Chronicles of the True Wizard

Once it had been completely obliterated by Felix's maul, Felix decided he was finished with the room. He quickly checked him map for the next nearest red room and headed over there. He managed to run all the way there, thought it was only half an hour away.

This room was much more mundane. Looking inside it looked similar to the previous red room, however, upon testing the tiles the trap was much simpler. It was a pit trap, the tile would fall and underneath was a pit a few meters deep.

Lame.

Felix checked 10 different red rooms before deciding to head back. There were 3 magic trap rooms that he retrieved the batteries from. In total, he managed to snag himself 25 batteries from the rooms.

Great now if only I could do anything with mana.

Felix headed back to the rest room. Looking at his map he only had 3 more red rooms to check before he could leave the dungeon satisfied. Which meant 1 more day to figure out how to cast a spell to defend himself outside.

Felix quickly ran through his bodyweight circuit and filled his belly, storing the extra food in his inventory. Then he retrieved all the mana batteries and spaced them out on the now empty table. He filled his canteens and began his mana practice. He had decided at this point to add mana practice of some kind to his nightly routine right after working out. He thought about practicing his mana during his workout, but he wasn't quite comfortable enough to try that out yet.

By the time Felix's energy was completely filled, as it appeared he could meditate instead of sleep, Felix had managed to keep three different threads active outside his body for a whole minute before they dissipated.

Felix decided to go check out the last 3 red rooms before finally sitting down and figuring out how to cast a spell. As he ran through the corridors he decided to try and hold the threads outside his body while he ran. He checked all three remaining red rooms only finding mundane spike, blade and pit traps. He ran all the way back to the rest room, only mildly annoyed at wasting his time.

By the time he got back he had managed to keep five threads active while running.

That's a really good sign, if running had been a serious distraction, casting spells in the middle of combat would have been impossible.

Felix sat down once again and this time summoned only a single thread. He mentally pulled up the memory of the Mana Bolt spell form he manually filed away earlier in his library. He set it to the side and tried to shape his thread like the spell form. After only a few hours he got close. The thread was in the exact shape, but it wasn't exactly still. The thread appeared to be squirming around as if dancing to the tune of an invisible wind.

After many hours, Felix finally managed to have the thread shape itself exactly like the Mana Bolt spell form. It was completely stable and unmoving and he had even managed to even it out so that it was no thicker in any one part then another.

I am basically a prodigy, only taking dozens of hours to cast the most basic of spells. Now to solve the simple problem of, if I made the shape, why the hell isn't it casting?

Felix spent another hour forming destroying and reforming the spell form with mana threads until he decided to take a food break. He tried creating multiple spell forms but as soon as he tried to create the second, the first one fell apart. He didn't quite have enough focus to hold them both steady and keep them from dissipating.

Felix ate from his inventory and drank from the fountain. He ran and did his daily exercises while forming the Mana Bolt spell form. He managed to form the stable spell form from scratch in just a minute now. Still too long for combat, but much better than the half hour it had taken him initially. He thought about trying the Fire Bolt spell form but decided if something went wrong, he was less likely to kill himself with the Mana Bolt.

With no better ideas in mind, Felix pulled out and read the Mana Bolt spell book again.

Welcome to the multiverse. To cast a spell, simply shape your mana into the spell form listed on the next page. Once complete add enough mana and the spell will cast. Don't point it at yourself!

How the hell did I miss that before? Was this always there?

Felix felt the sudden urge to smack himself. He groaned and formed the spell from a mana thread then pointed it to the side. Finally, he carefully pushed mana as best he could through the thread and into the spell form. As soon as he did the spell form, where it was connected to him, inflated and popped while his mana pool on his status sheet went down. He could even feel the mana in his body slightly deplete. He checked and confirmed that he had consumed twelve mana points.

He formed the Mana Bolt spell from mana threads again and made sure it was stable. This time he held on as tightly as he could to every part of the spell form to make sure it didn't inflate and pop again. He wanted the mana to spread itself evenly throughout the spell form, at least that was his theory. He slowly pushed mana as close to a single point as he could get through the thread. He made sure it spread itself evenly then he pushed another point of mana. He lost hold of it at 7 points and it popped again. He tried again and managed to get to 8 points this time.

He repeated this process, making sure to point the spell perpendicular to himself as he wasn't sure which end it would fire from he could currently only form the spell form a short distance from his body. Finally, after using up over half of his mana pool, Felix saw a small white dart in size and shape with a slightly blue trail shoot out of the spell form to his right.

Ha. That was awesome. Also tedious. I am happy I finally got here, but I also know I'm pretty stubborn. How are casters surviving in the tutorial if it takes days of practice to cast the most basic starting spell? Even then, it takes me three minutes to fire a simple Mana Bolt. Maybe I just suck at this. Even if I do, it's magic, it's cool and I love it. I'm definitely not gonna stop practicing, even if I do suck ass at this whole thing.

Felix practiced for a little over an hour managing to point the spell forwards every time and got the entire cast down to just over a minute. The longest part, taking up easily 90% of the time, was forming the spell with the thread. Pushing mana into it was fairly quick once he got the hang of holding it stable.

Referring back to the spell form in the book, Felix then spent an hour refining the shape of the spell form he created. He decided to check again on a whim, and noticed that the spell form in the book was not even in thickness, there were thinner and thicker parts. He had initially practiced forming it with a uniform thickness but that was wrong. The practice doing so, even if it was wrong, was still very useful though.

