Unruly Summon Chapter 13: More Magic (Patreon)

"Maius Magus Visus."

The words of the spell reverberated around my room, despite the way I'd spoken them face-down on my bed, face smooshed into my pillow and head buried under my blanket. Thankfully, I'd also hung up the fluffy hide over the door as an extra layer between myself and the guard outside. Using my new higher-tier mana sight, I peered through the wall, thankful to find him unmoving. It looked like I'd got away with it.

There had to be a way around that problem. Magic was used in a combat setting, and in a combat setting, why in the hells would you broadcast your moves to your enemy? Something to ask Wendy tomorrow; if I wrapped the question up with that sort of battlefield reasoning, it wouldn't be suspicious, and an inconspicuous way of casting mana sight without my chaperons noticing would be useful.

As hoped, combining the regular Magus Visus spell with the 'maius' modifier resulted in a superior version. The mana requirement was significant, and the single cast left me feeling some strain, but it had worked. I could see the guard outside in far better detail than with the regular version of the spell.

Just the guard, I realised belatedly. None of his equipment was enchanted, and the mana exclusion effect didn't extend beyond his skin. To my enhanced mana sight, he appeared completely naked. The lesser version of the spell had been sufficiently blurry that I hadn't given any thought to the fact I could see straight through clothing.

The additional detail was a nice side effect, unexpected voyeurism aside, but what I was really after was increased range. Inspecting the entire castle from the safety of my bed would have been amazing, but thankfully I hadn't had my hopes that high, or they would have been mercilessly dashed. The range was approximately doubled, which was an improvement, but still wasn't enough to see anything of interest from my room. Mary was next door, eating, but I neither wanted to stare at her naked three-dimensional shadow nor at her magical collar. Beyond her and the guard, all that was in range were some lighting orbs in neighbouring rooms.

Then again, what I couldn't see was just as useful as what I could. The fact that I couldn't see any mana beyond the normal background in my room, or any voids hanging around outside by the arrowslits, hopefully meant that my fears of being spied on were unfounded. For my purposes, it was perfect.

Plus, the mana sight let me see what I was doing with my body strengthening. Improving my image was far easier when I had some feedback, and ten minutes later I felt brave enough to take a few fumbling steps around my room.

Twenty minutes, and I was walking normally, although doubtless Christine would pass some snide comment about an abnormal gait.

Half an hour, and someone did walk past the arrowslits, pausing when they arrived, peering in my direction. Thankfully, with my magical forewarning, it hadn't been hard to remove the rug and hop into bed before they arrived, and they moved on after a few moments. Alas, given that I saw people only as voids, there was no way to identify my visitor. I could only recognise Mary and my guard because of their positions and Mary's collar. The best I could say was that the nocturnal visitor was female and medium height. It could have been Stephanie, but it wasn't as if I'd memorised her silhouette. It could equally have been a decent chunk of the city.

That interruption seemed a decent place to stop, so I remained in bed, closing my eyes and trying to summon sleep. That turned out to be unexpectedly difficult given that mere eyelids didn't block my mana sight, and I had no idea how to switch it off.

————————————————————

"Good morning," declared Mary, what felt like mere seconds after I'd finally drifted off. The sunlight streaming in through the arrowslits made it clear that the universe thought it had been longer, but my body was fairly insistent that the universe was lying.

"Morning," I answered blearily. "I don't suppose you lot have invented coffee yet?"

"You shouldn't take that stuff! It's bad for you!" pouted Mary.

"Bad for me? Wait, what do you mean 'take'? Coffee is something that you drink."

"It's a rather bitter plant seed that can be crushed into a powder and taken to induce wakefulness," said Christine, who was standing in my open doorway, facing outwards. "It also has a tendency to induce other things, starting with hallucinations at medium doses and escalating to heart failure."

"Huh. Translation glitch? Or do you actually crush coffee beans? Don't think I've ever heard of them causing hallucinations, though, even if you do."

"Something we have learnt from previous heroes is that we have plant-life that, while superficially similar to your own, differs in the details."

"Huh," I repeated, not having previously considered why a completely different world from my own had humans on it, or why most of my food had been recognisable. In retrospect, the question was obvious, although if this place had gods capable of interdimensional shenanigans, perhaps they'd just nicked a bunch of stuff from Earth and there had been some divergent evolution since. "And the translation thingy finds the closest available match? That could prove dangerous."

"No incidents caused by bad translation have ever been recorded," said Christine, shrugging despite having her back to me. "Now, please would you get out of bed and dressed? We once again have a busy day."

Feeling a little more awake, I did as requested, then ate the breakfast Mary had left on the table.

"We'll start with magic training, as per yesterday," continued Christine as I was getting ready. "Princess Stephanie and I shall be in attendance today, so please refrain from doing anything stupid. Minister Dennis wishes to meet you over lunch, to discuss Mary's situation. Then you'll..."

"Wait," I interrupted, despite having a mouth full of something that had the same sort of relation to porridge as their 'coffee' had to coffee. Hopefully it wouldn't come with a side helping of hallucinations. "He does? Why?"

"As I said, he wishes to discuss Mary's situation with you. Isn't that natural, given the concerns you expressed yesterday?"

I felt I couldn't argue with that, and I imagined the meeting would prove interesting, so I waved for her to continue.

"Then there will be another with Princess Stephanie to cover the structure of our army, the locations of our defences, and other information that is vital for you to know before you throw yourself into battle. Finally, I'll be training you again. Given your performance yesterday, I believe it's time we started on body strengthening."

Oh... Well, that had the potential to be a problem; there was no way she wouldn't spot that I wasn't a complete beginner. Could I chalk it up to hero bullshit? People were already used to me casting spells on my first attempt, so hopefully it wouldn't be that strange for me to grasp body strengthening in the same way.

