Nothing happened at first. I converted a bit more mana. Then a bit more.
I felt a slight pressure beginning to build, but I wasn’t sure if it was just in my head until the muscles in my hand began to tremble.
I held it just a little longer, watching my shroud…but I couldn’t see any change in the composition.
The pressure gave way to pain. That was a sign it was time to stop.
I released the transference mana from my hand into the air.
The resulting shockwave blasted outward and slammed into the nearest wall. I saw the flicker of protective sorcery — the entire interior of Derek’s house was warded — otherwise I might have put a hole in the wall.
I looked down at my hand, staring blankly.
I can work with this.
The blast was like a much stronger version of what I usually projected out of my gauntlet. Unfortunately, it also took up a vastly greater amount of my mana to use. Probably close to half.
Ordinary spells were designed to consume just a small fraction of the user’s mana, because you had to be able to discharge that amount of mana instantly.
But, logically, if I could have more time to convert the mana before discharging it… I could throw a lot more mana into a single spell.
This wasn’t a unique idea: it was how all Heart-Marked Attuned worked. The difference was that Heart Marks provided support to the body for that specific style of casting.
Without a Heart Mark, trying to practice this style had a clear downside. My hand was throbbing. I didn’t think I’d done any lasting damage, but it was clear my type of attunement wasn’t built to be used that way.
I’d never cared much for design intent, though. The important part was figuring out what I could do with the tools I had — and how I could make new, better tools.
I rested for a few minutes, then I tried again, releasing the mana before the pressure in my hand grew painful.
It had the same effect: a blast of kinetic energy. It was little bit weaker than the last one, but still far stronger than a blast from my gauntlet.
Testing, I could expel enough energy in an instant to push a book around on the floor, but not much more. With several seconds of holding the mana in, though, I could easily push over a chair.
At that point, Patrick came by to check on the noise. I got a little embarrassed, told him I was fine, and decided to find a better spot to practice.
The roof was the obvious choice, but it was occupied — Keras was giving Marissa another lesson. They offered me a chance to join them, but I wasn’t up for that degree of social contact.
I went to the enchantment testing grounds instead, where I’d first tested the gauntlet. I requested one with a shielded test dummy, which the facility had several of.
I spent the next hour or two blasting the test dummy around the tiny testing room. It was surprisingly cathartic.
And, more importantly, it taught me a few valuable pieces of information.
First, I couldn’t generate enough force to push a human back with just an instant of mana conversion. After some testing, I decided I need to store up my mana for about a second to get enough for that.
If I converted the mana in my hand for about five seconds, I could generate enough mana to slam the dummy into the wall hard enough to crack the shield. I had to recharge the dummy’s shields every time I practiced that, though, so I didn’t try it much.
Anything in between would have an intermediate result, and anything longer would result in too much pain for me to use the attacks consecutively.
I considered if I could apply it back to my original idea of converting my shroud, but it wasn’t currently practical. If I could send out a blast of force, I could generate enough energy to deflect a blade — but saving up that much transference mana took too long. It wasn’t practical as a defensive measure.
If I practiced enough, though, I’d get better at using transference mana in general, and it would be easier to convert my shroud when I had enough power to make it plausible.
I went home feeling exhausted, but satisfied with the results, even if they weren’t what I’d been trying to learn.
When I got back, I focused the rest of the evening on more transference mana research. I read a little more on the Juggernaut, as well as other attunements that used transference mana, like the Wavewalker and Shieldbreaker.
There were some types of general spells that anyone with the ability to use a certain type of magic could cast, but as an Enchanter, my classes weren’t focused on teaching those yet. We were expected to be dedicating ourselves to learning how to make magical items almost exclusively, since that was the primary function of our attunement.
Normally, we’d start learning those more general spells next year…but now that I’d been practicing transference mana, I was itching to learn more.
I was thinking about spells that involved infusing the body with transference mana when I remembered one of my previous ideas. I wanted to learn to move like Keras did — too quickly for enemies to react.
I already knew I could blast myself around with transference mana, like I was doing with the ring, but I wanted to find a way to move faster for a sustained period of time.
I found multiple ways of approaching that.
Haste spells are designed to increase the target’s speed. They require tremendous practice to use, however, because they do not increase their target’s mental processing speed — only the speed at which their body moves.
Even minor speed increases require a period of acclimation, because if your body moves more quickly than your mind expects, this can throw off your balance. More powerful spells grow progressively more difficult to control.
Thus, it is advised that you train with incrementally more powerful Haste spells over a long period of time, and do not attempt to use them in a combat environment until you have substantial practice moving at that speed.
The highest level of Haste spells are generally only possible to use while supported by an attunement that can enhance the user’s perception abilities, such as the Spellsinger or Shapeshifter. This means they are often unused, however, as these spells rely on either having two attunements yourself or a second attuned with an emphasis on support magic.
There is no known attunement that generates both transference mana and perception mana. It is possible that these mana types simply do not mix naturally with one another. It is sometimes speculated that the type of attunement that generates this pairing was the Chronomancer, a legendary attunement that supposedly originated from the Spider Spire.
Because of the difficulty of learning to use Haste spells, the opposite type — spells designed to slow enemies — are considerably more popular. These spells do not actually slow the flow of time, but rather constrict enemies with a field of pressure which resists their movements. More powerful Slow spells can slow motions to a crawl or even paralyze them entirely.
Both of those categories of magic sounded extremely useful.
Also, I immediately wanted a Chronomancer attunement more than I’d ever wanted an individual attunement before. Time magic? That sounded incredible.
I read a little more just to try to find more about Chronomancers, but sadly, most books indicated they were nothing more than a myth.
Now that I knew Necromancers were real, though, Chronomancers sounded like they were within the realm of possibility. If they were another restricted attunement, maybe Sheridan would know.