New world. New magic. Same goal.

[copycast]

Temple wakes up on a grassy hill. His body, he notes, is currently human and all of his equipment is human-sized. No big problems there, he looks around and tries to identify the closest signs of civilization and feels around for the closest signs of magic.

Comments

[copycast]

Temple makes Four-horned Bison meat (native from Temple's second birthplace) it tastes very similar to beef.

A Steelwing counts as a single object.

The "room" can be on a boat and the effect is permanent, breaking the rooms' borders can undo the effect so it is better done on something lasting.

Temple takes money for crop blessing, purely to have money if he needs, so half the suggested value if that doesn't look like too harmful to the farmers. He doesn't reveal the ability to give magic, but he asks around about people that could trustworthy and honest to work as possible assistants in case he doesn't find anyone suitable at the base. Not all his possible students need to come from the military.

Gren is easier to notice through his magic-sense now, so he greets her back.

[witchwatcher]

The cooks and supply office are delighted by his magic. They would like an iceroom, but it's not urgent. A lot of shipbuilders will want one, though. Since it's so draining he'd better wait to cast his furnace-spell until a Witch can ferry him somewhere that could better use a furnace. The farmers don't really have much, but they aren't offering much either. He now has enough money to stay in the inn for a week or buy a couple of outfits.

"I see you've been busy," Gren comments. "There's a fair bit of your sort of magic floating around. Very nice."

[copycast]

Temple will ask Lieutenant Vargo if he wants to make the necessary arrangements for icerooms (which he informs he can do on a weekly bases) and the furnace-spell. Also, Temple can teleport up to six people (or 120kg instead of a person) to anywhere he has been and is willing to offer this ability once per day, but it might hurt his performance at other tasks if he does. There is just so many hours in a day to memorize spells. At some point it should be useful to have a Witch ferry him around important sites around the globe. Temple keeps the money for now, he copies his own outfit trice and change the copies' colors.

"I like being busy," Temple grins "Are you too tired?"

[witchwatcher]

The UDF has a few teleporters. Their teleporters are heavily scheduled and in high demand, but they're common enough that it's better if Temple saves his energy for other things only he can do. A plan for going city-to-city and magicking things will have to wait until he meets with the bigwigs, either tomorrow or two days from now, it's not clear which yet.

"No, I'm fine. I've been casting Increase Mana every half hour or so, too. Thinking about a minor version of it. Nothing's come of it so far, but I can't expect to be too good at your kind of magic, now can I?"

[copycast]

Temple is willing to wait, he just wanted to let the option known.

"It does take time," Temple taps his cheek thoughtfully "I am still waiting for a official response from the UDF, but when I get one, it might be a good idea to separate something like a hour per day so you and other spell-casters can practice around me. I think if you spend half of that time casting Increase Mana continuously you can get the minor version in a week or two. Having the minor version will help you learn to write scrolls, spellbooks and to get a better intuitive feel about spell-derivation and we can derive a variety of minor spells from that minor, then major spells from those." He takes a piece of folded paper from a pocket, "I wrote down a few other spells derivations."

The list (more like a graph with arrows pointing between different spells) includes several variants for derived spells, like spells that could share the mana capacity between two witches, spells that could permanently increase mana capacity, spells that could make objects hold more mana, spells that "transplant" mana capacity between witches, etc. All organized in multiple variants depending on power, duration, range and other factors.

One of the most promising types would be a spell that increases the mana capacity for a very tiny amount (0.5%), but would be permanent and cumulative when done by different casters (200 casters would give a 100% boost). Temple believes that spell could be made in such way the boost wouldn't fade with age.

[witchwatcher]

"I can definitely convince Highlander to give me enough time off patrol to advance this as quickly as possible. Anything I can do to speed it up other than paying close attention?"

"And... How do you connect this world to your reincarnation cycle? Better to do that sooner than later, if possible."

[copycast]

"Not really much you can do to speed it up, sorry."

"The process begun when I landed here, but it is beyond my capabilities to directly know. I was told that having more spell-casters would speed up the process, but only if their existence is regular and constant, which is why I am not giving spell-casting like crazy. On the previous old the earliest reincarnated person was born two years after I arrived, so it was connected sometime before that. This world will generate a lot of young-souls at first. Oh, and you already sort of connected. If you don't end up in Heaven your soul will just wait until the world is connected to the reincarnation cycle."

[witchwatcher]

"I see. Well, now is as good a time as any. Increase Mana. Increase Mana. Increase Mana. Increase Mana. Increase Mana. Increase Mana..."

[copycast]

Temple smiles sympathetically and directs them to sit somewhere out of the way. He takes this time to write a longer list of spells and to ponder which ones he wants to make available at a regular basis. He keeps an eye on Gren and sometimes directs her to focus on a specific aspect of the new spell "think more about the increased capacity" or "think more how you want to keep the personal range" and so on until the time passes.

