Save Scumming Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Eight - Getting Gooder

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Eight - Getting Gooder

The next week was... interesting.

First, there was living with Fran. Fortunately, she wasn't insatiable. After that first night, things beca a lot more casual, though even though I was staying at her place, I still felt like I didn't know her all that well.

The woman just didn't open up easily, which was fine. I wasn't looking for a long-term thing, and a part of knew that this was epheral. I'd be reloading, and then everything would be gone.

So yeah, I enjoyed what I could, but was aware of the persistent sense that this was fleeting. Still nice to live in a luxury apartnt though. Every ti I thought I had seen the last fancy thing, I'd discover another.

There were two bathrooms, but that didn't count the fucking sauna. The toilets were smart, and for so reason connected to the internet. So was the fridge, and just about every other appliance. And that was just the stuff in the apartnt, it didn't count the concierge services and the car elevator and the rooftop pool. Shit was top. No wonder the point-one percenters shat all over the rest of the world; they had private golf simulators and helipads. I'd stomp on the proletariat too if I could get that.

The week wasn't spent luxuriating in Fran's apartnt and in her company, however. She had work to do which kept her surprisingly busy. It was a wonder she had ti to go out on occasion to hit up a random dungeon with .

So, most of my ti was spent in training.

Professor Sawyer was surprisingly patient with , even if he pretty consistently gave off the impression that he wanted to be anywhere else and that he wished my IQ wasn't stuck in the single digits.

Dark magic was complex. All magic was, but in the opinion of the professor (who was incredibly biased) Dark was particularly complicated. It didn't lend itself to conceptually simple things. A Fire mage burnt things. Easy. A Dark mage had a wider breath of potential spells, but their effects were often particular and strange. At its core, the magic was good at denying things. That often ant, in gar terms, 'debuffing.'

Spells like Shadow Bolt were tricky. Dark wasn't a magic that was good at physical manifestations, so a kinetic damage spell wasn't sothing that ca natural with the magic.

It was doable, but tricky.

The first couple of days were spent working out a baseline. That ant casting the sa spells over and over again, then letting my magical energy recuperate back to nearly full. That was helped by drinking these atrocious high-energy mixtures. They were a bit like protein shakes, only chalkier. They had flavours like 'strawberry' and 'chocolate.'

The strawberry tasted like expired gummy bears found dipped in rotten at sauce, and the chocolate tasted brown. I wasn't sure how else to describe that. It was bland, and brown, and not good. But damn, it boosted my regen like mad, and that ant more practice ti.

Since I couldn't carve out new spells, the focus was on learning how to manipulate magic post-cast. That was a pretty high-end trick.

The idea was simple enough, but it took so ti for to wrap my head around it anyway.

"What happens when you cast a spell?" Sawyer asked. We were both leaning against so desks in the sa training room. He had his arms crossed and looked a little bored.

"I... take the magical energy in , and I push it through the carved spell sticking out of my core," I said. I could feel the magic in , I could kinda move it, a little, but it was strange and slippery. Squeezing my core, however, was easy.

It was a bit like letting go of my bladder or sothing. Probably not the best analogy, but the sensation was kind of the sa, only I could direct that feeling through one of the carved spell formations jutting out of my core. When that happened, the magic would do stuff and then the spell would be cast.

I didn't know how it worked, I only knew how to work it.

If soone asked how my motorcycle worked, I'd have the sa response. I could make it go fast and I knew where to put the fuel in, but the engine and all that? Might as well be sorcery.

Professor Sawyer, on the other hand, did understand. Or at least, he knew a whole lot more than I did about it. "That's a plebeian response, but it's good enough. What we need to do, based on the criteria we have, is teach you how to change the properties of a spell after it has been cast. I've spent so ti thinking about it, and I see two solution."

Taken from , this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Go on," I said with a gesture for him to continue.

"The first is as I said, we teach you to modify a spell at the ti of its casting." Sawyer frowned, looked around, then moved towards the whiteboard at the end of the room. He tested a marker, then started to draw sothing. It was a complex, squiggly line. I though it was just a scribble at first, but then I recognized that it was straight up the carving formation for Shadow Bolt. Did he morize it?

He circled the space at the end of the spell, right where there was a small sort of 'hook' shaped thing that I think was designed to hold onto the spell as it was cast? I wasn't sure, but the spell could be stalled to cast a little faster or slower.

"This is where the modification would have to be, since we can't change the prior spell carving. The first option, as I was saying, would be to grab onto the fully-ford spell, hold it, and insert modified half-formations into the spell."

He illustrated how to do this by drawing a few strange squiggles near the end, then drawing arrows to where they would be inserted.

"Is that doable?" I asked.

"Yes. But it's complicated. You'll have to learn a few dozen modifiers, and they won't be applicable to every spell you learn in the future, though so might be. Think of it like... music? The carved spell is a scroll piano, playing certain notes in a certain order to create a song. What you're doing now is playing a second song on the remaining keys in accompanint. That sa second song could fit other music as well, as long as the beat and tone is the sa, but it would require so modification to work elsewhere."

"I think I follow," I said. "I play the guitar though, not the piano."

"Hm? I'll... keep that in mind when coming up with analogies on the spot."

"What's the other option?" I asked.

"We give up on all of this," he said, tapping the butt end of the marker on the board. "And imdiately learn how to cast spells without carving them first."

I blinked. "Isn't that a little of what I'm doing with option one?"

"A little is the important part. To continue with the music analogy, this would be learning how to play on a fretless guitar, blindfolded and deaf."

"I think you could actually do that," I said. "But yeah, it would be harder."

"Exactly. I would suggest learning it at so point, even if it's just for small, casual spell effects." He raised a hand and there was a sort of soft pop as a burst of pure black smoke appeared over his fingers.

I tilted my head a little. "A party trick?"

"Not much more than that. But it's a spell, technically. You need good control, however, and practice. An unbelievable amount of practice. But with the constraints we have, that's all I can offer you."

"So, either learn to modify spells on the fly," I started.

"Which will let you use an existing, already-carved spell as a foundation. You'll only need to learn spell modification. The 'only' there is carrying a lot of weight."

"Or I can learn to cast without carving at all," I continued.

"Which is an expert-level skill, but it would allow you to cast anything."

I started to pace as I thought about it. Freecasting sounded cool. Given that I had loops to practice it in, ti wasn't that much of a concern... only it was. On the other hand, I could also spend a lot of ti learning how to carve more spells.

Once the situation with Seraph was resolved, I was going to take so ti to carve out a few more spells. Freecasting sounded like trying to learn surgery with a spoon and a YouTube tutorial.

"What would you do?" I asked.

Sawyer's expression shifted a little. Not much. He still looked like a man who had been born bored. "I would learn the modifiers first," he said. "Not because they are easier, though they are. Because they will teach you the shape of magic while still giving you a fra to work within. Freecasting without that fra would be a waste of ti. You'd be guessing in the dark."

"I'm a Dark mage. Guessing in the dark sounds thematic."

"You're not funny enough to make that land."

"Ouch."

***