Zorian snorted derisively. «Trust me, shaping skills are not something I’m lacking in,» he said. He raised his arm into the air, palm pointed towards the earth, and willed some of the dust and dirt to rise towards it. The dry, loose material that covered the training ground slowly rose towards his hand in a diffuse pillar, coalescing into a rough sphere once they reached his palm.
Once he was satisfied with the size of the sphere, he pointed his palm towards one of the targets and willed the mass of dirt rapidly forward, catapulting it towards the target. Sadly, the impromptu construct was too structurally unsound and disintegrated into dust halfway towards the target, so some of the effect was ruined.
It didn’t make the feat any less impressive to Taiven, though.
«Damn, that was impressive as hell,» Taiven said. «How can you do that? I don’t think I could do that… Lift a rock off the ground, sure, but diffuse material like soil? That’s a pretty advanced exercise. Hmm, if your shaping skills are that good, I guess there are a few more spells I could teach you…»
Zorian smiled. This had definitely been a good idea.
During the next several days, while he waited for Taiven to gather her team for the journey into the city’s sewers, Zorian got a crash course in combat magic from his friend. Taiven took a surprisingly broad approach to the topic, opting to teach him as many different spells as she could manage instead of having him practice a few until he had a firm hold over them. She claimed that he already had a core of spells he was properly proficient in, and that he needed variety and breadth of possible options more than he needed a new ace in the hole, but she later admitted she was testing him, trying to discover the limits of his shaping skills. Something she didn’t end up finding — Zorian’s shaping skills were better than hers; every spell she could cast, he could as well.
Not all of the spells she taught him were of the typical offensive sort he expected from her. Some of them, like the ‘spider climb’ spell that allowed him to cling to sheer walls and other stable surfaces, ‘featherfall’ that allowed him to survive high falls, or the various comfort spells that blunted temperature extremes and other environmental conditions, could be more properly classified as survival spells. Nonetheless, Taiven insisted that sometimes the environment itself was just as big of a danger to a mage as his living opponents, and that he needed to know these spells if he was going to waltz around the dungeon and similar places.
She was also fairly horrified by his lack of defensive spells. Not just a lack of any defensive barriers more substantive than the basic shield, though she wasn’t happy about that either — no, she was talking about wards. Wards were fairly useless once the fight started, since they were slow to cast, and few opponents would give a mage the time needed to cast them during a battle, but Taiven claimed they were absolutely essential for a mage who expected to get into a fight. So long as you weren’t ambushed or otherwise surprised, and actually knew you were going to be in a fight soon, you could at least cast some basic wards to improve your spell resistance and counter some of more common spells. And if you actually knew something about your opponent’s spell repertoire and specialties? Then you could really ruin their day with a few choice wards. This was the reason why humanity had been steadily encroaching on monster-held territory with every passing year — most magical creatures only had a handful of inborn magical tricks and abilities on their side and once you knew what they were you could devise a perfect counter for them in advance.
Unfortunately, you could only stack so many wards on top of each other before they started to interfere with each other and the whole edifice collapsed, and some of them inherently interfered with each other’s operation, so knowing how to combine them effectively was a bit of a specialist skill. Taiven was not very proficient with wards herself, being more offensively focused, so he would need to find somebody else for anything except the basics.
However, most of the spells she taught him were various offensive and defensive energy projections, largely ones revolving around fire and force, but also some spells based on cold and electricity. Among other things, Zorian could now cast the ever-famous fireball spell… exactly twice before he ran out of mana. So not very useful, honestly, but Taiven claimed that any mage worth their name should be able to cast a fireball, and that the utility of such spells would naturally increase along with his mana reserves.
«Actually, I’m curious… is there some way to speed up the growth of mana reserves?» asked Zorian. «I know that artificially increasing them has bad side-effects, but is there some kind of training method that would speed up natural growth?»
Taiven looked at him, looking apprehensive. «Technically, yes,» admitted Taiven reluctantly. «It’s as simple as using mana-intensive spells to constantly exhaust your reserves. It would kick the growth of your reserves into overdrive. However, that kind of unnatural growth would completely wreck your current shaping skills — your normal growth of reserves is so slow because your soul is making sure your control over mana doesn’t slip. Wrecking your shaping skills just to speed up the growth of your reserves is really short-sighted, Roach. Please don’t do it. I never would, and you know I’m not exactly the most responsible girl. Surely you can wait for a few years for them to grow on their own?»
Well he certainly wasn’t pressed for time at the moment, Zorian had to admit. «I suppose that makes sense,» he said. «I guess the reason why mana reserves plateau after a while is that there is only so much power a soul can safely handle. Increasing the cap artificially after that point messes up the mage’s shaping skills with no hope of ever regaining them. No wonder everyone recommends against doing it — no matter how benign the enhancement process, the result is still more power and less control over it.»
«There is always a trade-off between control and power,» said Taiven. «It’s just not apparent most of the time, since very few people try to develop their shaping skills to their limits. Many mages think that having more mana is always better, since you can always work harder on your shaping skills, but increasing your mana reserves without bad side effects is essentially impossible. It’s not true, though. No matter how much time they spend honing their shaping skills, people with huge mana reserves are outright incapable of performing some particularly finesse-focused spells — things like advanced mind magic, detailed illusions and complex alteration constructs.»
«Wait, you’re saying that I’ll lose the ability to cast finesse-based spells as my mana reserves increase?» asked Zorian in alarm.
«No, no, I’m talking about your natural mana reserves — your inborn capacity before you start to increase it through regular spellcasting. About magnitude. Most spells, even highly sophisticated ones, are designed for average mages — magnitude 8 to 12, in other words. You’re 12, so still comfortably within the intended range. Hell, I’ve heard of a one particular 15 magnitude mage that became a damn good illusionist, so even if you tip over a little it will hardly matter.»
Considering Zorian’s real magnitude was 8, he apparently had nothing to worry about. Still, it did make him wonder about Zach, who seemed to have magnitude in the low 60s. How did that kind of monstrous power factor in Taiven’s scheme?
«How about people with really high magnitude?» asked Zorian. «How high can you go before finesse-based spells become impossible?»
«I’ve never seen hard numbers, but I’d guess around magnitude 20 or so,» Taiven shrugged.
«How about the really high numbers?» Zorian asked. «Something like magnitude 60?»