Modifying the spell form Felix managed to get the cost for casting the spell down to just 7 mana which was less than half of the 15 mana it took for his first cast. The effect of the spell didn't even appear to be any lesser. It seems like Felix had been wasting mana with some part of the spell form that didn't need as much mana before.

Maybe it was the visual effects or something.

Satisfied he had a decent handle on casting Mana Bolt, he decided that he needed to test the effects of the spell. However, the only way he had to test the damage was to shoot himself.

Not trying that anytime soon. I guess I can shoot it at the water in the fountain and see what happens. Then I can try it on the fox meat from the body. I don't trust my amateur skinning abilities enough to eat it anyways.

Walking over to the fountain, Felix readied and fired a Mana Bolt into the water. The bolt shot through the air struck the water and passed through right to the bottom of the fountain. The splash the bolt made was minimal and there was no perceptible damage on the bottom of the fountain either.

The lack of a splash might just be the shape of the spell, and the fountain is probably pretty durable. I hope.

Felix pulled out the skinned fox carcass and placed it on the table. Stepping back a few feet he fired a Mana Bolt at it. He missed. He stepped forwards a few feet and fired again. This time, he managed to hit it. He walked over to the table and inspected the carcass finding a small hole in the flesh penetrating almost the length of his finger.

Okay I need to work on my aim. This spell does seem capable of doing damage, to foxes at least. Not sure about anyone wearing full plate armor. For that I would probably need something that doesn't rely on penetration, maybe something with a little… fire?

Felix managed to construct the Fire Bolt spell form on his first try. It was somewhat similar to Mana Bolt, which helped a lot. This time he paid special attention to the thickness of the lines throughout the spell form so he didn't blow his entire mana pool. Felix knew, from the number of times the trap could trigger before depleting the mana batteries, that the spell should cost about ten mana.

He knew which direction this one faced as the engraving pointed outwards so he didn't have to test it. He slowly pushed five mana in, then proceeded with a little more bringing it to eight, then to ten. It still didn't cast. He slowly added mana until finally, at fourteen mana, a Fire Bolt shot through the air.

This time, a small ball of fire shot out of Felix's spell. He managed to get a good look at it as it formed in front of him. In comparison to the Mana Bolt, the Fire Bolt was more a ball and less a dart. It was almost double the volume and it traveled much slower. It was still fast, but it was much less reminiscent of a bullet, which the Mana Bolt had been.

He figured this was probably due to the thickness of one of the lines in the spell form, but he wasn't going to compare and modify either of them now. It still took a whole minute to cast Mana Bolt with abysmal aim and almost 2 minutes to cast Fire Bolt. Most of the difference in time was because of his familiarity with the Mana Bolt spell form. If he just cast the Fire Bolt a few times, he could probably get it down to a minute or so as well.

At this point Felix decided to try exercising while he cast the spell at the wall. He needed to get his exercise routine in and it would be good practice if he needed to defend himself once he left. He also decided to alternate between the two spells so he could do so outside if he needed a specific spell. Felix did his pushups and almost burned his hand before figuring out how to aim somewhere he wasn't looking. When he was done he looked up at a bunch of random scorch marks on the wall in front of him. His aim while not looking was, unsurprisingly, far worse. The other exercises proved less difficult.

By the time he started his run, his aim was less dangerous to anyone around him and he was fairly confident he could hit a still target about a meter across from 5 meters away. So still useless in combat. Adjusting to aiming while running took much less time than Felix expected, though it might be because his aim was so bad, it couldn't have been much worse.

His cast time however, had decreased significantly. He managed to get Mana Bolt down to just thirty seconds while Fire Bolt lagged behind at just forty. The biggest thing he needed to fix at this point was his aim. Felix picked up the batteries from the table which were all full by now and headed to the first red room he had found.

There he positioned himself on the left end of the room and aimed at the engraving with Fire Bolt with the obliterated tiles between him and the target. This was the first time he had completely depleted his mana, and it sucked. It felt like he had drained his body of fluids and he was a husk but once again the feeling was less physical and instead originated from somewhere else inside of him. Fortunately he had Mana Batteries to replenish himself, unfortunately he had no idea how.

After fumbling around with the batteries for a few minutes, he figured it out. It was pretty intuitive really, he felt the mana inside the battery and pulled it out. The part he had trouble with was pushing it into himself efficiently. He started with a small amount and got about half of it inside of himself while the rest just dissipated. He found that he had to purposefully direct it into his body then to his torso before he could let it go.

Once it started though, it was pretty fast and the rest of the mana would follow suit. It took a little effort initially to direct it then he could mostly just generally pull on the mana in the battery and it would guide itself to his torso. It reminded him of water cohesion, once it had a path, it just followed it.

With his mana pool replenished he continued to fire at the engraving. After about an hour, he moved one row down to the next engraving. He left all the mana batteries he had expended on the floor so they could recharge as he went.

At the fifth row of tiles, all of his shots landed within six inches of the engraving. He took a break for a meal from his inventory and collected the batteries that had filled themselves from the first row of tiles in the room. He continued all the way to the last engraving where he managed to get all of his shots within three inches of the engraving. A six inch diameter was decent enough on a still target. . . . . .