The Mechanics of Magic

Outside of the Barrier, everyone was already waiting for John as he appeared. Before either Magoi or Kwang could say anything, Kim walked up to him and spoke up, “Newma- John, I would like to say that seeing the difference between your fighting style yesterday and today has been truly fascinating. I would like to ask you to consider training with me, or rather, us, again at some point. I think that it would be beneficial to all of us.”

John didn’t even have to think about his answer, “Sure, I’d love to! If I can manage it with my schedule, which is soon going to be full of work I’m going to assume?” He put up a cocky grin while saying so and looked over to the Fateweavers.

Hannah simply rolled her eyes and shook her head while Magoi had to chuckle, “Cocky, aren’t we? We haven’t even started with the most important part of the evaluation yet. But let’s not delay that any longer. Now, for the next part, we ask of you to make a Barrier that is a copy of this dojo. Make it as similar as you can, nothing fancy.”

Nodding his head, John walked closer to the Fateweavers so that they could be in the area when he created the Barrier. He honestly had no idea if he could even properly make a copy of the room around him, but no time like now to find out!

Once he was close enough, he cast Create Barrier to encase them into the usual darkness. Magoi whistled, impressed by what he saw, “A two-step creation. Not bad, this is proving to be more and more interesting. Well, then let’s see your powers at work!”

John didn’t even wait and was already at work.

Step 1: Choose the hostility of the Barrier
Hostile/Non-Hostile

You selected Non-Hostile

Step 2: Choose the Mode of the Barrier
Random/Mirror/Select

John was assuming that the thing he wanted would probably be Mirror.

You selected Mirror

Step 7: Choose the Type of Barrier
Standard/Trap/Combat/Prison

Seeing as how Magoi said ‘nothing fancy’, John simply selected Standard

You selected Standard

Step 23: Confirm
Is this correct?
Non-Hostile Barrier (Standard)
Mirror

(Y/N)

Hitting Yes had the same effect as it did the last couple of times, the world around him built itself up from shards of something, creating a temporarily blinding light. Once the light dimmed down, the three of them were standing in the dojo again, but this time, Kwang, Wotan, Kim, and Kaen weren’t there.

Magoi nodded deeply in thought and started to mumble something. Hannah meanwhile looked around her with big eyes, obviously not expecting John to have this kind of skill. They both left John standing where he was and examined the area around. They both pulled out some sort of clear crystal, Magoi pulling out a crystal formed like a twenty-sided die and Hannah one that looked like a twelve-sided die and began to speak with one another.

“The Barrier is completely stable, no nominal Mana leaking anywhere.”

“Details are starting to get blurry after a certain distance from the point of creation. Estimated clear radius around three meters.”

“Barrier is bound to no greater deity and to no element. Traces of Void magic apparent.”

“Barrier Boundary not found yet, seems to be big enough to encompass the whole room.”

Magoi then suddenly disappeared from view, only to return a second later, “The Barrier is detectable from the outside, but you need to have some kind of sensory ability to find it. Also, the Barrier is actually as big as the room. No arcane shifting outside, Barrier is completely self-contained. Mr. Newman, do you need to use Mana to keep up the Barrier?”

John shook his head, “Not that I know of. My regeneration doesn’t seem to go down, and my Mana doesn’t decrease either.”

The Grande Fateweaver nodded, “It’s self-sustaining as well then… For someone with your time to collect experience, this is truly marvelous, though it is a pretty simple task. To give you a quick summary about what we found out about your Barrier: Your Barrier is hard to find from the outside if you do not have sensory abilities or a high enough arcane aptitude to magic. It seems to sustain itself with the residual magic both inside and outside of itself. That means it will draw in any radical magic trace that it will find in it surroundings to keep itself going. It should collapse at some point if there is no magic around anymore. It should also be susceptible to magic manipulation through this absorption of free magic. While at first glance the room seems to be a nigh-perfect replica of the dojo outside, the farther you walk away from the point you’re standing on, the more apparent it is that it actually created itself through your perception. The Barrier is also strong enough to not break at a specific point in time and should be able to run indefinitely if there is enough magic around. The Barrier has no element and no traces of any deity in it, meaning that your abilities, while possibly given by Gaia, are not directly bound to her. It also means that your abilities have no inherent element, which means that you could, in theory, learn any kind of magic. We call this ‘Void’ magic, because it means you could make any kind of element, again, in theory. I think that is all we can see from this Barrier. Hannah, do you have anything to add?”

