Arcane Apocalypse

9 – Elements and System Exploration

The book snapped shut, leaving Mia to massage her strained, and probably bloodshot, eyes.

She had just binged the whole thing. Although it wasn’t that long, only a hundred or so pages. Mia had to read slowly though and go over some parts multiple times to ensure she understood them.

At least it was worth it. Why this wasn’t included in ‘what an initiate mage would know’ she didn’t know. She would have called her class knowledge a scam, but it did let her explode things with magic, so it sort of worked as advertised.

Anyway, Mia understood a bit more about elements in general, and her element specifically. Surprisingly, the section about the arcane element was the longest.

Turns out, every enchanter, alchemist and artificer had to have at least a Minor affinity for the element. Almost every crafting profession needed the crafter to manipulate arcane mana, mostly just tiny amounts, but still. Arcane was the element that handled non-magical energies and materials the best. 

Earth could manipulate solids, Water could manage liquids, and Air could control gases, but Arcane could handle all three simultaneously. Only to regular stuff and with much more effort, but that usually wasn’t much of a problem in those crafting professions since most of the work was done through specialised implements, which negated the mental strain.

There were two other things she learned that were huge. One was how one’s affinities were determined, and another, that having Superior grade arcane affinity was considered a death sentence in the ‘mystic realm’.

Let’s start with the first! As it turned out, her scale metaphor was more fitting than she thought. Every single person has a sort of inner energy in their spirit, which is made of a mixture of positive and negative energy. The ratio of those two was what decided the person’s affinities. And affinity was the most important thing for determining the potential of someone. It restricted classes, magic, skills and sometimes much more. If the book was accurate, the entire System determined what to give to whom based on their affinities for the seven essential elements.

If she put 100% positive energy at one end of the scale and 100% negative on the other, she could just put the seven pins for the seven elements at equal intervals and have a somewhat accurate model.

Light affinity was born of an overwhelmingly dominant positive energy, Darkness affinity the same for negative and arcane sat happily in the middle at the equilibrium.

The rest were spread out evenly. Fire and air were both on the positive side of the scale, with fire coming after light and air just before arcane, while water and earth mirrored it on the negative side of the spectrum.

As for the second thing. Superior arcane affinity came about when one had equal amounts of positive and negative energy. Even a deviation of a hundredth of a percent would downgrade it to Major, and if there was more than two entire percents of difference, Minor it was.

The book even had a nice little illustration.

While having a balanced amount of both energies might seem fine, the book explained that it usually resulted in the two energies constantly clashing and warring. Which in turn made the mage’s mana uncontrollable and often even tore them to shreds from the inside out. Sometimes, even before birth. The mental image of the implications of that little tidbit wasn’t pretty.

The only thing that stopped Mia from freaking out was the line that followed.

‘With all that said, a select few are lucky enough to be born with a Constitution naturally suited for the chaotic and wild nature of uncontrolled arcane mana. The most prominent of which is the {Archon Body Constitution} usually found among the descendants of the Great Spirit King Anachreon. Such a physique would instantly turn the curse that is this affinity into a tremendous blessing.’

Mia remembered that constitution, and sure enough, it was right there when she opened up her Race tab. This made her suspect that her Arcane Halvyr Bloodline might originate from that Anachreon fellow.

Well, she might find out more about that once she got her hands on the history book about her new race. Honestly, she still felt human and as they say, if it looks like a human, eats like a human and barks like a human …

If the system had asked her back when it did its thing, listing out the pros and cons of the ‘awakening’, she would have probably still gone through with it. A silly barbie paint-over for not blowing up from her own affinity and a bunch of free stat points.

Plus a skin that was so effortlessly silky and smooth that using her previous skincare products would probably make it look worse. You would have to be an idiot to not accept that trade, and Mia liked to think she wasn’t an idiot.

With the book properly devoured and her eyes threatening to fall out of their sockets if she used them for a minute longer, Mia decided to get some sleep in. Hopefully, she’d be well enough to walk by the time she woke up.

