Ch: 15 Messages (Patreon)

Edited

Working on the DM chapter now. Lots of math going into this next chapter. I hope to have it out soon. Enjoy 

Chapter 15

Messages

“You have 64,291 messages.” Lily read the notification again.

“Who the hell would message me?” She asked herself. “I don’t know anyone. Does the world still have spam?”

She sighed as she closed out the notification. Her phone’s screen filled with unread messages. She clicked to the first message at the top of the list. The message was titled, A question on the Ritual, Woburn’s advanced Magic city force field. According to the date, it was sent four hours ago. It was sent by someone called Mantas Kazlauskiene. He had the title of Professor next to his name which was in bold letters. She wondered if it was a System-granted title, like the title she used to have, or if it was just one he invented.

She clicked the message and read it. It was roughly five paragraphs asking about how many people should be included in the ritual for Woburn’s advanced Magic city force field. He went on to give a couple of examples of when it was cast and how many people were involved plus their various tiers and levels. He also added what worked well and what didn’t each time it was cast, along with how many people were involved in the casting and what class they had. The biggest thing Lily noted was that only one person had to do the ritual. The others just had to add mana to the primary caster. He recommended that people be at least tier two to be included.

His questions were about what class the caster should be and what classes were the most optimal for the support classes. He got really technical with his questions, so much so that she barely knew what he was asking. She had no idea what to tell him. She only knew a few classes and really had no experience with them. She decided to ignore the message and backed out of the page.

She found herself back in the unread message screen. She read the titles on  the messages quickly, looking for the System help book, but most of the messages were from people asking about her ritual. According to the titles she was reading, some wanted information on the ritual while others wanted to pay her to cast it. She sighed and flicked her finger so that she scrolled up to the top again. She was about to close the app when she accidentally swiped right and found herself looking at a new screen.

There were four tabs. The first one said unread messages. Which told her that she had 64,290 unread messages. One less than before. The next tab was called unread system messages. She had 118 unread system messages. Below that was marked as read messages which had 1 beside it, and the last was star inbox which had nothing beside it. Hoping for the best, she clicked her system notifications. The very first message was a receipt for everything she bought at the system store in Quebec. The next one warned her that she had not assigned her stat or skill points. The one after that was a message congratulating her on leveling.

Then she had a long list of the same message repeated, except with the date changed. The list of messages warned her that she hadn’t visited a System Hub in fill-in-the-blank weeks. The number of weeks kept changing fors each week she missed using the System Hub. She clicked the first message with that title and briefly read it. Basically it warned her that she had unclaimed experience that she needed to claim.

She backed out and started deleting the messages in a huge batch, clicking on the small squares to the left of the message boxes. It took about a minute or so to delete them all, but she finally found the message she was looking for. It was sandwiched between her first warning on not visiting the System Hub for four weeks and the receipt for buying her phone and mana crystals and everything else she had used to cast her force fields. It was simply titled: System Help Book.

She clicked on the message. A small pop-up screen appeared asking her if she wanted to read the System help book. She clicked yes and the book appeared in front of her like the System notifications did. It opened to the contents page. She clicked on chapter one and the words blurred before becoming clear again, and she found herself staring at the first chapter. Lily pulled her pillow onto her lap and started to read.

She read for hours and only stopped when she realized she was hungry. Looking at her phone she realized she had read right through the night. It was nearly nine o’clock in the morning. Closing the page that was floating in front of her, she thought about going to sleep, but, while she was tired, she was very hungry. The book vanished like her grimoire did when she dismissed it. She absently wondered if the two were related.

Her stomach growled as she thought about the food from Jules’ diner. Thinking about her options, she got up and went to the bathroom and did her business. She still didn’t have a shower curtain so she stripped down naked and cast Cleanse and Repair. Once both she and her clothes were clean she left her apartment, deciding that she would visit the restaurant. The food tasted amazing, and she liked the cook. She was worried about the crowd though. She hated that feeling of being surrounded by people. Still, the food was good enough that she would try to ignore the feeling.

