The Power of Ten, Book Five: Versatile Wizardry

“Eight times faster!” Even Winkle was astounded. That was... Healing a LOT of creatures, and at incredible speed!

“I’d be able to Heal on a battlefield, too, as long as the wounds aren’t crippling, as I’d have the range.” I didn’t have the Reach/Distance Meta yet, but it wasn’t hard to pick up. But it was VERY inefficient trying to put effective battlefield range on default Touch Healing spells.

My confirmation of all that meant I was eager to pick up Minstrel Levels, as the spellcasting of a Minstrel was Arcane, the same way a Bard’s was Druidic. But Minstrels knew an Arcane version of Cure spells... which meant like +15 Caster Levels of Theurgic bonuses immediately lit up, placing it on par with Dispel Magic as the spell with the highest Caster Level among those I knew.

The Jasper Bison didn’t have anything seriously wrong with it, so I finished up half-healing its injuries, knowing its natural vitality would take care of the rest without issue. It still had crack-like patterns of silver and gold from the Holy energies extending over its hide as it walked off, a big ole Tortoise the size of a house almost floating into position in front of me as the Bison left. The crystalline plates of the Tortoise’s shell were cracked and weeping black pus, as were wounds on several of its limbs and head.

Obviously, even its natural armor hadn’t been able to match up to some of the Shadow attacks sidestepping material defenses.

I got to work as conversation among the Beasts built up around me, all of them watching what I was doing. I was already very good at this, especially at Burning away the deeper Taint that inhaling from a Brazier or applying a Torch to wouldn’t work on. Dour and calm, the old eyes of the Canyon Walker Tortoise followed me as I calmly set to working on him.

If Winkle wanted me pining for the opportunity to take his fancy set of Seeds, well, it wasn’t my call. I could put my virtues forwards for others to assess, and if it made its way to those with the influence to do something, fine. If not, no skin off my nose, it wasn’t meant for me, anyway.

That was not to say that I wasn’t going to be looking into this Seed thing more closely when it was time.

The old fellow particularly liked the Lesser Restoration effects mending some of his recent spiritual damage, or at least easing it. I noted that I’d do better in the future, but cleaning the cause of the damage was the only absolute thing I could do. Actually mending damage to the soul would take a full Restoration, which was still in the future.

He wandered off, very pleased with the gold and silver patterns scattered over his dark crystalline shell after I took care of him. A twenty-foot-tall burnished copper and steel Endless Roadrunner took his place, several black holes in her feathers marring the lines of her plumage.

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Shards flashed out. Servant Shades exploded in Holy vivic fire, lashed by Baneflames. A Warrior Shade raced towards me like a flowing shadow with no legs, trying to juke and dodge, but the Shards were on no-miss mode for a reason, and it ran right into a full volley and was really surprised when a Novice Mage killed it.

Without a sneak attack, I wasn’t daring a Ray, as the mid-size or smaller higher-Class creatures were too capable of dodging them. But at this point, with a modified Caster Level of 41 and Spell Penetration of +17 on top of that, no Warriors were surviving a pure volley of 16 Shards of mine all jazzed out with the Holy Metas. That was well over 350 points of damage, all of it Divine/Primal bypassing any particular immunities, and typed out to Radiant for a nice double damage on top of it to these things of Dark Magic.

I had even proven I could really hurt a Commander-rank Creature when Winkle had to take on a couple, absolutely shocking everyone involved.. Of course, I’d then had to run for my life, but it had been enough for Winkle to totally get into the creatures’ shit and take them down, bright shining burning holes in them and everything. Commanders easily had a thousand Health in many cases, buttressed by so much magic it wasn’t funny, but taking seven hundred points of damage to the chin really hurt!

Doing all that earned me a lot of Soul Crystals, too, and I needed those Commander-rank Soul Gems, both as a reserve to treat my later Stars, if I ever got them, and to combine into Noble-rank Soul Jewels!

My Spatial Pocket was sort of stuffed with Soul Crystals, coming in with every delivery of Torches I was sending out, but those were being condensed down all the time, too. I had two thoughtstreams finally going now, thank the Heavens; the second was doing little more than condensing Crystals all the time, setting up the collections for my eventual growth and promotion to a higher Level of Mage, and all the Stars that would need to be treated when that happened.

I had enough basic Soul Cores to take me all the way to Sage now, just heaped up in the Pocket in stone bins and boxes. I had enough Eggs and Gems for a Galaxy and more, but getting Jewels was no doubt going to be a challenge, unless I went hunting in some crazy dangerous areas.

Or, you know, agglomerated a LOT of lower-grade Soul Crystals. Fortunately, I was getting a lot of them!

Winkle watched in fascination, trying to balance his senses saying I was using Novice-tier Magic against his further impression that it was incredibly hard and intense Novice Magic, ratcheted up to a level that was simply fruitcake-insane, like Adept or Mage spells compressed way, way down.

The damage on my spells didn’t actually impress him, as the magic he could wield could do the same type of thing, only over a much, much broader area. The fact it was punching through the Shades’ Resistance to deal that damage was what was garnering his attention.

Novice-tier spells weren’t supposed to be able to hurt Commander-ranked creatures much at all, but here I was, clearly punching far, far above my weight!

“How,” he asked after a long and careful moment, “are you combining Ice and Fire Magic on the same spell?”

