The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith (6 page)

The guards seemed
reluctant to let me back into the college, but when I showed them my
silver emblem, they relented and allowed me in. Today’s class
was focusing on the essentials of spellcasting. Namely, the runes,
focus, and something that separated it from basic casting. The
incantation.

“
All spells possess
an incantation. And while it is possible to utilize a spell without
it, the result is vastly inferior to a proper spell. Keep in mind
when you are creating your spell that even those have an incantation
that you need to figure out. Typically, it is based on the runes used
in the spell, or the specific method of casting. It is not unusual
for spells to break this pattern, however. That is why mages often
carry a grimoire with them, recording their spells.”

With this information, I
quickly invested my points into Intelligence again, and opened my
Spell window.

I smiled inwardly. So,
spells could level up as well as Talents. But, my level doesn’t
reflect my spells. In other words, I’ve got to level up my
abilities to match my level or I’ll be the one left behind.

The rest of the class
followed like that, and I gained one more point in Intelligence. When
we got into the practice hall, I made my way to my corner and pulled
out my journal, writing down the chant for the Light spell. “Alright,
let’s give it a shot..” I brought my hands up in front of
me. “Northern stars, grant this traveler safety in the
darkness. Light.” As I spoke, I kept the image I had used the
day before, but it flowed much more easily, and when I opened my
eyes, I saw a perfect sphere of light in front of me, hovering by my
will alone. I also finally noticed that under the red bar at the
corner of my vision was a blue one, and it was slowly declining.

So, that’s my
mana bar. Well, now I know how to monitor it.
I kept the ball in front of me, before floating it around and up into
the air. When my mana was down to the halfway mark, I dismissed the
spell and opened the spell window again.

Okay, so the more I use
a spell, the better I am with it.
I nodded to
myself and just practiced that spell a couple more times before
stopping for the day.

The next few days passed
in a similar manner. On school days, I’d explain to Denise that
I’d be gone for about a day, and she understood. She was a bit
sad to see me go, but knew I’d be coming back when I could. And
every time I came back, she gave me a hug and wanted me to tell her
about my day. Given my life in reality, that was a pretty short
explanation.

During the days in the
game while I was online, I spent my time in the College, and for
about a week I was gradually improving my abilities. But after a
week, we got a new kind of lesson.

“
Alright, kids.
Today we’ll cover the basics of elemental magic. So far, you’ve
all managed to perform rudimentary spellcasting, but now we’re
going to move on to the next level. First of all, I would like
everyone to choose a primary element to focus on. For the list of
elements, see the table in the back of your book.” I opened my
book and looked for the described table. It was written in runes, so
if it weren’t for my Magical Knowledge talent, I wouldn’t
have been able to read it.

Got to be careful here.
No telling how many elements I’ll be able to learn before
graduation, and I need to be able to work well with Denise.
I could pick fire for the damage, but Denise will be pretty good on
that. After some internal debate, I settled on earth magic. Typically
in games, earth magic has the most crowd control, so I can give
Denise the most time to work with her bow.

Having chosen my element,
I waited for the teacher to continue. “Okay. Now, as I call out
the elements, I want everybody that chose it to step outside. You’ll
meet a personal instructor that specializes in your chosen field.
First, Fire.” When she spoke, about half of the class got up
and walked out the door.
Figures, everybody
loves playing with fire.

After that, most of the
elements got only one or two responses, and I ended up being the only
one to rise when Earth was called. Outside, a short man with glasses
too big for his face was waiting for me, dressed in a golden robe.
“Jin, right? Figures I get stuck with the foreigner.” He
adjusted his glasses while appraising me. “Well, let’s
see if the rumors about you lot are true.”

Not wanting to offend him,
I nodded politely. “Thank you for taking care of me, sir. I
hope to learn a lot from you.”

That got a laugh out of
him, “Oh, you’ll learn. Even if I end up having to beat
it into your body. They say your kind don’t really die, so I
don’t have to hold back, do I?” His grin seemed to become
almost sinister.
Why’d I have to get
stuck with the psychopath?

“
I’ll do my
best, sir.”

“
Yes, you will. Now,
follow me.” He walked towards the center of the building,
following the line of students and teachers that were moving to
various specialized rooms. When we got to the spiraling staircase,
most of them were going up, but my teacher took me down instead.
“Best place to train with the earth is within the earth.”
He explained when I didn’t say anything.