“Maybe get it to go?” She asked herself.

Unlike the day before, the building she lived in was mostly empty when she stepped outside her door. There were a few people in the courtyard, but they were just hanging out. There wasn’t anyone fighting like before. She made her way down the elevator and out of the apartment building without meeting anyone. The street was just as busy as the day before, with pedestrians walking up and down it. While there were a few white tables occupied with people selling stuff, most of them were empty. She found Jules’ diner and, to her surprise, she saw a small line waiting to go in. She got in the back of the line and waited for her turn. Amber had said the place was busy, but she didn’t expect that there would be a line this early in the morning.

“How many in your group?” The very young woman at the front door asked, when it was her turn to enter the diner.

“One.” Lily said, feeling overwhelmed at just how many people were inside the diner.

Every table was taken and most of the tables were packed with people. The feeling wasn’t the  worst she had ever felt, but she felt the edges of fear constricting at her chest, waiting to overwhelm her. She found herself looking around at the people who were eating, hyper-aware of what they were doing. She got a few looks, and that made it worse.

“I’m sorry, there are no solo tables. The minimum allowed is two. I can put you with someone else, but we don’t have any …” The young woman started to say, when a loud familiar voice interrupted her.

“She’s with me.” Lily turned to find André jogging up the street towards her. “This is perfect, we can sit together.” He told her as he came up to her.

“André.” The young woman at the front door said with some warmth that surprised Lily. “I thought you’d already eaten.”

“I did, but I got a job across town so I thought I’d have an early lunch.” He said, rubbing his belly. Oddly enough, Lily’s panicky feelings faded a bit.

“Of course.” The young woman said with a big smile. “If you would follow me.”

She led them to the back of the restaurant to a very small, round table. Lily followed after André, hiding behind his big back. André reached the table first and sat down with his back to the crowd. Lily took the seat across from him with her back against the wall. The young woman left and an older woman with a white towel hanging from her apron walked up to the table and took their drink orders. After a brief glance up to the woman's face she looked down at the table as André ordered his drink. Not remembering what she had to drink the night before and not wanting to draw any attention to herself, she followed André’s lead and ordered water.

“What a jump in levels.” André said once the older woman left. “You must have been holding on to your experience until you arrived in Quebec or you went out hunting with a very successful group. Either way, congratulations. ”

“I had some saved up. And thank you.” Lily told him. “Hey André, I have a question about Runic magic.” She said, looking the man in the eye and leaning forward.

The man’s smile grew very wide and he leaned forward as well. “I am always happy to answer any questions about that. Fire away.” He told her.

She had to speak louder than normal to be heard over the crowd, but he didn’t seem to care. She asked him about how he added mana to a solid object to condense it so that it became liquid. His face broke into a huge grin as she spoke.

“Sounds like we got a budding Runic mage on our hands.” He told her. “Well to answer your question you saturate the solid object with mana.”

“Yes, but how?” She asked him.

“Use the System?” He replied seemingly confused. “Oh, you mean manually? Well, well, well. How did you figure out that I can do that?”

Lily had no idea that it was supposed to be a secret. She remembered Jules saying that only a few people could manually do spells, but she just assumed André could. He was a tier 3 Runic mage where most people gave up on it at tier 2. She just assumed he could.

“I didn’t figure it out until I reached tier 3, but all it takes is to vibrate it. I take a lot of practice, but I can do it now, but I rarely do because the System is faster.” He told her.

“Vibrate it how?” She asked him.

“Well, everything is made out of atoms, right?” He explained. “Magic is no different. You have to take the particles that make up mana and make them vibrate, then you kind of slide them into whatever solid object you are trying to use to carve the rune. Once inside, you need to let the particles go and they kind of bunch up and look like water. It takes some practice. But once you get it, you’ll kick yourself at how easy it is. Took me years to figure it out, but aside from the ten percent bonus you get for doing it the first time, it's really not that useful. I find it too slow to use outside of academia.”

