Andrew Rowe - Sufficiently Advanced Magic

When that was done, I went to the Divinatory and asked them to identify the large crystal Professor Orden had given me.

The answer was…unexpected.

“That’s a Class 2 universal mana core.”

I blinked. “Universal? You mean gray?”

The Diviner shook his head. “Nope. Universal. It’s much rarer. You can channel any kind of mana into it and it’ll change into a crystal of that type. Don’t waste that thing, it’s rare; only a few of the strongest monsters in the tower have universal cores. How’d you get it?”

“Uh… gift from a teacher.”

“Wow. That teacher must really like you. Those things are expensive.”

Huh.

I didn’t really know what to make of that. I bid the Diviner goodbye and headed back to my room.

Having a universal core vastly broadened my options — if I was willing to use it immediately. No wonder Professor Orden already thought she’d given me enough resources. This crystal itself was worth at least as much as one of the greater crystals in the shop, and probably vastly more, due to its flexibility.

I could only change it into a few types of things myself, but for something like this, I’d be willing to put in the effort to ask a friend to shift it to a different type.

What could I accomplish with a single Class 2 mana core of any type I wanted?

Shuffling though my books, I came up with a pretty simple answer: nothing more than I could have made before.

Using Class 2 cores was at least Carnelian-level, possibly higher. Attempting a Carnelian-level enchantment at my skill level had a huge possibility of failure — which would cost me the crystal — and possibly a disastrous backlash if I made a bad enough mistake.

I tucked the crystal away in the relative safety of a secret compartment in the bottom of the wooden crate where I kept my laundry.

While putting the crystal away in there, I found my other hidden item, the flask of water from the attunement chamber. I hadn’t forgotten about it exactly, but I also hadn’t done anything with it as quickly as I had planned.

I turned on my attunement to look at the flask. The water inside still glowed a bright, ice-blue hue under my vision. The same hue, in fact, that I saw on my own attunement if I looked in the mirror while it was active.

I’d promised myself I’d do something to preserve the water in there, but I’d procrastinated on it pretty severely. Grudgingly, I spent most of the day studying enchantments to preserve potions. Fortunately, I was able to find a few that only required gray mana.

I marked the flask’s exterior with ink, the easiest way to make a rune on something made of leather. Then I spent the evening putting two quick enchantments on the flask. One to preserve the liquid, and the second being a simple shield sigil like I was using on my walls. I didn’t want a stray arrow puncturing the thing.

I was getting to the point where I had a lot of enchantments to maintain. None of the enchantments I’d made thus far were the permanent, self-sustaining kind — those were too expensive. Even the items I was making for Jin would have to be recharged, but he seemed confident he could get them refilled without people asking too many questions. I didn’t ask how.

I ran into Sera while I was shopping for supplies for my permanent enchantment.

She fell into step by my side, walking with me to the shop. “You sign up for a team for the practicals yet?”

How does everyone know about these other than me? “No. I wasn’t even aware we had teams.”

Sera paused in her step, staring at me for a second. “Seriously? I was wondering why you hadn’t asked me to join you, and I was feeling a little left out… but you didn’t even know?”

I shook my head. “Is this in one of our thousands of school documents somewhere?”

I had read those. Or skimmed them. Skimmed most of them. Parts.

The first few pages, at least.

“Yes, but they’ve also been all over the newspapers. And they’re the only thing half the students have been talking about for weeks!”

Oh, talking to people. That’s a thing I should do again sometime.

“Right,” I said sheepishly. “What’s the deal?”

“Teams of five, to get ready for the first tower incursion.” Her reply was instant. “I’ve got Patrick on my team already.”

Patrick was an unsurprising choice — he was both talented and very easy to work with. “What about Roland?”

Sera made an ugly scowl. “He had ‘other obligations’.”

Huh. That would be interesting if I actually cared.

This was giving me an idea, though. “You ask any physical fighters yet?”

She shook her head.

“Okay, you sold me. I’ll join your team… if you let me bring a friend.”

She drew back and crossed her arms. “Who said I want you?”

I gave her a knowing look. “I’m not going to beg.”

“Fine, fine. You can join us. And you can pick someone. But get Jin, too, yeah?”

She wants Jin on the team? That was interesting. I would have expected her to go with any of the other students we’d known for years.

“I think I can sell him on the idea. Where do I sign up?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of it. I’ve known how to forge your signature for years.”

“Knowledge is distinct from mastery. If your idea of my signature is anything like your homages to the great artists of—”

“I was six when I drew those, Corin. Six ! Are you never going to let that go?”

“Not if you keep giving me such perfect reactions.”

“Ugh.”

We made our way to the shops without any further incidents, and she helped me pick out some of the items I needed. Fortunately, I’d just gotten my weekly stipend that morning; otherwise I’d have been begging Sera for a loan. I was only going to make one or two items immediately, but I picked up a handful of mundane accessories for future enchantments for myself, as well as the next few things Jin was going to need.

I had a lot of options in mind for my first item, even with my relatively limited resources.

In terms of function, I had a few main things I wanted to focus on.

First, I needed to make sure I stayed intact. My shield sigil was a good start for this, especially because I could recharge it myself, but eventually I wanted something that was stronger and wouldn’t require any upkeep from my side.

It also had a clear weakness to kinetic energy. Most shielding spells seemed to dampen the force of physical attacks, but failed to stop them entirely. I’d need to research how to counter that. Maybe a transference-based shield spell?

I also needed more raw offensive power. When Professor Orden had broken into my room, her tunic had been able to effortlessly absorb my dueling cane’s blasts. Maybe she wasn’t a fair bar to set. I couldn’t expect to beat opponents with Emerald-level enchantments that caught me by surprise in a fair fight, but even my own humble shield sigil was capable of soaking about fifteen hits from a standard dueling cane before failing.

Presumably, that was why Lord Teft had felt comfortable letting us throw spells at each other on our first day of class. The sigil defenses were more than capable of stopping anything your average student could have produced. Sera’s summoning-based attack spell might have broken through a shield, but I really had no idea. It was visually impressive, but I didn’t know how much punch those shards of ice had.

If I couldn’t break a simple shield, I couldn’t be expected to handle any monster of significant power, either. My sword might have done the job, but I still didn’t know exactly how it worked, and I wasn’t going to get into close range with anything threatening if I could avoid it. I had just enough sword training to know that there were plenty of people who were better .