155, 1/2

How does one find a dragon, since their entire species is all about not being found? Erick already had a few ideas. He could put some lightwards up in the sky, calling out the Mirage Dragon, or maybe just the dragon that the Mirage Dragon was imitating. He could even go around from bar to bar, asking if anyone had seen any dragons. He could find some Dragon Essence monster and tie it up somewhere, and then he could advertise the location of the beast, and see who shows up; dragons hunted other dragons and dragon-aligned beings for their dragon essence, after all. He could even start Imaging for some dragon teeth, since he had certainly seen those up close (thank you, Melemizargo), and then when he found some, he would either have found a dragon, or he would have found some draconic relic in someone’s collection. If he found a relic, he might be able to track the blood identifiers in those teeth, and then he could find out where a dragon had been, and then he could go from there.

There were many different ways to slice this apple.

Nirzir paled at every new suggestion as she politely shot them down, while everyone had lunch together, in the kitchen dining room.

Teressa seemed to be enjoying Erick’s suggestions, as she ate her lunch like she was watching a play, but even he had to admit that he wanted to get all of the normal ideas out of the way, first, before Nirzir spoke of her own dragon finding ideas.

“I’ve seen dragon teeth all around in collections here and there. Lingxing even has one above her desk in her office.” Erick said, “Find one dragon, find them all. Right?”

“Oh, for sure,” Teressa said, smirking.

Poi shot her a hard-edged glance.

Teressa continued, “I, for one, wish to be directly in the center of a dragon fight.”

“Your sarcasm is noted,” Erick said, smiling.

Nirzir was having a little trouble keeping up, though, and Erick’s latest suggestion had thrown her for a hard loop. Her voice turned slightly serious, “You can’t touch that tooth. That’s a cast off tooth from Rozeta herself. It won’t be used in any ritual.” Calmer, she added, “But your postulation that one dragon will lead to all dragons is very… baseless.”

“Well those are my starter ideas.” Erick asked, “How would you go about it?”

“Have you talked to the Dragon Stalkers yet?” she asked.

“Yes, and we’re not going that route. They want to kill every dragon, and that is the opposite of my current goals. I want to talk to them; to find out what the Mirage Dragon was doing when she attacked.” He added, “I am fully aware that I will likely need to kill a dragon, but that is the backup plan.”

“Ah. Okay. Then…” Nirzir readily said, “There are certain establishments all around the Highlands, in the smaller places between the border and the main cities, with word ‘Ar’Co’ in their names. They’re always apostrophed like the ‘Ar’ in ‘Ar’Kendrithyst’, too, for they reference something dead that was once magnificent. Do you know of these places?”

Erick readily said, “I do not. Go on.”

Teressa silently, eagerly listened to the stories of dragons in Nelboor.

Poi seemed mostly ambivalent.

Nirzir nodded, saying, “Almost all of these locations are low class establishments, but there is one set almost halfway between Eralis and Alaralti, on the other side of the river, named ‘Arcology’, that is very, very high class. I have been there three times for various celebrations.

“Arcology is filled with the most obsequious people you would ever meet, who will take you through a wonderful dinner, made with the best ingredients you can find in this entire world. They have world class Cooks and you might never get a better meal anywhere else. The lesser establishments are similar in nature, but I was warned to never go to one of those smaller places. Ever.” She paused. “Maybe the dragons are at the smaller ones? But I don’t know about that.” She continued, “There are a few rules to follow at Arcology upon pain of an instant [Teleport Other] from the establishment.

“You must never wander away from the part of the building you have been placed into. You must not interact with other guests. When you walk into the establishment they will greet you and ask you if you have ever been there before. If you give them any answer except their code phrase, you will get a normal meal.

“I have no idea what the correct answer would be, but I was always told to never deviate from ‘No, I have not been here before’.” Nirzir said, “When I asked why there were all these rules, I was told that dragons frequent the establishment. That’s about all I ever got out of my older brothers or anyone else that knows of the place; it was very tough to even get that out of them. I have no idea what the dragons do there, and my mana sense was useless the last time I was there; the place is absolutely filled with blocking spells.”

Erick thought, then said, “Sounds like a good way to be ambushed. I’ll do that if there are no other options.”

Nirzir looked a bit saddened by that, but she rapidly went to the next idea. “There’s a dragon known as Red! She had been shutting down the larger dragon fights in Eralis for a long time by eating the other dragons she finds. I have been told that if you are not a dragon, she will talk to you. Getting to Red is outside of my ability, but you should be able to do this. It’s a bit more difficult than meeting normal people though, of course, and you won’t actually meet Red, herself. There are other complications, too.

