Inari’s Gift

The following day, Cera awoke, still annoyed, though for different reasons.  Initially, she wanted to learn how things worked in detail before getting into her old habit of experimenting, but she had determined that she needed to grow faster.

As such, she informed Falron, “I believe I have changed my mind, and will be experimenting with magic now instead of later.  If you wish, you can observe, but it is likely to be quite boring.  I know enough to mitigate most risks, after all, if not entirely avoid them.  And I’ll mostly be trying to recreate my old methods.”

He shook his head and inquired, “Are you certain you wish to do this?  Just experimenting at random is very unsafe, and you had mentioned wanting to learn properly before.  I suppose it may not be as bad if it is something you did before…”

Cera nodded and replied, “I’ve thought about it for a while since the goblin attack, and I believe I could have done far better.”

Falron sighed before responding, “I suppose I should watch over you in case something goes wrong…”

With a shrug, Cera remarked, “If you want, sure, but I don’t think much can go wrong at first.”

She then led the old man outside, stating, “It is always best to do experiments away from anything fragile, flammable, or important, so the field out here is the best place to work for now.”

As he nodded, Cera closed her eyes for a moment, searching within herself.  A moment later, she manifested a large shield in front of herself, then began to spin a ball of mana until it became an elongated bolt.  Once it had the proper shape, she fed more and more chaotic external mana into it until she could barely interact with it, then hurled it at the shield.  As she had predicted, the bolt splashed against the shield, but then ate through it as the chaotic mana penetrated the structure.

“And first experiment is a success, as expected.  So now I can destroy spells at a distance rather than just within my own range of manipulation, including shields,” Cera remarked calmly before explaining what she did to Falron.

She paused for a moment, then stated, “This one is a bit less likely to work.”

After summoning another shield, this time much closer and curved around herself, she focused on the far side.  While she could summon flames and even throw them, this time, she wanted to attempt to do it closer to her old method.  As such, she began forming a mana construct, one component after another, before connecting them together.

Once she was done and struggling to maintain the full construct, she began to feed it mana.  Her first guess was that it would continually build a larger and larger fire over time, but instead, it sort of stuttered, an intense flame flicking in and out of existence several times a second.

She hummed under her breath for a moment and disabled it before tweaking the design somewhat.  The next try ended up exploding with considerable force, destroying the mana construct in the process and pushing hard against her shield, though it didn’t come anywhere near breaking it.

Once again, she hummed under her breath before slowly rebuilding the mana construct and tweaking it again.  Several tries later, she found the proper pattern and was able to use basic telekinetic force to throw the newly-formed ball of fire, only for another to immediately manifest in the same place as the construct continued working.

With a nod, she disabled the mana construct and began altering it once again.  Using the lessons she learned from the fire creation, she was able to produce ice spikes with only a few tries, without any more explosions.  As she left the ice spike in place, more and more mana poured into it, and it began to grow larger as more water condensed from the air only to freeze in place.

She took hold of the spell as she disabled the construct, then began to tweak it further.  Once she enabled it again, the ice spike was torn from her control and began to compress itself, the ice creaking under the pressure as it shrank.  Examining it more closely, she noted that over seventy percent of the energy was coming from the chaotic ambient mana, even more than she had expected at first.

In the end, however, she decided it made sense.  Her constructs had always been designed to utilize any energy that they could consume, and she had spent a great deal of effort replicating those early designs in the initial components.

Cera disabled the construct once again and took control of the ice spike, slowly bringing it over the top of her shield and to her hand.  As she had expected, it was quite heavy compared to its size.  She then fully dismantled the mana construct.

“I’ll be right back, no point in wasting this,” she informed Falron before jogging back inside and dropping the spike into the ice box, then she returned just as swiftly as she had left.

Once she had returned, she began work on yet another construct, this one far more complex than the prior ones.  As she continued work on it, she dropped her shield, needing more focus on her creation.  Shortly afterward, she activated it, and a small, palm-sized shield appeared in front of the construct.  With a small adjustment, the shield spun as it extended, eventually becoming nearly the same size as the shield she had created herself.

It was incredibly inefficient in terms of focus required to maintain, but as she had expected, it was possible to form and adjust shields with her creations.  Another tweak and feeding more mana to it led to a full sphere of shielding forming around her, moving as she moved the construct.

Unfortunately, she was unable to maintain more than a single construct currently, so it wasn’t terribly useful at the moment, especially since she was holding it together consciously rather than subconsciously, and thus, the slightest distraction would destroy it.

Perhaps if she altered the design of the energy input components, she could handle them more easily, but she didn’t want to lose the advantage of using external energy instead of purely her own.  Instead, she simply dismissed the shield, and the construct that was maintaining it.

As she turned to pop her back, she noticed Falron looking at her with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth.  Cera chuckled for a moment as she turned to face the other direction, popping her back again, then spun to face the older man.

“Is something wrong, Falron?” she asked.

