Gamer Chapter 42 - Learning As You Travel

I can name two occasions where I forced the plot. The first was when he was in the city and travelled to the first world, the entire situation was far too sudden.

The second was when he summoned the rift, it wasn't so much that it was a bad idea, but I required suspense of belief with the way he spammed coins to get his body inside the rift. Namely, the coins shouldn't have been sp.a.w.nable outside of his hands and pockets.

And so, because the mages will not be kind and explain to him why he's the devil reincarnate, Jon will never find out why he's loathed so. Maybe the G.o.d will explain it to him as he laughs at Jon's expense.

Personalities change as people grow, and it sometimes isn't obvious why. Jon has grown distrusting, unwilling to put his faith into other people or trust them with the entire truth, his secrets. This is a combination of being betrayed in the past and the hostility he's been shown.

He was betrayed in the first world, taught magic just so that they can cripple him. He fought in the second world, his bloodl.u.s.t overwhelming. And in the third world, he's hated on sight. So when he looks at the party of 4, he wants to trust them. But he's waiting for the coin to drop. He doesn't want to overexpose himself, giving them reason to withdraw from him.

And of course, that's doing exactly what he doesn't want to happen. Self-destructive spiral.

He can't even relate to them. His journey is vastly different from the peace the others had prior to joining this world. He knows this, and he is older than them.

Isolation.

Not healthy behavior, but its his behavior.

If you are looking forwards to a happy children's story, sorry. Wrong story. He's not a happy person.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time pa.s.sed as we travelled, I spent the nights alone in the dark sitting up high on the flying saucer as rings of torchlights illuminated the area about our camp, chasing the darkness away even as a few eyes glittered red in the dark shadows outside the camp.

The first night the party looked at it in wonder, amazed at the sight of spirals of lights floating in the skies about us. They soon grew used to this sight, crawling inside their tents where it remained dark as they accepted this as yet another magical mystery I had mastered.

Rob desired to learn this, but when I tried to describe it to him being unable to put it in a vocal form he just couldn't get the hang of it, we dropped the conversation afterwards. Accepting this as just a difference in the way we manipulated our magics. Or the way he was taught. Something that just prevents him from learning voiceless spells.

Personally I think he's been handicapped, like a bike with training wheels on it. Because he never learned how to ride the bike without training wheels, he doesn't even know how to remove the training wheels.

We used the lights in our tents at night, and the very first question Kira asked me one night was "Can you uh, see through them?"

"No"

"Good"

She headed inside to change, I didn't bother telling her that she casted a faint shadow on the walls of the tent.. We all noticed, but with a silent nod of agreement no one said a word.

It was a good idea though, I should implement it sometime. Especially if I could use it as a scout, or to see things I shouldn't. Would work even better if I separate this from my torchlight I mused, though the torchlight would give excellent cover if someone sensed the spell and would make a great baseform from which the spell could attack to.

Every night there would inevitably be some form of creature that's attracted by the huge lightshow, their movements and shadows standing out unnaturally in the dark quiet of the night. A small whistle would sound and a light crack before the shapes stopped moving again.

I would then examine the bodies to see what new monster I had discovered before returning to my position, experimenting and thinking over what I had learned from the books.

In this manner one of my quests slowly filled up.

QuestRaces of the Beastlands!DescriptionDiscover and meet all 22 races of the Beastlands!

Races Meet: 6/22

Potential to discover a new skill
Potential to receive a new t.i.tle

The races I had meet as far were: Gray Wolf, White Wolf, String Snake (Basically really thin snakes with tough bodies, kind of hard to spot but they're low levels. Poisonous bites), Goblin (Only saw 2 of them, they were pathetic), Harrower (Tunneling mole creature, nasty teeth) and the ever elusive 'Gray Elf'.

I'm not sure why Gray and White wolves don't count as the same race, but I'm not complaining..

As for the elf, from what I saw it was very interesting. It refused to enter the light, two eyes staring unseen from the darkness into the camp and if I hadn't spotted the weird abnormality how the darkness seemed offcolored, thus spotting the elf itself after examining the area. Its nametag wouldn't even had shown up. Luckily, just seeing the nametag still counted as a "Discovery"

Gray Elf lv.21

I didn't have much time to examine it for the moment I moved a torchlight closer, it freaked and ran. I did get the impression it was small.

