Chapter 40: Chapter 40 – Mystic stress relief

After they got back to the mansion they were greeted by Whiteley—the steward-or-whatever that was in charge of taking care of the estate here in the capital—where Scarlett simply gave him a short order to arrange another room for Rosa before she left the others by themselves in the foyer. She'd spent a short amount of time exploring the mansion this morning and during that time she saw that it had a small garden—if you could call it that—at its center. It seemed as good a place as any right now, so that's where she decided to go.

It wasn't particularly large; the training ground back at the Freybrook mansion, for example, was several times larger. This little patio was just a square-shaped area enclosed by low bushes and surrounded on all sides by the mansion's walls. At its center stood a white metal bench, situated so that you got a view of a tiny patch of red flowers that grew next to the bushes. Scarlett sat down on the bench and leaned back, taking a deep breath as she looked at the flowers. They looked like lilies of some kind. Though the pistils were far longer than what she was used to.

She stayed like that for a while, simply observing them. Those feelings from earlier were still there, simmering under the surface even now that she was just sitting here. It was odd, how long the emotions persisted this time. Was it because she hadn't gotten the opportunity to do anything about the situation? Other than just accept it and run away? That part almost angered even the Amy side of her.

God. She almost felt like a child again, running away to hide from her parents due to throwing a tantrum.

Could she maybe do something to get back at Rowley? Would that make her feel better?

...It probably would.

But that wasn't an option. Anything she could do right now was more likely to cause her harm in the long term. She just had to accept that this particular facet of her plans would be delayed for the moment. And if she wanted potions and the like when here in the capital she would have to buy them the old-fashioned way. Still... That bastard could at least have treated her with some respect, instead of just kicking her out like that.

She paused. She was starting to get riled up again. Looking down at her palms, she saw that she'd unconsciously started digging her nails into them again. Shaking her head, she brought her hand up into the air. She needed something to take her mind off things for a bit.

With a flick of her wrist, a flaming ball of fire appeared above her hand.

[Name: Scarlett Hartford]
[Skills:
[Minor Mana-control]
[Pyromancy]
[Pyrokinesis]
[Minor Hydromancy]
[Hydrokinesis]]
[Traits:
[Dignified August]
[Supercilious]
[Cavalier]
[Callous]
[Overbearing]
[Conceited]
[Third-rate Mana Veins]]
[Mana: 4189/4226]
[Points: 15]

She let the ball float further up in the air and grow in diameter as it did, soon reaching the size of a fitness ball back from her world. Its light blanketed her and the garden in a deep orange as she felt its warmth wash against her skin. With some additional mental exertion, a sphere of churning water formed next to the sphere of fire, although only about half the size. The reflections across its surface were interesting to look at.

It'd been a while now since she had upgraded her hydrokinesis to just [Hydrokinesis], and she had mostly acclimated to the difference. Now both of her skills were at the same level. Hydrokinesis wasn't as...pliable as pyrokinesis was, though. To her, it felt like the water skill had much more of a weight to it, while pyrokinesis almost felt like playing with playdough. The volume of water she could control was much less than what she could control with her fire. It might have something to do with the fact that her pyromancy was at a higher level. Or perhaps that was just how the different elements worked. That wouldn't be too unreasonable either.

She turned her head to the side as another window appeared in the air before her.

[Skills Menu:
Upgrades
[Greater Pyromancy] (10 points)
[Greater Pyrokinesis] (10 points)
[Hydromancy] (5 points)
[Greater Hydrokinesis] (10 points)
[Mana Control] (5 points)
New skills
[LOCKED]]

Recruiting both Rosa and Fynn had netted her a decent amount of skill points. Her first priority was [Greater Pyrokinesis]. She'd already decided that some time ago. After that, she also wanted to get [Greater Hydrokinesis], but that would have to wait for a bit.

With five points left over after upgrading her pyrokinesis, she was considering upgrading one of the other cheaper options instead of just saving for the hydrokinesis upgrade immediately. [Hydromancy] and [Greater Pyromancy] wouldn't be of much use to her when she still didn't know how to use real magic. From the game, she knew it was likely that they would decrease her mana expenditure for the correlating kinesis skill, but she hadn't tested that hypothesis out yet. She would eventually, because she would definitely need something like that later on. But right now she still wanted to focus more on raw power. [Mana Control] was the other option, as the New Skills section was unfortunately still locked. Thus far she was no closer to figuring out how to unlock it, or when it would happen.

