Rise of the Devourer

Book 2: Chapter 41 — A Lesson on Magic

Noah had not been to school in a long time, but this felt like the closest experience he’d had to sitting in a class. He sat on a log he’d dragged over from a broken tree, and now was listening to the dragon teach him about the fundamentals of magic.

“Do you know how we talk, Noah?” the dragon asked.

“Uhh, using your mouth?” Noah said.

“If we tried to speak with our mouth it would sound something like this,” the dragon said, and Noah heard what sounded like a giant lizard choking on something but somehow the sound managed to still remain utterly terrifying.

“The mouth movements you see are purely for show. It unnerves people when we do not do them. But this is telepathy, you hear the voice not in sound, but directly in your mind. Your mind merely makes up for the difference in reality, letting the sound appear real. It is also because we are skilled enough to know how to control the sound as well.”

“Neat! But how does this help me help you?”

“We’re getting there. Telepathy is a form of an attack, the difference merely lies in intent and power. If we were to do something like this for example-“

Noah clutched his head as the worst headache of his life came down upon him.

You’ve been inflicted with [Migraine-IV]

He activated pain tolerance on reflex, feeling the pain fade, yet his mind still throbbed, and his thoughts swirled around in jumble, like he’d woken up after a decade of sleep and something had scrambled the inside of his head.

“S…stop,” Noah begged, falling down from his log. A moment later, the magic faded as his head cleared itself.

“Did you gain the resistance?” the dragon asked.

Noah took a deep breath, pulling himself up. “Okay, if we’re going to do this, we need to establish some rules. I’m resilient, but no surprise mind attacks. Or any attacks actually. Tell me first.”

The dragon looked down at him, and Noah remembered for a moment just what kind of a creature he was talking to.

“Apologies, we got excited.”

“It’s fine,” Noah replied. “And no, I didn’t get a resistance.”

“Shame. Perhaps you weren’t resisting hard enough.”

“What do you mean?” Noah asked.

“To gain resistance to something, you must actively resist the thing. For example, when we use telepathy to drown you, you must resist the effects and try to retain focus. That is how you gain resistance,” the dragon said, lowering his head to bring itself to Noah’s eye level.

“Huh, alright. I still don’t understand how this helps you, shouldn’t we be focusing on soul resistance instead?”

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The dragon let out a snort. “We forget how inexperienced you are. Like a child, even by human standards. To answer your question, let us ask you this. What is resistance? How can you resist some things but not others, and why?”

“Well… because that’s how the system works?” Noah said, realizing he’d never given it any deeper thought. "It’s just one of the many magical abilities I’d gained upon arriving in this world. I wasn’t about to start questioning all of it at the time, I had other things to worry about. Like not dying. And doing that would’ve very quickly made me lose my sanity.”

“But that is no longer the case. You are not in any danger of dying, and you have had time to come to terms with your circumstances. So think about it,” the dragon said.

Noah sat back down on the log, thinking. Why did he gain resistance? The dragon said the method to gain resistance was to… resist. But why would that cause the magic to be weaker?

“I don’t know,” Noah replied, looking up to meet the dragon’s eye.

“The answer is your soul. When you resist something Noah, you are exercising your soul, almost like a muscle. And the more you do it, the better it gets.”

“That makes sense,” Noah replied. He’d felt something similar whenever he’d gained a resistance, though he hadn’t realized that before now. “So all resistances are based on the soul?”

“Not just resistances Noah. Skills as well. Before the reform of the Astral scripts, Paths had revolved around skills. This is from an era history itself has forgotten, before the Celestians had created their empire, and the Pantheon was still young. Vestiges of that old system now reflect as the skill section,” the Dragon replied.

“Huh, that’s… interesting. I never thought about the Astral scripts changing themselves. Or being changed by somebody. How did the system come to existence in the first place anyway?”

“That is one of the mysteries that remains unanswered to this day. We know there was a time before it existed on Erandir, but what that world looked like, we can only guess at. Even the oldest Dragon I knew did not know of a time before the Astral Script existed,” the dragon said, its eyes distant as if remembering an old memory. “Regardless, we lose track. The thing we want to ask you now is, if all resistances are in reality resistance gained by the soul, then what does soul resistance mean?”

Noah took a few moments to think about it. “It resists things that directly affect the soul?”

The dragon smiled, a terrifying look as it revealed its giant teeth. “Indeed. Soul magic is a form of magic, and soul resistance is in reality soul magic resistance. The reason it does not say so is because what constitutes magic itself is vague, and does not have a simple answer. So it puts it into a larger bracket that contains fringe cases that may not necessarily count as magic.”

“Alright. So… I guess the way to train that would be to resist… I guess something like your shackles?”

“Indeed. Though that is far too great as task and highly ineffective, so we will take a simpler approach first,” the dragon replied, raising its head slightly as lightning crackled in its mouth.

“I have a question. How did the chain even manage to capture you? I assume you have really high resistance?”

“We have [Greater Spirit Resistance (Elite) - level 74]. Had we taken the opportunity to rank it up to Expert, we likely would’ve broken the entire chain ourselves.”

Noah’s eyes widened at the numbers. “Elite huh. I haven’t even touched that rank.”