When we arrived at the
bottom floor, the stairway opened out to a vast cave, barely lit with
torches every few meters. “Now, your real training can begin.
Until I say you pass, you will be coming here to train instead of
your normal classes. First lesson. The earth is the unmoving force,
which we breathe life to. Simply knowing the runes will not let you
perform an elemental spell. You have to truly understand the forces
you are dealing with.”

Bringing one of his hands
up, he clenched his fist. Immediately, I felt the ground beneath me
rotating, sucking me in as it spun me downwards. Within a moment I
was down to my shoulders in the ground, stuck.

No shit!
I mentally cursed the window and closed it, looking up at the
teacher.
No panicking…

“
Your first job is
to dig yourself out of there. You should know enough that you can
piece together a spell. Eventually, at least.” He grinned and
walked off towards the steps, out of my field of vision. After a
minute I heard him sit down, though it was hard to guess where
exactly.

Okay.. Escaping. That
would be a freedom rune, right?
I focused on
the rune in my head, letting it flow through my body. This was the
first spell I’ve tried aside from Light, but the process should
be similar. Theory never quite equals practice, though, and I went
through all of my mana without any results.

Grumbling, I silently
began hating these messages. So, I waited, breathing deeply and
meditating as my mana gradually refilled. “Okay.. round two…”
He said that I’d need to understand the element. How does one
understand a stone? I tried pushing my energy out into the ground,
but all I got for my trouble was a sharp reduction in mana.

I kept trying this for
hours, tackling it from every angle I could imagine. Lifting myself,
lifting the ground under me, moving the ground away from me, I even
tried to pass through the ground once. Each time I got a failure
message. And each time, I could hear a low chuckle coming from
somewhere behind me. It was obvious my teacher hadn’t left me
alone, and was enjoying the show.

“
Oh, were all those
stories about foreigners a lie? I thought you were a quick study!”

Shaking my head, I tried
to gather my focus again. Think like a rock… think like a
rock… forget everything I’ve learned and just try to
think like a rock. What would a rock think like?
Stubborn?
The ground was definitely being that. Unyielding.
As I thought of this, I noticed that the ground seemed to loosen a
bit, and there was a sharp breath from behind me.
Alright,
I’m onto something… no runes…

Gathering my remaining
mana, I filled it with what I had perceived as ‘earth’.
The stubbornness of a mountain. I tried moving my mana upwards to
have it carry me, but quickly regretted that as I was lowered further
instead, being momentarily buried up to just above my chin.
Wrong
way, wrong way!

Okay, basics learned, I
shifted my mana down, to push myself up rather than pull. As I did, I
gradually began rising up. Unfortunately, I ran out of mana just
after it pushed past my elbows. “Alright… I’m
getting there…” I was breathing a bit heavily from the
effort, but it was worth it.

I sighed, smiling at the
series of popup windows, and opened my character window to spend the
points.

I grinned a bit, breathing
deep before focusing again. Now that I had the spell, it came easily.
Earth Freedom!

The ground split around me
and I shot up to my feet, nearly losing my balance in the process.
But dammit, I passed the test!

“
About time, kid. I
was about to go take a nap.” The instructor spoke, and I
finally remembered he was in the cavern, so I turned to see him.
Somehow, he looked pleased and bored all at the same time. “Now
it gets interesting. Your next lesson is to create your own earth
spell. It can use any runes you are capable of casting, as long as
you can cast it. You can not ask anyone for help for this assignment.
You can use the library, but you can not copy any of the spells from
those books. I’ll be keeping an eye on what you read, so I’ll
know if you steal the spell from somewhere.” His expression
displayed unimaginable levels of smug.

“
Understood, sir.”
I sat down and went over what I’ve learned. He said runes were
usable.. so most elemental spells should need it. Earth Freedom is a
spell that simply moves the earth around the user, so it’s
understandable if it didn’t.

Talents
,
I opened a window, checking if this was a valid screen as well.

Frowning, I pressed
Magical Knowledge, hoping for more of an explanation. To say I got an
answer was an understatement. In a moment, I had reviewed every
lesson we’ve had so far, and a few facts I had gleaned from my
time in the library. Likewise, my mind was filled with an array of
runes, some of which I haven’t even seen yet. All of them had
meanings in my mind, as if they were common sense. Reflexively I
brought a hand up to hold my head at the flood of information.