The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith

by Justin Miller

  Earth Magic 7 has been converted to Nature Magic 1

  Due to a loss of levels, unused points are returned, and title bonuses to Talents have been made permanent.

  Nature’s Grip has been added to your spell list.

  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.”

  She laughed a bit, “You know, you’re pretty devious.”

  “I am. It’s one of my best qualities.”

  “Maybe. So, I take it we want to keep a low profile for a bit?”

  “Until we build up our abilities more, yeah. Aside from Kevin, I don’t want us to team up with any other foreigners for a while. I might still be the only true foreigner mage, and if so that would just bring a lot of questions.”

  “Well, there are still the ones who learned magic but dropped out, right?”

  “Yeah.. I’ll have to hide my grimoire. Someone could identify me through it. Also, keep an eye open for any caves or hidden doors when we are walking. If we can find a dungeon, that will be an easy way to grow stronger.”

  “Alright. I noticed that there was one in the elves’ forest, but I don’t think we should go back and fight our way through there.”

  “Right. They said that killing the animals of the forest is looked down on. Let’s just keep moving. With the nature magic I learned from the book, it seems that I can use all of the elements now. So I want to come up with a few new spells while we move.”

  She nodded, and we quickly made breakfast before packing up camp. While we travelled, I did indeed make a few simple spells, and was surprised at how easily they came to me now with my Nature Magic talent.

  Fireball has been added to your Spell List

  Shock Bolt has been added to your Spell List

  Ice Lance has been added to your Spell List

  Gust has been added to your Spell List

  After getting one of all of the basic elements, I stopped making spells. No point in flooding myself with spells I haven’t mastered yet.

  Slowly, the landscape began changing along our path. We were running out of grassland, and entering.. a desert? “Well… good thing we don’t have to worry about running out of water.. But the hunting will probably get harder, as well.” I couldn’t use some of my spells because of the terrain, so this was a good time to train the ones I could.

  And sure enough, off in the distance we saw something that we hadn’t come across yet. At first, we couldn’t clearly make it out, but then a shape quickly emerged from the sand and began running away. My eyes quickly focused in on it with the aid of a scan spell. Combined with my Discovery talent and Worldlore, I was able to find and identify the creature.

  “It’s a lizardman. Looks like a scout.” The lizard was wearing metal armor, and carrying a scimitar.

  “Can you hit it from this distance? Lizardmen are notorious for ambushing travelers.”

  “Alright, let me try.” My spell told me that the Lizardman was nearly a hundred meters away, so this was going to be a longshot, literally. Let’s go with lightnin
g. All that metal should make a great conductor, and it’s my most accurate long range spell.

  “Warriors of the thunderstorm, bestow upon me your spear. Shock bolt!” I fired off a burst of lightning that flew towards the fleeing reptile. Although it only clipped him, the shock was enough to trip him.

  Lizardman Scout has been stunned.

  “Let’s go, Midnight. Don’t want any surprises if that guy gets away.” Denise patted Midnight’s mane, and the horse ran off towards the downed lizard. Though, the stun didn’t last for long and by the time we had covered ten meters it was already up and moving. “Think you can do that again?”

  “Let’s try… Shock bolt!” I sent another quick bolt of lightning, but this time the lizardman anticipated it and jumped to the side. “Damn, he’s learning. Okay.. how about this. Raging ghosts of battles past, lend your aid in this time of need. Calling the Iron Falcon! Go and stop him!”

  A blue circle appeared in midair about twenty meters ahead of us, and my iron bird shot out of it, soaring like a spear towards the lizardman.

  “You know, I’ve never tried this before, but it should be interesting.” I grinned. “Raging ghosts of battles past, lend your aid in this time of need. Become, Calling the Armored Bear!” Denise looked at me in shock, and then grinned. A green circle appeared in front of the falcon just before it impacted with the lizardman.

  As the falcon flew through the circle, what emerged on the other side was a bear easily as big as the fleeing lizard. Of course… the bear still had all of the momentum of the falcon, and crashed into the target like a cannonball. “I… I think that was overkill.”

  The impact damage from colliding with the lizardman and the ground was enough to forcefully dismiss the bear, but at the same time it proved to be enough to separate the creatures upper and lower body. A trail of green blood was all that connected the two.

  “Let’s.. remember how to do that.” Denise said with a smile, still stunned by the effectiveness of the cannonball bear.