Sleep came the moment her head hit the pillow, spiriting her away to the land of dreams and nightmares.

******

Dressed in her still bloody shirt and her by now very sweaty jeans, Mia grabbed her book, stacked Mark’s loaned ones ontop and left her room.

She was somewhat worried about what she’d find in the apartment, seeing as the bird made quite a mess and even had the audacity to die on their new carpet. Then someone boarded up their windows, if Mark was to be believed and she didn’t think for a second that person took any measure of care while doing so.

More than fifty apartments and hundreds of windows were to be boarded up and barricaded as fast as possible and under the constant threat of being murdered by an overgrown metal chicken.

Mia wouldn’t fault the person who did that, but she still feared for the apartment. 

She was still a bit out of it as she went to open the door leading to the stairs. Maybe that’s why she almost slammed the door into the face of the man coming down the stairs.

“Motherfucker,” the man cursed and Mia stiffened up. “Look where you’re going. Fucking moron. Shit.”

Mia watched him go as he continued to curse, not even glancing her way as he ambled down the stairs.

He looked human. More human than she did, at least. What had Mia so frightened was his blood-drenched clothes.

He wore what might have been a pair of jeans and a shirt once, now torn and ragged and caked in still drying blood.

The problem was he had no injuries beneath, which meant he took a bath in monster blood.

Only after his footsteps faded into the distance did Mia timidly start moving. The air still tasted of copper and gore, the bloody footprints of the man visible on every step.

I really hope that was monster blood. Mia found herself thinking. Though if the man was one of those psychos that would start to murder people as soon as he got some power, she probably wouldn’t have survived slamming a door in his face.

Mia took the steps of the first floor up timidly, ears trained on any footfalls echoing in the enclosed space, but when she didn’t catch anything, she sped up. Two steps with one hop, then three and then four. She raced over the stairs, almost gliding as her feet easily found the best way to land and launch herself a bit further up.

A minute later she was standing in front of her apartment, barely winded from the mad dash.

Weird, but less weird than conjuring up magical hands. It probably had something to do with her feeling as light as a feather ever since the change, plus those six points in Agility.

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The apartment opened up before her and the bird’s corpse was gone, but not without a trace. The entire room still stunk and she could see a spot on the carpet she would have to burn.

That much dried blood was impossible to get out of their fluffy carpet. So it would have to go if she didn’t want to smell it for the rest of her time here.

When she turned to the boarded-up window, she felt the urge to scream. They had to get the boards from somewhere, but why did the coffee table have to be the poor sacrifice when there was an entire wrecked kitchen table lying on the floor? That thing wouldn’t be much good for anything besides firewood with how mangled it was from the murderbird’s strikes.

“This will be a pain to clear up,” Mia deflated, debating with herself about ignoring the whole thing and just going about her day. 

She groaned. The whole room was a mess. If not her, Mark would have to clean up and he was more likely to dump everything into a garbage bin than doing it right.

With a tortured sigh, Mia got to it. She gathered the pieces of wood and dumped them in a corner. Who knew, maybe they’d need firewood when winter came and then went about cutting the bloody bits of carpet away from the rest.

A ruined scissor later, she dumped the stinky bit of carpet in a larger bin at the end of the floor before rushing back to the room to take a well-deserved bath … 

Well, bath in the vaguest sense as it consisted of her dumping a towel into the tub of water, scrubbing herself off and then putting on some shampoo before giving herself another scrub-down.

She made sure to use as little of both water and shampoo as possible, but she knew both were finite resources. She dreaded the day when she would have to do without bathing.

Even just this much was probably a waste, but she hoped someone selected a water mage class and would quickly learn how to conjure up some water.

After she survived a magical storm and a monster attack, dying from thirst would have been extremely embarrassing. 

With now as clean as could be in the circumstances, she went to get clean clothes. She chose a simple comfy hotpants and a loose shirt for now.

