Chapter 48: Progress

The forest east of Vrung’s Quarry wasn’t especially dangerous, just dense. The deeper he pushed, the more the trees leaned in like curious old men, whispering through their leaves at Alex. Shafts of sunlight pierced the dense canopy in lazy golden beams.

Alex found a small clearing not far from the slow-moving section of the river, marked it on his mental map, then dumped his pack onto a flat rock and exhaled.

“Alright,” he said. “Time to get to work.”

“Finally,” Obby replied, his voice buzzing with smug satisfaction inside Alex’s head. “You’ve been walking for hours. Your progress bar was starting to cry.”

“I get it already, damn.” Alex muttered. “First, let’s figure out how to best spend these experience points. Which stats are going to be my priority?”

“Still can’t believe you hit Wisdom five,” Obby said. “Feels like I can breathe again. If I had lungs of course.”

Alex ignored him, rubbing his chin. Wisdom was certainly not his priority right now, despite how much he knew Obby would disagree.

“So then,” he said. “What’s our plan?”

“Short version? You’re a broken mage with no core, running off body-stored aether. That makes you a hybrid. Glass cannon without the glass or the cannon.”

“Helpful.”

“Just being honest. So, if you’re going to be a martial caster without a core, you need three things: survivability, efficiency, and spell-integration.”

Alex nodded. “So we prioritize stats that support all three.”

He mentally pulled up his status screen to spend his points, and his finger hovered over the screen. “Willpower and Intelligence. I need to absorb more aether and use it better,” Alex muttered. “Those stats would likely also help in progressing my [Aether Attuned Body] ability at a faster rate.”

“That’s all true, but it wouldn’t provide a power increase here and now, just slightly accelerate future growth. Remember, your body runs on aether now. But you also use it to cast your spells, so the more you can store the better.”

“Easy, it has to be vitality then.” Alex said.

“For increasing your overall power right now, that would be the best bang for your buck, so to speak.” Obby gave Alex a mental nod as he spoke in his mind. Alex wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he felt it.

“Bang for my buck huh? You mentioned Batman earlier too, how do you know all these things from earth? From my world?” Alex asked wearily.

“Oh good question!” Obby’s rock hummed softly. “ I have no idea.”

“ None? Really?”

“Really. I can guess it has something to do with our connection, but Arceus only knows the truth on that.”

“ Arceu- okay never mind, forget it. Vitality it is, let do this.”

He poured every experience point he could into his vitality. As he already knew, the amount of experience it took to increase each stat was climbing. So after spending over thirteen-hundred points, it didn’t feel like Alex really made much progress when simply looking at the numbers on his status screen.

That wasn’t entirely true though. Each gap between stat points seemed to increase as Alex kept climbing. The level of difference between eight vitality and seven vitality was greater than the difference between seven and six, for example. He felt this fact as the soothing warmth of energy in his body faded, and he mentally checked his body with his mind’s eye, as well as his [Aether Sight].

“Looks like my body is ready to absorb more aether now, that’s for sure.” Alex said, looking down at his torso and limbs. The saturation of energy in his cells and tissues that he felt before, full and nearly bursting, was now hungry.

“Try doing that thing where you attack your insides with aether then. You know what I mean. It’s fun watching you grunt in pain and sweat all over the place. Reminds me how glad I am to not be a weird fleshy sack creature like you.”

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“Yet you wish you could somehow take over my fleshy sack form for yourself. How strange.” Alex chuckled.

“I am a complex being with contradictions, yes. Now hurry up and train. While you do that, we can continue your [Glyphcraft] lessons, as you are still scandalously lacking.”

***

The training was just as painful as he remembered it being from last time. Pulling aether from his surroundings through the gate at the nape of his neck and compressing it inside his body was a seemingly simple thing to do, as Alex had gotten the hang of the activity some time ago. But, continuing to repeatedly pack in more and more energy once his body refused to absorb any more it became increasingly harder. Most of all once his muscles, bones and organs started to send pain signals blasting through his brain nearly non-stop.