“A rune, once activated, is carved on the outer edge of reality, but what is behind the rune?” She asked him.

He leaned back and lost his smile as he stared off into the distance. He seemed to complete whatever thought he had as his eyes focused back on Lily. He spoke slowly. “That is a very good explanation of runes. Carving runes on reality. That’s the best explanation I’ve ever heard. I never thought about it like that. Seems simple, but I never thought about it like that. I don’t know what you’re asking, though. I want to say mana, but I don’t think that is what you are asking.”

Lily shook her head sadly. She explained how to look through his soul with meditation. He looked off into the distance again and seemed to forget she was there. He only came back to her when the older lady came back with their waters and asked what they wanted. Lily ordered scrambled eggs on toast while André ordered an egg sandwich. He remained quiet throughout their meal, looking distracted as he ate.

“The more I think about it, the more I like that phrase. Do you mind if I post that on some message boards?” He asked, her putting his half-eaten sandwich down. “They’re mostly professional articles, but I promise to give you all the credit. I just want to share what you said.”

“Sure.” Lily said, shrugging. “But you don't have to use my name.” André waved at her in dismissal then took out a huge-looking phone and put it on the table next to his plate. He tapped something on the phone then started mumbling to himself. Lily mentally shrugged and went back to eating her meal.

“You know…” He said, putting his phone away. “...You have the same name as the Lost Sage. Did your parents have a thing for Sages?”

“Something like that.” Lily said, not looking up from her meal. Before he could reply, Jules came up to their table.

“Lily, André. How are you two doing?” Jules said with a big smile. She came up to their table and put her hands on her waist as she looked at André. “What happened?” She asked him, in a very serious tone of voice.

“Nothing. Well, this one is going to be a fantastic Runic Mage.” He said, pointing to Lily, smiling. “She’s only a level 5 mage and already she is asking the hard questions. Questions I've never thought to ask and Runic magic is my life.”

“She’s a talented mage, that’s for sure.” Jules said, with a grin.

“Thank you for the meal, Jules. It was perfect as always.” He said standing up. “I must go. I have work across town I need to get to. Thank you, Lily. You have a sharp head on your shoulders. You really should think about taking the Runic Mage class once you reach your next tier. You have a real talent for magic.” He told her in a very serious tone of voice. Then he turned away, and walked to the counter to pay for his breakfast before leaving.

“What did you tell him?” Jules asked, sounding amused.

“What is behind a rune?” Lily replied, shrugging.

“Mana?” Jules replied, looking at her. “I don’t understand the question.”

Lily repeated her explanation and Jules stood there with no expression on her face, staring at her. Then she seemed to wake up. She shook her head and smiled. “You are one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. Carving a rune on the edge of reality. That’s… that makes sense.”

“No, I'm not that smart. I just know how to look at magic.” She told her friend.

“Honey, I’m a tier 4 witch. I know how to both metaphorically and physically look at magic. André should be at least tier 4, but he won’t abandon his class. He knows how to look at magic. He is the foremost expert on Runic magic in Quebec. Trust me, he knows what he is doing. So when we say you have a talent for magic you should take that seriously.” The witch cook told her.

Lily frowned, not really sure that Jules really knew how to look at magic. She remembered Herold. She remembered how he was convinced he knew what he was doing, but he really didn’t. He felt his mana from his mana well, but he didn’t see it. She wondered if Jules and André had the same problem. They didn’t really know how to look at magic. At least not completely. She didn’t know how to tell the other woman that though, so she kept her mouth shut.

Jules then gave Lily some advice about a few places she should visit around Quebec, before she returned to the kitchen to help her employees keep up with the breakfast orders, even though it was getting closer to lunch than breakfast. Lily left not long after that and returned to her room. Once André had left she had started to get claustrophobic again with all the people around her. She did want to visit the places that Jules had recommended, but she had had her fill of crowds for the moment.

