29. Chain Lightning

29. Chain Lightning

Morgana was pleased she'd escaped her meeting with Giles while keeping suspicion to a minimum. The exam had been tricky. She'd never needed to answer questions with the intent to minimize her proficiency before. That was the opposite point of taking a test. Still, she'd done well, she thought, by how unperturbed Giles had seemed throughout the process.

She walked back to Rune's guild with a pep to her step, happy that she'd navigated the situation with such deftness. Maybe she wasn't as bad at deception as she'd feared.

Soon, perhaps in as little as a day or a few days, she would gain access to the Designers' collection of System constructions. She might not have much to learn from that organization—even for a novice's exam, those three papers of questions had been unimpressive—but they had resources she was interested in. It seemed Giles was willing to help accelerate the process, too, if need be.

Giles. She liked him. Maybe that was because he was the first and only academic she'd met since her transmigration across worlds. But he was friendly, at least.

When Morgana got back, Flint and Vesper hadn't yet returned. With dinner approaching, she took the opportunity to rectify an egregious insult to her honor, pulling out a pen and notepad and entering a familiar deep focus where minutes flew by.

During that period of experimentation, in which she created, discarded, and modified design after design as buried memories on warmagic resurfaced and were synthesized with her current understanding of spell architecture, she came to a curious realization.

The System's so-called automatic tiering of abilities was a boon in and of itself.

Upon submitting a design, the System would automatically evaluate its worth. The genius behind whatever mind—or not-mind—that ran this strange gestalt of functionalities would evaluate, upon her whim, the efficacy of a given spell. It was like having a supreme archmage standing over her shoulder, approving or disapproving theories as she postulated them.

In her excitement, she threw more and more outlandish designs into the storage space of her mind. Some [Frost Novas] downgraded to Advanced. Some evaluated as the equivalent of Expert, though were certainly better or worse in varying regards compared to the original.

But the important part was that Morgana didn't need to make the evaluation herself. She needed not run tests or submit the design for tedious review by her peers. The System judged its value, and she knew she could trust its verdict.

Advanced.

Expert.

Expert.

Advanced.

Expert.

And then finally:

***

Spell design recognized as a variation of [Frost Nova].

***

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Saved as default.

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[Frost Nova]: MASTERED. Encase a target in ice, reducing magical defenses and slowing or disabling.

***

She nodded to herself, a satisfied smile crossing her lips.

Practically speaking, it mattered little whether she upgraded the skill to its maximum. Already, [Frost Nova] could lock down anything they ran into. The improved mana efficiency and extra damage wouldn't hurt, certainly, but neither would it sway the outcome of a fight, not at the dungeon floors they were exploring.

But having it sit at 'Expert' rather than 'Mastered' had vexed her. The spell was extraordinarily simple; she was embarrassed it had taken even a handful of tries to perfect it according to the System's satisfaction.

Though she was getting the feeling that the System's preferences were very, very exacting.

"Really?" Vesper asked, immediately interested. "What is it?"

"Chain lightning. Bounces between targets." She frowned. "But only enemies. Interesting. I wonder whether the spell defines 'enemy,' or if that's some baked-in aspect of the System." If the former, the design would have to be monstrously complex.

Pulling up the design in her head, she found, to her great disappointment, that it was the latter. She found no complex arrays of runes inside the awkward spell construction that somehow identified friend from foe. Nonetheless, she ran her mental eye across the System's most recently granted spell, excited to take in the details.

"Oh, yes," Morgana murmured. "There's a lot I can do, here. Raise how much damage is reflected. Increase the number of bounces. Perhaps even make the bounces variable to maximize the efficiency of its mana cost. That would be convenient."

She trailed off, already sketching designs in her head.

"Well," Flint said dryly. "Think we lost her. What'd you get?"

"[Backstab]," Vesper answered. "Looks like my class is pretty on rails. People were saying I'd get something like that."

"Goes well with [Inconspicuous]," Flint said. "Not that we're doing much fighting of our own," he added with a snort.

"Maybe someday we'll catch up. Even if we don't, sure as hell don't mind playing bodyguard to an [Archmage]."

"Sure. But I won't be able to play bodyguard much longer, 'less I get my own class."

"Yeah." Vesper grimaced. "Give it a bit more time. It'll happen."

Stroking the last few lines and runes into place for her rough first sketch, Morgana slotted the design into the database inside her head.

***

Spell design recognized as a variation of [Chain Lightning].

***

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Saved as default.

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[Chain Lightning]: EXPERT. Blast a target with a concentrated bolt of lightning. A large portion of the damage is reflected onto the nearest enemy. This bouncing effect occurs up to twenty-seven times.

***

"Mm," Morgana said. "It's...acceptable." Expert, but not Mastered, again.

"What'd it change to?"

"Large portion reflected, up to twenty-seven bounces."

"Twenty-seven!"

"And each bounce is an instant kill, probably." Flint shook his head. "Well. There goes your biggest weakness—being limited to single target damage."

After a second of silence, Vesper said, "Speaking of...if we're no longer scared of a swarming boss, how'd'you feel about tackling the next boss we see?"

Flint frowned. Morgana almost expected that same argument from before to break out. But it didn't. Flint just shrugged.

"Guess we might as well." He leveled a stern look at his sister. "We sure as hell aren't going down to the next floor, but a boss? Whatever. That's where the good loot is, and if she can blow up entire swarms of monsters now, we're in way better shape." He glanced at Morgana. "We're still gonna need to test out the skill, though. See how it works."

"Of course," Morgana said smoothly. "Let's go do that now."