"Speaking of Princess Stephanie..." muttered Christine, looking down the corridor uncertainly.

"Maybe she slept in?"

"Possibly. We'll continue without her for now. Let's meet up with Wendy, and Princess Stephanie can catch us up later."

The three of us returned to the courtyard, where Wendy was once again waiting. The wall was repaired and the scaffolding gone, which seemed impressively quick work to me. Instead, a new set of black pillars had been placed at the courtyard's far end.

"Cast Conflagratio," she demanded, pointing at the row of pillars.

"What, not even a hello first?"

"Hello. Now cast! I want to see how much your mana has grown."

I held my arm above me, palm open and facing the heavens as I gathered mana, wishing I could use Magus Visus to see what I was doing.

"Conflagratio!"

The far end of the courtyard erupted into flame, despite the way I hadn't come close to casting the spell yesterday.

Wendy whistled. "Impressive. So your mana capacity has tripled since yesterday? No, you're not even breathing heavily. It's quadrupled at the least! Can you cast it again?"

"Please don't risk knocking him out," interrupted Christine.

"Aww," pouted Wendy, a look which was far less cute on her than it was on Mary. "But I want to see what he can do. Okay, let's blast through the other spells I need to teach you, then we'll test your mana capacity properly. Ventus Ferrum, Terra Columna, Aqua Pila!"

A shimmering arc of green rushed towards one pillar. A spike of earth shot from the ground at a second and a football-sized ball of water shot towards a third. The shimmering arc did nothing, the spike shattered on impact and the water ball splashed harmlessly.

"Images are compressing mana into a blade of air, gathering it in the ground and then having it erupt out, and exactly like Ignis Pila except with water instead of fire."

"Wait, you need to explain better than..." started Christine, before her voice was drowned out by the odd harmonics of my magic.

"Ventus Ferrum, Terra Columna, Aqua Pila!"

Another three magical attacks struck harmlessly against the black pillars.

"... that," finished Christine.

"Wow!" exclaimed Mary.

"Right, next up, mould mana into the air and spin it. Form rings of the same blades you imagined for Ventus Ferrum. Procella!"

The dust whipped up around the row of pillars, spiralling into the air as the wind howled. Beyond that, nothing seemed to happen. This batch of spells seemed rather lacklustre compared to the explosive damage we were doing yesterday, even if this particular one was quite loud.

"Procella!" I echoed, once Wendy's cast had died down, only for the wind to whip back up again. The strain of casting it was significant, leaving me a little winded, but at least I didn't fall over.

"Hang on," interrupted Christine, shouting over the howling. "Even I know that was impossible. Procella is a spell on the same level as Conflagratio. I've seen the textbooks that describe the image it requires, and it takes up an entire chapter. You can't just sum it up in a couple of sentences and have it work."

I peered at my whirlwind, which was starting to die down, but still very definitely existed. I'd say the empirical evidence was fairly heavily stacked in Wendy's favour here.

"He's a hero," shrugged Wendy. "Maybe the translation gives him all the info he needs, or maybe the gods' aid lets him cast spells despite not holding a perfect image. It was obvious yesterday that he's playing by different rules, so I'm damn well going to take advantage. Incidentally, he's still standing upright, and as you say, that was a spell on the level of Conflagratio. Now we're up to seven times the mana capacity. Maybe even eight, given the smaller spells."

"How is that on the same level as Conflagratio?" I asked. "It didn't do anything."

"Didn't it? Well, why don't you cast it again?"

"No!" exclaimed Christine. "He may be upright, but he's obviously exhausted. Take a mana potion before casting any more spells, please."

Mary went running to fetch one from the stores.

"Aww," pouted Wendy. Was she trying to knock me out? "At least I got some good evidence. I think we're looking at a mana capacity that's increasing by an order of magnitude per day. If you keep developing at the same rate, by tomorrow, you should be able to cast the level of spells that would take a regular mage decades of training. The day after, you'll be able to cast the sort of spell that no single mage could normally cast, requiring a team working in sync. Either way, I think tomorrow's lesson is going to need to take place outside of the city."

"Outside the city?" I questioned, looking at the completely undamaged pillars we'd been using as targets.

"Outside the city," confirmed Wendy. "That black material is a type of obsidian that's immune to most magical damage. Lady Christine, if you would please demonstrate? Procella!"

The whirlwind whipped up once more while Christine calmly walked to the weapons rack, picked up a massive, two-handed sword and launched it with a simple overarm throw straight at the swirling magic. It was an impressive shot, even if the sword was only made of wood.

The moment it impacted the whirlwind, there came a crunch and a cloud of splinters burst from the training weapon. I had just enough time to spot a gouge had been torn out of it before it crunched again, and again, and again. A dozen times in a second chunks of wood were torn from the sword and shattered into splinters. The sword snapped in half, then quarters, then I lost track. By the end of the second, there was no sword left. Only a ring of splinters spiralling around inside the spell, and even they weren't spared, continuing to be struck by the invisible blades. By the time the magic dissipated, there was nothing but dust remaining.

"Now imagine that was a person," said Christine.

"No, imagine it was an army, and you'd used the 'maius' modifier," said Wendy. "Underestimate green magic at your peril."

"Here," said Mary, rushing back with a mana potion. "You should hurry and drink it!" she added, mistaking my blanched face for the effects of mana exhaustion. Alas, the mana potion couldn't erase the picture that was now fixed in my head of an army of soldiers lifted from the ground, reduced to a cloud of bloody mist in seconds, barely even having time to scream.

"Well, that's tonight's sleep flown straight out of the window."