Prelude: To Domathra (Isekai/LitRPG/OP MC)

“How many spells do you know?” Nephthys asked, making the conscious effort to stand rather than float.

“A couple…” Tara replied, her hands clasped behind her back, likely to prevent nervous fiddling.

The two stood in the center of a spherical chamber. The walls were starmetal, with blue lines running across their entire surfaces, glowing subtly. The chamber was illuminated by a source-less light, roughly the hue of early morning. It was just enough light to see by, neither overwhelming nor distracting.

This was Nemesis’s training chamber, built near the center of the pyramid. Nephthys had built it near the center mostly to localize her starmetal expenditure, as it was a rare and expensive resource even for her. Its location, in addition to consolidating starmetal, also meant that any weapons or artifacts that needed testing were just a short walk away, as the vault was practically next door.

“Cast one for me, then. It does not matter which,” Nephthys ordered, stepping back.

Tara held out her hand, closed her eyes, and spoke.

“Light,” she said confidently.

Nephthys watched in confusion as Tara’s mana stirred after the command, strangely, as if in response to it rather than her own will. It circulated efficiently, but in a mechanical, almost robotic way, to Nephthys’s senses. After a second of circulation, a small, glowing orb manifested above her outstretched hand.

It emitted a soft blue light, barely noticeable against the training room’s ambient illumination. Tara glanced at it in satisfaction before looking toward Nephthys.

“I made it small and subtle since it was just an example,” she explained.

Nephthys observed her silently for several moments, struggling to process the strangeness of what she had just witnessed.

“Why did you say the name of the spell?” she finally asked.

Tara cocked her head to the side, confused by the question.

“You…asked me to cast a spell…” she replied.

“Yes, cast it. Not name it. Did you just say its name for my benefit, so that I would know what you were casting?” Nephthys asked, sure they were beginning to talk around each other.

“I—how else would I cast the spell?” Tara questioned, obviously becoming frustrated.

In response, five small balls of intensely concentrated fire sprang to life, orbiting around Nephthys’s head in a wide halo. With a mental gesture, they went flying toward the other side of the training hall, where they detonated in explosions that would likely have deafened them both save for the dampening enchantments built into the room.

Tara’s eyes were wide. Her mouth hung agape, staring at the other side of the room, where smoke was quickly being dispersed by the room’s enchantments.

“You did it again! How are you casting without an incantation?!” Tara exclaimed.

“How are you casting with one?” Nephthys replied. “The name of that spell is Bolide. However, as you probably noticed, simply saying the spell’s name did not cast it automatically.”

Tara stared, blinking rapidly. Nephthys inferred that she had asked something outrageous, as she could not find a better way to describe Tara’s current state beyond ‘dumbfounded’.

“Of course it didn’t. You have to communicate your intention to cast the spell to the Words,” she said flatly.

“The Words? What exactly does that mean?” Nephthys asked.

Even ‘dumbfounded’ could not adequately describe the look Tara gave her now.

“The…Words…you know? The Words! The grand design! The thing that shows your levels and class and stuff!” she shouted, hands in the air, nearly hysterical.

Pieces began to click into place in Nephthys’s mind. Suddenly, Tara’s casting and even her unique tattoo magic made more sense.

“I see. That is why your mana did not stir until you spoke the spell. It also explains why your circulation was much more efficient, if ugly, while casting that spell compared to using your lines,” Nephthys said, thinking aloud with her hand on her chin.

Tara stared at her, completely mystified, and likely growing even more frustrated.

“Bolide,” Nephthys said without warning.

She carefully observed her mana flowing in response to her words. The activation and circulation were much faster than she would imagine Tara’s, yet it was still dramatically slower than her own casting. Her mana pathed through her body similarly to how she circulated it, yet this system—these ‘Words’—seemed to circulate at a set rate. Perhaps it was based on the maximum the average caster could handle?

After a couple of seconds, the same halo of fireballs appeared around Nephthys’s body, yet they were…diminished. The fireballs flickered and wavered, their flames far less compressed than her own version. With a wave of her hand, they were sent flying; the resulting explosions were weaker, likely due to the reduced compression.

“I see. The Words automate casting to some degree. Fascinating,” Nephthys mumbled, staring toward the still-flickering flames from her spell.

“Wha—how was that so much weaker than your first one? That was the same spell, wasn’t it?” Tara stammered, looking between the flames and Nephthys.

“It was, yes. How about we try something? Cast your light spell again, but this time, pay close attention to your mana, to the way it moves. There should be a moment between when your mana finishes circulation and the spell activates that you visualize something. Describe it to me, if you can,” Nephthys instructed.

Tara scrunched her brows together, trying to parse through the instructions.

“Light,” she said.