“Dragons have territories, you understand, and they secure their territories through strength. But it is by the simple act of having one territory marked as theirs, that makes other territories ‘not theirs’. This mental shift is enough for some of them to interact with others as long as such interaction is across established, polite boundaries. They still have to meet each other through the use of intermediaries, though. These meetings are always dangerous, because either side could be trying to move in on the other dragon’s land.

“And the very fact that the Mirage Dragon was active in this land without Red appearing means… Well. It could mean anything.

“The way I see it: There are two possibilities. The Mirage Dragon is either someone from outside Red’s territories, in which case Red would know more, as she is undoubtedly trying to find out what the interloper was doing. Or, the interloper dragon was just an illusion, and yet, even in that case, Red would want to know more, so she has probably sought out what was going on there.” Nirzir thought for a second, then added, “Or the Mirage Dragon is Red. Or… Well. There are a lot of possibilities there. Too many.”

“Hmm.” Erick said, “Meeting Red seems like a good idea.”

Poi said, “She won’t interact with you.”

Erick scrunched his eyebrows. “And you know this?”

“No.” Poi said, “But the Mind Mages do have standing orders not to interact with her, because she will not interact with us, and you’ll likely get the same treatment because you’re already marginally aligned with the Headmaster, and his territory is the entire world.”

“Do the Mind Mages know about this recent—” Erick paused. He said, “Ah. Sorry. I shouldn’t ask that.”

Poi smiled softly. “Thank you. The Mind Mages generally keep firm lines of obfuscation between ourselves and dragons, because the dragons are always after other dragons, and the Mind Mages are strictly uninvolved with that.”

Erick said, “Right. Well. If we end up seeing Red, maybe she won’t be an enemy.”

“Why would she be?” Nirzir asked. She added, “I mean. I know why. I hear what you’re saying: To be known to the Headmaster is to be automatic enemies with all the rest… But wouldn’t it be different for an archmage of your stature?” She glanced to Poi, then back to Erick, saying, “I didn’t know that about the Mind Mages, but Red will meet with almost anyone of high enough ranking.”

Erick said, “We’ll put her down as another option, but not one to actively pursue.”

Nirzir nodded. “Then I have one more option. We could go to Ooloraptoor and speak to the Warlord Tribes.” She explained, “The grass travelers are supposed to have a long history of dragons behind every major clan, with each of those dragons warring with other dragons through the tribes they control. I don’t know how true that is, but that is how they portray their fights, sometimes.”

“… Tell me more,” Erick said, suddenly concerned.

Was this the Path, shoving him toward Ooloraptoor?

Nirzir brightened. “Oh! Well. Their concept of war is where a lot of Nelboor gets the concept of polite war; a hundred warriors facing down a hundred warriors, and whoever is left gets the rights to whatever is being disputed. If Terror Peaks had won that initial clash— Well. Things would be very different. Eh. Well. If they had asked for something lesser, and if they had won, then they probably would have gotten the chelation treatment, or something. But they wanted our annihilation. If they had gone for a normal war, then maybe we could have avoided the… the rest of what happened.” Nirzir put away those bad thoughts, and turned upbeat again, “The grass travelers firmly adhere to the original Polite War. They field ten people on both sides and if anyone dies on either side, then the army that did the killing gives recompense to the harmed clan, which is usually a grand core per person killed. In almost all situations, that recompense is worth a lot more than whatever argument they’re disputing, so everyone tries to avoid total war.

“They’ve had large wars, though.

“A hundred years ago there was a large debate among the grass travelers over the integration of Ooloraptoor into an actual nation state. Every so often this debate happens, and we’re in the middle of one of those times, but we’re still a long way off. Years, perhaps. Back then they got to the final stages of integration, with different compacts floating around, and battles being fought over those compacts.

“For three years, they had polite war, with small scale battles of ten people versus ten people, and occasionally with a hundred versus a hundred. They were actually in the middle of making a hierarchy; of putting together their people into some final form that would then go on to make a true centralized government. There were still a lot of people against the whole idea, though. They fought to knock down those who chose to integrate. Thus, the two sides of the final battle. Integrator, versus traveler.

