Mined Games chapter 18

“Son of a bitch!” I snarled, hurling the metal frame of my knitting project across the room after the yarn burned up for the hundredth time. Turning to glare at my roommate, who was trying not to smirk, I pointed furiously at the still smoldering practice tool. “Come on! What the hell do I need to do to get the hang of this?”

The next day of class, we’d taken our first turn with reactive knitting, and then we’d been given the frames to take home for practice. We had to check them out, and apparently they cost like ninety gold if you broke them, but considering how much money I had I didn’t really care.

Which…was probably short sighted. I spent an absurd amount on crystals nowadays for training, and even my hundred plus gold per day wasn’t enough to keep up with my expenses. I should probably get down to the next level of the mine soon, but apparently the next stop on the elevator cost a single crystal coin.

Crystal coins were a type of currency nobody in Edgebank used except maybe the duke. Carved fromMana Crystal (tier two were the only type you would find around here) they were worth about a hundred platinum, which was…a lot. Even for me. Ten days worth of mining without training resources. Too much for me to commit to during such a crazy time.

Alec just chuckled at me, shaking his head. “Only what you’ve been doing. Practice, practice, practice. Maybe focus on some of your stuff from other classes? You have anything else to work on to clear your head?”

I shrugged. “Not especially. Physical conditioning assigned a workout before bed, but I’m not going to sleep yet, Material Study is still in the initial stages, having us memorize a list of all the tier one metals, and Basic Hammering is apparently meeting once a week because they want us to get some of the Mana Control stuff accomplished first.”

He nodded with a frown. “I do remember the first week being light.” After a bit of thinking he just shrugged. “Oh well, what kind of Complexity are you trying for? The higher the number the harder to keep it stable. If you overdo it you’ll never be able to create a stable structure. Have to make sure your Density can support that many lattices.”

I groaned again. “Four. But I don’t want to go down to three. Any decent spell requires four. You need a mana type lattice, a converter, then something for shaping and something for release. That’s like, the most basic possible spell.” Of course, I could skip the converter, but I’d have to make the spell a spatial spell, and there were…other issues there.

My roommate snorted, snapping his book closed. “This is the problem with freshmen. So impatient. This is practice, kid. Teaching you the process of forming lattices. You don’t need it to FIRE, you need it to be functional. Stop trying to run before you crawl.”

That was…kind of fair. But I hated it. I wanted to be a genius. I’d been so useless and pathetic for my whole life. Now I had my smithing skills making me seem impressive, I wanted to keep the streak going. Blow everyone out of the water. Three lattices was…average, for an Apprentice in the first circle. But I didn’t want to be average. Still, I knew he was right, I stood up and stalked over to the wall, picking up the frame, then I grabbed the yarn and started the knitting process.

The needles hummed with energy as I infused them, glowing softly. The needles glowed with varying degrees of brightness based on the amount of mana being shoved through them, and were themselves a training tool for controlling mana flow. Their use was one of the easiest parts of this little test though, so no one really spent too much time on it.

I started knitting. As I worked, I wove the actual lattices into the yarn, creating visible, easily understandable versions of the mental constructs as I made them appear in front of me. One, the mana type lattice, two, the converter, and three a basic sphere shape construct lattice. It wouldn’t launch or anything, but it should at least WORK.

When I finished, I ran the mana through the frame and the yarn glowed. I was afraid it would burst into more of that heatless fire. The blue flames didn’t hurt anyone, but they consumed everything touching them that wasn’t alive in the blink of an eye.

Instead of the blue flames of the mana destabilizing though, another type of flame manifested. An orange flame. A sphere of it, sitting directly above the frame. I whooped with joy, flinging my arms up…and subsequently sent the fireball flying through the air. My eyes went wide and I panicked, but before anything could happen there was a flash.

Alec raised his hand casually and the ring on it flashed and a spike of ice lashed out across the room, puncturing the fireball. The thing vanished in a his of steam along with the ice spike, and Alec shot me an annoyed look. “You can pick the single most overused starter spell in the world OR you can be shocked when it works. Not both.”

I gave a sheepish shrug. “Sorry. My mistake. I just kind of got excited. How did you do that by the way? That was so fast. I know you can weave spells internally once you get past Mana Control, but that was almost instant.”

He shrugged. “Four lattices. Same ones you were trying to make, just with a different element. Someone who does enough work on complexity can shrink the number. Use more intricate and customized lattices. If you’re using your own element you can get it down to one for simple spells, though I’m nowhere near that level.”