  Summoning Magic has increased to 9

  Discovery has increased to 2

  Navigation has increased to 4

  Hot damn, three levels. And finally increased Navigation again. I guess fighting in new terrain is helpful. After spending my points, I got another message barrage of messages.

  Your Intelligence has risen to over 200. A new Intelligence-related Talent will be granted based on your style of play.

  New Talent!

  You have been granted the Divination talent, which enables you to search for people, places, and information through magic.

  Scry has been added to your Spell List.

  You have collected 30 spells in Jin’s Grimoire. Due to the properties of the Deific Dictum, the Grimoire has now gained a new ability.

  Wow… so, just increasing stats should grant talents as well.. does that mean that Denise will get something when she hits 200 agility? Or does she get it now, because I got mine? I decided to go ahead and check both of our character sheets, as well as the grimoire for its new ability.

  Name: Jin

  Race: Human

  Title: Mage, Arcane Savant

  Fame: 670

  Gild: 1000

  Level: 57

  Health: 225

  Mana: 1225+75

  Strength: 20

  Agility: 40

  Endurance: 35

  Wisdom: 75+15

  Intelligence: 205+15

  Luck: 10

  Attack: 10 + 10

  Defense: 10 + 28.75

  Talents: Magical Talent 17, Magical Knowledge 22, Navigation 4, Nature Magic 1, Summoning Magic 9, Runescript 1, Discovery 2, Divination 1

  Title Bonuses: +2 Int/Wis, +200 Mana

  Equipment bonuses: +15 Int/Wis

  Name: Denise

  Race: Human

  Title: Innkeeper, Beastmaster

  Fame: 30

  Gild: 14450

  Level: 57

  Health: 325

  Mana: 0

  Strength: 65

  Agility: 195 + 20

  Endurance: 55

  Wisdom: 15

  Intelligence: 20

  Luck: 7

  Attack: 30 + 149.5

  Defense: 15 + 135

  Talents: Merchant 2, Archery 21, Reflex 10, Speed 6, Chef 6, Tracking 3, Light Armor 4, Taming 4(+4), Hawk Eyes 1

  Title Bonus: +4 Taming

  Jin’s Grimoire

  Rarity: Unique

  Type: Accessory

  Value: --- Gild

  Earned through excessive studying, this spellbook is the proof that Jin achieved the rank of Mage. All spells are automatically recorded in this book as its owner learns them.

  Intelligence +15

  Wisdom + 15

  Barrier: As long as this book is carried, the magical energies contained within it wrap around the book’s owner, forming a barrier that negates damage based on the owner’s remaining mana. Once per day, this can change into a barrier which substitutes health for mana. In the event of an attack that could kill the owner, this effect activates automatically.

  Worldlore: After receiving the blessing of the elves, you are now capable of gaining information of all the world’s inhabitants at a mere glance.

  Once per day: By studying this book, the owner can increase their effective Magical Talent level by 1 for one day.

  Requirements: Magical Knowledge 10, Mage title

  I… have mana armor now… okay, then. I guess this is more incentive to focus on Intelligence and Wisdom, to up my defenses. The idea of a surefire defense against a killing attack was nice as well. Though I was curious about the Hawk Eyes, I figured it was Denise’s Agility-based talent and was used for long distance aiming.

  If I raise my mana enough.. does that mean I’ll become a tank? I should invest in recovery items while we’re in Coatin, to maximize that.

  Denise seemed to notice that something was up, because she looked back at me curiously. “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”

  “Oh.. yeah, sorry. Looks like I hit that goal Dariel told us. Got a powerful ability in my book now.”

  “Oh? What’s it do?”

  “To put it simply… mana armor. I take less damage based on how much mana I have left.”

  “Well, they did call it a Guardian Tome. I guess something like that is to be expected. Still, that’s great though.” She smiled to me, and I nodded. Though, the fact was that either due to us being high level or because of our teamwork, nothing had managed to actually hit either of us for a couple days.

  I had a feeling that wouldn’t last much longer. Now that we were farther from the starting zones, the difficulty level should rise exponentially. Curious if there was any news, I sent a message to Rusty to ask if he’d heard anything. Until we met Kevin in the game, or at least got close enough that I could use my divination magic to find him, we still had to use Rusty as a middleman for communication.