“The path to integration came to a head with a thousand people versus a thousand people, and it started off as any normal war would, with people being injured to lost limb and heart stab, and then being taken off the field. But someone killed someone, and then, instead of stopping and reorganizing the field, and the offender being taken off the field, the killing cascaded. Soon, it was seven hundred integrators against a hundred travelers.

“And then a single traveler cast vast, dark magics, instantly killing most of the integrators. Several integrators survived, though. One of them turned into a dragon; brilliant blue. That blue dragon proceeded to assault the other side. Soon, more dragons appeared. The official records state that, in the end, there were seven dragons in the battle.

“It was, perhaps, one of the largest dragon fights to ever occur.” Nirzir sat back, saying, “And now we’re in talks for integration again. So. You know. That story is on peoples’ minds. We think that the guy who started the killing was a Shade, though, so it might not happen that way this time.” She added, “Since you killed all of them and Blessed the rest into becoming better people.”

That was a lot to think about.

Erick arrived at a decision rather fast. “Looks like we’re going to Ooloraptoor.”

Teressa smirked, saying, “That guy you saved and the face stealers were already pointing us in that direction.”

Nirzir looked puzzled.

Erick explained, “A week ago I rescued a grass traveler by the name of Amasar of Clan Pale Cow when he [Teleport]ed into a destroyed city near Alaralti. He was dying from blood loss. He had confronted some face stealers who had taken the Forms of some ambassadors from Alaralti. I thought I had untangled that knot by providing some Imaging services to help them counter-hunt the face stealers among the grass travelers. Of the hundreds I did help to counter-hunt several days ago, the grass travelers only gave me 9 people to search for; Amasar’s patriarch, Niyazo, contributed the most names. He accepted my services and found some more face stealers among his people. But, you know, there are obviously more of those types lurking around that place, for sure.” Erick shrugged. “And now I know there are dragons there, too. All the more reason to go for a visit. I’ll probably drop in unannounced on Amasar and Niyazo and go from there.”

“Oh.” Nirzir said, “Then… Is that how the Worldly Path works?”

“It’s certainly not going how I expected it to go.” Erick said, “This started as a vacation, with a bit of an academic pursuit of [Gate] on the side. Everything else has just… sort of happened.”

Teressa smiled. “You haven’t backed down from helping the people who fall into your Path, though.”

“I have, though. I miss a lot of people I could be helping.”

Teressa had a sudden look of disbelief on her face. So did Nirzir. Poi understood, though.

Erick said, “I see a lot with Ophiel. I could send him out right now and find a hundred different problems I could solve. I could dedicate my entire life to doing just that; to helping those homeless on the streets, to feeding the world, to solving crimes faster than most guards are capable of working… But it would never be enough. I would end up killing myself to take on that much work, for there’s always something more to be done, and there’s always big stuff that needs to get done, too. So I help with the big stuff, and hopefully that is enough.”

Teressa sternly said, “You do more than enough, Boss. You do a lot. A lot of good, for a lot of people, but people got to look out for themselves, too.”

“Well… Yeah. I guess. But it’s still hard to see the good I could be doing, and yet I am not. I could never do enough.”

Poi said, “You do more than enough, Erick.”

Erick gave a sad grin, saying, “I suppose you would know what it’s like.”

“No. I don’t. I may be able to walk through a marketplace and know the problems people have, but you can do the same thing on the scale of a hundred marketplaces, and you’re allowed to act on what you see. I cannot act on anything I see, unless someone is in direct physical peril, and maybe not even then.” Poi said, “But even so, maybe some advice I was given a long time ago might help you: There are limits to giving of oneself to the world, and you are so far past your own limits that you don’t even know where you last left them.”

Erick frowned; knowing Poi was right, and yet still feeling some kinda difficult way whenever he saw someone in trouble.

Erick said, “I suppose I shouldn’t discount the ability for others to do well by themselves, either.”

Teressa said, “Exactly!”

Nirzir had watched the discussion with rapt, quiet attention.

After lunch was over, Erick allowed Nirzir to have her pick of the extra rooms, to set herself up, and then he decided to take a nap so that he could ignore whatever conversation Poi needed to have with the young girl.

Hours later, Erick awoke to the smells of burned something.

Nirzir was desperately trying to make dinner. By herself.

She had the rice in the steamer but there wasn’t any water under the basket.

The fillets of fish had been mangled beyond belief.

The frying oil was barely hot enough to fry—

And now there’s a fire. And! The girl was crying. Nirzir had been crying a little this whole time, but now came the waterworks.

Erick rapidly got out of bed to go help her.