After the same second-or-so of circulation, the light appeared in her hand, blue and faint. Tara’s brow was still furrowed, her eyes unfocused, concentrating on some unseen thing.

“What did you see?” Nephthys encouraged.

Tara started, surprised out of her reverie.

“I saw…I don’t know. There was a brief moment where I swear I glimpsed a…mountain valley? It looked like a scene from the Strip, but there were strange artifacts: lines and glyphs. They overlapped and glowed, twisting nonsensically around each other. They’re hard to recall at all. The image faded so quickly,” Tara explained slowly.

Nephthys felt like her mind ceased for a moment, all thought grinding to a halt as a revelation overtook her. She could not help chuckling, a strange, choking noise coming from her body that seemed unable to emote correctly. Tara recoiled a small step from her.

“Apologies,” Nephthys said through a strangled chuckle. “It is true what they say: you do not truly know something until you teach it to someone else.”

“Wha—” Tara started, but Nephthys held up a hand.

“Irrelevant. Let us return to something tangible you can practice for now. How well can you manipulate your own mana?” she asked.

————————————————————

Nephthys stood in the center of the training hall, alone. Her eyes were closed, her mana circulating. Her mind was a storm of whirling thoughts and information, connecting all the disparate dots, slotting them into her formulation of this world’s magic. Spell forms, circulation patterns, and Praxic spell records that describe circulation patterns but not spell forms all fit neatly together, now.

Multicolored arrays surrounded her, all spells from her spellbook depicting ideal mana circulation patterns. She had wondered why spell records only showed this specific piece, as circulation was only the first step in casting a spell. How could a spell record be considered complete without recording the spell form—the visualization component that controlled the spell’s actual function?

Why were spell forms so obtuse? How could she even cast spells when the spell form itself was opaque to her mind? Casting with incantations made sense. What Tara did was fully hand off the spell’s execution to the Words. However, when Nephthys cast spells, the spell's form was completely instinctive, while she could consciously control its circulation.

Why was that?

After witnessing Tara’s mana movements and hearing her description of her visualized spell form, Nephthys had come up with a hypothesis: the spell form visualization was deeply personal, not just to individuals, but to the Words as well.

The common thread between her perception of spell forms and Tara’s was the same indecipherable scripts. They appeared as tangled lines and threads in her mind, while Tara saw them scrawled across a landscape. That could not be a coincidence. It resembled an intrusion, the Word’s visualization bleeding into their own

Nephthys deduced that her instinctive casting relied on her body’s remembered method, which was from back when Prelude was a game. In other words, the way her body remembered casting spells was with the Word’s visualization, but this was not how Nephthys—Addy—visualized spell forms naturally.

She imagined the situation might be similar if her mind were suddenly placed in the body of a talented musician. The body would retain muscle memory of playing the instrument, but that memory would be foreign to her mind, now occupying it.

This also explained why the Praxic Empire did not attempt to record spell forms. The visualization was simply too personal to standardize. Instead, they found a workaround.

They recorded the ideal circulation pattern and the spell's name. The mana circulation primed it for the desired spell effect, and the name subtly suggested to the caster how the effect should manifest. The combination of these two standardizations would be enough to cast the spell, while refinement would be up to the caster’s own visualization.

Each spell was its own work of art that the caster tailored to their unique vision.

Mana leaked through Nephthys, pouring out of her body and filling the room. It was thick, visible, a cloud of power that thrummed with her attention, waiting for release. The moment she was preparing for came: the spell form.

She knew what spell she was casting, exactly how she wanted it to manifest. She needed to translate her will to the mana, and that would happen at the most instinctive, sensory level.

Suddenly, she saw a myriad strings before her mind’s eye. They seemed like threads of metal, like guitar strings, only in a dense tangle. This was not surprising. The spell Nephthys was casting was unbelievably complicated—so much so that she did not know how it was possible.

This was her visual language, the spell form unique to her.

With a quick strum of her mind, the strings vibrated, an appealing chord ringing out across her mind space, though she immediately identified discordant tones. Fixing it was a quick matter of ‘tuning’ the strings until they sang in harmony, the melody forming the spell she envisioned.

Nephthys opened her eyes, the time in her mindspace occupying less than a second of actual time. The spell activated, and both the mana within her and suffusing the room rushed into the center, a colossal gate manifesting before her. It was made of some strange, reflective metal and formed into an arch at least ten feet tall.

The center of the arch swirled with purple fog, which accelerated until, with a pop, it filled the entire interior. Before her now was a mirror that reflected her smiling visage. To her surprise, the smile she wore seemed genuine, her Djinn body somehow emoting correctly. Perhaps it corresponded to the magnitude of her joy.

This was the first real spell she had cast on her own, with her own vision of its execution.

“Gate,” she declared proudly, a deep hum rumbling out of the liquid mirror surface, as if in response.

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