Akevorax almost bashed his head against the chilly floor as once more the words of a spell simply did not make sense. Not literally though, he translated the Draconis easily enough to grasp their meanings, but it was actually understanding what that spell produced which left him stumped. On top of this, he had to consider the interaction such words had with the dimension, providing mental feedback which interacted two-fold.

This secondary feedback to the magical dimension came extremely easy to him since Mala sat him through days of mathematics, specifically learning to calculate and predict fluctuations produced by a spell.

But now he considered it a cruel, twisted joke that great languages actually expected their users to fully calculate what effect they’d have on the interacted dimension. One or two word spells hardly affected things besides producing a ripple with precise oscillations, so long as the harmonics were known, it was easy to find the interaction. Then came more words, and with it even more frequencies to remember, plug into equations, and then manually adjust parameters according to changes in that coloured dimension!

It gave him two seconds to complete a process asking for over five!

However, this unreasonable portion came down to him once more… Most dragons resolved the problem long ago by creating buildings with dedicated arrays for calculations. He couldn’t really depend on such methods at the moment.

And to him, this was the easy half of the problem!

The hard part came in the words themselves. A process he mentioned as visualisation but never really explained, it’d been just over 12 hours since the wave of soul form attacks, but besides memorising a two-word spell, he utterly failed in every regard. Predictably, he chose a combination which translated to ‘Ice Sword’. In a sub-realm like this, he noticed early on that the red dimension appeared rather faded, like a layer of cloudy glass covered it, making interactions with it exceptionally hard.

This was just an illusory appearance brought on by the extremely near blue dimension, but that distance actually existed. It hadn’t affected the phoenix flame which triumphed over this sub-realm’s natural state, but lesser flames struggled to survive without sufficient infusions of mana.

As for the words in question, Ice Sword did… Several things.

When one thinks of a literal ice sword, they imagine a real blade created of either clear ice, cloudy ice, or even a light blue yet transparent ice. A direct visualisation which would create the literal object… But then it’d reveal an extraordinarily weak structure as ice lacks the physical properties to support a slim, bladed object. Furthermore, he realised that using this representation actually required rather precise calculations of the dimension to even create such a thing.

This semi-failure was grouped under the term ‘Imperfect visualisation’. A common problem most suffered through when learning great languages.

Now, Ice Sword wasn’t the hardest thing ever to visualise, but the problem came in the form of current limitations. His damaged state meant a single cast worsened his condition, and multiple in a short time frame resulted in significant clusters of breakdown, all in all limiting his speed to an attempt every hour.

And you don’t need to be a genius to know that 12 attempts really isn’t that many. Especially if incorrect calculations failed half of those…

“It's not going well?” Adret asked from the side as his bitter face revealed everything, although just his last attempt 20 minutes ago proved that clearly enough.

He gave a despairing look before ending with a sigh. Akevorax reminded himself to keep things vague and replied, “Not in the slightest, for some reason I can’t find a Perfect visualisation. Can sub-realm laws influence how ideal it is?”

“The books say that’s possible… But in this place, wouldn’t any Imperfect visualisation work just as well as Perfect ones in the universe?” Adret’s tone shifted from confirmation to questioning as she became less sure herself. They both read the same books, so he couldn’t possibly know more than her here.

Unless the Nexus stepped in…

[That’s not how it works. It only applies to unfinished laws, in which cases anything can happen. But usually you need a sweet-spot of half-finished laws]

That didn’t really explain anything, but it answered his question at least, so a minor win for him!

Akevorax had considered other two-word combinations as well, rather than stubbornly sticking with this one. Mind Bomb, Soul Strike, Sharp Wind, Lightning Arc, Frost Touch, Light Ray, Space Slash, and so many more which all seemed like viable options. Especially Sharp Wind and Frost Touch, both in which he already grasped a single word of… But he knew to be reasonable only for a moment.

This was nothing like the old days where just memorisation alone got him closer. Back then, adding another word usually just transformed the end of the previous one, in rare cases, the start of the next changed too.