Her eyes hovered on the text for the different skills. She'd considered the value of [Mana Control] on several occasions. Because it was a bit of an unknown factor what it actually did in this world she hadn't brought it into her calculations for any of the builds she had come up with, though she had been curious whether it did anything more than just lower mana costs like it did in the game. That could be what 'control' referred to. If so, then it was around the same priority level as [Greater Pyromancy] and [Hydromancy].

But there was of course also the possibility that it did more than that. She'd considered it likely, even, considering that her pyrokinesis and hydrokinesis skills had appeared to work differently in this world compared to in the game. One possibility she had considered was that it could be a skill that'd help her in her efforts to learn spells. That wasn't too farfetched. No matter how exciting of a prospect that was, however, learning spells wasn't a priority of hers. She had given it some effort, far from enough to get anywhere noteworthy, but enough to make it clear to her that, even with more help, she wouldn't become a master mage any time soon. Even if she learned the necessary steps to control and shape her 'inner' mana—which was somehow different from what she did with her other magic, but still a part she suspected could be aided by the effect of skills from the system—she'd realized that actually learning some of the spells was much more complicated than that.

She was still dreaming of doing it, eventually. But it wasn't reasonable to expect her to learn what essentially took some of the mages in this world decades in not even a quarter of that time, even with the system's aid. At least not judging from how it appeared to work at the moment. And unfortunately she had never been the kind of person that was good at learning those kinds of things.

But that didn't mean it wasn't worth trying to upgrade [Minor Mana Control], at least. Even if it did just affect mana costs, which was the minimum of what she was hoping, it would still be worth investing in when she had points leftover in the future.

She focused on the upgrade window and the different options in it and imagined herself spending her skill points.

[Name: Scarlett Hartford]
[Skills:
[Mana Control]
[Pyromancy]
[Greater Pyrokinesis]
[Minor Hydromancy]
[Hydrokinesis]]
[Traits:
[Dignified August]
[Supercilious]
[Cavalier]
[Callous]
[Overbearing]
[Conceited]
[Third-rate Mana Veins]]
[Mana: 4127/4226]
[Points: 0]

As her status window updated itself, she suddenly felt like a small weight was taken off her mind. She looked up at the two elemental spheres that hovered above her, but they were unchanged. Her perception of them, though, was...clearer? Vaguer?

Both, oddly enough. Even though she previously hadn't considered maintaining only those two a strain on her mind, now it was clear to her that they had been. She'd just grown used to it. But now? They were noticeably easier to maintain, to the point where she felt she could almost completely forget about them and they'd still remain. In that sense, their presence to her senses was vaguer. But at the same time, she felt a stronger...hold over them.

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She let both spheres dissipate into the air and concentrated her attention on the space above her palm. A basketball-sized ball of water appeared above it, the water swirling across its surface for a moment before she managed to get it completely still. It seemed her literal control hadn't changed much. This was the largest sphere of completely still water that she could create with her hydrokinesis at the moment. It was something she had experimented a bit with for her Aqua Mines.

She glanced at her status window.

[Mana: 3978/4226]

Before, just conjuring this had taken around 200 mana for her. But now it didn't even take 150. That was a pretty decent decrease.

She let the sphere dissipate and created another one of fire a few feet above her. She then let it grow, both in intensity and size. It quickly became larger than the previous one she had made, and she had to pause its expansion when it had reached almost three times that because it was becoming a bit too large for her current space. At this level, it did take her a great deal of concentration to sustain the fire, sweat forming on her brow not only due to the heat, but she was pretty sure she could push it even further. The difference between [Pyrokinesis] and [Greater Pyrokinesis] was obvious.

After maintaining that fire as it was for over almost half a minute, she let it disappear with a deep breath.

[Mana: 1765/4226]

It was leagues more powerful than what she could do before, but also extremely mana-intensive. But it did make her wonder what the higher tiers of the skill were capable of.

