Chapter 540 - Fire, Aim, Ready! (Patreon)

I had new skills! So many new skills! 

It wasn’t an emergency, there wasn’t a fire or people dying, so I decided not to sprint as fast as I could to the firing range to test things out, or the flying obstacle course.

I simply… brisky strode through the paths, System-weirdness making me look like I was casually strolling through the boulevard, nevermind that I was going hundreds of miles per hour.

Casually strolling.

I clasped my hands behind my back, grinning the whole way, almost the perfect image of a slightly mad [Archmage]. I needed a bigger, whiter beard to properly pull that off… but maybe I was putting off more of a Merlin vibe, living backwards through time and looking young.

I did need to dodge quite a few apple-infested people. The School had a wide variety of food grown, and there was usually some of the dreaded fruits in the cafeteria. It was easy enough to dodge them, and just for fun, I dodged a few more people to make my ducks and weaves follow a fun pattern.

Stats at this stage got interesting. The main thing I noticed was I could control how quickly I perceived the world. I didn’t feel like everyone was eternally trapped in molasses, even though I could move and think like they were otherwise.

What sort of society would it be if I couldn’t ‘slow myself down’ to ‘normal’ speeds? Would cities be segregated by speed and vitality? Would a whole second set of people live ‘overlayed’ on the first?

In a way, it was a little like Immortal and mortal countries segregating from each other. I idly ruminated on the topic as I continued to not-rush around.

Ahhhhhhhh! I wanted to though! I had ideas! Plans! Things to experiment with! [Luminary Mind] plotting out a totally-cool and absolutely not indulging my inner eight-year-old idea!

I knew I was going to eat a lot of dirt, some metaphorically, some physically. Skills didn’t come with huge ‘how to perfectly use this’ manuals. I needed to come up with ideas. Test, iterate, refine. I had to break old habits, old muscle memory. I needed to find my limits, and that often happened when I went a little past them. I needed to figure out what I could do, then use my imagination to think of more ideas, try them out, and see what happened.

In many ways, it was the task of a lifetime, but basic proficiency was doable in a short timeframe. Even shorter if I was willing to run face-first into walls, sometimes literally. My healing would help significantly. I didn’t need to work up [Fireball] from a small level to a larger one, I could immediately start at the largest one possible and tone it down from there. Anyone watching would probably laugh themselves sick at how much I was going to have things blow up in my face, but it would work, and it would work quickly.

Ciriel’s divine grace and by every tasty mango - I was pretty sure I was about to obliterate the sound barrier. [Arbiter] had been slowly trickling speed in over the years, but the description of [Seraph’s Wings] suggested it was significantly stronger than [Scintillating Ascent].

As I headed over to the firing range, I continued to think on just how perfect the School was for classing up.

Not only did the flying Oddity the School was on make it easier to get skills, but the School had helpfully set up a firing range and an aerial obstacle course to test it all out!

I could genuinely see now how the School had evolved here. Start off with people figuring out it helped gain skills easily - my experience with Remus and the Dead Zone suggested it was not easy to figure out in the slightest - then people wanting to test out their skills. Add in some enterprising fellows setting up a basic flight course, firing range, growing trees, and other ways to test skills out, and suddenly the island’s a pretty neat place. Add in libraries to have skill-reference books, and the island was 60% of the way there. Wasn’t quite sure how it ended up being Artemis’s School - my theorizing could only go so far - but the chain felt logical.

Of course, I could just be reverse-engineering in my head, and the truth was wildly different. Like, someone said ‘that’d be a cool island to put the School on’, and everything happened from there. 

I let [Luminary Mind] ruminate wildly on the topic, while running two additional thought processes that worked on my spellbooks, reviewing them, making lists of spells I needed to re-add to the books, and thinking about anything else I needed to include while I was here.

The School still had the Overflowing Stack, a fantastic wizardry resource, and I’d love to make more use of it if I had the time.

So many things to do, so little time. I needed to prioritize and go from there.

It only took me a few seconds of speed walking and thinking to make it to the aerial obstacle course. I stopped and stomped my foot as I arrived.

