Chapter 14 - You're a Wizard Solis

  "Sufficently advanced magic is indistinguishable from normal technology."

  -

  Solis was really glad the siblings didn’t scream. It was only after he had started breaking the dome that he realized he may have gotten overly excited and rushed without explaining anything. He, in fact, did not phase crickets through the ceiling, although he could see how it may have looked that way.

  For the past day, while regenerating mana, he had also been building another dome on top of the first to ensure the crickets that were trying to get in couldn’t run away. The outer layer he built in two halves, one on the side closest to the craig and the other everywhere else. He used [Anchor] set on the crickets to coax them to the proper side and then cut them off with a solidified wall.

  In Solis’s opinion, the coolest part came next. Since he made the outer dome in two hemispheres -- and had now blocked off one of the hemispheres -- he could collapse the one not holding the crickets and use that mana to help construct an inner half dome with a wall to cut off the crickets from him and the kids.

  Then, from there, he just destroyed the original dome and let the trapped crickets fall through.

  Very complicated stuff, but it worked and let him save mana. It also had the added benefit of looking like Solis had just made crickets phase through the wall.

  With the rest of the mana he had just received. Solis sent it into the other half of the dome and began to solidify straight jackets on the crickets.

  “Pretty cool, right?” he asked, a big, stupid grin on his face.

  The siblings both looked excited, ready to burst. He thought that if he broke that center wall that both of them would rush in and just start swinging right away.

  With the amount of mana he had to work with, he couldn’t put all of them in straitjackets, but he got a good twelve of them before he ran out.

  “It’ll be a second until I regain enough to get the rest of them, so let’s talk a bit until then.”

  That seemed to disappoint both siblings, but he knew something that would cheer them both up. He pointed at Ana, “Let’s talk builds. You said you want to kill monsters before, and I asked which type of monsters. You also need to think of how. Pretty much everything can kill monsters in some way. I can’t directly damage anything yet, but I can trap a cricket in a solid box and have it die of oxygen deprivation. There are also crafting skills. Do you care if you're the one killing or just that they die, because someone who can make a good weapon is responsible for every kill it makes? Is that enough for you? These are the questions you need to ask yourself.”

  Hans raised his hand, so Solis motioned for him to speak and pulsed [Translate].

  “I thought there were no crafting skills?”

  Solis made a so-so gesture. “Kind of. The System can’t really beam knowledge into your head as far as we know. It can’t teach you how to blacksmith or fletch or anything like that, but there are skills that are useful in crafting. Back before the teleport, I heard of someone who could enchant weapons, but he did that through some skill loophole bullshit. Basically, just made small traps that detonated on his sword when he hit something. It was pretty cool.”

  The siblings nodded that they understood, so Solis continued. “Back on track. So, pretty much everything can kill monsters, so you need to decide how you want to do that. Up close? Far away? Zip in and out of fights or tank hits? Remember, and this is really, really important, so I need you to hear me. Stats rule now. If either of you puts even a single point in [Body], you will beat me in an armwrestle or any contest of strength every single time. It doesn’t matter that you’re smarter than me, or I’ve worked out every day since I was thirteen. You put that stat there, and you beat me in raw strength when they’re active. Skill plays a role, but only in how you use what you have, not what you have.”

  He turned to Hans, “I’ve talked to your sister a little bit, but what do you want to do? I’ll pulse translate in three, two one.”

  “Sorcerer not wizard!” Hans stammered out in a panic.

  The answer made Solis so confused that he momentarily forgot to kill his skill. “What’s the difference? I really can’t afford to use any more [Translate,] so you’re going to have to play charades or something. Do they have charades in Germany?

  Ana rolled her eyes at that. What followed was several minutes and drawings on paper. Eventually, Ana managed to convey the idea, with negative help from her brother.

  When Solis finally understood what they were saying, he frowned. “I… uhh. The System kind of already works like that, Hans. When I use my [Skills], I don’t actually know what I’m doing. I’m pushing mana through a mold. The mold is sometimes complicated and has different paths that can cause different effects, but it’s still all provided by the System. As you rank up your [Skill], the mold becomes more complicated, but it’s just a mold. When you turn a normal [Skill] into a [Personal Skill] pieces of that mold stay like muscle memory which allow people to use them without an [Enhancment Point]. I have no personal skills yet, so I’m basically a sorcerer as well. Just not combat focused.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Ana was halfway to asking how Solis had managed to kill any monsters then, but saw the gun laid across his lap and made the obvious deduction. You didn’t need magic to kill a cricket if you could blow its brains out.

  “But yeah,” Solis continued, “Magic is sick as hell. What’s your favorite element?”

  Hans began making wavy hand motions in the air.

  “Water?”

  Hans shook his head.

  “Uhh air?”

  Another shake.

  “Fire?”

  A nod.

  “Oh, you’re going to fucking love firebolt. Tell you what, hang out a little longer and we’ll kill these crickets and see if that’s enough for a level up or two.”

  —

  It turned out that the crickets were not worth 45 exp. They were worth around 450 each if they weren’t shared. So, in total, the siblings only had to kill 13 of the twenty-two crickets that were trapped. They had wanted to kill all of them, but Solis held them back, since the others would probably also benefit from EXP.

