Elysium's Multiverse

Chapter 9

Athela looked around the small island, gazing up at some of the other floating islands in the starlit sky and then down to the crashing waves of the sea below. Then she looked back up to him with a confused expression and poked him with a foot. “So… What is this place?”

Riven shrugged, put his hands on his hips, and yawned loudly. “Beats me. Something about the quest for Chalgathi’s Lineage. Know anything about it?”

The spider raised a leg, paused, and then slowly retracted it while shaking her head. “No…no, I don’t. I have never been to the mortal realms before.”

“Well, apparently I’m supposed to fight to the death with another person here soon in order to keep my class.”

“Oh, really?” The spider perked up and widened her mandibles with a malevolent hiss and a look that Riven could only describe as a spider smile. She used animated gestures with her fangs, abdomen, and legs to describe her next thoughts. She looked…hungry as she spoke the words that were turning into a growl. “Who do we get to kill and feed on? I’m starving! Let’s GUT them, RIP out their entrails, DRAIN them of fluid, and LAY OUR EGGS in their carved-out corpses! WE WILL BE FEARED!”

She raised her front legs animatedly, continuing to laugh with that same clicking sound she made with her mandibles, and danced on her back legs in a circle. It looked a little bit like a ritualistic dance, but the sight was slightly ridiculous to behold.

Riven slowly examined the creature inch by inch with a mixture of startled disbelief and amusement, this time rethinking his first impression of her. “You really are a demon, aren’t you?”

She immediately glared back at him over her little spider shoulder—red eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “And what’s that supposed to mean?!”

*BLIP*

In less time that it would take to blink, Riven had been placed in a spacious room of white light, a high ceiling overhead, glowing walls, and a lukewarm interior.

He was quickly getting very tired of being zapped around to different locations at this point.

A timer of 120 hours started counting down in the ceiling above him, indicating the time he had left to learn these spells. In front of him was a long wooden table with two books laid flat: one, with a burgundy cover, was titled Bloody Razors with what looked like a circular, six-bladed red throwing star on the front of it, while the other was titled Wretched Snare and had a black-and-gray cover depicting something like an ancient fishing net.

A red velvet armchair appeared out of thin air seconds later, placing itself softly on the lightly glowing white ground with an echo across the cavernous room. Lastly, a target dummy made of clay appeared at the opposite end of the room from where the armchair, table, and books were.

Cocking his head to one side and glancing one more time around the room to make sure he wasn’t missing anything, he pulled the chair out and took a seat at the table. He stared at the books one after the other before shrugging and picking up the Wretched Snare tome first.

The book was heavy for its size and likely held a hundred or so pages. Opening it and flipping through, he saw the yellowed parchment contained within was filled with schematics, drawings, explanations, and applications of the spell. It appeared there was not just one single use for this spell, but numerous ones depending on his own creativity.

What had him most interested though was the beginning of the book, where it described basic magical theory in detail. As he started reading, his excitement began to grow until he was fully immersed within the material set before him. An hour in, his excitement had spiked even higher. All the daydreams he’d had as a kid were finally coming true. Despite his possible impending death, if this was how he had to die, then so be it! He was going to be a fucking wizard!

You have probably already acquainted yourself with the basic rules and tenets of spell casting by now. But I will nevertheless give a brief description of what is expected when undergoing spell casting of the Unholy variant.

If this is your first attempt to acquire a spell, know that as soon as you have succeeded in fully understanding the spell to the point of system acknowledgment, your soul will undergo a permanent change—one that necessitates acquiring mana to cast spells within the pillars of this universe.

All skills can be placed into one of three categories. Those that use mana, or spells. Those that use stamina, or martial arts. And lastly those that use divinity, or miracles.

Some abilities may overlap with one another. For example, Infernal from the Unholy pillar, Sun from the Holy pillar, and Volcano from the Fae pillar. Infernal abilities often utilize hellfire, Sun abilities often utilize blessed fire, and Volcano abilities utilize elemental fires. They may sometimes look the same, but their underlying properties and origins of drawing power are different. They stem from different sources of energy and have vastly different effects upon the body, mind, and soul. Each and every skill is assigned to one of the pillars or subpillars that create the foundations for the universe, and each pillar is a different pathway to utilize the pure-energy component of the soul.

Then there is the topic of cooldowns. Cooldowns are the time it takes for a pillar to reset itself after taking the form of a certain spell and utilizing that ability. Sometimes cooldowns can happen out of nowhere—meaning you’ll activate an ability and suddenly find yourself unable to reuse the same ability for a limited amount of time. Other times you’ll get lucky and be able to cast numerous times in a row as long as your mana, stamina, or divinity doesn’t deplete. When a pillar takes a certain shape and releases that shape, it can become rigid and stagnant—blocking the flow of mana for a certain amount of time. This is the essence of what a cooldown is, and it can be worked around by utilizing different parts of the same pillar, casting smaller-scope versions of the same ability for decreased amounts of cooldown, or you can increase your resource expenditure and simply push through the cooldown limiter at the expense of more mana, stamina, or divinity being cast. Just know that for a beginner mage, you’ll likely run into times when you’ll be unable to cast repeatedly if your soul’s pillars become too rigid after repeated use of various spells.

