Chronicles of the True Wizard

Felix made it back to the fort and quickly ran through his workout routine, which he had barely enough energy to complete. Checking the tutorial screen it had only been about thirty hours since he had left for the dungeon.

After completing his workout routine Felix promptly dropped himself into his bed and fell asleep almost immediately. Some time later, Felix's slumber was rudely interrupted.

All Forts Have Been Claimed

All forts in the tutorial have been claimed. Their locations and requirements will now be displayed on your map. You may inspect them to view their set disposition and requirements for admission.

Felix had claimed his fort and had no interest in joining another fort so he promptly went back to sleep.

Felix woke up some time later and began experimenting with the Fire Bolt spell form in the field outside the fort. He didn't want to accidentally ricochet a rock into himself and figured an open field was the safest place to experiment, just in case his modifications were more explosive than he was expecting.

He already knew that increasing the thickness of the outer ring by 50% spewed the summoned fire out in an explosive cone. Now, he wanted to try increasing the thickness of some of the other lines in the hope that he could summon more fire.

First he compared the spell forms of the only two spells he knew. He assumed whatever lines were converting mana into fire, or summoning it, would not be on the Mana Bolt spell form. He gradually tested changing the thickness of each of the lines that were unique to the Fire Bolt spell form. The majority of them had no apparent change at all. One of them changed the shape entirely, compressing the spell so that it was so round, it looked like an orange marble instead of anything made of fire.

Unfortunately that did not make a Fire Ball that exploded when released as he had hoped it might. The orange looking marble simply degraded to fire instantly and lost most of it's momentum as it fell to the ground only a few meters away. After running through three entire mana batteries, Felix managed to find the combination of lines he was looking for.

Felix began gradually increasing the thickness of the lines to test the limits of how much fire he could create. He managed to blow through an astronomical amount of mana before he realized more fire was being summoned, but something was wrong with the spell.

Inspecting his modified version of the spell form he noticed that the line he was playing with didn't fit the spell around it anymore. All of the lines running to the one he was increasing in size were still as small as they were originally. It looked like a small thin pipe leading to a massive sewer drain. Felix could only describe the connections between lines of vastly different sizes as janky.

It stood to reason that the lines surrounding the one he wanted to grow, would also have to grow, at least on one end. This would make the difference between the thickness of lines more gradual and not entirely sudden. It seemed obvious in hind sight, but Felix hadn't wanted to mess with more than one line at a time.

I really should stop thinking of these as lines, they are more like symbols or runes or something, at least, some of them are. A lot of it, really is just lines. Until I know the difference though I guess it can all just be lines. For now. I really need to find something like a spell form for beginners textbook or idiot's guide to spell forms in the multiverse. Spell Formations for Dummies. Spell Formations 101.

Felix managed to increase the amount of fire generated well beyond what he had initially wanted. Unfortunately there was a fine line between generating fire and fire spilling out of his spell all over the place. At a certain point, generating more fire simply resulted in it leaking out. Some of it just disappeared and some of it started falling out in random directions. If Felix kept pushing it, he found that the entire thing would fall apart and the fire would just drop to the ground.

Felix consumed the mana from his batteries as he fine tuned the spell form. The most fire he could generate without adverse effects was almost nine inches in diameter. Next he began increasing the thickness of the outer ring. The 50% increased thickness he currently used wasn't enough to do anything more than splash a little fire around in front of him with most of it just falling to the ground.

Increasing it further caused the spell to blast a hole through the ball of fire. Almost as though the force generated by the spell was concentrated right in the middle and wasn't designed for something so big. At this point Felix tried something that he was surprised he hadn't already tested, just making the whole spell form bigger.

He didn't change the relative size of any of the lines in the spell form just yet. Increasing the size did exactly what he expected, the entire spell was bigger. The bolt generated was bigger, but it was launched at about the same speed so it had a much shorter range before it slowed down and fell apart.

The down side to just making it bigger, was that it cost exponentially more mana to activate the spell form and cast the spell. A normal Fire Bolt cost Felix about fourteen mana. Increasing the size of the entire spell form by 50% cost about fifty mana, almost three and a half times the amount of mana.

To launch the maximum amount of fire Felix managed to generate, he figured he would need to increase the size of the spell form by about six times. Felix doubted he could cast that spell at all without blowing through at least a dozen batteries.

It took Felix a while to test how big he could make the spell before it consumed more mana than he had in his pool. He had to drain mana batteries constantly between casts.

I really hope there are no adverse effects to pulling the mana from mana batteries into my body. Hopefully they aren't addictive like a drug or something. I don't feel withdrawals or anything if I don't use them but maybe I should go a few days without them at all just to see if I feel anything. Eh, some other time, got too much to do.

The biggest version Felix tested consumed five hundred mana leaving him with a meager ten mana to his name. The effect of the spell was, not as big as he expected for five hundred mana. It was a large cone of fire but it was not large enough that he could hit a bunch of enemies without being really close to them. It only traveled a meter or so and spread out a meter or so in width before dissipating. Also the cast time was abysmal. Instead of the spell form construction which only took marginally longer, the majority of the cast time was spent pumping mana into the spell once the spell form had already been constructed.