Thus I had 6 races met so far, 16 to go..

As for the spells I was researching, a few of them I was unable to learn. d.a.m.ned affinities..

Those spells I was unable to learn, I attempted to understand how they worked, trying to manually cast them even as windows popped up how I was unable to learn this spell. I failed of course, and learned just about nothing from them. I tried to get Rob to learn the spells for me, maybe view the spell formations just from obserbing.

It takes him a week just to learn a single spell. A freaking week. It wasn't even a spell he liked! The information I gathered from watching the spell cast was a little helpful, but the structure of the spell when it was fully formed was vastly different from the structure before and while its being cast. I didn't have much experience from examining that sort of stuff, and didn't think it worth the time to learn more on the final form of a spell. The finished form.

If I learn how the base of the spell works, how it forms the finished form. Then I don't need to learn the finished form.

Its like learning how to create a clock, and how to take apart a clock. I want to create one, not take one apart. Taking it apart is useless unless I want to replicate spells I see others cast. Could be useful, useless to me currently.

I was seeing similar structure tie-ins in all of their voice spells, the spell structure not shared with the voiceless spells I could use myself. So I was guessing that those specific structures of the spell was the bits I needed to take out, but even then I didn't know how to replace it, how to remove it or even where it started and ended.

Another simile for that would be a circuit board. You want to remove the part that's tinted purple and replace it with an orange one that's got entirely different wiring, but if you do it wrong without connecting all the wiring properly, the circuit board won't work.

Another thing, when I say a spell is a giant circle with mana being channeled inside, that's like calling a wars.h.i.+p a "Giant boat with cannons and sails". It says nothing how the s.h.i.+p is constructed, how the cannons have portholes that can be opened and closed. It's describing less than 5% of the s.h.i.+p itself. There's more to a wars.h.i.+p than just having cannons and sails...o...b..ard. Tons of tiny details. Lots of ways for a spell to go wrong.

Just this tiny change can make a torchlight explode uncontrollably. Even when I change the color of the torchlight I have to modify other variables in the spell, not just one. A simple color change has me rearranging little details so that the colors work.

I mean, the colors was pretty easy. Its just spectrum's of light and all that, three basic colors combined together. But beyond those three basic colors mixed together to form a single color which is then released as light, if you try to do more than just simple uncontrolled light release it gets harder. Way harder.

It was good practice flying these torchlights at night, but my own practice as I experimented with the new changes to the spells was long and tiresome. I can see progress, the torchlights raising in levels even as I discover new aspects. But I'm not a genius. The mana cost decreased, lessening the strain and allowing me to widen the illuminated area at night. But again, I'm not a genius. If I was, I would not being finding stuff through experimentation, but logical steps.

One of my favorite new experiments was a blacklight, when I first created it I had thought it was a failure. The torchlight had seemed to flutter and almost disappear, but even as I flinched and closed my eyes it inexplicably seemed to stabilise after a half second before remaining semi-transparent. New details began to s.h.i.+ne in the dim light it let off, and the spell still drained mana. It was stable?

I quickly realized it was a very basic form of a blacklight, the light was dim and shallow, but I quickly began to improve the spell itself up to the point where it resembled a purple hazy ball partly by design.

A blacklight lets you see things the eye normally doesn't pickup, such as invisible stains on clothes or where an animal had peed. You know about it on Earth, and I had a theory on how to replicate it on my torchlights back when I first learned the spell. It was just purple light right? Nope. Apparently not.

As cool as it is, the blacklight isn't very useful, Great and is a wicked novelty, but what am I going to use it for? To see where someone took a p.i.s.s? I'm not that creepy sorry.

Another interesting thing I was creating was a far more complicated array in the torchlights, instead of making it more powerful which can easily be done by pumping more mana inside the spell, I was trying to display two colors on it.

Have one side of the torchlight s.h.i.+ning red, and the other s.h.i.+ning blue. I was current getting a green torchlight, but on each of the separate sides I could see a tinge of blue and red. The bleed over of the colors was too much, but it was still happening.

