Chương 4: AF Chapter 3 – Second Hand Education

I also should have monstrous amounts of unused Karma just sitting around I could throw at things. I didn't know if the Power of Ten limits applied here, as everything I could see related that gaining Levels here wasn't that hard, but gaining Karma fast enough to improve yourself to the scale I was used to wasn't very common at all, and likely only to be found on battlefields.

Or, you know, hitting an Eldritch abomination with an Eternal-Class Death Curse and booting it off the mortal plane after a foolish young woman with arrogant overconfidence in her own abilities brought it in. A young woman tempted by her master to do so. That book wasn't left lying around because her teacher forgot it. It was done so the old Devra would take it, get dreams of power, and try to use the things inside for her own benefit. She'd been a sacrificial lamb. If she succeeded, her master knew it worked.

If she didn't... alas, another foolish mage lost to the demands of magical discovery. I could see and infer things this girl had not, clearly hinting that she was raised up to be used and disposed of when her ambitions overreached. That meant... she would have been followed, observed, and all of this witnessed. On cue, I heard a soft footstep nearby. Ah, 'my' teacher's pet Scholars of Shadow, the Zharalim. They were often used as personal agents and bodyguards of the most powerful mages of the schools.

They wouldn't be here without having had instructions to follow me... I guess giving the vestiges of her mind a new soul didn't stop a whole lot of resentment from bubbling up inside of me. The sense of betrayal was pretty thick and cloying, especially with my insights into what a fool she'd been. Carefully spreading out my weight, I cleared my head and focused around me. I couldn't see very well, which surprised me, as I was very used to having incredibly acute vision on several levels.

I allocated one of my Valence II Slots to the vestiges of my Mask of Clarity Soultat, and it bubbled out of the skin on my face and slid into place down over my upper face and eyes, giving me Devasight and Devilsight, and x4 magnification. The night instantly brightened up. Directly in front of me was a crushed wall, and beyond that was a very weird crater, having a spire-like point in the middle of the basement-deep crater that had dug out a few more feet down past where the Summoning Circle had been drawn.

The upper floors were no longer there, nor were the supporting walls to the side, and it looked like the stones and dirt in an unnaturally perfect sphere or circle had been picked up, swirled around, and deposited beyond the edges of the spatial rift there. The hole in the wall was unnaturally sheer and perfect, although the ground and area around was also dotted with rubble and stone, twisted into unnaturally thin and warped shapes that had promptly shattered when they plummeted to the ground. Let's see...

she'd picked an abandoned building a good half-mile from any others, and it was night. There'd been no indication of a fire, and a spatial rip tended to suck in dust instead of spread it, so it was entirely possible nobody random knew where the sound of an explosion had come from. The odds the Zharalim wouldn't check the only other building here was slim to none, especially with the big gaping hole in it. Well, it was actually not something I didn't have to worry about.

My eyes glittered as I looked around for my dropped Wand, and still didn't see it. Wouldn't be surprised if it was morphed and shattered in mid-explosion as I was sent flying and it left my hand. Wonderful. There were many things I could potentially do, but rapid no-Implement Casting could knock me right out and defeat me immediately.

I took a deep breath, stepping past the empty window silently, into the shadow of the rubble on the floor, and began to slowly gather power for a Valence II, wincing at the throbbing headache that started again, something only partially alleviated by the complex hand motions drawing the sigla needed for the spell.

Ghosting around the corner, the Zharalim paused directly on the other side of the wall from me, staring at the crater carefully, then at the circle carved out of the timbers and hardened clay of the building behind him. There were tiny crinkles under his feet from shattered and fused bits of earth and stone that he couldn't avoid without resorting to some of the greater secrets of Stealth Magic here. He stepped inside, pausing at the greater shadows, just as the swirl of my spell finished and I vanished from sight.

Invisibility, staple of every Sorcerer with any sense. And then, just... don't move where you can be heard. I had been limited on what I could allocate Karma to while astral-drifting. According to what I recalled, I had nine sets of Karma at Nine to allocate... but everything in Devra's memories said the whole Classes thing I was used to was absolute nonsense. Everything was a skill, and you got better at it when practicing it, only there were only so many things you could be good at because time actually existed.

I was so definitely going to have to get Sustained and turn THAT on its head. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. The Zharalim couldn't see very well, and he wasn't going to light anything up to see my tracks in the sand and stuff. I just focused on standing very still, staying relaxed, and breathing in absolute silence. He was trying to feel for signs of life, but Invisibility was foiling it as a quasi-stealth magic, so he was getting nowhere.

After a few minutes, he turned and exited the room as quietly as he had stepped inside. I waited in the silence until the shadows of his motion had faded, and then carefully stepped over into his footprints, so I wouldn't crush any of the fragile things on the ground and alert him of my presence. It was possible to see me if someone was really sharp-eyed, but I was moving slowly and carefully, knowing how fragile the illusion could be if you didn't know the particulars about it.