Clothes too would be a problem. She had enough to keep dressing in clean clothes for about two or three weeks if she changed into a new set every day, but that too would be unsustainable in the long run.

Especially as it was the height of summer. Before things started going tits up a week ago, the average temperature for the last month had been 26 degrees — in celsius.

So if the weather settled down again, she’d be sweating like an animal. Without daily showers, it could be hell.

Back in the living room, Mia threw a blanket over the poor couch then collapsed onto it. She could still feel the torn leather under the soft blanket, but it was much better than staring at the claw-marks.

Mostly clean and comfortable, she went over what she wanted to find out before doing anything else.

The next quest in her quest chain would be first. She’d have to go through as many of those as possible to give herself more books to read through.

Before that, though, she wanted to see whether she could find anything else in the Ancestry tab and she’d also have to finally check out the Traits tab.

***

[Quests]

[{Newcomer} Introductory (2)]

Objective:

• Raise a Sub-Attribute by training.

Reward: A free Attribute point into the Sub-Attribute you manage to raise.

***

Didn’t I do that already? Mia thought, but shrugged a moment later. If all raising an attribute took was to repeat some exercise associated with it, wouldn’t playing with magic count as training for both her Will stat and the Manifestation stat?

Practising to make more elaborate shapes out of mana was also likely to count as training for the Control part of the Spirit attribute.

Then there were the Body attributes, but she’d rather play with magic than start doing squats in a corner.

That’s for later though, let’s check that Ancestry tab. I feel like I got an abridged version of it last time.

The window opened, and after only a few moments of glaring at everything in sight, a few more things became apparent.

***

[Ancestry: Halvyr (Arcane)]

• Desc: [ … ]
• Arcane Bloodline: [ … ]

[Racial Characteristics]:

[Maximum Base Attributes]

• Desc: The list of maximum Sub-Attributes attainable through training.

[Body]

• Agility: 15
• Strength: 5
• Flexibility: 15

[Mind]

• Cognity: 10
• Memory: 10
• Will: 10

[Spirit]

• Control: 15
• Sensitivity: 20
• Manifestation: 10

[Life Expectancy: 0.5 SC]

[Inherent Racial Traits]

• {Archon Body Constitution} 
• {Spirit Sense} 
• {Lesser Featherweight Physique}
• {Fae Blooded}

***

Well, that’s convenient. Mia hummed. She’d have to remember that. Does that maximum go up by one if I put in a stat point into one of those, or does that point go down the drain? 

Well, it wasn’t like putting in a point now would be useless. It was an instant power-up. In a second, she could almost double her Will or quadruple her Strength.

Still, now that she knew this, she was even less willing to scrounge on those points until she maxed out her base attributes.

Was it her low-key OCD talking? Maybe. Did Mark’s idiocy rub off on her? Probably.

Mia dreaded the kind of training she would have to do to raise all these stats. Spirit would be similar to playing with magic so she didn’t mind that, but raising Body attributes would take months of gruelling training while Mind’s sub-attributes would probably need some migraine-inducing puzzles and memorization games to increase.

Her gaze travelled further, landing on the Life Expectancy header and the undecipherable ‘0.5 SC’ next to it.

She squinted at it, and the system answered her silent prompt.

***

System Cycle (SC): An interval of one thousand years. (Equivalent to about 998.9 Earth years)

***

“Nice,” Mia said. She waited a few seconds, wanting to check whether she’d freak out, but it seemed that one point in Will was worth it. Or she was just getting numb to the weirdness. “So about 500 years. Neat.”

She eyed the Trait list, but she’d already decided to check out the full Tab just after the Ancestry one, so she ignored them for now and headed over to doing just that.

After a few moments of mental gymnastics, the new window opened up.

***

[Traits]

{Novice Arcane Mage (Tier 1)} - Class

• +1 Spirit; + 1 Mind Bonus Attributes. Increases with each Tier.
• +5% Spirit +5% Mind Bonus Attributes. Increases with each Tier.
• Increases the potency of Arcane Spells based on the User’s attunement to the element. Current bonus: 10%
• {Newcomer} Desc: Bonus Attributes do not count as base Attributes, nor do they count towards your maximum Gained Attributes.

