now she was also physically overshadowed by Ralator's Mirror Tower. It had been in use as an experimental smelter concentrating sunlight and magic and heat into a broad stone cauldron. Now at her suggestion, it'd become something more. An orb of crystal, polished and slightly cut, hung in ropes from the tower and two shorter pillars of wood and rock she'd help build. A set of three contraptions supported this greater shard from below: enchanted pipes, conduits that Vonn had personally put together with much grumbling and an aggravating hour of resizing them. He tended to make the work look easy when he was showing off, when really there'd been a few late nights of swearing and scrapping parts behind every major success.

She, of course, never looked that undignified.

Their first effort to poke at this hanging crystal had been so flashy she thought it'd worked right away: a burst of multicolored light, a hum that made her teeth chatter and all her fur stand on end. The research team later determined that a random squirrel had just absorbed several hundred points of misaimed Mana and attained temporary godhood among its kind. It took hours to recover their Mana and patience and to scrub a type of spell residue that the enchantment collected.

But on the third attempt, to say nothing of the near disaster of the second, the converging lines of energy were more orderly. Tazo, Ralator, Selen, and Vonn along with several other spellcasters had managed to work out the imbalance created by their various specialties and power levels, to pump an unreasonable amount of Mana into the shard. A key insight came from Vonn, though he wasn't at all the best at magic theory. They'd been trying to fight the imbalance, but he pointed out that the goal was to destabilize the crystal a certain way and make something new of it. That meant that within rough limits no one was sure of, some chaos and variety to the magic workers was actually a good thing.