But Sharp Wind, and Wind, spoke of two different things. And what the hell were ‘sharp winds’ if the latter already cut through master tier objects given enough energy?

He hadn’t even touched the word Mana yet for a similar reason. A fault that crippled his array studies in the meantime because it created a concentrated spell with just one word, and that magical construct acted as an ink for most great runes. This could be seen in how any array above the upper end of the master tier required these runes to work efficiently… Or you ended with mountain-sized abominations which took years to craft in a mental space. In retrospect, that giant array was a poorly-made knee-jerk reaction to ensure some way out against unwinnable threats.

When this round of bothersome thoughts came to an end, and he readied himself to stare at the words ‘Ice Blade’ for another half hour, a translucent barrier formed a wide dome all around them.

At a range of 200 metres from them, Adret advantageously took time to check and identify her enemies. At first she observed with her bare senses, most of these useless against such creatures, with the exception of her sensitivity to psychic elements and its dimension. However, only after she finished a whole round with this sense did she use half a minute to cast an Adept true spell, making a grey coat spread over her eyes to distort how she saw the world.

Blurry grey blobs all around the barrier now appeared with stronger soul forms like fireflies. Far more confident in this sight, she said, “I see 16 more gold tiers, and hundreds of the weaker ones. Almost all of them are stunned by the barrier for now.”

“Yes… Were you waiting for me to help again?” he asked teasingly.

Adret shook her head, looking away with a slight embarrassment, before flying off to deal with the masses on her own. Either silver threads obliterated them with raw power, or she released trivial wind spells to replicate the effects. Any elemental damage, while resisted, performed well enough against these blobs of soul power. Akevorax removed the barrier with almost all the soul forms dead and each array entered a recharge period, the information for which appeared in his mind when asked for.

In the battle's aftermath, Adret returned in wonder at the same things concerning him. Eventually inquiring, “It was about the same as last time, but why did they attack again so soon? There’s clearly not many or they’d have swarmed us from the very start.”

“Be prepared for larger attacks after this… Hopefully there’s nothing above mithril tier,” he aimlessly gazed out into the endless wasteland of ice and rain. Adret couldn’t last all that long in the liquid oxygen, her wings froze solid in less than a minute, meanwhile the solid version beneath didn’t help in that regard when it came to sleep. Any extensive combat threatened her life, and if a master tier occupied him, then it wasn’t hard for a mithril tier to keep her out there.

The threat ended just like that, for now.

And that meant Akevorax returned to almost bashing his head against the ground as Ice Sword failed once more.

He changed his thoughts for these attempts, rather than focusing on the end result, he looked at the process itself. Whether it was creating a sword of ice, or simply manifesting a slash made by that sword, neither of them aligned with any of the possible Perfect visualisations.

“Should Ice Sword be an ice element spell primarily, or should it focus on the application of swords?” He muttered to himself quietly, assuming that Adret in her mental space couldn’t hear these thoughts.

But she hadn’t actually entered yet and confusedly replied, “Why would you want a spell which actually made a sword? Did you learn to use one?”

He paused for a few seconds to think it through, but her response hardly solved his problem. Akevorax’s voice instead grew more uncertain as he said, “That’s a good point, and making swords should always be Imperfect then. Maybe the words clash? Even though Ice Sword is a recommended starting point…”

She didn’t have any way to respond further, the topic wasn’t one that could be discussed so easily, but her question also pointed out flaws with his focus on the second word, Sword.

Whenever he considered the actions of the Ice Sword, it always concentrated on his visualisation of a single move. In effect the spell completely failed to work because at no point was a ‘sword’ ever being used properly. Which meant that his current methodology might entirely depend on the caster knowing how a sword worked, and adequately imagining a more streamlined attack.

One basic slash couldn’t possibly replicate the full movements in a technique, just as all sorts of fighting depended on aspects beyond throwing punches.