Once she got to her room a wave of tiredness swept through her body. She was not sure if it was the start of a food coma or if it was the all-nighter she pulled that was catching up with her. Either way, she crawled into her bed and went to sleep. She woke up late in the afternoon and used her phone to bring up the System help book, but gave up a few hours later because she found herself unable to concentrate on the pages. She found herself thinking about the runes and what they meant.

Looking over at the wall she found her rune was still glowing. She could still feel the small amount of mana that was coming from it. She had no idea how long it would last. She made a note to keep an eye on the rune to see how long it lasted. Then she dropped into her soul and looked through the rune at the spell ball ocean beyond. She noted it was still very active, and she could still feel the effects from the spell balls behind it. It hadn’t changed in the least that she could see. She dropped out of her soul and sat at the edge of her bed.

She absently popped a mushroom from a small bag near her bed into her mouth. Then she opened her message app again, and brought up the System help book. She settled back down against the wall and started to read again. She gave up a few hours later. She had found the chapter on tiers and classes. There were pages and pages of them. Each tier had more classes than the one previous until one got to tier 6, at which point classes became more specialised towards the person. You basically created your own class at that point.

She learned a lot about classes though. There were fifty levels per class no matter the tier. The first tier was the only tier you could just tier up whenever you got enough levels to do so. There was no test to do so. Every level after that had a test or quest. The test or quest was specific to the person and was given by the System.

The book went on to explain that the System designed the test so see if the person had mastered the class up to that point. If a person failed then they got stuck at the level they were at and could not get any more stat or skill points until they passed the test. While they could take the test as many times as they wanted to, the book suggested if a person failed twice they should pick another class in the same tier to level in hopes of learning something that would help them advance their understanding.

The problem with leveling the same tier class, she read, was each time a person leveled up to the next level it was a little bit harder. That meant that if you leveled two classes in the same tier it was the same experience requirement as if you had just continued on to the next tier. That made leveling the second class in the same tier take longer than the first one. There were benefits to getting more classes in a single tier. The biggest, at least before level 6, was that there were other classes you could get from the System that required you to have two specific classes in the tier below it before the System would offer them.

That wasn’t to say you should take a bunch of classes in the same tier to make yourself stronger, stat wise. A tier 10 person who made it to tier 10 without doing any extra classes wouldn’t have lost out on any extra stats compared to a person who had taken multiple classes in several tiers. There was a cap on stat points for people on Earth that could only be removed by leaving Earth and joining the war. The person with extra classes would have more skills, as there is no level cap for skill points, but those skills would max out at some point. Skills can only get so strong while on Earth, but there was no cap on getting new skills. The help book didn’t even try to hide the fact that it wanted people to enlist in the war to progress further.

Lily read that the stat points were designed to increase a person's combat potential. In fact the System help book stated several times in as many chapters that it was built so that people would get strong enough to help fight off the demons in the other realms. It even hinted at some of the rewards that people would get if they enlisted. One of the biggest was age regression and agelessness. Lily already had the agelessness and didn’t want the age regression so there wasn’t anything so far that they could offer her. It did say the more stats a person had the less likely they would age. On top of that, age meant less the more stat points were spent. According to what she read, someone like Ms Turner was far more dangerous even without her skills than Lily was with hers.

The book went on to explain that once one hundred stats points were imputed into a single stat, that person would have double whatever they had before the System nanos activated. For a person who activated their nanos late like she did, it recommended that she train all of her stats to increase her potential for when she reached the one hundred point mark. After she reached that mark, there was a complex mathematical formula for how strong a person got per point.

Then it went on to explain about the bio shield. Lily didn’t find it that complicated. The shield was a skin-deep shield that protected a person from magical and non-magical attacks. There was a complicated formula on how it did that, but basically it rated each attack based on how much of the shield was damaged and that was what you got. The more points a person put into that stat, the more protection they got. Once it was gone, then you got hurt like normal. For high-tier people, a glancing blow could kill them once their bio shield was gone if they had no armor, spells, or something else to protect themselves.