Teressa, who had stopped practicing with her aura to watch the show from three rooms over, sent to him, ‘It’s just food! Let her burn it! And then let her eat it.’

‘I may not recognize all of my limits, but one of them is little girls crying over failed dinner preparation.’

Teressa laughed; her boisterous voice carried through the house.

– – – –

“… Thank you.” Nirzir said, her face red as she joined Erick in his library, after dinner. “For helping… With everything.”

Dinner had been well-seasoned and seared pork chops, buttered vegetables, bone broth soup (which was much better than it sounded), and rice, along with an assortment of sauces. It had taken two hours for Nirzir to make the meal, with much of that time spent restarting, and with Erick helping her the whole way. To Nirzir’s credit, she powered through; she might have cried a bit but she got it done. Erick even offered to take over for her twice, but Nirzir assured him that him ‘taking over’ was not an option for her. She had to do this. Erick had said that everyone cooked, and so, Nirzir would cook.

Erick had offered to let her try something simpler, but that was a non-starter of an idea, too. No; Nirzir wanted a good dinner, and she was going to make it happen.

And after a fashion, it had.

“You’re welcome,” Erick said, looking up from his book. “Learning how to cook takes time and patience and recipes.” He smiled, and joked, “Just like how they say you’re supposed to learn magic.”

Nirzir asked, “I don’t understand why you cook for yourself, though? Other people are much better at it. You could hire a world class Cook if you wanted.” She added, “I mean… There are wait lists to get good Cooks, so I can understand that.”

“… Wait lists?”

“Oh yes. A good Cook is hard to find! I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t get your pick of Cooks… though.” Nirzir eyed Erick and frowned a little. She sat down in the seat across from him, saying, “You have no idea what I mean when I say that, do you?”

Erick smirked. He closed his book, saying, “Not really.”

“Cooks? In the guilds? The Cooking Guilds?”

“What? Oh my gods!” Erick laughed. “There are cooking guilds?”

“Of course there are cooking guilds! You don’t know— Oh! They’re big on this side of the world. Maybe not so much over in Glaquin? I don’t know about that.” Nirzir said, “I do know that if you don’t get in good with them, then you might never get a decent Cook in your life! My family has a branch family of Cooks and I might be lucky enough to hire one of their 8 stars once I become an actual archmage, but even that is not for certain. My brothers have joked at committing an inter-family polite war when the next 10 star Cook comes out of Eralis…” Her voice trailed off, then turned serious, “We don’t think it’s a joke anymore.”

Erick’s eyes went wide as he gave a nervous chuckle. “Oh my gods.”

“Oh! Uh. No one will die…” She softly said, “Probably.”

“Ah. Well…” Erick asked, “So I take it these cooks are rated like Adventuring Guild threats?”

“Oh yes. I think the two guilds originated together, but only the Cooking Guilds survived Nelboor. There’s all sorts of different specific Cooking Guilds, too.” Nirzir said, “If you know where to look, you’ll see their Cooks everywhere. There’s a 9 star in the Void Temple. We have a 10 star at the palace; Neri Fei. She’s been with us for thirty years. The Headmaster collects as many 10 stars as he can get, but he’s at the bottom of the waiting list right now. Void Song is next in line, and we’ve been waiting for a decade. Neri Fei is fantastic, but she’s looking to retire. I never tried cooking before tonight—” Her eyes went wide. She looked away.

Erick’s heart beat hard as a thousand terrible scenarios raced through his mind.

Instead of panicking, though, he calmly asked, “What is it?”

With a completely normal, happy tone of voice, Nirzir continued, “I was just remembering a conversation— Did you know that Matriarch Lingxing is a 7 star cook? Not a classed Cook, so she can’t go higher than that, but I was just remembering… that. I don’t think it’s a secret? She really likes food and that’s not a secret at all.” She paused. She asserted, “It’s not a secret.”

Oh.

Nothing was happening.

This was just a normal talk.

Erick relaxed.

Nirzir glanced at the book in Erick’s hands, asking, “Reading about the grass travelers?”

“Somewhat.” Mostly, he was thinking about a spell that would be useful against entire armies without actually hurting them. Erick held up the thin book. “I got it with Ophiel while you were cooking.”

Nirzir smiled a little. “I know a little bit about that, if you are interested—” She dropped her hopeful expression, as though remembering something else. She rapidly continued, “But I will let you get back to your reading.” She stood up, saying, “Thank you again for helping with dinner. It was most informative.”

“… Anytime.”

