Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Riven flipped yet another page, curiosity getting the better of him as he continued to read without pause or boredom. Allie and Jose would have loved this kind of stuff, and he couldn’t help but wonder what they were going through right now. His mind began to wander, and worry set in about whether or not they were okay. They needed to survive their own trials in order to be reunited with him, according to the system’s early message when he’d first split off, but he had no way of telling whether or not their trials were just as ridiculous as his own or if they were having an easier time.

No, he couldn’t think about that. Back to the present, and he put his nose to the grindstone for learning. The prologue for the text had indeed been helpful, but there were still many questions concerning the actual spell he needed to learn rather than just the backbone fundamentals.

The spell Wretched Snare had a vision that he could produce easily enough just by the way the spell was drawn out in the book. Pictures of a black, sticky, needle-laced net of Unholy magic were drawn on the parchment rather well. However, the book also described how he needed to encompass the thought of burning, the thought of being sticky, the thought of ensnaring an enemy into the vision rather than just what one physically saw. Vision included not only sight, but also purpose and meaning—which was something Riven hadn’t necessarily anticipated upon the initial description in the fundamentals section.

The channeling of his mana wasn’t too hard to do, and that might have been due to the fact that he’d already gained the Unholy pillar via the blessing he’d received in the maze. Blessing of the Crow had imbued him with the pillar in a vision of what Riven now knew without a shadow of a doubt was the inherent changing of his soul. He’d inherently felt it might be that, but it’d just been guesses made upon introspection until now. What he hadn’t known was that the pillar, that bustling orb of green, crimson, and black lights that had attached itself to the white core of his center self, was actually a type of converter. One that would convert his body’s pure energy into mana that he could then use for the spell he was trying to learn.

He was curious about how the next spell would work, but at a bare minimum he assumed learning Bloody Razors would be harder to do because it was in a more specialized pillar. He had the Unholy pillar already, so a subpillar shouldn’t be too hard to acquire? Or maybe it came along as a package deal since he had the major category already? Then again, he did have a high affinity for blood magic, at least according to earlier prompts. It was hard to tell from the pages of the book.

It was like he’d grown an entirely new organ, almost akin to lungs. But instead of air, they breathed power.

The energy had been very hard to deal with at first. He could feel it, twisting and turning as new mana channels were dug out and created through his physical body and his soul. It’d been painful, but he’d endured—and now the hot, smoldering collection of raw power that tingled at his very fingertips struggled to be let free against some mental barrier he couldn’t quite place his finger on yet.

Again he pushed, sending out a wave of rushing power that caused his hands to convulse...but otherwise he got nowhere with it.

What was he doing wrong?

Riven closed his eyes in a meditative pose while sitting on his red velvet armchair, concentrating on his inner core and feeling the roiling energy within his soul vibrate upon his mental touch. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to draw the energy through his pillar—converting the energy into mana. He drew the energy forward from his core, into his body, farther into his hands—and could literally feel it heating up the skin along his fingertips on either side.

All right...now for the vision again.

Lo and behold, the magic stabilized.

With a low hiss, the nets of black energy expanded to over six feet in diameter and erupted from his outstretched palms. They shot across the room, landing two dozen yards away and splattering against the floor with an acidic sizzling sound while the black needles of the nets bubbled and writhed.

[You have successfully learned the spell Wretched Snare. Congratulations! This spell has been added to your status page.]

“HELL YEAH!”

Riven shot his fists into the air with a hoot and did a very brief victory dance with a self-satisfied nod. He repeated the spell once, twice, and then thrice while aiming at the clay dummy a little ways off. Each time the nets would expand after being fired, and the sticky needles would contact the dummy before biting in and wrapping around the object. When the acidic black magic ate all the way through the dummy a couple dozen seconds later, a new dummy would then appear.

It took him a while to get his head on straight after that. The excitement of being able to really cast magic was intoxicating, despite his fucked-up situation and the potential of a life-and-death battle headed his way. It was insanely cool, so at the very least he’d go out with a bang!

Riven settled back down and pushed aside the Wretched Snare tome, pulling over the other tome that read Bloody Razors with the six-pronged red throwing star on the front. The introduction to basic blood magic was overall the same as the other had been, with a few key exceptions to the earlier paragraphs. After that, it got more complicated.

Like many of the elemental pillars, utilizing your blood abilities can actually allow you to create ambient mana from the surrounding environment. Namely, you can draw out power from the blood of your fallen enemies. If there are corpses nearby, use them. This allows you to cast spells in the Blood subpillar at a reduced or even free rate if your mana manipulation is good enough. This aspect of using your environment to benefit, enhance, or even pay the mana cost of your blood spells is the same reason why the elemental subpillars of the Fae category are so popular despite their rigid utilization and relative lack of diversity. Just like a water mage can use nearby water, so too can you use nearby bodies to fuel your blood spells.

Otherwise you’re looking at creating mana-imbued blood from thin air. Creating it by utilizing your own body’s crimson liquid as a blueprint is the easiest application of this branch of magic, but this will obviously be more mana-expensive than using the environment around you, such as using the fallen soldiers on a battlefield for a highly reduced mana cost.

But utilizing the environmental factors is a long time coming and will take a lot of practice. Probably years or even decades, especially if you’re a beginner. In the meantime, rotate the mana and sharpen the mana’s vessel in your vision for eviscerating your enemies.