Damnit! I had a million things to test and prepare before dropping off the island, and testing all clothing variations in my flight was a bad idea. I needed to test tight clothing or armor, because that’s what I was going to operate with in the Phoenix Peaks. Except my flight clothes were spinning deep in my [Tower], and the armor was wholly inappropriate for the spot.

Nothing to it. I teleported into the disaster that was my personal storage, glanced longingly at my armor, and shot off through the debris, scanning everything with [The World Around Me]. I found my shirt being molested by a dinner fork, and shorts wrapped around a shovel.

Well, at least the place was a little tidier. I put my fancy robes near the entrance, changed, and teleported out.

It didn’t matter if I was running or flying here - people expected big shows at the School. I ran onto the field, jumped, and with a mental twist in a new-but-familiar skill, I unfurled my new wings for the first time.

Light exploded around me as I gasped. Six gorgeous wings emerged from my back, three on either side. With a single flap I shot up into the air as hard as I could, an explosive boom echoing in my wake. The last few numbers of my mana flickered as I regenerated mana as quickly as I burned it. I found myself needing to frantically twist and turn to avoid the various obstacles and other fliers, blasting my healing out as hard as I could.

A slight shudder went through me as I berated myself for being an absolute idiot. I’d known I was probably going to crack the sound barrier, I just hadn’t thought I was going to do it so quickly or easily. The sheer force and pressure from it was enough to blow out eardrums, rattle bodies, and otherwise cause modest harm to all the other fliers. 

My healing was mitigating any serious [Oath] violations - everyone was staying pretty much in perfect health, just getting shaken up a bit as my shockwave passed over them - but it was still a deeply unpleasant feeling. I held my hands up and hung my head in shame as two instructors swarmed me.

“I know, I know, I fucked up.” I said before they could say anything. “New skill, two new classes, was too excited and wasn’t thinking properly. Everyone’s already fixed up.”

Once in a while I wondered why cities had various means of segregating high-statted Classers from other people, or in other words, why children had safe zones of their own. Then I got reminded that it only took half a moment of carelessness to cause massive harm. 

I swallowed my pride and let myself get equally berated and lectured by the two flying [Instructors]. It wasn’t the first time, but it’d hopefully be the last.

Lucky for me, I knew they couldn’t ever spend too much time on one person. There was bound to be - yup, there it was, someone else new to the skill had just let it fail on themselves half a mile above ground. The two were off like a shot on an intercept course, and I went back to testing [Seraph’s Wings]. 

The first thing I did was activate my anti-friction runes. Not only would I go faster, but I wouldn’t leave a devastating sonic boom in my wake. The term ‘anti-friction’ occasionally got members of the School of Natural Philosophy up in arms. According to them, the rune was horribly misnamed, and should be called something different for the effect it produced.

I was on team ‘we all know what it means and the name’s fine’. 

Hmmm. Was it worth trying to change the skill to prevent it at all? It was a horribly untargeted ‘attack’, and I could see it causing more problems than it was worth. Something to think about.

I flapped my way up, my six wings not moving all in unison, and quickly reached the ‘ceiling’ to the flight zone. Then I dove, pushing my body to its limits, using the stat-boosting runes engraved on my bones.

I had basically never used them before getting [Arbiter], not knowing when I’d need them. Now that I could restore them easily, I was much more willing to play with them.

It was such an incredible rush. The air whipping my hair around, the gale at my fingertips, the howling in my ears. I’d wanted to fly at an early age, and it never got old.

The only downside to testing my top speed, maneuverability, acceleration and the rest was it went by so fast. I waited until the last possible moment to flare my wings open and try to bleed off speed, only to eat dirt.

Wasn’t sure how much my lack of injuries was from my vitality, and how much was my healing, but I suspected I would’ve been taken out of here on a stretcher if it wasn’t for [Universal Cure]. The instructors landed next to me as I sprayed dirt out of my mouth, making worried noises. I waved them off.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, don’t worry about me.”

I glanced back at the long streak of broken grass behind me.

Yup. Totally fine.

I’d try to avoid wiping out quite so hard in the future. At the same time, it wasn’t like I’d had a ton of knowledge stuffed into my head with the new skill. The only way to find out exactly when I needed to pull out of a dive was repetitive practice.

Runes glowing on my skin, I shot up into the sky again, seeing how quickly it took me to reach the top. I discovered I could ‘push’ myself, burning more mana than I regenerated, in exchange for going even faster.