The stats were also self-correcting. For example, a person with five hundred in their strength who was knocking on the door might accidentally put their fist through the door. The nanos prevented that by reducing the person’s strength. The nanos read a person's intentions before they did any action and regulated that stat for them. It meant, Lily realized, that the nanos were both smarter and faster than their human counterparts.

It was only after reading the chapter to the end that she realized that just knowing what tier a person was didn’t really tell you just how powerful they were. If a person had multiple classes below their tier then they would be significantly stronger than one who skipped the extra classes and went right to the next tier based on their stats alone. That made her realize just how powerful Jules was compared to her wife.

To be a tier 4 witch, that meant that Jules had to have taken the tier 2 hedge witch class which would give her access to tier 2 witch classes. She could have advanced right to tier 3 after she completed both of those classes. To be a tier 4 witch, she would need at least one more tier 3 class, and a single tier 4 class before she could get access to the tier 4 witch class. That meant Jules had the stats of a tier 7 person. While her wife, depending what classes she had taken after getting to tier 3 as well as if she hadn’t immediately taken the witch class, only had the stats of a tier 4 or up to tier 5 if she did take the needed extra tier 3 class.

It was very complicated, and Lily had to take a break after reading those chapters. The stupid thing read like an instruction manual from a different country that had been poorly translated into English. To clear her mind, she decided to try and change her mana to a liquid-state based on how André explained it. Six hours later, according to her phone, she succeeded.

Vibrating the mana particles wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be, even though it took her hours to succeed. It was all about imagination. She had to pretend that the mana was made up of thousands of really small marbles and then vibrate those marbles. The hard part was doing that while pouring it out of her hand and into her knife. She had to vibrate it before it left her hand, and keep it up as it passed into the knife. That was a pain and took a lot of concentration. Even then, once it was in the knife, she had to make sure to keep concentrating or it would leak out and evaporate. It only turned into liquid once it was in the knife, but vibrating it allowed it to flow into the knife. She only got the notification that she did it right when the knife wouldn’t accept any more mana and it started leaking liquid mana at the tip of the knife.

Once she had the mana built up in the knife, which took nearly thirty minutes to do once she started vibrating the mana into it correctly, she then went to the wall that separated the living room and her bedroom, and started to carve the rune Earth and Distance while thinking about keeping people from entering through the wall. She carved the runes into the wall while at the same time pushing the mana into it.

To her frustration, the spell failed, and she had no idea why. Looking over the runic design, she realized that there were a bunch of things wrong with it. First, the runic design she had carved was horrible. The curved parts weren’t the best. Her knife had slipped a few times and there were knife marks that ran outside the rune. She also spilled some mana outside the carving while she was pushing the mana into it. The mana had soaked into the wall after it spilled out, where it was now slowly evaporating. What was worse was the mana was slowly trickling out of the knife marks where the knife had slipped outside of the design. As it drained out of the design, it was soaking into the wall and spreading.

Cursing, she cast Repair on the wall, not really thinking about all that extra mana that was inside the rune and now soaked into the wall. She was surprised as the mana was absorbed into the spell and the wall, plus parts of the ceiling and floor were repaired. The area was much larger than the small area she was trying to fix. The very thin carpet around the wall, in a two-foot semicircle, was as clean as the day it was created. It left a much darker, but cleaner-looking semicircle. Chuckling to herself, she leaned down and repaired the entire carpet so there wasn’t an obvious clean spot. It also showed her how dirty the carpet was, making her feel better that it was now clean.