I could tell he actually considered that quite crazy. The Magicks were total opposites. They should be cancelling one another out to no effect!

“Oh, that? Well, they’re two sides of the same coin, plus they feed one another with their purity.” His pale sapphire eyes fairly goggled at me as I unleashed another salvo at some scattered Shades who were tossing shadow-sickles of force in my direction, trying to get closer to me. They were getting blasted clear through with Radiant shafts of multi-colored fire, falling burning with sparkling mists to the ground and joining the dots and swathes of such covering the valley.

A Zephyr Jay in a tree nearby was dutifully fanning the vivic fires and helping them grow in this contested area, wafting them towards concentrations of Dark Magic and helping them increase in area and do their job of driving the Dark back.

My personal contributions to the vivus were being lost amid the many, many Torches out there lighting up dead Shades and forming veritable White Walls of vivus now miles wide, pushing back against the Breach and its forces. The White Walls were enough to stop the weaker Shades outright, and could render the Warriors and Commanders extremely vulnerable, regardless of day or night.

Some of the Shadow Rulers had been prodded to come forward and investigate, and that hadn’t gone well for them. The Beasts had been waiting, and two Shadow Rulers had fallen and burned in vivus, dying forever. I knew that because I’d treated over a hundred Beasts damaged in the fighting, and received two Soul Jewels!

The vivic conversion was starting to hard-contain the expansion of the Breach’s influence, and would only grow. The Breach’s growth was slowing dramatically now, and within a month, it should start reversing and be pushed back. It would be interesting to see the Dark Planes’ reaction when that happened. I expected a big push, and a huge focus on shutting down the vivic fires.

Also, assassination attempts, but hey, I was making the big money for a reason, right?

“That... makes no sense?” Winkle asked warily, squinting his eyes.

“Perhaps on a magical level, no. But on a REAL level, yes. You’ve seen Ice Magic at work; what does it do?”

“They send out Ice Magic into the world to freeze the targets of their magic,” he replied promptly. I waited politely for more, and he blinked at me. “Yes?” he finally fished hesitantly.

“They also bring in a lot of water to convert into Ice a lot of the time,” I pointed out. “Ice as it is wielded is almost a subset of Water Magic, despite the heart of the Magic having nothing to do with Water at all.”

“Nothing to do with...” he repeated, blinking in disbelief.

“There’d be Steam Magic, and Mist or Cloud Magic, if that were true, right?”

His jaws opened and closed as he watched my Shards going out into my next Warrior target, catching it in the heart of its Nyx Regime without erring and blowing apart its upper body. Its area of conjured darkness collapsed instantly, revealing another dozen startled Shades there waiting to be blown apart by other waiting Beasts and myself. There wasn’t much word getting sent back by those who’d experienced my Shards, after all, as they all wound up perma-dead.

Winkle thought about that, trying to wrestle his head around it. “So, why isn’t there Steam Magic?” he had to ask.

“Because Steam is created by Fire, and direct Fire is more effective than Steam against most foes. Also, COLD is huge, Fire’s equal. Cold is everywhere, but most users like to wield it as something solid, and Water is the easiest thing to do so with. Trying to freeze most gases in enough volume to make use of them tends to take a lot of energy compared to using Water.”

“Freeze gases? The Air?” he repeated, blinking again. “That... would take a lot of power,” he agreed.

“And a lot of Air,” I agreed, continuing my non-stop salvos and cleaning up the Servant Shades, putting shiny holes in them which charging Beasts of various sorts used to tear them apart quickly, the Badgers and Wolverines being especially energetic at it. “There’s definitely Rulers and probably Commanders who could do it, it’s just not very effective. You could solidify carbon dioxide, but most of the other gases don’t hit solid until very far down the scale, and the liquids are going to be so scattered and small in volume they don’t matter as much. A rain of liquid nitrogen is rather dumb and concentrates a lot of Mana into a small area. You can freeze just as much with Cold-imbued water and just release it into the target, instead of making liquid air.”

He nodded slowly. “But how does that make Ice the equal of Fire that way?” he asked.

“You’re standing on Frozen Earth. After all, it’s not molten, is it?”

He blinked. Blinked again, thoughts running through his vulpine skull. He suddenly jumped ten feet in the air, whipping his head around to look at the hills and mountains about us, and his blue eyes grew very, very big.

“Ah, you see it now. Yes. You are surrounded by frozen lava, everywhere. What is rain and water, but cooled steam?” I kicked a rock to the side of me. “Cold, you see, is absolutely relative. Ice made from water is just the easiest thing to wield. But from the viewpoint of Fire, we live in a cold, cold world, Elder Winkle, surrounded by frozen stuff all the time.”

He probably didn’t feel like an Elder at this time. He probably felt like a child standing on top of the hugest stony iceberg, an ant towered over by the Cold that made up the whole damn world!

Power pulsed around him as he stared wide-eyed at everything. I could feel his understanding growing his power with the sudden enlightenment.

“You see, Elder, Fire Magic and Cold Magic are artificial distinctions in the real world. Hot and Cold are totally relative to where you start. Why we love water for ice is because it changes its state of matter, from gas to liquid to ice, so very, very easily.

“Using the exact same amount of energy to turn water from ice to steam would simply make your average rock a little warm. Water is merely easy to use.”