Erick looked up to Nirzir, and the girl blushed.

And then she turned tail and tried to rush out of there as fast as—

Erick said, “I’ll be making one more spell before I’m ready to leave Songli behind. It’ll happen around midnight, or a bit later. Do you want me to wake you up for that?”

Stuck halfway through the doorway, Nirzir turned, and brightly said, “Yes!”

And then she rushed away, down the hallway, toward her room.

Erick chuckled a little, thinking it cute that Nirzir had a crush on him. That was unexpected! That was probably what Poi talked to her about, too. Ha!

He went back to reading.

– – – –

Some time much later, when the only ones awake were Erick and Ophiel, Ophiel sent Erick a ping because something was happening in Jane’s room. Erick switched over to his mana sense and watched as a dark blue [Scry] eye bobbed around for a moment, and then popped all on its own. A second later, dark blue light blipped in the air, and Jane tumbled out of that light, directly into her bed. She discarded a metal sword to the ground where it clanged and thudded against the carpet. Within seconds, Jane was asleep.

Ophiel tapped her with a [Greater Treat Wounds] and a [Cleanse], healing the few cuts she had on her arms and cleaning away the filth she had tracked into her bed.

Jane shifted around a bit more, then settled down, looking a lot more relaxed.

“Tough day, I suspect,” Erick said to himself.

And then he went back to playing around with Ophiel and magic, well outside of everyone’s sight.

– – – –

Ophiels tumbled through the sky, supported on auras of [Physical Domain], lighting the darkness around them with brilliant magenta explosions. Sometimes the explosions were too brilliant, and Ophiel ripped himself apart. But soon enough, another Ophiel would pop into the world and flit over to the party, to join the rest of himself, to fill up the gap that had been created by his temporary diminishment.

To learn to fly through the use of a spell that was very much not suited to the task.

Flying on [Physical Domain] was difficult. Erick could suspend Ophiel upon vibrations in the air and turn that air dense around him, becoming practically immovable. Doing so usually carved a crater into the nearby ground and sent Ophiel upward. Ophiel stopped ascending, though, when the magenta vibrations of suspension equalized Ophiel’s weight, with the size of the vibrational sphere having a large correlation with the distance Ophiel could achieve from the surface. Erick suspected that since Ophiel weighed a lot less than him and had wings that could hold him aloft, that Erick wouldn’t be able to get himself very far off the ground, using this method.

Erick confirmed this suspicion with Ophiel holding aloft a small rock that weighed about as much as Erick did, and yes, [Physical Domain] was not useful for flying. And besides that, flying with [Physical Domain] left a lot of destruction behind.

All of that was just to test to see if he could shift away from [Lodestar] and [Greater Lightwalk], and surprise surprise: he could not.

So Erick moved on to the next part of the magic making. He plucked a few books from his library, and went over what Veird knew of Extreme Light. Among those books was one that had followed Erick all the way from Treehome. There was another which Erick had picked up from Tsung, at the gathering at Red Ledger’s new clan mountain, but that one was more of a pamphlet, really. Some Knowledge Mage had published them with the goal of informing people of why Terror Peaks’ Extreme Light bombs had worked so well against their defenses. Erick had acquired another, similar pamphlet from the Clan Exchange, when he sold all those monster cores to them.

All of them were shit at explaining Extreme Light.

But, still, there was enough there to get an idea of what Extreme Light was. So Erick tried it.

With Mana Altering for the idea of Extreme Light, Erick cast through Ophiel, willing [Force Bolt] to strike a [Force Wall] he had already cast on the cratered plains. A brilliant shard of light zipped through the air and struck the Wall, embedding in the glass-like surface, sending a spider web of cracks of bright white light a meter from the impact point.

The Wall held, though.

A blue box appeared.

[Force Wall]s normally had 500 points of defensive capability, which meant that for 50 mana, Erick had inflicted just over 300 points of damage to the construct. This was technically good. Force was harder to disrupt and dispel than normal magic.

To [Dispel] normal magic, one usually had to spend as much mana as the magic cost, in order to [Dispel] that magic.

To [Dispel] Force, one usually had to spend as much mana as the Force was worth in defensive points, and Force that was attended by the caster required a lot more than that; sometimes as much as twice as much.

Erick had already created [Force Breaker], though, through Trick Magic, and that worked a lot better against Force than did this new [Extreme Light Bolt].

Erick came back to himself, in the library of his temporary house.