She decided to try again. This time she used the weird-looking pen she bought the day before at the white table market, and drew the design freehand. She wasn’t the best artist in the world, so she had to Repair it a few times until she got the design right. Then she started carving the design without trying to feed it mana at the same time. She carved over the design lightly at first, so that it looked better. She was very careful not to screw up the carving, going slow at first then deeper as time went on and she followed her pen marks. Feeling better about her design, she then started the long process of adding mana into the knife. Roughly a half-hour later, she was done and started dripping the mana into the rune.

She dipped her knife at the top of the rune and let the mana drip downwards, filling up the bottom first before rising to completely fill the rune. It was the same thing she had done with the other rune and it worked just as well this time. As it filled, she got the feeling of trying to push two magnets together while at the same time hearing what sounded like an off-key flute playing in the background. They steadily got stronger until the rune design was complete. Then she got an entirely new feeling as the runic design snapped into place. She felt like something was thumping deep in her chest. The weird part was that she felt the feeling coming from the runic design even though the feeling was in her chest. She leaned back away from the rune and the feeling went away.

Shaking her head at the odd feeling, she went around the wall, through the door to her bedroom, to her living room. She placed, or at least tried to place, her hand on the wall, but it was stopped about half an inch or so from the wall. Smiling, she pushed harder, trying to touch the wall, but the feeling of something repelling her hand away stayed. For her last test, she took a step back and then tried to kick the wall. Her kick was stopped just before the wall. Her runic design was successful.

Going back to her bedroom, she sat down beside the runic design. Thanking a deep breath to relax, she quickly fell into her soul and looked at the design. Just like before, she noted that the design was very similar, if not identical, to a symbol inside a spell ball when it had collapsed into a fully-realized spell. Just one that she hadn’t seen before.

She had chosen this spell because it was part of her series of protection spells. In fact it was her fourth protective spell. Her spell was designed to keep physical things from entering a radius. She had another one that prevented anything with mana from passing through it, but she couldn’t figure out how to do that with the limited runes she had.

The runic spell design, though, acted slightly differently than her spell did. Her protective spells were bubbles in shape, while this runic spell was like a wall. It was, she realized, a much better way to protect an area than her spell and she didn't have to anchor it to an expensive mana crystal. She frowned at the notion, not liking it one bit.

Shaking her head at the better spell, she looked deeper, trying to see past the runic design. To her delight, she was able to do it with very little effort. Like the light spell she had designed, there were a bunch of spell balls just past the runic design. She watched as they bounced off each other for a few seconds and thought about what she wanted to do to see if it was possible to create a new rune.

To see if it was possible, she moved over to the wall near her bathroom and sat down. She then summoned her grimoire and put it down beside her. Taking out her pen again, she started to draw three spell ball symbols on the wall. It was a spell she had created long ago. She also hadn’t used it in a while. She was carving the spell balls that she used to use to make things stronger. Back in the early days of her confinement, she had used it to make walls stronger when a monster or beast was trying to break into her home, before she figured out how to use a mana crystal she got from a monster or beast.

Once she was done, she took out her knife and, taking a deep breath, she started to carve the new symbols into the wall. She did it slowly and with care like she had with her protection rune. Then, once it was done, she spent another half-hour filling her knife up with mana. She stopped once it started dripping. Taking the dripping knife, she started to fill the rune up while trying to think of the spell she used to use.

She knew something was wrong the moment the mana hit the symbol. Sparks started to flicker out of the symbol and the area around the runic design she was trying to create started to get blurry. She quickly pulled her knife away, but the sparks kept on jumping from the design. Cursing, she quickly cast Repair. To her great relief, the sparks disappeared as the spell stole the extra mana to remake that part of the wall.

“Well, that didn’t work.” She said out loud, looking at the now very clean-looking wall. She was glad she had cleaned the rug early when she looked up to see how clean the ceiling was above her. She now had two spots on her ceiling that were much cleaner than the rest. With a frustrated huff, she went over to her bed and stood on it so she could reach the ceiling and cast yet another Repair to clean it completely. She checked her phone and realized it was getting pretty late, so she turned the lights off and went to bed.