Chapter 78: The Final Layer

Sitting down on the raised platform where he and Porkchop had discovered the stash of potions, Kaius repacked his bag.

With a single tonic each of Solar Revitalisation and Psychopathic Assault, the latest haul had brought them to a total of nine tonics. One more than he could hold in his potion pouch. After moving his coin and empties to a slot in his pack, Kaius had to make the tricky choice of which potion to leave outside of easy reach.

All five of his healing tonics would be staying with him, to do otherwise was stupid. For now he was leaning towards stashing one of the Jack Rabbit tonics. He intended to save both of them for the guardian, but if the situation arose where he had to choose between imbibing a potion and potential death, he was going to make that choice ten out of ten times.

Satisfied with his choice, Kaius pulled his Jurryrigger’s Stylus as well as his notepad out from his pack, before setting the bag on the ground. Having already removed his vambraces, he was ready to reinscribe. First though, he wanted to try his hand at modifying his Arcane Bolt hymn.

Like he’d mentioned to Porkchop, he needed something cheaper. Having a spell that could burst a goblins head like a melon available at the flick of his fingers was all well and good, but it was costly. Most of their fights had been slogs, and only having four spells available was hampering him. Plus, the shaman’s bone darts had sparked some inspiration.

He probably wouldn’t make a spell that fired a spray of them, that would suffer from the same cost problem as Arcane Bolt and would probably be less effective to boot. But if he could scale down the hymn…

He flicked open his notebook, already two thirds full with runic diagrams- carefully neutered so as not to pull in mana, of course.

His current hymn was made up of a few parts. A section of runes to shape the spell, one to contain and direct his mana, and another to harden it into a penetrating projectile. All made up of hundreds of High Lothian words that looped over themselves until they formed a dense, arrow shaped array.

Most of the shaping and containment sections were held in the ‘haft’ of the arrow, if he could just shrink the overall size of the arcane shard, reducing its mana requirements while increasing its density…

Grabbing his pen, Kaius sketched out a test on his page. It looked like it should work. Everything was in alignment, there were no syntax issues.

The only way to know would be to try.

Snapping his book closed he shoved it back into his bag before snatching up his stylus. Laying his left hand on his knee he bent over and started to draw, wincing slightly as the mana he channelled through his stylus started to burn into him.

He moved quickly. Thanks to his modifications, and the overall shrinking of the runic spell form, he actually managed to finish it quicker than normal. With a final flick of his wrist he completed the last rune on his test a mere five minutes later.

His glyph drank hungrily from his mana pool, flooding his newest spell. A moment later and it clicked into place, sequestering the energy it needed for him to cast the hymn. Kaius let out a sigh of relief. At the very least the spell was stable. Now he just needed to test it.

He pulled up his resources, curious about how much mana the spell had taken from his reserves.

Resources:

Health – 380/380 (2.8/min)

Stamina – 280/280 (2.8/min)

Mana – 273/430 (4.3/min)

Free Mana – 243/400

Reserved Mana – 30

Seeing the cost of his adjusted spell, Kaius grinned. Thirty was low enough that he could inscribe fourteen of the damn things! Quite a step up from a measly four. Though, whether it was actually viable to use in combat had yet to be seen. If everything worked to plan, it should be far denser than his original, but would probably have a little less oomph behind it.

“Heads up. Going to cast something.” Kaius said, alerting Porkchop to what he intended. His friend simply grunted in acknowledgement, more interested in meandering around to explore the pavilion.

Turning back to his task, Kaius looked up and pointed towards the ceiling. A flicker of intent and he watched as his latest hymn lit up gold, runes flaking off into burning embers as a deep blue shard of the arcane popped into existence at the dip of his finger. Maybe a fingerlength and a half long, the spell looked like a faceted sapphire that had been cut to a needle tip.

Faster than he could blink, the shard rocketed towards the ceiling as it whistled through the air. It hit the roof with a crash, cracking into the stone and showering him in dust.

Kaius let out a hearty laugh from deep in his belly. That was fantastic! Sure, it had lost a lot of the oomph of Arcane Bolt, but it still looked like it was more than enough to put a depths-born in the ground if he aimed well. He could always inscribe the original if they were going to come up against something that warranted a bit of extra firepower.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Hurriedly, he went back to inscribing more of the spells, not stopping until he had used all of his available mana. Then he had to wait. Pacing back and forth as his pool slowly refilled. Thankfully, on his fourth such break, a welcome ding rang through his mind.

**Ding! Runic Lexicon has reached level 19!**