Well that was basically a waste of time and a ton of mana. I learned some things but I don't have any new spells that are usable in combat, or very useful at all for that matter.

Slightly dejected Felix ran through his workout circuit. He ran through the ruins of the fort noticing the clouds gathering in the sky.

This will be the first time it rains since the tutorial started. Wait probably not, I did spend over eight days in a puzzle dungeon. Hopefully the rain doesn't start for a few hours so I can finish my run.

I am assuming that is rain and that the weather is similar to earth's but this is almost definitely not earth. I also don't know what season it is. It doesn't feel cold but maybe my endurance or something is making me not feel it. There is no frost but the seasons could just change instantly for all I know.

What if it's toxic or acid rain, that would suck.

Felix finished his run around the fort and headed back to the castle. Felix still had some energy left so he decided to experiment with energy. It's possible it would all amount to nothing, but Felix liked reading cultivation novels pre integration and figured he might as well try manipulating the energy in his body. It wasn't like he would kill himself doing so, he hoped.

There is probably a multiverse standard for date and time but in the tutorial and on earth we will probably all refer to the years as BI, before integration and AI or maybe PI for post integration? Seems too easily confused with pre integration. Wait this is the 256th, is it 0A256I for the rest of the multiverse?

I should also see if I can upgrade my meditation at some point. Ugh, there are so many things to do. I gotta grind levels, find all the dungeons, experiment with spells and hopefully doing all that I will be strong enough to fight some world bosses. I may die in the process, but I really want to do everything in this tutorial or at least try everything.

Luckily, I can probably try upgrading my meditation whenever I meditate to regenerate, that does cut out some spell form construction practice though.

Felix sat down in the court yard and closed his eyes. First things first, he needed to figure out the base amount of energy he consumed. He did not begin meditating as that would restore energy, but he did need a baseline and this seemed like it would result in the most stable loss.

Felix checked his energy then pulled up the tutorial screen and waited for five minutes. He did nothing but wait so as to not affect the result. After 5 minutes his energy hadn't changed. Next he focused as much as he could on the feeling of the ground beneath him. He wanted to eliminate the possibility that simply focusing on anything at all consumed energy.

After five minutes his energy had decreased by a single point, well within margin of error. Next he began trying to move the energy around his body. He tried cycling it around his body as fast as he could manage. After five minutes he expended a single point, meaning he consumed no extra energy. However, he thought he felt different, maybe.

He tried pushing the energy into the cells of his skin and muscles. After five minutes, he had consumed a single point of energy. He thought his skin felt different, maybe.

I was probably imagining any differences I detected. I guess it makes sense considering I couldn't touch mana until I knew what it felt like. I guess I was hoping that because I consume it throughout the day it might be easier to interact with.

Slightly dejected he had wasted a bunch of time, Felix stood up and headed back towards the castle. As he stood up, he immediately noticed his body felt faster, ever slightly. The difference was very minimal such that an observer likely wouldn't notice. To someone who lived in the body though, even a subtle difference was noticeable.

Felix walked aimlessly out of the castle grounds and through the town. As he walked he slowly cycled his energy. The cycled it throughout his body and through his legs. As soon as he did so, he walked into the side of a building as he was distracted and not paying much attention.

He got back on the road, planned his route this time down a long and straight road, then he cycled energy through his legs. He began walking down the road then suddenly broke into a run.

I think I am faster but I am not sure, or maybe it's just less taxing? The drain on my energy is a lot higher though. I am going to have to test racing down the street and timing myself with and without it, later though. I just realized something more pressing. I need to find the line between walking and running.

My boots double my move speed when I am walking, the question is, what is considering walking? I always thought it was something along the lines of your two feet are always on the ground. If that is the case, then I can just "walk" as fast as I want and the boots will double it. Unfortunately, this is probably going to result in a lot of falling on my face before I figure out the limit.

Felix began walking, then he sped up gradually increasing his speed and paying attention to his feet. He tripped and almost broke his nose thrice as he accidentally lifted both feet off the ground and his speed suddenly halved. It took an hour or so of practice but he managed to get his speed walking with the boots to about 180% of his running speed, meaning he could speed walk faster with the boots than he could run without the boots.

Alright well at least I managed to do something that worked today. The information I got from experimenting was nice, but it is a lot more satisfying when something actually works. Theoretically this should increase my traveling speed overall by 80% and it's almost as taxing as running so it should be fine to replace running entirely when traveling long distances. I should have compared energy expenditure to see if that improved as well, I'll have to check next time I travel to the combat dungeon.

Maybe I'll head over there tomorrow. Actually I need to look into some sort of defense and area attack before I go back. I could just run a lower difficulty, grind that for a while and claim the reward at level 19, but that seems super boring. The difficulty I ran was decent fun but maybe a little too close for comfort, at least without more tools at my disposal.

So where the hell do I start on that?

Felix walked back to the castle as he ruminated over his options. He could continue trying to figure out something with energy but that might take forever considering he was figuring it out without any direction at all. He could also just practice his spell form construction. He was close to being able to prepare multiple spells at once, he could feel it, but not that close. He was at least a full few days of practice away, at minimum. . . . . .