{Archon Body Constitution} - Bloodline

• The body of the User naturally pacifies their warring Positive and Negative energies.
• Backlash and internal injuries caused by arcane energies is reduced by 90%.
• Increases the User’s attunement to the arcane to 10% if it is below that threshold.

{Spirit Sense} - Racial

• The User is more sensitive to supernatural energies.
• The User is capable of glimpsing into the Spirit Realm.
• The User has a rudimentary mana sight.

{Lesser Featherweight Physique} - Elemental

• Max Base Body Strength is reduced to 5.
• Max Base Body Agility and Base Body Flexibility increased to 15.
• User’s mass is reduced by a flat 30%. 

{Fae Blooded} - Racial

• The Blood of a Spirit King flows through your veins. Lesser and even Greater Spirits will have a better impression of you.
• Maximum Base Spirit Sensitivity is increased to 20.
• Maximum Base Spirit Control is increased to 15.

{Energy Channels (Rank 0)} - General

• As a Rank 0 being, more commonly known as a Mortal, you have a rough and rudimentary system of energy channels in your body.

***

“Eeeee,” Mia squealed and jumped behind the couch mid reading as the barricaded window shuddered.

She heard something smash into the boards. The wood groaned and cracked, but whatever monster tried its luck seemed to have bounced right off.

Mia coughed and slowly rose from behind the couch, the embarrassing sound she made still ringing in her ears.

“Glad no one heard that,” she murmured. She looked around, just to make sure and found no one. “Okay. I’m fine. Calm down.”

As she sat back down at the couch she stared at her shaking hands. That was one thing her increased Will didn’t help one bit. 

I guess I’d make for an atrocious fighter if I didn’t have magic. She thought. Magic used her mind and focus to aim after all, not her treacherous muscles. Still, it couldn’t hurt to have something to hit monsters with.

Her gaze snapped over to Mark’s bat, hanging on the wall like an ornament. It probably wouldn’t last for long against stuff as hardy as the bird monster, but anything she could put between herself and a monster might be what keeps her a firm distance between her and death.

She hopped over to the wall, somewhat conscious about her minus 30% weight as she did so. Mia didn’t feel particularly light. Maybe her steps had a bit more of a spring to them and she felt a bit faster, but that was it.

Maybe the awakening took away some of my muscles. I doubt I had a 1 equivalent strength as a human.

Mia grabbed the bat, her fingers wrapping around its wooden handle, already making her feel a bit safer.

With that done and everything else on her mental to-do list crossed out, Mia decided to get that quest done sooner rather than later.

With Manifestation being the lowest of her Spirit stats, she went with that. She sat down on the carpet with her legs crossed and with the bat resting on her lap, then started the exercise.

A Mage Hand shimmered into being a few seconds later. The mental effort of activating the spell didn’t lessen, but getting her mind to do the mental gymnastics needed to exert the needed focus got easier the more times she did it.

The Hand flew out, targeting a cushion, and Mia grabbed with her fleshy hand as its spectral replica closed in on its target.

The Hand closed into a fist, then slammed into the poor cushion before dissipating. 

Mia ran over and checked the cushion, flipping it over and prodding it. It was undamaged. 

I learned two things. Mia thought as she plopped back down onto the carpet. One, I need to train with the Mage Hand much more if I want the spell to be even a bit useful and two, Mage Hand dissipates from a slap’s worth of damage.

Mia took a deep breath, then got back to training. If she wanted to survive her next fight with a monster — and she held out no hopes for not coming across another monster — without almost dying, she would have to get stronger, improve her runic model, learn new spells and train up her attributes.

She had a long road ahead, probably a dreadfully tiring and endlessly dangerous one too, but at its end waited unfathomable magical power. And it was hers for the taking.