[Skills Menu:
Upgrades
[Greater Pyromancy] (10 points)
[Superior Pyrokinesis] (25 points)
[Hydromancy] (5 points)
[Greater Hydrokinesis] (10 points)
[Greater Mana Control] (10 points)
New skills
[LOCKED]]

25 points to upgrade pyrokinesis the next time. It wasn't exactly cheap, but it was definitely achievable.

She conjured a smaller flame above her hand and started playing around with it, shaping it into different forms, like that of one of the lilies in front of her, as well as the head of a dragon. She'd taken to doing that now and then during her practice sessions lately. She might have gotten it from Kat. The Shielder had entertained the children this way on several occasions.

It did make Scarlett wonder what level of pyrokinesis Kat was at. Judging from what she had seen, it was probably somewhere around just the common [Pyrokinesis]. Garside was a bit more of a mystery, on that part. At minimum, he was at a level equivalent to where Scarlett was now. She felt like she might be able to extinguish a carriage on fire now, but she wasn't entirely sure. But it was also possible that Garside's true capabilities were above that, which would be quite impressive, considering some of the stuff Scarlett had learned about magic since she arrived in this world.

It was funny, actually, how the skills the system allowed her to learn without knowing any real magic were specifically hydrokinesis and pyrokinesis. Kat had mentioned to her before how that was basically the opposite of how things normally worked, but Scarlett hadn't quite understood the reality behind that then.

From the game, Scarlett had known that there were essentially seven schools of magic in this world. Those schools were pyromancy, hydromancy, terramancy, aeromancy, lumomancy, umbramancy, and 'unschooled' magic which had aspects that weren't quite as defined. What hadn't been mentioned in the game was that there were also two types of magic: evanescent and manifest.

Evanescent magic was by far the most commonly used type and included spells like [Fireball] and [Earth Spikes]. It was effectively magic that couldn't affect the world itself, but rather created magical phenomena through which to influence the world. While Scarlett didn't quite understand the underlying mechanics, it basically meant that [Fireball] didn't actually create a flaming ball of fire, but rather...mimicked—if that was the word to describe it—the effects in a way. In the same vein of thought, [Earth Spikes] didn't move the ground beneath it to create spikes, but instead fashioned them out of mana. So while the effects of evanescent spells like these could have a lasting effect on the world, the magic itself always dissipated after a while.

In comparison, manifest magic referred to the type of magic that altered the world itself, which was supposed to be a much harder process than simply creating a magical phenomenon. She had only seen one such spell herself up till now, when Kat had cast what Scarlett recognized as the [Living Burial] spell from the game to take care of the last of the Cabal Adepts that had attacked them previously.

From what she could tell, mages normally began with using only evanescent magic. Manifest magic wasn't something they could even begin using until they were more experienced. Though Scarlett didn't quite know how 'experienced' you had to be. All she knew was that pyrokinesis, hydrokinesis, and all the other elemental variants of the same technique, were a more basic application of manifest magic — and thus, far from beginner-friendly.

She didn't really know if there was a large difference in power between the two types of magic. She could think of several of the more powerful spells from the game that were likely to be manifest spells, but she could also think of a few that were evanescent, so it wasn't as if manifest magic was the same as high-level magic. But one difference that she knew of, and had observed first hand, was that manifest magic wasn't as susceptible to anti-magic measures as evanescent magic was. It had probably been the main reason she had been able to beat that Cabal Adept by herself back then.

There had been some spells that had a higher magic penetration in the game, so it was possible that had been related to this. She wasn't quite sure.

One question this revelation had raised to Scarlett—back when she originally learned of this difference between the two types—was why she had started with two skills like that upon first arriving in this world. She'd just assumed it was because the original Scarlett had known them, but that didn't really fit what she knew of the woman. After all, the original Scarlett was supposed to be a very mediocre mage.

Despite thinking it over for a while, she hadn't come up with a certain answer to that question. The original might have been better at magic than she thought, but that didn't seem very likely.

Still, in the end that was just one more question added to an already long list of things she didn't understand about this world and was unlikely to find any answers to any time soon.

Well, she wasn't one to waste too much time trying to solve things she didn't have much chance of understanding without more information. A snap of her finger brought forth a small array of elemental spheres that hovered a little unsteadily around her. As of now, she still had some mana left, and if she was frugal with it she could probably spend a bit more time out here without feeling like she was delaying. Complicated matters that were beyond her right now would have to wait for later.

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