The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith (22 page)

Searching through my pack,
it was easy to locate the book, and a pop up window told me it would
take forty-five minutes to finish.
I guess
that makes it a bit more advanced than the other one?

Laying back, I placed my
hands and the book behind my head like a pillow and stared up at the
sky.
Well, I’ve upgraded Denise’s
weapon, but I wonder if I’ll be able to get something for
myself in the next town? Oh, speaking of… I wanted to see if I
could make any new spells with my rune.

Smiling at the thought, I
sat up, wondering what kind of spell I should make.
A
rune to alter something’s nature. I know that it can make one
spell into another, but.. maybe I can use it on items too?

Dariel did suggest I work
on transmutation magic first… though I doubt this is what she
had in mind.
Okay… I’ve got the
rewrite rune, but what else do I need for this spell? I could use an
item rune and be straightforward, but… I want to make sure
it’ll work.
Also, there was a different
rune for ‘item’ depending on the type of item.

Maybe I could use a
property rune? No.. that rune refers to magical properties, not
literal property. Same thing with possession. I don’t have to
make a new rune just to mean all items in general do I?
I opened up my talent window, and selected Magical Knowledge. If
there was a rune I needed, I’d find it in here.

Something that means
‘that which belongs to me’. No.. I don’t even need
that! The inanimate rune, that should work! I wasn’t going to
try rewriting living creatures anyways so it’s fine.

I suspected that the
reason my Spell Knowledge didn’t activate was because the spell
I was creating was something that the system hadn’t encountered
yet, so I had to figure it out on my own. Still, there was a glint in
my eyes as I thought of a way to test this spell.
Ohh..
if this works…

Reaching into my bag, I
wrapped my hand around a small object and set it on the ground in
front of me, still keeping my spare hand on the nature magic book at
all times.
Okay, I’m not rewriting any
magical properties this time, but I might use the spell like that in
the future. So the runes I want are rewrite inanimate properties.

Putting my hand over the
object, I focused on each rune in turn. I was really hoping that this
would work, because if it did that would be amazing. However…
after pouring half of my mana into the spell, I didn’t get any
results.
Maybe the ordering is wrong?

Like grammar in a
sentence, the order that you place runes in for a spell is vital. So,
maybe I had to designate the target of the rewrite before the rewrite
rune? Trying that, I focused the inanimate rune on the object below
my hand, then properties, and as I did I got a more detailed feel of
the object. Finally, when I slipped in the rewrite rune, I heard the
ding of multiple windows opening.

Seeing the second window,
and the fields I could rewrite, I grinned. “Spell name,
Customize.”

Then, I got to work on my
10 gild coin. When I altered the material, the spell consumed a bit
of the ground beneath the coin to make up for the difference in mass.
But what was left was a platinum 10x coin, or a 10,000 gild coin.
“This… this spell is a cheat.”

“
Hmm? What spell?”
Denise slowly sat up across from me at the other side of the camp,
rubbing her eyes. “You make something?”

“
Yeah… and
this time… we’re never telling anyone about it.”

“
Okay.. why?”

“
Come here.” I
smiled to her, and she approached. When I removed my hand from the
coin, which was worth 100 gold coins, her eyes grew wide as saucers.

“
Is… is that?
Where did you get it..”

“
My new spell…
It let me turn a 10 gild coin into that.”

Denise slowly turned her
head to look at me. “We are
never
speaking of this. We will use it, hell yes, but we are
never
speaking of it.”

I couldn’t help but
laugh. “Agreed. I guess that takes care of our need for funds
for a while?”

“
Well, let me check
something first…” She picked up the coin, and I suddenly
felt my fortune slip away. She tested its weight, tried bending it,
and then grinned up to me. “It’s real.. What else can you
do with that spell?”

“
Well.. let’s
find out? Got your old bow still? Oh, and an arrow too. I want to see
what this can really do.”

Neither weapon had magical
properties, but when I cast the customize spell, I was presented with
their item name, materials, their attack values, and their
durability. But even with the damage on a slider, I couldn’t
improve her old bow to the same level as her new one. “Looks
like there is a limit. I can increase the quality of the wood and the
drawstring, and thus increase its damage. But, since the design of
the bow itself was inferior to the elven one, I can’t make this
bow that strong.”

Of course, I only admitted
this after I made a dozen arrows into silver arrows, and decorated
the bow with silver engravings. With the rapid usage of the spells, I
didn’t even notice that the book was almost done. I was more
preoccupied with other messages.

However, I didn’t
even have time to appreciate that, because in the next instant the
book in my hand was finished, which I had completely forgotten about.
“Fuck..!” I quickly brought my hand up to my head as the
information flowed in. Unlike the summoning book, which was a subject
I had already studied, there was no immediate sense of familiarity.
It felt like the information was carving out its space within my
head, completely disregarding what parts of my brain it scooped out
in the process. Just as I had before, I fell back to the ground, and
my eyes closed.

“
Jin..? Jin!”
I could hear Denise shouting for me, and for some reason my cheeks
felt red… and swollen. How long had she been slapping me?!

“
I’m awake.”
I blurted out, though honestly it hurt to talk thanks to the new
condition of my face. However, I had the distinct impression it would
hurt more not to. Opening my eyes, I indeed saw that Denise had
raised her arm for another strike.

