22 – Testing the New Staff

I left Myrl and his psychedelic concoction in the crafting room with my staff. It would need to dry overnight. In the meantime, I had the entire afternoon free. It was still raining outside, so that ruled out an afternoon stroll in the woods. I knew I needed to come up with something to bring to the festival, but it wasn’t for another two days, and right now I really wanted to reach level 9.

I ate a light lunch of buttered sourdough and sheep’s milk cheese, then secluded myself in my bedroom. I loved seeing my orb in the rain. It felt like being in Victorian England or something like that. Just drizzly and dreary, but utterly beautiful.

The world tree did a good job of keeping the rain off my normal meditation, and soon my disciples were gathered around me. [Healing Water], the blue koi fish swam around in excited circles. Blade jumped into my lap like he always did, just an excited void puppy. It took many head scratches and “Who’s-a-good-boy?”s to get him to calm down and sit in front of me.

[Void Thread] inched down his black silken thread, and [Outer Dark] just hovered there ominously like he always did. [Spirit Herb] was still just a sprout.

I took one look at my status before we began.

Wizard – Level 8
Mana: 783 / 1760
(Mana required to reach next level: 2000)

I hadn’t realized that using [Spirit Herb] on my crafting ingredients earlier had consumed so much mana. I guess at 200 mana per cast, it started to add up.

No matter, I set my little guys to meditating, then decided to try something new.

Before, I had been closing my eyes in my orb and going into a kind of nothing state to meditate. But my eyes were already closed in the real world, and the very fact that I was in my orb world meant that I was meditating. So rather than just sit under the tree with my spell creatures, I decided to go for a walk.

I pulled my hood up to protect from the rain and strolled out into the rolling hills. My status followed me as I did. I noticed that the more in tune I got with the nature around me, the faster my mana would recover.

It was all about being in the present moment. I tried the trick a therapist had once taught me about noticing things with all five senses. Sight was easy. Green grass lay heavy with droplets on the roadside as a gravel path led me further into an idyllic, rain-drenched countryside. The smell of the rain as it interacted with the earth was intoxicating. The smell even had a name. Petrichor.

Compared to dogs and bears, humans definitely didn’t have the best sense of smell in the animal kingdom. But I had read that we were particularly sensitive to the smell of rain. So much so that we could detect it at levels even lower than sharks could smell blood in the water. It was a survival thing to lead us to water when we were evolving on the dry plains.

But there I went getting distracted by my thoughts again. My mana recovery had slowed because of it. I focused back on my senses. The sound of the rain was like a symphony of white noise. Static before static existed. The gravel crunched under my boots as I walked. I stuck out my tongue and caught a drop. It was sweet like dew.

As I lost myself in my senses and the world around me, my mana finally recovered. Now it was time to push through to the next level. Increasing my reserves by 240 was more than I had ever done in a single session, but I was hopeful.

I rejoined my spell creatures for this part. “Good job, guys! Ready to reach level 9?” They all jumped (or bounced or wiggled) excitedly.

We got straight to it, pondering in earnest. I had to be diligent not to keep checking our progress. It dragged me out of the meditative state, and we had a lot of mana to accumulate.

It felt like we were sitting there for hours, which we probably were, but finally I heard the much-anticipated ding!

I opened my eyes, and there it was.

Congratulations, you have reached level 9!

Mana: 2000 / 2000
(Mana required to reach next level: 2500)

You may now upgrade a spell or learn a new one.

Upgrade [Void Thread] → Level 3
Increases the diameter of the thread.

Upgrade [Void Blade] → Level 4
Increases the size of the blade and the duration of the spell to 4.0 seconds.

Upgrade [Outer Dark] → Level 2
Increases the size of the sphere and duration of the spell to 6 minutes.

Upgrade [Healing Water] → Level 2

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Increases the amount and potency of the water.

Upgrade [Spirit Herb] → Level 2
Increases the magical enhancement of herbs by 20%.

Spell choices:

[Overgrow] plant magic
[Water Stream] water magic
[Decay] rot magic

I didn’t like the sound of “rot magic.” It sounded like something a necromancer would use, but I checked the spell description anyway.

[Decay] rot magic
Casting cost: 140 mana
Accelerates the natural decay of dead wood and old stone.

I figured there might be some pretty interesting applications of that, especially if I leveled it up, but my main focus now was upgrading my current spells. I’d been meaning to give [Void Thread] an upgrade for a while now, so that’s what I chose.

“Upgrade [Void Thread].”

I wasn’t expecting much to happen, but after I said the words, the caterpillar was bathed in a warm glow. When it faded, he was noticeably larger, and his fuzzy purple dots had transformed into small spikes.

My little spell creature had grown. So cool.

With that, I bid the creatures goodnight and drifted out of the meditative state. It was late, and I had pondered straight through dinner. Luckily, the wizards had left me a plate of food on the round table. I loved those guys.