All the while, Obby spoke to him about connector and activation glpyhs. Sequence and domain tags. Elemental conflicts and more. Flashing images and energy constructs in his vision. It was hell.

After about ten cycles of compressing and washing his pained tissues with aether, he couldn’t hold the pressure anymore and had to release it. Unlike last time, Alex didn’t use the [Flare] spell to discharge the excess energy in his body. Instead he used another little item that he had gotten from Celeste during his shopping spree.

A leather bracer on his left arm, embedded with a small clear gemstone hidden under a small leather flap.

Celeste explained it as an Aether gemstone. A naturally occurring material that readily absorbed a supply of aether energy and could store it indefinitely. Since it could only hold unattuned aether, and only mortal tier at that, it was useless to Celeste and most other mages, but a true treasure for Alex.

The gem happily swallowed the energy Alex jettisoned from his body, its surface shimmering for a moment before it once again dulled. Then Alex started absorbing again. Repeating the process. After a couple grueling hours of trying to pack his body full of aether energy with the [Condensing Spiral] technique, Alex found a few exciting results from the effort.

Firstly; he could absolutely hold more aether in his body now that his vitality had been further increased. Alex felt that before he could hold roughly one and a half [Flare] spells worth of aether energy, he could now pack a little over two spells worth in his body now. It wasn’t a huge change, but it was noticeable, and meant he could utilize more of his magic without exhausting his body as quickly.

Secondly; the gemstone was a huge boon! He looked at the gemstone on his bracer through his aether sight and could see that it held around the same amount of energy his body contained. Effectively doubling his aether capacity.

The lack of a hit points or a mana bar in his status screen made it difficult for Alex to precisely measure his aether energy. It was rather clunky to try measuring in spell amounts, but he didn’t have much of a choice currently.

“Oh, I can probably help with that. I can measure the amount of aether in your body and quantify it for you. Would you like me put one of those little blue bars in your vision as well?” Obby, helpfully, chimed in.

“Uh, no to the blue bar, but if you can help with the energy thing, that’d be great actually.”

“Sure thing. So based on my estimate, I’d say you have… eight Vitality worth of aether energy. Does that help?”

“I can just throw you into the river and walk away you know.”

“Please don’t.”

Ignoring Obby’s antics was possibly Alex’s greatest means of training his willpower stat outside of feeding experience points.

Another exciting result from his training showed up on Alex’s status screen.

More small, but measurable, progress. Just three tenths of a percent, but it was near tangible evidence that Alex was working towards getting stronger.

Of course Obby’s [Glyphcraft] teaching during his meditative aether cultivation also had its own rewards. One that admittedly, Alex was most excited to see.

His [Glyphcraft] skill knowledge was the thing that had kept him alive when Doudra wanted to drain them all. It was also the most promising road to power that he personally had that could get them out of this nightmare and back home on earth.

He didn’t have a mage core, so he couldn’t cultivate his magic power to the degree of other denizens of Aetherious, nor to what his fellow Worldstrider’s might be able to achieve. Alex wasn’t jumping head first into the pit of despair quite yet though, as he felt that [Glyphcraft] might be his way of making a teleportation circle—or something like it—to get everyone home.

That wasn’t even mentioning the effects Obby promised he could help Alex create once the skill started ranking up.

Beginner [Glyphcraft] wasn’t much. But if he managed to get it into intermediate or advanced rank, then he could have a way of crafting some heavy duty enchantments onto some weapons, armor or even one-time use items.

Even breaking into the next skill rank of Novice was a tantalizing promise, as Obby insisted once Alex got there, they could start working on making a custom Glyphscript to mimic some spell ideas Alex had. Such as an Augmentor buff, or to help increase his [Condensing Spiral] efficiency.

The options would open up drastically.

“ f you manage to pay attention and grasp my lessons that is.” Obby said.

“Look, I’m doing my best okay. I’m a computer guy, not a magic enchanter guy. Give me some slack.”

“Whatever, let’s get moving okay, we have people to save, and experience points to earn after all.”

“Yes, yes we do Obby.” Alex picked up his spear and looked east.

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