26 – The Rite of the Black Meridian

It was written by someone named Kurluck. I returned to my favorite chair, lit another bowl of leaf, and settled in for a read.

Luckily, this grimoire was much shorter than some of the others I had found on the shelves. I flipped it open to the first page. It read: The Rite of the Black Meridian: A Tier 1 Art for Void Magicians.

The first chapter was a general description of the art. Essentially, it used a small amount of void mana and concentrated it somewhere in the body to nullify the momentum of incoming attacks. This was exactly what I was looking for. If I had something like this during the necromancer attack, I could have prevented that slash from the knight.

As I read further, I learned that in order for this technique to work, I had to sacrifice one of my meridians to void magic.

Usually, when I channeled mana out of my fingers to draw a spell circle, it came out as raw mana, that glowing white-blue substance which could be used to cast any spell I knew, be it plant magic, water magic, or void magic.

But according to this book, I would need to convert one of my meridians, usually an arm, to conducting only void mana. That would essentially mean that whichever arm I chose would only be able to cast void spells afterwards.

That part didn’t bother me too much. Most of my spells were already void magic, and I pretty much never used my left arm to cast anyway, so I could easily sacrifice that meridian.

It was a small price to pay for the power of negating oncoming attacks.

Cross-referencing with the other book I had been reading, The Arcane Artist: A Guide to Mana Manipulation Techniques, I learned that in order for the system to recognize your chosen arcane art, a ritual needed to be performed. Each art had its own series of movements and invocations. When completed successfully, the ritual would lock in the arcane art, forever binding it to you.

This part of the arcane art was usually found in the back of the grimoire.

I flipped to the back of my little black book and found instructions on how to perform this particular ritual, along with illustrated diagrams. It looked easy enough.

Now all I had to do was break through to level 10.

Judging by the silence coming from the rest of the tower, it seemed the wizards were all still sound asleep, recovering from the events of last night. I kind of wanted to surprise them when they woke up, not only by reaching Tier 1 but by learning my first arcane art as well.

It was a beautiful day, so I decided to ponder my orb on the roof of the tower, surrounded by the bluebells.

I was surprised I hadn’t thought to ponder up here before. It was incredibly peaceful, and I had an unobstructed view of the horizon in all directions.

I settled into a seated position and closed my eyes. Despite the two cups of coffee, my heart rate had slowed from my earlier excitement, and I was able to enter the meditative state with little effort.

The first thing I did after greeting my spell creatures was check my status.

Wizard – Level 9
Mana: 1843 / 2180
(Mana required to reach next level: 2500)

It didn’t take long to recover my spent mana, especially with all my spell creatures helping out. Then came the hard work of increasing the total capacity of my orb.

We needed to accumulate 320 in order to break through to level 10. It was more than we had ever done in a single pondering session, but all I had was time, and I wasn’t feeling tired yet.

I left the spell creatures meditating under the world tree and wandered through the hills of my orb world, watching ambient mana floating through the universe become attracted to the outside of my orb and stick to it like magical fluff. The constellations in the sky were becoming incredibly dense and were way brighter than the real night sky.

The more I paid attention to my world, the more my total mana ticked up. It was becoming easier and easier to get lost down here. I let my instincts guide me, traversing hill and dale and crossing little creeks when I came upon them.

When my mana was approaching the threshold, I decided to rejoin my creatures for the final push.

Mana: 2495 / 2495

Only five mana to go. I closed my eyes and pondered. When I opened them again, we were at 2499. Level 10 was so close I could almost touch it. Come on, just one more mana…

But as hard as I concentrated, the total limit would not tick up. What was going on? Breaking through to a new level had never been this hard before. It must have had something to do with reaching a new tier. This was going to take more than normal pondering.

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Blade’s puppy face was scrunched in concentration. My other creatures looked similarly focused. They were all trying so hard. I couldn’t let them down.

I redoubled my efforts, clearing my mind of all distractions. I sank into a deep nothingness, focusing only on a black dot I imagined in the center of my awareness. Nothing but the black dot was allowed to enter my thoughts. It was nothing. I became nothing, dissolved in the emptiness there. Who knew how long I was in that state? I could not say. All I knew was that I was roused from it by the sound of a ding!

Congratulations, you have reached level 10!

Mana: 2500 / 2500
(Mana required to reach next level: 3040)

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

Congratulations, you have reached Tier 1!