“Things change beyond level 50. But that is for a later time. For now, we must train you to the point where you can unlock [General Elemental Resistance].”

“Alright. So doing that increases my soul’s overall resistance or something?” Noah asked.

“Indeed. It makes your soul as a whole more resistant. But that’s not all we must do. We need you to also gain all three major resistances. That is, [General Infliction Resistance], and [General Spirit Resistance].”

“That… sounds like a lot,” Noah said.

“Normally this is something that would take a year at a minimum to achieve with dedicated training. But with our help, I believe we can do it in… hmm. Two weeks. If you wish, you could also use the chance to bring up your Pain tolerance up to Elite, the rewards are quite worth it.”

“Uhh… I’ll think about it,” Noah said, feeling nervous at the casual way the dragon was describing all of this.

The dragon leaned in, moving its giant face close to Noah as he sniffed him. “Your physique is unusual, we assume you’ve modified it in some way?”

“Yeah, that had been one torturous week.”

“Hmm. So your base resistance is good. We can sense more vitality than average in your body as well, so good constitution. Indeed, you’re a near perfect specimen for this task.”

“Alright, so what will this involve?” Noah asked.

“We will have you gain resistance to most major types of damage. Each general resistance category consists of a specific type of damage. Elemental resistance resists direct magic attacks, infliction resists things such as poison, rot, disease, cancer, toxin, necrosis, burn, frost, and other statuses. While spirit resists soul, mind, and mana damage.”

"Mana?" Noah asked, curious.

"Yes, there are many techniques that exploit your susceptibility to mana to break past your defenses. For example, we know of a healer who used arcane magic to heal, and had the ability to damage their insides using mana. The man never used his ability in this regard, but it had often saved his life when things had turned difficult since almost no one bothers getting a resistance to mana," the dragon said, huffing. Noah was pushed a step backwards from the gust of wind.

“Wouldn’t that make it harder to use any abilities?”

“Does your void resistance make using your abilities harder?” the dragon asked.

“Well, no, I don’t think so,” Noah replied.

“It does not. Mana is the same. It makes you robust to outside sources of mana. So yes, if you wish to obtain mana from someone else, it will be harder to do so, but man sharing abilities are a fringe use case, and at Advanced levels, you can simply selectively resist the source of mana as well. People are simply too lazy to account for abilities like this, leading to their doom when they come face to face with it.”

“This makes me want to get that. Mana damage I mean,” Noah said.

“We could see your Astral magic allowing something like that. Or you could develop an Arcane Body, which would be the more ideal option.”

“Arcane body?”

“A body that has mana ingrained into it. A lost art, but not entirely so. There will be ways if you look into them.”

Noah gave a nod.

“What you must now do Noah, is gain the resistances that you’re missing, and level them up to Intermediate. Upon doing so, you will merge them into general resistances. Ideally we’d do this at Advance though.”

“Oh? Why not at Intermediate? I did that for my weapon mastery skill.”

“Because general resistances are slower to level up. Your weapon mastery will level more slowly than any individual resistance will, since it incorporates all weapon types there are. If you merge at advanced, you directly reach the advanced rank. Given how tight the deadline is though, we do not have a single second to spare,” the dragon said, raising its head up.

“Alright. Let’s do this then,” Noah said, taking a deep breath to prepare himself.

“We will use our telepathy now. Prepare yourself.”

Noah nodded, and after a split second of consideration, he decided to turn off his pain tolerance as well.

The dragon’s magic slammed his brain like a speeding train, destroying any and all logical thoughts. Noah found his head feel like it would split in half, as he struggled to feel anything beyond the pain and the sensation of being completely and utterly overwhelmed.

With extreme effort of willpower that struggled to gather his mind, Noah slowly reached out to his meditation, like an achor of calm in a swirling tornado. Mana began to flow into Noah’s body, a set rhythm from his body now moving to the slow beats of his heart. The process was painful, each attempt at focus being broken by the complete overwhelming downpour of brain scrambling magic pounding in his head.

I’ve lived through worse. Focus. Breathe. In. And out. In. And out.

Slowly, steadily, Noah’s breath began to stabilize. He didn’t notice the notification when it first came, telling him he’d gained the resistance. He simply felt the pain lessen, and focused even more deeply.

Time passed in a steady rhythm of breaths, and as Noah felt the final remaining bits of pain stop, he opened his eyes. Three moons glowed in the sky above, each a different color, and at different positions.

Noah looked at the dragon seated nearby, its eyes glowing in the dark, and a menacing look upon its face.

He checked his resistance.

You’ve obtained [Mind Resistance]!

[Mind Resistance] level 0 → 10.

[Meditation] level 28 → 30.

[Mind Resistance] has ranked up to Intermediate!

[Mind Resistance (Intermediate) - level 10]

You’ve survived the barrage of telepathy from a dragon, keeping your mind from falling apart into shambles. Now find yourself resistant to all forms of mind attacks, and capable of reverting back the damage to the user.

Noah looked up from the description at the dragon seated under the night sky, grinning at him as lightning crackled around its body and its reptilian eyes focused.

“You show promise Noah, we are going to enjoy breaking you down as we build you up.”