“So…we want to shrink it? Wouldn’t we want MORE complex spells?” I knew that spells required more power with more lattices, but they also produced greater effects.

That got a smile and a head shake. “Everyone has limits. Density, stability, they only take you so far. You want your limits high, of course, but once you hit them you need to make spells more complex to add more utility. Someone who can create stable structures of ten lattices can refine spells much more thoroughly if every lattice does multiple overlapping things. If you have to apply shape, speed, movement, and so one with individual lattices it takes up space. You can also use extremely expensive high Form magic tools to control spells manually, but it takes away from casting time and concentration for other spells.”

“So I just keep doing it?” I asked miserably. “Learn how they fit together and how they work until I can create complicated spells that can do crazy things?” I considered the possibilities of space magic. Maybe I could make a teleportation spell…then I realized that maybe literally tearing through space might be an example of the kind of overreaching Alec JUST told me not to do.

So I picked up the now empty frame (the weave disintegrated when it activated, though it didn’t burst into flames, ironically, just kind of fell to dust as the mana keeping the yarn together was sucked out) and started again, this time with a new element base.

I could do tons of these actually. One big benefit of my formula was that spatial magic is incredibly draining, and the crystal extremely complex. Because of that, I had a ton of mana to use, and neutral spells, as well as low level three lattice spells like the ones I was weaving were easy to manage.

It ALSO meant that ranking up was going to take ages, but you worked with what you had. I just needed to fill the crystals and they would shift to a latent tier three state, then once I completed the process on all of them they would resonate and I would rank up to Caster. That would take me months, but it was fine, at least I could cast now.

Finally though, I ran out of mana. Even my reserves couldn’t use mana like this indefinitely, and I dropped the frame on the table next to my bed, the one I’d moved into the room from the mining company when Alec was out of the room.

Speaking of Alec, my roommate was looking at me oddly. I raised an eyebrow at him. “You planning to paint my portrait or something? Maybe take up sculpture.” I flipped my hair dramatically before saying in a faux arrogant voice. “I realize my beauty is astounding, but it’s rude to stare.”

He rolled his eyes. “You look like a scarecrow dipped in egg white. No, it’s just…I heard some things about you. They don’t seem like they would be true. Some of the heirs from the big families, they say there’s something wrong with you, that you’re off. Not just the low sensitivity thing. They say you’re…unclean. I don’t even know what the hell they mean, but I don’t really see it.”

I considered the comment. I could have gotten pissed, but him telling me meant he didn’t buy it and wanted to be friends. Which was good. But what he said…it made no sense. It lined up with what I’d seen from that group, the higher nobility kids were the ones who seemed to look at me with disgust. But I was with Alec. I didn’t know what unclean could mean.

“I don’t know.” I said finally. “I spent most of my life being shunned because of my sensitivity, or at least I thought I did. I never really interacted with higher nobility, just lesser families like the Seltons and Ardanes. I thought becoming an apprentice would fix things. Make them easier. But some people seem almost angrier that I got strong.”

He looked disturbed. “Will they attack you? Because you could approach the teachers about it if you feel threatened.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. They haven’t so far. As long as all they do is glare and talk shit I don’t really care. I’ll keep getting stronger and then just leave. If they mention the reason to you though…”

“You’re the first person I tell.” He said with a nod. Despite that, he still looked unsettled, and I didn’t blame him. I was unsettled too. Why were some people so disgusted by me? It couldn’t be the sensitivity issue. Was the bias against weakness that strong? But I wasn’t weak anymore. It had to be something else.

It didn’t matter for now, but I was going to look into it. Maybe Riley ( my contact in the gangs, not the redhead from the guild test) could get me some answers. Either way I didn’t care. Tomorrow after classes I planned to finally go meet up with Tara to check how she was feeling about the mage’s tower. I hadn’t spoken to her in too long, I missed my best friend.

I checked my inventory, seeing that I had a decent amount of gold on me, one or two platinums worth. It would be plenty to bring Tara somewhere nice to eat to celebrate her getting into the tower, she had been ranting about a new fine dining establishment she’d heard about that served tier two beast meat, and I’d love to try that myself.

Sadly I wasn’t able to go to bed. My mana was empty, but I still had other things to do, so I dragged myself up and then down the hall to the closet I used to enter the mining company and then headed down to the mines to get to work. With my crystallization complete I had the strength to get through it, and I couldn’t miss a days worth of money. Once I was done with this though, I could head to bed. I was also going to count this as my physical conditioning workout, so at least I got some use out of all the effort.