Pain ravaged Sarah’s body. With the spell still being cast, a normal mage would most likely have issues keeping everything stable, though such problems didn’t exist for the girl. Sure, her overmind skill might have been useful to keep her mind in a usable state regardless of the pain, but in this case it wasn’t the reason everything worked. No, souls kept the spell circles stable. Unfortunately they would be lost after the case, used up as material, though it was just a small addition to the already long list of sacrifices she had made to speed up the cast and one she knew of beforehand.
As her spell engulfed the realm, rumbles spread throughout the chamber the three girls were in. Yet, aside from a few small drops of water, nothing managed to enter the sealed off space. Her defenses seem to hold. The advantage of creating those just for this one purpose.
Sarah would have liked to observe her spell, but unfortunately her abilities were still lacking. She needed more power. Or at least more mana, so she could create purely magical barriers which still allowed observations without having to also rely on the environment.
In addition she had already noticed during the planning-phase that her initial idea of completely changing the affinity alignment of the realm would be impossible, at least for now. She would either need to absorb most of the mana of the realm or provide enough mana by herself to drown out the natural affinity. Both were however pretty much impossible for her in her current state. Even if she depopulated a few realms to spread her soul orrery throughout the world, it would likely not be enough to actually drain a significant amount of mana from a realm. Cursed square-cube-law. Populating her skill with enough souls to also spread through the third dimension would be magnitudes harder.
Then she wasn’t even sure how she could transport everything. Getting such massive spell circles through the dimensional rifts would be problematic; be it the compared to realm sized spell circles small opening or the environment devoid of mana inside of the rift, which would force her to provide the mana to sustain the orrery by herself.
And afterwards she would have to control the mana of more than half a realm. She might be able to offload more of those tasks into souls, but that would just mean she would have to create an even bigger soul orrery.
So many walls were in her way. It was a bit disheartening, yet also meant she had still a long way in front of her, many questions to solve, potential to tap into.
But even with that setback, changing the affinity wasn’t her primary goal anyway. A partial success or even a failure would offer her more than enough information for future attempts and would likely still grant her levels. Either that or she would know that scale didn’t matter and she could again focus on smaller experiments.
Meanwhile system messages appeared, though, as she was already thinking about how to improve her spells, she paid little attention to them.
At least until a rather unusual one popped up and prompted her for an input.
[You have successfully executed an unknown large-scale spell! Due to the damage and change caused, it was categorized as a legendary realm-destruction spell and may be named. If no input is performed a name will be assigned. The name has to be fitting.]
As a scientist, naming new things one discovered was definitely a perk, unfortunately it didn’t mean one was automatically gifted with a good naming sense or many ideas for names. The rather vague condition of having a fitting name didn’t make it any easier, though she assumed it was intended to prevent people from using misleading ones like “Small Fireball” for what she had just created.
Musing over the question for a few moments, she simply entered the first one which came to her mind. Sure the name might haunt her later, but it was just a name, nothing really important, nothing which would help her. So there was no reason to waste time on the decision.
Sending her input, more messages appeared.
[You have successfully created the legendary realm-destruction spell: Apocalyptic Torrents.]
[You gained the title Walking Legend.]
[You gained the title Legend of the Apocalyptic Torrents. The title’s effect was changed due to the title Nemesis of Gods.]
[You have won the war against the Flame Sea Shore!]
[The Flame Sea Shore has fundamentally changed and become the Volcanic Rainforest!]
[You have cleared a Quest.]
Excited Sarah was about to open her quest menu and claim the rewards, though then stopped in the last moment.
And thought for a moment.
Why was she so focused on the rewards?
She knew what had happened back in the dungeon as she claimed the quest rewards. Sure, now there would be different rewards, but it didn’t mean that claiming them came without risks. She hadn’t even checked what her new titles did and her other gains. Furthermore she was still quite weakened from sacrificing a lot of health.
So the mage was about to open her log, but that seemed very inefficient. A lot of kill messages would be waiting for her… She should just check her status. …Later. It would only inform her over some level gains anyway, no information she needed now. The titles were more important.
[Walking Legend]
[A being which managed to create a new legendary spell on their own. A difficult achievement for a group and even harder to accomplish without help. Eases creation of other legendary spells. Eases handling of magic and mana in general.]
[Legend of the Apocalyptic Torrents]
[A unique title for those who created the realm-destruction spell Apocalyptic Torrents. Improves your instincts over the water element, this effect persists even if you lose or evolve your water affinity. Reduces the influence water-affinity gods have over you and your creations.]
If she had to guess, the “Legend of” title had likely initially contained a buff for assistance gained from gods, or something similar. Though maybe it was also just a wrong assumption, her nemesis might have just added the line on its own, without inverting some existing effect. Not that she would be able to figure that out, unless she somehow got Sera or Nia to create a legendary spell.
