Chapter 326: Exploring Magic

Chapter 326: Exploring Magic

Sofia chose to train on the sprite skill first, because out of all the things she had to do, it was the most uncertain one. By the time she had to come out to teach again, her progress was not very good. Clearly trying to copy the entire thing at once was a fools errand, so she had to train to form the mana pattern bit by bit. It was easier said than done. Reproducing about a twentieth of the entire thing at once was the best she could do. She learned two such fragments, but trying to reproduce them at once only led to the collapse of both and her body suffering a minor backlash from the mana going astray.

Her scepter could absorb the backlash, which would make the process easier, but since the students had no access to such a tool, she had to find a better way to teach them. It would have probably been easier just to ask any other teacher what the usual method of learning to cast wild spells from the raw schematics was, but she wanted to find it by herself.

That days class came and went. The five students spent two hours in a five versus one battle they couldnt hope to win, with Sofia using no skills and relentlessly slapping them with a napkin every time they failed to hit her. Despite their best efforts, they touched her zero times.

Sofia, hauled up in her room, spent more time trying to learn [Call Elemental sprite] until her last class of the week, which was spent on more theory. Then came the three days of the week she had no work on.

Almost there

I cant believe the system does so much of the work normally. Even with ungodly amounts of mana to waste on this its still taking forever.

Sofia had finally found a working way to reproduce the spell pattern with her mana : cheating.

If she couldnt use the help of the system controlling the mana for her, what was to prevent her from using her bone sculpture as a guide? No need to precisely copy the pattern, just fill the bones. The backlash would also be absorbed by the bones instead of her body, which made this even better. The only issue was that she was learning to cast the spell outside of her body instead of inside, which failed to produce any kind of magic even when it looked like the spell was resolved correctly without any backlash.

It did nothing the last three times I assume that means the position of the magic inside the body has its importance.

Does that mean a race with a different anatomy needs a different pattern for the same spell?

Exidians are pretty similar to Humans, from the outside at least. So its probably fine.

Sofia tried reproducing the spell inside of her body like the visualizer room had shown. She failed to construct it properly without the bone sculpture to guide her mana and the spell crumbled. The mana rampaging inside her body was more violent now that the spell looked more like it should. She coughed up some blood.

I need more training with the sculpture as a guide.

But what if I just

Sofia activated the skill again, or at least, she tried. It took another twenty minutes before her second successful attempt. During which the black sprite had stopped hovering around her and started to roam around the room. This time, the sprite was of an unstable, flickering blue, it formed around Sofias right hand and leisurely spun around it.

Lightning?

Pareth raised his shield. Sofia grinned and gave the order to attack.

The sprite moved in fast, angular motions and collided with the shield. It exploded with a thunderclap. Although it was quickly fixing itself, there was visible damage on Pareths shield.

Lightning sprite!

Uhm

Its dead?

Unlike the shadow sprite, which had survived its own attack and was currently exploring the bathroom, the connection with the lightning sprite had been severed. It was nowhere to be seen.

Alright then

The next activation of the skill called forth a second shadow sprite, which quickly started following the first like a puppy following its mother. The third summoned a Light element sprite. Just like Shailys light sprite, it was reluctant at first, but after Sofia spent half an hour trying to coax it, it finally accepted to come closer, and settled atop her head.

Finally! Im not even going to try ordering it to attack, its been hard enough to get it to come closer, I dont want to scare it away.

I dont really get if these are very smart or not. Theyre weird, but they do have different personalities depending on their elements. I would call them cute but theyre also just flying specks of mana and light.

So far I have three elements. Lets try to get a fourth one!

Despite several correct activations, no more sprites appeared at all, leading Sofia to believe her current maximum number of sprites was three. She asked the shadow sprites to go back and they quietly disappeared. The following two casts instantly summoned a lightning sprite each.

Sofia spent the entire weekend getting used to the spell pattern and playing with sprites.