Hannah nodded her head, “Just one thing: It’s completely insane that a late bloomer like you could be able to create a Barrier like this after just three days. It shouldn’t be possible; there has to be a limit to the amount of power you can gather in such a short timespan. So either you’re lying to us, or your powers are absolutely bullshit.”

John simply shrugged at that, “From what I’ve experienced up until now, I’d go with the second option, seeing as how I can apparently give other people parts of my powers as well, if I have the right quests.”

Both Magoi and Hannah looked at him curiously when he said that. The older mage then spoke up, “Quests? The recommendation letters were vague in what your powers are; they only said that you had some ‘game-like’ powers, which didn’t sound like much. I would like you to explain that one to me in a bit more detail later. For now, we will leave this Barrier again. We would like you to deal with discarding it in any way you see fit.”

All three of them then left, and once they were all out, John used Delete Barrier to remove the Barrier. All the people around him who were able to vaguely sense the Barrier before looked around confused a second later.

“There’s nothing left. No trace of it ever existing,” Kwan spoke out, clearly fascinated.

Magoi nodded his head, “I agree, there is nothing left. That is some high-class removal there. Well, then we’ll get right to the third point of the Barrier evaluation. You will now be able to create a freestyle Barrier of your choosing. Try to make it as special as you can, so that we can see the extent of your abilities.”

All the people around him then took a step towards John, with Wotan speaking to him, “We would like to see this one as well. I always like to see the creative things that you young people come up with.”

Kaen meanwhile seemed to have other priorities, “Could you make it full with something punchable? I want to see what kind of monsters you can make. Especially after what Kim told me!”

John simply chuckled as he raised his hand to create another Barrier.

He wanted to see how bizarre he could get with his creations.

Once again they were in the blackness that was his unfinished Barrier. All of the people that haven’t seen this yet were looking around in awe, even if there was nothing to see.

Step 1: Choose the hostility of the Barrier
Hostile/Non-Hostile

Hostile selected

Step 2: Choose the Mode of the Barrier
Hunt/Wave/Defense/Transport/Race/Climb/Skirmish/Annihilation

Now, there a lot of options here, and John had no idea which one would be the best one. But going back to the Barriers he had created so far, the Annihilation one was the most impressive one yet. So he went with that option.

Annihilation selected

Step 3: Select Difficulty
Select from: 50% - 200% (The higher the Difficulty, the more EXP, Money, and Items you will get as well as better Gear)

Seeing how much destructive **** was standing around John, he decided to go with 200%

200% Difficulty selected. Enemies will now deal twice as much damage, will have twice as much Health, and twice as many enemies will spawn. Effective level of enemies increased by 50%

Step 4: Select Enemies
Robots/Wolves/Barrier-Created/Random

Barrier-Created selected

John just wanted to see some more enemies, and he was pretty sure they would still be pretty impressive.

Step 13: Select Scenery
No currently available scenery. Use Random or Select an Item to consume.

Ah damn, he really wanted to see if he couldn’t do something like the underwater biodome again. Oh well… since he didn’t want to use any material right now, he simply selected Random.

Random selected. Result shown after creation.

Step 23: Confirm
Is this correct?

Hostile Barrier
Mode: Annihilation
Difficulty: 200%
Scenery: Random
Enemies: Scenery-related

(Y/N)

John hit yes, and they were once again engulfed in bright light, but they could immediately feel hot winds blowing in their faces.