Though that was a task for later.
It was time for her rewa- No!
[Your Overmind skill has reached Lv 5.]
Why was that skill suddenly level 5? Sure she was fighting against her still present headache and the pain of her half-sacrificed body, but that shouldn’t be enough to level the skill to 5.
Tearing herself away from the need to gain the rewards, she finally opened her status screen.
[Sarah Goldschmidt
Age: 3
Species: Human Lv 11 -> 19
Classes:
Searcher of ##### Lv 29 -> 39
##### Lv 1 -> 2 Ex
Affinity:
Water Lv 21 -> 50+
#####
Condition: Mindmelted, Weakened
Titles:
Genius of Mind
Progenitor of a new Age
The first Mage
Nemesis of Gods
Breaker of Reality
World Invader
Witness of the Unthinkable
Dungeon Destroyer
Skill Creator
Walking Legend (new)
Legend of the Apocalyptic Torrents (new)
Attributes:
Hlth 42/140
Stmn 54/140
Snty 21/890
Mana 3/960
Vit 10 -> 14
End 10 -> 14
Str 11 -> 15
Agi 12 -> 16
Dex 14 -> 19
Wil 64 -> 89
Sol 71 -> 96
Int 46 -> 64
Prc 50 -> 68
Mnd 46 -> 64
Skills:
Body Enhancement 1 -> 2
Chrysopoeia 2
Greed 2 (new)
Macro Magic 1 (new)
Mana Drain 1 (new)
Mana Efficiency 6 -> 7
Mana Harvesting 10
Mana Sense 6 -> 7
Micro Magic 10
Overmind 2 -> 5
Perfect Memory –
Perfection 1 (new)
Sacrifice 2 -> 4
Spell Carving 10
Spell Casting 10
Spell Creation 7 -> 8
Spell Hacking 4
Soul Orrery 2 -> 5
Soul Sense 2 -> 3
Soulbond 1
]
[Weakened]
[For one reason or another your whole body has taken damage and can’t display its full might. Your physical attributes operate with 50% efficiency.]
With the amount of mana she squeezed out of her body with her sacrifice skill, it wasn’t a surprise to her that she gained another status condition. As were many of the level-ups. At least her weakened state only affected her physical attributes. It was annoying, however she could think of much worse fates.
Also she seemed to have missed a few new skills she had gained during the cast.
[Macro Magic]
[After mastering Micro Magic and solving your mana problem by going to a new world, you chose to explore another direction to develop your magical abilities. Expanding your spells not out of necessity, but just to reach new heights. You reshaped a whole realm only to prove it feasible. Some might deem your action excessive, others will find inspiration. Regardless, you have brought your ability to handle magic into a new dimension. Large-scale spells will now benefit slightly from mana recovery effects of other skills, effectively reducing the required resources by incorporating the ambient mana.]
[Perfection]
[A skill unique to the ##### extra class. Dedication and sacrifice, of yourself and others, has lifted your abilities to the next level. This skill allows you to repeat the process. You may perform actions perfectly, as long as you sacrifice enough additional resources. Sacrifices required depend on the likelihood of achieving a perfect result. Less sacrifices increase probability of success.]
She would need to run some tests with both skills to get numbers, but they seemed quite useful, especially when she would attempt to cast more large-scale spells to level her class. Well, before that, she had to find some way around the war system. Causing a war once was apparently fine, however she expected people to become wary of her once she did it too often.
Like how you could kill a messenger in a fit of rage once, but if you did it too often people would get annoyed and question your ability to be part of the high society.
However Sarah would think of her future planes later. Before that she still had something else left to look into.
Having reached level 50 in her affinity she could choose the first evolution for it. As she had already seen the options from Nia a while ago and had many days to think about it, there wasn’t anything delaying her decision.
[
Water *
Ice
Healing
Magma
Plant
Weather
]
Actually a rather easy choice in her opinion.
Yet before she managed to finalize her selection, she couldn’t get rid of the feeling she was forgetting something. Well, not forgetting, just ignoring.
Going over her memory, she finally noticed the issue.
[Greed]
[Good job in finding this skill. Many who obtain it never notice its presence, and those who do are usually beyond salvation by that point. While your greed for knowledge might have worked in your old world, might have been a logical development with your abilities, social standing and backing, you have already noticed that such a reckless approach would be suicidal in the Realms. Yet even when you tried to restrain that trait with logic, reason and calculated actions, it still existed within you and now manifested as a skill. Guides your thoughts. Improves your focus on your goals and desires, but may let you overlook, ignore and suppress whatever distractions dissuade you from your path; whatever stands in the way of your Greed. Eases acquisition of tracking, searching and empowering skills, depending on your goals and desires. Allows you to break external compulsions.]
“Damn!”
Becoming literally blinded by greed was definitely the last thing she wanted!