Fuck yeah!

Another thing I tried was ‘brushing’ some of the obstacles with my wings. Unlike [Scintillating Ascent], my wings didn’t get half-banished when hitting another object. Instead, they were physical enough to ‘push’ the semi-stationary objects around. It prompted me to pause and hover for a moment, reaching out to feel my feathers.

They were both illusionary and soft, like a warm summer’s day on my face.

Oooh! I bet I could hug Iona with them! That would make her feel so good.

Testing this one skill was going to take a while.

=============

I didn’t bother repairing my clothes after the [Instructors] politely kicked me out of the flight zone. I was hitting numbers and speeds usually reserved for Immortals that were long past wanting to use the Island or its facilities, or had their own ways of testing how good their flight was. I didn’t have any illusions that I was the strongest flier on the island or anything - plenty of Immortals around - but they didn’t have brand-new-shiny skills they were learning. 

I made it to the firing range, wondering if I was capable of breaking it like Auri had. I didn’t think I could [Burn Magic] like she could, but my skills had some dramatic descriptions, and they didn’t always limit themselves to what they said they did. 

Parts of the firing range were open to everyone, where other people could see what I was doing. I requested a private section, not because I terribly cared about keeping everything super secret hush-hush private, but because [A Light Shining in the Darkness] had the potential to mess with everyone else.

I started with that skill, blasting Radiance all around me, trying out the ‘blinding’ mode. My world practically went golden-white, the lack of [Radiance Resistance] no longer letting me see through my own stuff, forcing me to squint. [The World Around Me] still worked fine though, and I started to ‘play’ with the skill a bit. It had both a blinding and a ‘friendly’ component, and I mentally switched myself to ‘friendly’. Then made sure the default on the skill was ‘friendly’ - it would be a hair worse in a fight, but it would be much friendlier in a big fight.

I blinked, and suddenly I could see again. It was weird - there was clearly harsh light radiating from me, but I could see through it.

I spent a minute playing with it at low power, seeing what I could do with it. The skill was supremely flexible! I could cast from any spot on my body. I could radiate out in various shapes, having fun shining my name and Iona’s in a curly heart on the far wall, making the Remus eagle ‘soar’ across the sky, making myself into a lighthouse with a spinning circular light, and more! I could make tiny pinpoint precision spots, the size of a pupil, but I couldn’t have it automatically track eyes. The skill needed manual control for that.

Shame. It would be so much more efficient to snipe a thousand eyes with bright lights than to simply blanket an area.

Something I couldn’t easily test was how well it dealt with counters.

Just as battles were fought on a Sound axis, it was also fought on a Light axis. People tried to blind the enemy, making it like they were fighting into the sun, while others worked on countering it, using a mix of skills to prevent their side from getting screwed over.

On one hand, I had enough power with a dramatic skill describing all the ways it beat Mirage and Darkness. On the other, the skill was low-level, fighting on that axis would burn huge amounts of mana that could be used to heal people, and I wasn’t specialized in it the way dedicated Classers who fought on that axis were.

The second point felt most pertinent to me. It wasn’t going to stop me fighting that way, not when it could win the battle and ultimately reduce the amount of mana I spent healing, but it wasn’t going to be primary.

I ended the practice of the skill trying it at full power, my entire mana pool draining in seconds. From my point of view as the ‘friendly, don’t blind’ caster, the light just seemed to get more intense. Hard to properly practice a blinding skill against unliving objects.

[*ding!* [A Light Shining in the Darkness] leveled up! 1->15]

The implications for smaller-scale combat were a little more exciting. Easy to agonizingly blind someone, at which point I could leisurely take them down at my own pace. [Pocket Sand] on steroids.

It took about seven and a half minutes for my mana to fully recharge. I could just yoink it out of the arcanite at the firing range - it was designed for that after all - but I was aware of just how much mana I had, the range’s budget, and all the other students who wanted to practice. With my regeneration, it was simply kinder to wait a bit, and I had other things to do.

I pulled out some spellbooks out of [Repository of the Magus], then cast my ‘bootstrap’ spell to summon ink and a quill. I sat down, balancing the books on my lap as I started to write some of the spells I thought of with [Reality, Writ As You Will].