The real problem was going to be when I deviated from his footsteps. The tracks would be obvious in better lighting, given the sandy soil, and they'd lead right to me. I didn't have the lightfoot or other techniques to avoid the ground, either. It was a pain being a Three and not being able to apply tons of Karma quickly. Except... was that true here?

Devra had never really been in a situation where she could apply more than a point's worth of Karma or essence or vitae or experience or whatever they called it here, poetic names that basically all meant the same thing: the favor of the Land complemented by magic so you could improve, generally working off an akashic basis to accelerate learning to magical levels. I had just thrown a really powerful and monumentally dangerous creature off the Mortal Plane, and if I hadn't killed it, I had really, really hurt it!

Hmm, according to Devra, breaking through to a new level of spiritual growth was actually accompanied by a visible light display, magic reacting to the new level... and it was supposed to be accompanied by magical healing and invigoration, which should have raised my mana pool to full, taken care of my injuries, and restored my stamina... I eyed the crater in front of me, and suddenly realized why I had survived.

If my False Life was tied to my mana pool, it must have been hugely drained at the same time my health was going up and down. So, I hadn't died of injuries, internal or external, because I'd Leveled up as I was blasted away. Well, convenient. Of course, I hadn't Assayed myself, so I didn't know what Level I was... except Devra's memories indicated that such self-examination was purely internal and wouldn't use any magic that might alert someone. I flicked the mental switch she used to examine herself...

and it promptly glitched, the format of the incoming information completely screwed up and adding to my headache with an explosive jumble of psychedelic data popping into my head. I had to catch my breath and shove away the effect, feeling a drop of blood come out my nose as I calmed down my thoughts. The magic system here was cuckoo. Or... I was. I had a Power of Ten Casting Matrix inside me, as well as the local mana pool.

The two different magical Traditions were jockeying for position and how to apply themselves, and the local manafield was probably watching and laughing at me at what I was doing. Okay, okay. How to apply, what to apply, reason my way through this and then apply the Karma... The Power of Ten had two main systems of learning: Karma and Time/Training. Karma gave you Class and Racial Levels.

These came pre-bundled with specific abilities, skill ranks, Soak or Health, and general increases in the limits of what you could learn. Time/Training was the 'real' method, where you focused on learning something, generally Skills, but sometimes Feats or Masteries, and added to your store of information and skills the long, slow, real world way. The local, um, Isparian system, just had Skills and Stats, and treated them both the same way. Well, no.

Skills could be improved by practice and repetition, a slow and steady rep count system of their own that over time could raise you to great skill, relatively speaking. If you had nothing to do, you could just practice, over and over, and improve steadily. Stats, now, Stats you had to earn Karma for, and basically magically juice them. Your youth was the time to develop your foundation Stats in the direction you wanted, and you couldn't fundamentally change them without Karma or temporary magic.

Her vestige was going ga-ga over all the stuff I knew was possible, categorizing it all as Skills I could just pour Karma into and acquire, without going through all that 'Class' rigamarole. The idea that I was a Sage Sorcerer/3, Wizard/3, Ur-Priest/3, Monk/1, Melee/1, Archer/1, Scout/1 was giving her vestige conniption fits on all the time and skills I'd 'wasted'... except I hadn't wasted anything at all. Nothing I did on the Power of Ten side detracted from the potential of the Isparian side.

Effectively, the Skills I gained on that side were completely ignored. The fact I knew how to throw things, wield a staff, could fight unarmed, and other martial things were wastes of time on her end. Of course, how Caster Level improvements worked on one side vs the other was still something that needed to be hammered out. But... that was basically what a Theurgy was, and a Power of Ten Theurgy Class Level basically harmonized two different types of magic.

Granted, it was usually WITHIN a Casting Matrix, not just connected to it and spritzed out into a world with such different default magical rules. But this world didn't have Valence structures or Engrams like Power of Ten did. The system seemed needlessly rigid to the inherited side of me, while also extremely powerful for the amount of mana it used and how it could just explode with extra power using Feats, Class Skills, and Masteries. The only problem was...

there was probably no akashic rendition of an Arcane Pool Theurgy for me to take a Class Level in, which meant I would have to make my own! Such a damn pain in the arse when my life was literally on the line here. Okay, I was going to have to draw a clear line between the two types of magic, even if they basically did the same thing and I instinctively would grab for both results. Don't Assay, just Assess.

Don't Assay, just Assess, I repeated to myself, focusing exclusively on the native magic, directing it at myself, forcing off the divination effect that wanted to come muscling in on pre-programmed reflexes that told me I needed it to do this. There was kind of a split divergence in my head, a metaphorical kick in the shin that I was ignoring MY proper magic for this crazy stuff, and then the data unspun the way that it should have, although my Cantrip-powered Visual File seemed to be the default dump location.

Devra al-Ryinth, Level 104.