  “We’ll start with you Hans. Today you’re going to learn how to shoot fire out of your fingers.”

  The kids did indeed love the [Firebolt] spell. Ana still had more to think about, but Hans had spent the first second he bought the skill hurling a firebolt at a cricket. It hit dead center on its underside, sending the creature hopping back in fright with a deafening chirp. It then got up as if nothing had happened and continued crawling.

  Disappointed that he didn’t one-shot a level nine monster at level 4 with a rank 1 skill, the boy began waiting for his mana to refill. It’d take the better part of an hour for him to gain the 10 mana needed to cast the spell, which he’d quickly do, trying to hit a target on the other end of the dome. Hans failed more than he succeeded, hell, he even admitted to his sister that he hadn’t even been aiming for the original cricket he had hit, but one several feet away, and it was just luck he had hit anything.

  Ana, for her part, was skeptical until she saw the next four of her brother's shots go wide, where she promptly laughed at him, stood up, and walked back through the crack.

  “Man,” Solis chuckled after it was just him and Hans, “tough crowd eh?”

  Hans just huffed and sat on the ground, frustration mounting. This wasn’t what he had expected. He had expected what -- he didn’t know -- immediate competence? The mana was also so little. Even in the [Nomial] rank zone, where the mana charge rate was much higher, there was a limit to how fast he could cast the spell, and so a limit to how useful his actual practice would be.

  The boy watched Solis stand up and brush non-existent dust off his lap, something the older boy did often for some reason. He then produced a rubber ball from his pack and gently tossed it through the air in a soft arc towards Hans. Hans caught it, with a small start.

  “What was that for!” the boy said, more startled and confused than upset.

  “Still can’t hear you kid,” Solis said back. He stepped towards the wall, and a moment later, a small stone outcropping resembling a target appeared where his palm had been. Stepping several feet away, the older boy waved Hans over.

  “You see that target?” he asked. “If you don't, we have bigger problems than your aim.”

  Hans nodded, and Solis pointed at the bullseye.

  “Good, throw the ball and hit the bullseye.”

  Hans did as Solis asked. He took aim, and like an uncoordinated baseball pitcher, he lobbed the ball. It went wide, hitting too high and too far to the left before bouncing off the wall and rolling back to Hans' feet.

  The boy picked up the ball and raised an eyebrow towards Solis, who just smiled. “Course you can’t hit a target with your spell. You can’t even hit it with your arm, and you’ve had that all your life.”

  With a blank look, Hans held out the ball with the obvious, unspoken message attached of, ‘Well if it’s so easy you do it.’

  Solis shook his head, “I don’t have any projectile spells. That’s not a skill I need, but it is one you do.”

  Hans opened his mouth to say something, but stopped not only because Solis wouldn’t be able to understand, but also by the fact that Solis just continued talking. “Before you start complaining, it’s a good spell. I knew someone who took it and we worked out some of its tricks.”

  Hans tilted his head, exaggerating the motion into a question to get his intent across clearer.

  “Right now, you’re shooting out your mana, and you’re doing that out of your hand area. You’re doing that very vaguely too, so even when your hand is pointed in the right direction -- which it’s not often by the way so keep throwing that ball -- the energy is unfocused and so has a lot of variance. But no one said that’s how you have to cast it. The spells are a mold, but still what you put in affects what you get out.”

  Hans blinked slowly. He got … some of that. About half, to be honest, but he could fill in the rest. Despite Solis' declaration that he wasn’t a wizard, he sure did wizard shit.

  Talking more at Hans than to him, Solis continued, “Try focusing the spell and mana on a specific area, like a finger, or a knuckle. The palm would work, but it’s trickier.”

  Hans held up ten fingers, pointed to himself, and held up seven fingers. ‘I don’t have the mana,’ he tried to convey. Solis nodded and sighed, “Anyways, try it out when you can, also, you can shoot the firebolt -- most spells actually -- from anywhere, not just your hands. That’s also good practice.”

  That got a return grin from the younger boy; he thought of Cyclops from the X-Men, and that thought spread like wildfire. Aiming wasn’t easy, but if all he had to do was look and then shoot from his eye balls… His leg started bouncing, and he eyed the target, his mana slowly ticking up.

  The instant he hit ten mana, he activated the spell. He felt its pull, searched for and found what felt like a mold. It was an instinctual thing that would flicker in and out of his mana pathways while his skill was in the halfway holding point between activation and firing. He moved it up to his eyes, focused on the bullseye, and pushed all ten points of mana into the spell.

  An iris-thin beam shot out, moving just as fast as a bullet and struck the exact spot Hans had been staring at. His face was flushed with heat, his sight momentarily covered by smoke, but he was unburned. Stumbling more than running, he reached the target just to confirm what he already knew. Dead center. Dead fucking center!

  Hans let out a whooping cheer. He raised both arms in triumph and roared his victory against the stationary rock, and the notification a moment later made him go speechless

  “Okay Ana,” Solis clapped. “You’re up next.”