The man shook his head and responded, “The first several creations seemed useless to me, but I can easily see the utility in something that passively maintains a shield like that.  All you did was a light touch on some controls, and it became a full shield, and I could see you weren’t spending much energy at all.  This is how you did things in your prior life?”

“Indeed, indeed,” Cera began, nodding her head before continuing, “I used things FAR more complex, however.  These resemble the first creations I ever made with this system.  Once I can maintain more of these at once, then my power will skyrocket.  The construct handles the formation and casting of a spell; I merely have to set the parameters and initiate it.  Additionally, most constructs have numerous standardized components, so as I learn to hold them in my subconscious, it will become easier and easier over time to use new ones as the older parts will already be easy to maintain.”

She smiled at the man and added, “In theory, I could even power multiple of them from the same set of components, but that limits mana throughput, making it less capable, which I despise.  I would much prefer a single powerful spell over three or four weak ones.  Especially since my first priority with such constructs is defense.  And on that note…”

Cera then began weaving mana together once more, not bothering to turn.  It wasn’t like creating a shield between herself and Falron was risky at all; this was her specialty, and she was certain it wouldn’t go wrong.

Her prior shield design had mimicked metal, but in the end, any single-layer shield was weak to the right type of strike.  For her new shield, she began with a softer layer, then placed the old metal-style variant against it on the outside.  Above that, she produced a dense, marshmallow-like field of energy designed to slow incoming impacts.  On top of that, she added a thin but solid shell of mana to contain everything.

Once she’d finished the layered shield, she stepped out from behind it, gestured to it, and said, “Go ahead and try to destroy that, Falron.  It is one of the simpler defensive designs I used to use when I was a novice.

Falron shook his head and sighed before hurling a fireball at the shield.  The first layer failed, then the second layer absorbed the blast with ease.  Cera made a quick replacement of the first layer before the man tried an ice spike.  The first layer was easily pierced, then the spike slowed significantly before barely penetrating the metal-like layer and getting stuck in the backing.

A telekinetically-hurled rock shattered the first layer, barely struck the metallic shield, then slowly dropped to the ground as the second layer absorbed most of its momentum.  A blast of air simply passed over the outer shell.  The more refined blade of air was stopped dead by the second layer.

In the end, Falron had to resort to a pressurized water jet to carve through the shield, shaking his head and stating, “That is, to be blunt, insane.  And you said this was simple?!”

Cera laughed and nodded, remarking, “I used far more complex than that even as a novice.  Eventually, you can modify properties of energy directly rather than using conceptual magic to hold them to a given concept, which makes it far easier.  I can’t manage a full-body shield like that yet.  But I could produce a construct that would do so, it would just take all my focus and strain me significantly.”

“On the subject of conceptual magic, I have one last thing to show you, which may be disturbing.  Please create a shield, then put a blob of energy behind it,” she requested as she began forming several orbs of energy connected to one another.

Cera hummed under her breath as she worked, slowly imprinting the concepts she needed.  For this demonstration, no energy input was required, merely a payload that she filled entirely with chaotic external mana.  In front, she added a hollow piercing needle.  Behind, basic targeting, followed by thrust and turning.

At this point, the mana creation appeared close to a dart to manasight, but was far easier to handle than her shield had been.  After ensuring that Falron had finished his preparations and was standing out of the way, she set her target and activated the creation.

A moment later, there was a cracking noise as the dart punched a small hole in the shield, extended the needle, then pumped masses of chaotic mana into the target behind.  In seconds, nothing remained of the target, merely a knot of chaotic mana whirling where it used to exist.

“That was something I used to call a hunter-killer.  It is quite crude, but is specialized in destroying non-physical threats.  I’m sure it would be quite nasty against a mage as well, if needed.  I used to use toxic payloads, but in this case, pure external mana works just as well thanks to its chaotic nature,” Cera explained with a frown.

“I’m not the biggest fan of using those, however.  I much prefer defense to offense,” she finished.

Falron shook his head, a horrified expression on his face as he remarked, “That is nightmarish.  It is likely fatal to anyone hit with it, though it would take days to kill.  Please, don’t use that against anyone.”

“Well, I can’t promise anything.  If I’m attacked by a stronger mage, and I can slip one of those by them, I can cripple them and survive even if I wouldn’t otherwise.  But you needn’t worry about me using them as standard weapons.  I dislike prolonged suffering, and those are not fast, to put it mildly.  They are assassin tools, not combat weapons.  The only reason I’d consider using one is because it would throw someone’s mana into disarray and stop them from casting at me,” Cera replied, continuing to frown due to her own dislike of the weapon.

“But I had to show you what someone with my knowledge and skill can create.  This way, you can begin to think of ways to avoid such things.  I do intend to spread my knowledge, to a degree, and that is an easy idea to come up with,” she stated with a sigh.

“Now then, how about we head back inside and have some food, and I can explain more?” Cera asked Falron, gesturing back to their home.

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