Magic tiers, or spell tiers, differ slightly from stamina-related martial arts or divinity-related miracles, so what knowledge is written down here only applies to spells.

There are seven tiers of spell casting, with Tier 1 being the most basic and Tier 7 being the most advanced. As the author of this book, I have only ever been able to acquire spells up to Tier 3, though I am sure if you were to find masters of a certain type of magic they could provide you with more knowledge on Tiers 4 and 5. Tiers 6 and 7 are the stuff of legends, and I doubt you’ll ever even bear witness to one of those spells—much less cast them yourself.

Tier 1 spells are the easiest to learn, the fastest to cast, and they require three things. They simply require you to channel mana through your soul pillar. Not divinity, not stamina, but mana. Experiment if you must between the three to get a feel of what you need when channeling your soul’s energy, but the spell you’re trying to cast won’t react if you have the wrong power source. Then, while having the proper vision of the spell you wish to create, you must have a key understanding of how the spell links to the astral plane around us. Mana channeling, vision—sometimes known as intent—and understanding are the three basic requirements of any and all spells, and without these things you will never be able to create even the most simple of spells.

For a proper mana channeling, you will have to focus on the pillars within yourself and draw the pure energy through those pillars like water through a sieve to convert the energy into the needed mana. Note that if you do not have the required pillar, it simply won’t work. You’ll need to acquire that pillar’s blessing.

If the pillar even accepts you, that is. You’ll need an affinity for the pillar as well, and though everyone has at least one affinity, it is never guaranteed which ones they’ll be. You may want to utilize the Fae Foundational Pillar but could only have the Harmony Foundational Pillar available to you; sometimes it’s just luck of the draw.

For proper vision—this inner vision is how you wish the mana to present itself when it exits your soul. This requires focus, a complex picture of what you wish to form through you as a conduit, but it is often the easiest of the three things needed.

Lastly, for proper understanding, this can be gained by learning through tomes of people who have perfected the spells already and opportunistic visions given to you by the system that may be deciphered. Upon leveling up, the system may reward you with such visions, and it will be your duty to understand them and learn from them as best you can. If you fail to do so, it is your loss, as they will likely not be presented again. There is a third way to acquire proper understanding, and this is through experimentation…but it is often a very dangerous road to take and can lead to one’s death or worse.

Tier 2 spells aren’t necessarily more powerful than Tier 1 spells, as the power of a spell in large part depends upon one’s magic stat affinity as well as the amount of mana they pour into it, but the higher tiers are usually more potent, and they’re definitely more complex. Tier 2 spells work the same way Tier 1 spells do and have the same previous requirements, plus one additional requirement. They, too, require mana channeling, vision, and understanding—but Tier 2 spells incorporate very specific movements of one’s body that works very much like a key fitting into its lock. Though instead of a physical key being placed into a physical lock, you are using those motions to unravel certain astral bindings that relate to the spell you wish to use.

For most humanoids, Tier 2 spells are therefore cast with hand gestures. Hands are a perfect means of completing complex motions at a fast pace, but there are many other creatures or even monsters that use different aspects of their body to undertake the same motions at faster or slower speeds depending upon the caster. Hands are by no means a must; you could even cast with your toes or nose if you had the skill to do it, but hands certainly make it easier.

Tier 3 spells require the previous components mentioned plus yet another addition to the list. Tier 3 spells require mana channeling, vision, understanding, specific movements, and finally they require spoken recitals as well.

Think of a recipe in your mother’s cookbook back when you were a child. It was a list of ingredients, a means by which you created that perfect pasta or cake. This is the same concept by which Tier 3 spells are performed. You speak the correct words in the correct order of spell casting, and you receive the proper end result.

As the last portion of this prologue: I will be discussing channeling and items that help you channel. These usually but not always include staves, charms, totems, scythes, pendants, crystal balls, and wands. These items have usually been enchanted with mana lines or inscriptions and have been shaped properly with proper materials of various affinities to create conduits that amplify spells in a certain way. Some amplify mana output, making your spells more powerful. Others reduce cooldown, allowing you to cast spells more frequently or cast more of the same spell at one time. Some are only oriented toward one type of mana, while others are oriented toward all types of mana. Some of these items can recharge your natural mana replenishment, while others utilize your mana at higher costs in order to perform specific functions such as special abilities innate to the item. Some of them don’t even need to be held and can activate spells on their own.

Regardless of which it is, channeling conduits of various types will no doubt present opportunities to you that can be capitalized on. Staves, scythes, or wands can be used in place of your hands to perform gestures needed for Tier 2 and above spells as well, so do not think that utilizing a handheld item of this caliber will cause you to underperform at the higher tiers of spell casting. In many cases, these conduits can be used to even circumvent a portion of the hand motions or even chants of the Tier 3 spells simply by being held in your hand…if it is the right conduit for the job. In the end, creating one of these conduits yourself often takes a lot of practice but is very doable if you have the right skill set. If you do not, it is highly recommended that you find someone who does and use them to better yourself, as in many ways these items can increase your proficiency with spell casting, much like a pen can help you write better on a page than a stick could. Especially when you start delving into the high-quality conduits—that’s where things really start getting tricky.