“Well that was a waste of 12 hours… And this is meant to be easy still,” he whined momentarily but still went right back to creating a new visualisation. At least now he wasn’t walking down roads completely unknown to him, or directly off the path and down a cliff. Figuring out Ice came down to multiple ideas, but he considered it from a conceptual angle first as the physical seemed too reductive.

Ice implied coldness, and it was cold to the touch, but who looks at a frozen lake and instinctively thinks ‘cold’?

Water, a naturally liquid substance, flowed freely and morphed to fill any container. Many even considered it the ‘essence of life’ as a fundamental material to countless creatures, even if things like himself no longer required such a thing to live. But what differentiated water and ice… were precisely just their states.

Not as liquid or solid, but simply how one may move while the other is stuck. When a frozen lake appeared, it described what many saw in such simple terms! Not a cold lake, but something frozen.

Ice revealed a fundamentally halted world, one agreeably driven by a lack of heat, but it was specifically this trapped water which severely changed so much about the universe.

In that case, it was no wonder why his attempts to cast Ice failed over and over.

The physical also made sense, describing how lowered energy eventually settled the active molecules until the forces between them arranged them into a delicate, but weak, crystal regime. He knew all this, it was hardly complicated, and yet not once had he found a way to actually visualise this process. To imagine the neatly lined-up water molecules? How about their frigid state as minimised oscillations?

Conceptual visualisations worked best simply because metaphors contained more emotion. And emotions directly led to a greater connection!

Furthermore, this now made Ice Sword a blatantly easy spell. It was not an attack composed or mixed with ice, but rather one which directly led to a frozen target.

If Frost sought to sap away all heat; Ice sought to trap everything!

A great weight lifted on him as the stream of incorrect thoughts for the past day finally ended, all that remained was testing, for which he felt extremely confident. Only to then sigh and say aloud, “No reason they’re always stuck in their caves. How do they ever have time outside if it takes so long to understand singular words?” Mentioning the cornem and supreme tier dragons who took peeks outside their caves on occasion, but almost never left.

Thinking about it, Sages and Great Sages spent almost all their time researching too… He had to get better at this process.

“Hextole Amsana,” he spoke the two words once more, for the 14th time, and visualised no blade or weapon, but a strike with one target and a single aim. Not to freeze them into a statue, or create a leeching cold which hampered their ability, but rather solely stopped them in a moving, active world. A slash, cut, stab, riposte, feint, anything, so long as it stole all movement.

He didn’t know how to fight with a sword, but he could identify some moves and knew how to block or avoid others, blindly using any such move for this spell didn’t change anything.

If a sword could do it, then why make a fuss?

As the visualisation completed, he saw the field of blue all around him as well as an extremely dark spot around the location occupied by his spell. The dimension itself hardly changed as ice elements amassed in this spot, proof of its great stability here, and he easily imparted some calculations which described the effects imposed by that released blue mass.

Back in the sub-realm, that blue spot was in fact a ball of tightly packed golden rings about six inches across, and mana from his body flooded into it at incredible rates. Even though just one word higher, this tiny change increased the mana cost by 50%, a small portion of his current stores, but a wild increase for anyone.

Not that he really cared with attention purely kept within the stable blue dimension, his spell reached its limit.

The mass of blue vibrated, shaken violently for a moment, and then it released…

Spheres of blue emanated outwards, the dense, darker colour radiating outward in pulses at incredible speeds. Every single one moved with concentrations and speeds as expected, with a frequency not too much lower than he fed to the dimension.

And in reality, the orb of golden rings collapsed in on itself. Every part condensed to an infinitely small point before completely vanishing!

At first, nothing apparently changed, the air around them flustered and the patter of rain a noisy blanket, a torrent of ice elements appeared easily to both. It cut across the air, leaving a wide arc of movement as the flow dispersed to nothingness, but left obvious effects. An arc of droplets stood out amongst the rain, their movements downwards noticeably slowed all as more from above smashed into them.

Every collision actually sped up the formally stuck droplets, and with sufficient time they too splashed against the ground.

It wasn’t like he could move and celebrate though. That completed one Perfect visualisation, and he could think of many useful words to learn. The process only just began.