“
Oh thank god, you
just passed out. Don’t tell me you used that reading skill
again?” Her eyes were watery, she must have been pretty
worried.

“
Sorry, I didn’t
think you’d be up by now, and I completely forgot about the
book when I was working on that spell..”

“
Ok… I don’t
like it, though. Don’t be so reckless, okay?”

“
Says the woman who
just turned my face fifty shades of ouch.” That got a laugh out
of her, and I sat up, noticing for the first time windows that had
appeared. Of course, these were not the kind of windows I liked.
These were windows that made my eye go twitchy.

So… even though
I leveled up twice… I lost those 10 points..
Okay…
okay… not all bad. I didn’t lose anything overall,
though I doubted my earth spells would be as strong now. And being
over level 50 meant it took longer for my talents to level up.

Only after that did I
remember the other windows that had appeared. Quickly, I shot
upright--nearly smacking my head into Denise as I did so-- and
grabbed one of her arrows. From the look on her face, you’d
think I was going to use it on her.

“
Uh.. Jin.. what are
you doing?”

“
Oh, sorry. My spell
improved. Wanted to test it.” I put the arrow down in front of
me, and opened my grimoire to find the spell. “Stone into
silver, iron to gold, become that which you might have been.”
This time, sure enough, there was a new option for Quantity.

From Denise’s
perspective, there must have just been a bright flash after my chant,
and then suddenly ten arrows were sitting where just one had been.
“Yeah… we are so never telling anyone about this spell.
Can you do the same thing to coins?”

Her curiosity piqued my
own, because I tried it on a 10 gild coin. It would be suspicious if
we walked into town with nothing but large coins, so it would be best
if we made the 10x in moderation. And sure enough, I was able to make
a hundred identical coins. I looked over at Denise, and part of me
wondered if the look she was giving me now was how I looked at her
when I thought of her as my personal purse. I decided it was
extremely likely!

“
So.. as long as we
have one of something, we won’t have to worry about buying it
anymore..”

“
Yup. And from the
looks of it, I can repair items as well. So basically, we now have
unlimited funds, and a much reduced need to spend them.”

“
Yeah… you
know, just one or two of those platinum coins would have been enough
to buy the Sleeping Soldier.”

“
Is there a currency
higher than 10x?”

“
No. After that
point, it’s just expensive gems. But this means that you can
buy whatever magic books you want once we hit Coatin.”

“
Yeah. Maybe a
staff, too. I’d like to be armed with more than just a sharp
tongue.” I grinned to Denise, and she shook her head with a
laugh. “By the way, the friend I am meeting there… We
can’t even tell him about this. He is the worst person I know
to keep a secret. If we told him, he’d find some way to make
sure half the continent knew about the spell overnight.”

“
Yeah.. that’d
be bad. What do we say if he asks us how we got so much money?”
She asked, seemingly worried about being exposed.

“
We’ll just
say the truth, we have been helping out whoever we could along our
journey. He doesn’t have to know exactly how much we have. Oh,
and let me see your elven bow. I want to see if I can improve it.”

“
Alright.. just be
careful. That’s a good bow.”

I smirked. “That’s
alright, I’ll be gentle.” I cast the spell again, and
worked the bow’s damage and accuracy. “I’m going to
be increasing the damage quite a bit, but in order to make it
something you can still use, I have to drop the accuracy. You’ll
have to make up for it with your own skill, alright?”

“
Okay..” She
nodded slowly as I made the adjustments. If I raised the stats too
much, then the level requirements increased. So, I prioritized damage
since Denise had excellent accuracy on her own. Once it was done, I
handed it back to her.

“
Alright, give it a
shot..” I pointed up into the sky, where the giant eagles were
just beginning to show themselves for the day. Denise grabbed one of
the arrows I created with my spell, pulled her bowstring back, and
let the arrow fly. Rather than hitting it on its head, like she was
clearly hoping, she struck its wing. However… that didn’t
seem to matter much, because the force the arrow hit with was enough
to completely shred the wing, and send the eagle crashing into the
ground.

“
You were right.”

“
About what?”

“
...That spell is a
cheat.” She slowly smiled to me. Even without landing a
critical, she was able to down a giant eagle with one arrow. Not only
that, but we could freely replace broken arrows now. She fired a
couple more arrows at the downed eagle a good forty meters away to
finish it off, rather than leave it suffering.

“
So.. let’s
see if I can help your armor next.” She nodded quickly, and I
worked on her armor. Since I couldn’t alter the general shape
of an object with this spell, I couldn’t improve it too much. I
could, however, fix all the damage it had taken. “We’ll
get you some better armor once we hit Coatin. As for me… I’ll
see about getting a staff, maybe some other useful items.”

“
Yeah.. I never
thought we’d get enough gild that we could afford magical items
for our journey. Unless, you know, they were weaker than our usual
skill.”

“
I know what you
mean. And that’ll be something else we’ll have to be
careful about. When we get to Coatin I’ll learn enchanting
magic. After that, if people ask how you got a magical item, you can
tell them I gave it to you, okay? It’s not even really lying,
since my spell is funding this.”