It was so easy. My quill practically flew across the page, the ink perfectly flowing from it. I barely needed to refill it! I felt my hand correcting itself as I traced the circles in a fury, moving faster and faster. I didn’t get to see how quickly I could go in the end. I was forced to lift my quill up, spraying a line of ink across the room. It splattered against the floor, a line crawling up the wall and onto the ceiling as I slowed down.

I had significantly more mana than when I started, my regeneration utterly crushing any spent mana. Getting excited at how quickly I could make spells, I blew on the page, then turned the page.

Spell after spell flew off my quill. I rapidly ran out of spells I’d decided I needed, and went straight onto making more copies of commonly used spells. Jiwa’s [Greater Invisibility] was still one of my favorites, but now that my healing restored the rune in my bones, I didn’t quite need a full book of them.

Maybe I’d gift it to an enterprising student at some point. Just kick-start their collection. Heck, for all I knew, it would give them the idea to prepare multiple copies of the same spell!

One woman’s trash was another’s treasure. 

I primarily focused on Ice, Water, and sneakiness spells. We were about to jump into the Phoenix Peaks, into the somewhat mysterious Northern Continent. With the specific heat of water being so high, being able to summon vast quantities of it, or have cooling spells at the ready felt like the most useful thing I could do. I could heal Fenrir from basically any injury, but we’d all have an ugly time if they melted his armor and it stuck to him. 

Similarly, I felt comfortable with my blasting abilities, but I didn’t exactly have any good sneaking skills - nor did Iona and Fenrir. Something they could also use would be valuable, and I had a few last-minute ideas.

My mana recharged, I got up and started to test my next skill.

[The Rays of the First Dawn] worked almost exactly the same as before, but with better control. I could make the rays super-fine again, and I wasn’t limited to casting from my fingertips. I also burned clean through all the target dummies the firing range had, nevermind I’d cranked it up to ‘maximum durability’.

It suggested I could make it through ‘at least’ a defensively-specced Classer at around level 600. Not too much of a surprise.

The other minor surprise came from mirrors. They still deflected [Rays], but the skill was so hot that I eventually warped the mirror, making it go off in crazy directions. It only lasted until the mirror was charred black, at which point [Rays] burned straight through it, melting and igniting the mirror a moment later. 

Interesting.

It would be wildly different against a Mirror Classer of course. 

It was a good thing I’d picked a private range. That could’ve legitimately killed someone in the main firing Range, forget the [Oath] violation. ‘Whoops, didn’t mean to accidentally scythe down a dozen students testing this skill, my bad’ was no excuse.

Another session of spellbooks later, and I was ready to test out [Six Wings, Six Million Feathers].

The first thing I tried was summoning a single feather. My wings didn’t manifest, which was nice. 

It was… a feather. The entire feather, from hard, pointy end all the way to the bristles in the back. It was soft and downy, a white feather glowing softly with Radiant light.

Huh.

I had a random thought strike me, and I got wildly distracted from what I was planning. I [Teleported] the ink jar to my hand, then dipped the feather in the ink, and tried to draw with it.

It went terribly. The ink didn’t want to sink in, there was nothing notched or carved, and all in all, fresh feathers weren’t good for making quills. My finger would be a better emergency ‘draw with something’ object. 

Oh well. Live and learn. That was the whole point of this!

Re-focusing on my new skill, I ripped out the page of the book I’d ruined - it was more ‘notebook’ than ‘reading book’, so it wasn’t sacrilege - and let it drop onto the edge of the feather.

It sliced clean through, without a hint of resistance. I tried it on myself, nicking my finger, even through my subdermal scales and improved vitality. With another thought I made the feather super-soft, even the calamus bending, but not breaking.

With a flick of my wrist and a mental command I sent the feather spinning down the firing range, effortlessly slicing through the regenerated blocks, before exploding with a command. 

The range’s shields flared as it prevented debris from hitting me. 

Whoof! That had oomph, and I hadn’t even been trying to maximize it!

How many feathers could I summon at once?

I tried it, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of feathers instantly filling the space around me. I could probably summon more, but I had literally stuffed the entire room full of them.