The last and final thing wasn't even connected to the light magic, but rather to the newly discovered electricity. I had mentioned I could learn lightning spells right? Basically I learned how to discharge electricity in my own form of spell, and when I mean discharge. I mean an uncontrolled burst that will hit everything about it. Including me. Damage included.

There wasn't such a thing called electrical mastery, it seemed to fall under 'Light Mastery'? Seems weird, but I'm actually not complaining. Its easier to train a single skill that covers multiple usages than two skills with a single usage each.

Incidentally, as the days pa.s.sed and my practices continued, I never forgot the deadline.

QuestWaiting RoomDescriptionSpend two months in the worldTime Elapsed22 daysRewardsWorld Conquered

The further we travelled, the stronger the monsters began to get. Encountering new types of monsters and goblins slowly began to become common, but instead of the two goblins I had seen before, these were travelling in groups of up to 20. They were weak individually, but they had numbers. And a few of them even had slings to throw stones.

Personally I found it mildly amusing that Rob began to double up as our healer, it made sense because he can use magic. But you tend to see girls or priests handling that, not Rob. Rob loves spamming damaging spells..

The stronger the monsters grew, the more scratches and cuts the others gathered and the more we needed him to act as a healer..

I even began to "practice" my super heavy stones, showing everyone that I was developing a new weapon from which I could fight. I wanted to take out my club and fight with it, but that would invite questions to where I had been keeping it..

My backpack didn't contain weapons beyond a few knives, one combat knife with the rest being common use. I don't like to fight in touching distance of monsters, so beyond keeping the combat knife in my inventory for potential use later, I didn't even consider fighting with the knives.

In the end I whittled a tree branch down to size, leveling up my woodworking as I created a new club to use. It wasn't as comfortable as my old club, and it definitely felt strange to use. But it would do.

Swinging the club through the air growing used to the grip and weight, I occasionally joined the others on the ground, walking with them as the flying saucer floated low to the ground behind me, packs aboard as I tried to join in their conversation.

We didn't have much to talk about, and the group felt a little stiff as if I was the adult in a group of children. But they slowly began to warm up to me, but they didn't seem to recover the same camaraderie we had before, even despite their efforts to include me.

Rob had an interest in my spells I was developing, borrowing books so that he could learn from them. Despite his apparent genius however, he added only three new spells to his a.r.s.enal and praised me to the others for my apparent genius, able to learn most spells with a single read through..

Slowly the color bleedover in my torchlights began to creep back as I worked, spell proficiencies rising and Gravity Cloak slowly leveling up from the constant usage.

The days started as the others woke up, my torchlights flicking off once the sun was high in the sky. Breaking camp we started moving, the others rarely coming aboard the flying saucer when bored of walking. But generally staying to the ground as it was more.. Exciting..

With breaks during the day, we generally walked until I spotted a group of monsters, or even rarer, the others spotted the monsters first.

The only time we didn't spot the monsters first was the borrowing creatures "Harrower" that liked to travel/hide underground.

I was able to catch their approach a few times, but it generally required that I notice a mound of upturned dirt, then slightly raised dirt travelling away from said mound. And given that they seemed to stay underground unless forced aboveground..

When we encountered creatures, I tended to hang back as the others gleefully jumped into a fight to the death. If I felt they needed support, such as when Josh had a nasty slash on his leg and a group of monsters sought to exploit that.. Thats when I jumped into the fight.

Adding another Gravity Cloak to myself I would fly over the group of monsters, staying out of range from their attacks before I scattered a handful of stones over their heads. Those same stones were enchanted with a Gravity Cloak and on a single thought would ruthlessly slam down through flesh and bone to heavily impact into the ground.

In regards to safety, I kept a connection to the stones on the offchance any of the stones dangerously neared the others. The attack was damaging and brutal, but it also drained mana ensuring so many stones were deadly enough to be sure kills. I could make them distracting or damaging, but if I do sure kills I get vastly more experience.

It was something I noticed, if I help in a fight but I don't deal the final blow. I get no experience.