He went over the books before him and decided, “Okay. So I made the good Bolt. But…” He cast a glance back to the cracked Wall on the plains. “Doesn’t look like a proper version of radiation destruction, though.” He mumbled to himself, “Probably a function of how much power was put into the working, and [Force Breaker] is better, anyway…”

His voice trailed off as he thought.

Erick devised an experiment.

An Ophiel let his [Physical Domain] loose, letting it expand to the full distance of nearly five kilometers in every direction. And then that Ophiel took a hundred meter sphere of that space and shifted it into both Harmonize and Amplify, while other Ophiel set up completely normal [Force Wall]s, each worth 500 points of defensive power, in a curve distribution that arced away from the vibrating space. Each Wall would be exposed to the radiation coming from the [Physical Domain], but each one would be further from that vibrating space by one more meter than the one before.

The setup was complete.

It took thirty more seconds for the experimental space in the center of the [Force Wall]s to begin to be visible to the naked eye.

It started like seeing the pressure wave from an explosion. And then, small white waves of power bounced around inside the sphere, like ripples on a 3D pond surface.

A minute later, the white waves flickered magenta; a threshold was crossed. Magenta power crashed from the edges of the space, into the center, and then out again, like the beating of a massive heart. Glows built upon glows. Power grew. Soon, the magenta space was as bright as the sun.

Radiation began to break away from the pulsing sphere.

The [Force Wall]s had been barely visible glass-like monoliths, floating in the night air. But now, they began to glitter as ionizing radiation showered upon them like invisible, sideways rain.

The nearest Wall was all of a meter from the vibrating sphere. It lasted ten seconds. Then it burst away from the magenta light like cotton candy dissolving in water. In that time, the pulsing sphere pulsed larger, but a surrounding application of Normalize kept the sphere from further expansion.

Walls two through ten, each positioned about that many meters from the sphere, lasted from ten seconds for the nearest wall, to 14 seconds at wall number 10, while the wall at 50 meters away lasted nearly 40 seconds.

Erick smiled, even before he did the math. Force spells needed [Dispel]s based on the power of the underlying [Force], not on the mana needed to cast that Force. Each one of those Walls should have taken 500 mana to [Dispel]. Force was good like that.

But just like how Tricking Magic was good at breaking Force without adhering to the [Dispel] parity cost rule, [Physical Domain] and true ‘extreme light’ could do the same. [Physical Domain] only cost 5 mana per second. Erick was spending a handful of mana to erase thousands of points worth of Force. It was his own Force sitting out there, unattended, but that didn’t matter for this sort of experiment.

Erick flooded the experiment’s beating magenta heart with Normalize, instantly shutting down the spell, harmlessly. And then he got out some paper and a pen, and did some math based on surface areas of a sphere and how distant the Walls were from the beating heart. Calculating by surface areas might not be correct, but that was Erick’s first instinct on how to calculate what he was seeing, based on the time it took to dissolve the [Force Wall]s.

If a Wall is worth 500 points, and it took 10 seconds for it to dissolve at one meter away…

Erick smiled as he sat back. “Yup! That’s correct.”

At a 50 meter radius magenta heart, the ionizing radiation dealt close to 50 points of damage per second at its surface. Calculating out the surface to a larger space —where all the Walls had been staggered— gave a drop off in power that perfectly matched the 50 meter sphere’s power as it was mapped out to 60, or 80, or 100 meters large.

Of course, that was just for the 50 meter radius beating heart. A smaller heart would likely do a lot less than 50 damage per second, while a larger heart might do a lot more. Erick could experiment with that later, though. For now, though, Erick knew that he could not use [Physical Domain], or even its component pieces, in the spell he had planned to make around midnight.

He needed some smaller radiation spell.

Much smaller than the other radiation spell he had, too. [Luminous Beam] was great, but he would not be putting that spell into the one he was planning on making.

So Erick sat back in his chair and sent a hundred mana to the manasphere, to Phagar.

Divine fire flexed through the air, along with a simple message, ‘Go for it.’

So Erick did as he wanted. He made a small spell. And it was going to be a small spell, for sure. There would be no fallout from this one. In fact! That would be a part of the working, right there. ‘No extraneous damage’. Could he put that into a Basic Spell? He’d find out!

Erick stepped upstairs, into the room without any dense air, and cast a small [Force Wall] a few meters away. He pointed with a hand, and all his fingers splayed.

He rhymed,

“To erase some magic; to make it mana

“Here’s a light that won’t affect fauna

“A strong one for sure