I looked at my feathers, I eyed the destruction one feather had done. I remembered Auri causing problems with her [Burn Magic]. On the other end of the equation, it had taken a full-power [Rays] and hadn’t blinked.

I decided to find a nice deserted mountain to test against instead. I didn’t think it was stronger than [Rays], buuuut my flight experiments were fresh in my mind. I really didn’t want to hurt anyone, even by accident.

I dismissed most of the feathers, leaving only a few hundred around. I practiced having them fly around in formations, fly in fancy patterns, generating some wind from the firing range to see how it impacted them. It was fun - I could choose if they got blown away from the wind, or if it would slice straight through it. That would give me a significant range boost if I was downwind of my target, at the cost of a little control. Mirrors had nothing on the feathers, which was a nice plus. I supposed they weren’t actually rays of light, so there was nothing to truly deflect. Again, Mirror Classers could probably do some utter bullshit. 

The flurry of super-sharp objects make me think of Meng Ao. Wasn’t this basically a direct upgrade of his black lotus petal skill? They were super sharp and in a huge swarm.

… Huh. I was probably stronger now than he had been then. Weird to think about.

[Radiant Angel’s Spear of Obliteration] was up next. I held my hand up, a gleaming spear of pure Radiance snapping into existence. It was a pilum in the Remus style, my experience, upbringing, and vague familiarity with the weapon coloring the summon. I could feel the waves of heat radiating off it from where I stood, and with my recently dropped [Radiance Resistance] I didn’t want to touch it and burn my fingers off. 

I made a throwing gesture, flinging the [Spear] down-range. It passed clean through the first target dummy, leaving a sizzling hole of molten metal behind it, and embedded itself in a second dummy before exploding.

It was more of a ‘shaped charge’ than a ‘small’ explosion from [Feather]. Beautifully, it kept itself mostly self-contained. On one hand, it made it harder to hit a bunch of people at once, on the other, it kept the hallmark of Radiance and what I liked skills to do - unerring precision.

[*ding!* [Radiant Angel’s Spear of Obliteration] leveled up! 1 -> 20]

I immediately tried another [Spear], this one flying much faster through the air before cleanly penetrating two dummies. It ‘fizzled out’ after that, and I got to testing.

Turned out, I could summon two dozen spears at once, and [Luminary Mind] helped me control them all, letting me fling them with a mental thought.

Next up was a practice weapon, and I tried imbuing [Radiant Angel’s Spear of Obliteration] into it. It started to glow, growing white-hot in my hands.

Huh. I’d expected to get punished here for a lack of [Radiance Resistance], but no. I suppose most ‘imbue weapons with shenanigans’ had innate self-protection, otherwise flaming swords and lightning strikes wouldn’t work. Made me wonder if I could summon a spear then grab it.

My ‘ooh shiny idea’ brain executed on the idea before I fully thought it out.

“FUCK!” I swore, dropping it and blowing on my hand. It was a little dramatic - my healing had instantly fixed me - but it was hot.

It was clear there were two modes. ‘Summon a hand weapon’ and ‘summon a thrown weapon’.

Right. I wasn’t summoning extra weapons. Then again, pilums weren’t really made for anything other than stabbing the other person or throwing them. I wasn’t going to be blocking with one, and I didn’t need to hold onto it to destroy something.

I spent the rest of the day practicing in bursts, then taking spellbook breaks while I waited for my mana to regenerate. Finally, it was time for dinner, and I popped into my [Tower], grabbing a few needed cleaning supplies and clothes. I teleported back out, and quickly got to work, my heart beating with furious excitement.

It was time! I had the classes! I had the knowledge! I had the levels! I had the outfits! Most importantly, I finally had enough magic power to pull the stunt off even with the huge wizardry penalty. Blasted weight increase from my biomancy had really set me back on this project. [Reality, Writ As You Will] was helping with a small discount.

My witch robes on over my Sentinel armor, my broomstick enchanted to fly, I sat side-saddle on it and with a thought and careful control, I took off, grabbing onto my broom and hat as I took off into the sparkling night sky.

“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” I screamed out in pure joy and elation.

I’d done it!

It had only taken me thirty whole years, but I was flying on a broom as an [Archmage], witch’s clothes over armor.

Just like I’d dreamed of as a kid.