"Enough," Temple says "I don't think we can get more from today. Do you want to try writing down your current spell? Just think about what the spell-word means to you and start writing whatever comes to mind, a lot of it will be useless gibberish but that is part of the training."

He will provide the writing implements.

[witchwatcher]

What she produces is, in fact, mostly gibberish. A significant section seems to be notes on her synaesthesia. Another section is a detailed, intricate circle containing a detailed, intricate flowchart. Only a small section is spent actually describing the effects.

"Not sure this is usable."

[copycast]

"It might be," Temple says clearly uncertain "it is progress nonetheless. What this circle is supposed to represent?"

[witchwatcher]

"Oh, the whole thing is sort of a... Loop. That's how it stays in effect for the whole hour, I think? The different parts of the circle indicate different parts of the loop, visually encoded as best as I could. This nub here represents the start, and it's a slow spiral, see, thinning out as it goes, shedding the outer, layers, for lack of a better word, until it can't keep itself together anymore."

[copycast]

Temple nods approvingly. He takes a larger sheet of paper.

"Lets try this. Try to connect some of the different parts to the circle and... try to add more of your emotions to it. I understand they are personal, but they do provide insights and they are trimmed later. You are doing remarkable well, back in my original worlds people start with free-form writing to get their own spell-words and they don't produce diagrams half as good as this. They try to describe things purely with words out of habit."

[witchwatcher]

"I keep chart-and-synaesthetic notes on Witch specials I expect to need later, so I guess I have practice."

She begins annotating the circle.

[copycast]

"If you don't mind, I would like to have copies, mostly out of curiosity, but there might be some insights," Temple shrugs.

Temple doesn't provide input while she annotates, but does observe closely.

[witchwatcher]

The annotations are not particularly easy to interpret. Things like 'this bit is lumpy. Replace it with a helix? How??' or 'Strange hint of inevitability about this bit. Can't recover layers, can't keep them either'.

"You can have a look at some of my old notes. I don't expect them to be useful to you... You know, I'm still not sure how it's increasing my mana, except that it's doing something to my body."

[copycast]

Temple asks if the inevitability might relate to the spell duration and what the "helix" bit is supposed to be doing.

"Insights on Witchcraft and Magic in general," He clarifies "and I don't mind looking them over either way."

[witchwatcher]

The helix is supposed to do the same thing as what it's replacing, in fewer steps. Upon closer inspection, it wouldn't actually work, though. The inevitability definitely relates to the spell duration.

Here's some old notes, in more or less the same format as this one, though the particulars are different since all her Witch specials draw on a supply of mana. She has quite a variety stored up. A lot of the notes have to do with ways to combine two different specials - it's very difficult unless they have natural synergy, apparently.

[copycast]

Temple asks if the word "certainty" wouldn't work better instead of "inevitability", because it sounds less fatalistic.

Temple surveys the old notes, comparing them with the spell-word notes. Following a intuitive whim he makes annotates two points of the circle as connected, and marks a third one as unnecessary.

"This is a bit difficult to represent in two dimensions, but I think this works better."

[witchwatcher]

"Word choice, fine. I see the connection, but I'm not sure that part's as unnecessary as you say. We'd have to change this bit, see, it's helping prepare the magic for the next step. Which would change that bit... It could be done, I guess. But it'd be easy to mess up."

[copycast]

"I see... it is a very dynamic spell effect... I sort want to make a second graphic. Just for completeness sake, but that would defeat the purpose of abridging. Huh, okay, keep the third mark, and note that it's connection with the second mark is a weaker than the connection between the third and the next step preparation. I think that is enough."

[witchwatcher]

She makes the connections. "This is tricky stuff, but certainly interesting."

[copycast]

"I know!" Temple agrees excitingly "It gets less tricky and even more interesting with other spells. Which reminds me," he takes a few books out of his pockets "These three are spell-books for healing, shielding and a homing shadow missile. Twenty charges each, the missile is weak, but it works in such way that it detonates precisely where you want as long you have line of sight and will pass through everything else. More importantly, I separated this as your spell tome for memorization. I can cast any of the spells if you want to copy them now, the books are meant to conserve your mana while in battle."

[witchwatcher]

"I'm not quite sure I understand... I can write spells in the spell-tome and then whenever I need to use them, I read it to memorize them again?"

[copycast]

"A spell tome is your collection of spells to memorize. You can memorize a spell and it will stay memorized until you decide to use it, then you need the tome to memorize it again. The book itself isn't magic. Which is different from a spellbook or a scroll, they hold magical charges bound by the creator to the written words... well you can make it without the writing but it is so ridiculously harder, that I prefer to mask the words if necessary."