Spell synergy

Before his unfortunate passing, Narvi, knowing what was gonna happen to him had taught Nerida the only spell he knew.

The spell was named earthen bullhead. It used powerful magic to create an earthen bullhead that would follow its victim and crash into it.

The main problem being that to use the spell without being a baron magus would need the assistance of the caster's blood.

The more blood the more powerful the spell is, essentially making this a suicide spell with great power and little use.

So when Nerida told me she wanted to learn it after breaking through, I told her not to.

The whole affair ended in me promising to teach her another spell once she had stabilized her realm and brought the clan under her absolute control.

Did I have such a spell prepared?

No.

Did I have a plan for getting such a spell?

No.

Was I just going to improvise?

Definitely!

'Nerida sit here with your back touching my bark. I need to see what spell suits you.'

She sat down trying to hide her anticipation. Her hands were trembling with excitement. To people from lower clans like hers learning a suitable spell that had no drawbacks was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Through the connected surface between Nerida and me, I could now check her body condition. As my magic slowly flowed into her body Nerida slightly shivered.

Feeling the intruding magic her own magic lashed out violently, only to dissipate upon contact. My magic was overwhelming in both its density and accuracy of its movement compared to hers.

I kept the amount minimal as to not cause any damage to her body and began to systematically inspect everything.

Soon I was met with an unexpected surprise.

The blood in her veins was not entirely human. There was a wild aura mixed in, hard to notice because of its low potency.

\u003c[mountain bull bloodline] detected.

Extract?\u003e

'Hell no! This is perfect. If I teach her beast mode she will definitely be satisfied and not learn that suicide spell.'

\u003c[mountain bull bloodline] is highly beneficial to the host once he evolves into a [magical beast tree]. Extraction is highly recommended!\u003e

'Why are you suddenly using square brackets again?'

\u003cThe system had a [malfunction]!\u003e

'Oh really... then the fact that you just used a different form to refer to yourself surely is a malfunction too, right?'

\u003cIndeed\u003e

'You must mean affirmative, right?'

\u003cHost is asked to shut up!\u003e

I really wanted to comment on the use of shut up instead of something like refrain from speaking but... divine lumberjack.

Reeling my magic back I began teaching Nerida her new spell.

On that subject, a quick explanation of how magic works in both worlds to the best of my understanding.

In my old world, there were two main ways to cast a spell. Manually controlling magic to take the desired form and element, like for an example forming a ball out of fire magic would create a fireball. Depending on the spell this could be very demanding on the user's mind because they had to control everything by themselves.

The second option was essentially the same but with a solution for the high mental demand of spells. The manual conversion and formation of the spell were be substituted through magic circles. Using the same example as before you'd need a fire conversion and a ball formation circle.

These circles were generally just created in the caster's mind but could also be engraved and used similarly to runes.

In this world, spells seemed to depend on a so-called spell model. This mental construct would do all the work. The only thing the caster did was to build the model and feed it with enough magic for the spell to work.

Now, why did I explain all this?

The spell I was going to teach Nerida was, of course, different from all the things mentioned previously.

Beast mode as it was generally called was a transmutation typed spell that took advantage of the user's bloodline. Through stimulation of this bloodline, one could temporarily receive certain attributes of the bloodline progenitor.

Sadly the prerequisite for this spell was having a bloodline. And getting such a bloodline was pretty difficult.

To put this into perspective, if 100 people drank the blood of a beast strong enough to give them a bloodline it would be a miracle if anyone survived. The easiest way to receive a bloodline was to have your ancestors take the risk and then just be born with it.

But enough of all that for now.

Teaching Nerida the way to stimulate her bloodline was a quick matter.