Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotional Incompetent [A Magical Academy LitRPG]

A dozen more void-things erupted from the ground like warped insects, limbs slick with glassy shadows and flailing in sickening arcs.

Tommaso raised both hands overhead. "Spring of Trials; Ring of Fire."

Crimson runes blazed beneath his feet in a perfect circle. Flame burst up in a towering wall, then imploded like an inferno scythe collapsing on everything inside. The creatures barely had time to shriek before they were reduced to cinders.

The air sizzled, steam and ash swallowing the pondside yard.

Fabrisse flinched, shielding his eyes again as his vision scattered into a fragile mosaic. He blinked hard to reset, but the afterimage still danced at the edge of his sight. When he could see properly again, he saw Celine hacking at the newly-spawned nearby creatures with crystal javelins, one forming after another.

The void creatures spawn too fast, he thought, jaw tight. That's what Rolen warned us about.

Once the rift opens, the voidspawn would take almost no aether to manifest. What they needed was efficient control, smart spacing, and someone tracing the aether source that was feeding them.

Then Fabrisse caught Ilya lifting two fingers and twirled them into one another.

In the prep chamber, during the calibration trials, Ilya had practiced that exact same motion. That was her aether tracking spell.

Tommaso had already repositioned to higher ground, arms weaving arcs of flame in tight, rhythmic patterns. Instead of detonating in wide bursts, his fire spirals now danced like living sentries, corralling void-things into specific paths, funneling them away from the others.

"He's really good at this," Fabrisse murmured.

A void-thing sprang atop one of Celine's summoned bulwarks. Its limbs twisted in a jerking spasm, jaws splitting in three directions as it lunged straight for Fabrisse.

He immediately flung a Stupenstone at its head. It didn't hit the head, but its elongated neck.

That didn't do much.

Celine jerked her body as she yelled, "Snap!". Her bulwarks rotated, grinding on a crystal hinge. The sudden shift flung the creature off its perch with bone-snapping force. It hit the stone with a crunch and didn't get up.

Crystal mnemonics are so clean. Or maybe she's optimized her spell.

Then Celine went on the offensive. Her crystal javelins stabbed out in rapid succession, but it was her positioning that mattered—she cast from behind summoned bulwarks, forcing the creatures to waste energy climbing over them or skittering into her carefully-laid traps.

The stone beneath his boot gave way, warping like a rug yanked from beneath him. A void-thing tore upward from the ground with a sickening slurp of broken earth.

Celine yelped in surprise as she instinctively recoiled.

Fabrisse's pulse spiked, but his hands moved without hesitation. "Tremblehold."

A pulse ripple, barely visible, but the effect was instant. The creature's footing slipped, legs splaying. It stumbled with a confused hiss.

These voidspawns really are slow.

A trio of crystal shards shot out, pinning the creature to the ground with a hiss so theatrical it practically drowned out the voidspawn's own hiss, like two snakes in a very petty argument over volume. It writhed once, twice, then Celine stepped in and drove a javelin down through its center.

"Good cast!" Celine said. "Help me control your own space. I'm—" she fired shards at another incoming void creature. "—a bit occupied."

That Tremblehold worked really well. Sure, the effect might not have been a full two-meter radius and the duration might not have been three seconds, but that was an instantaneous cast. The mitts and the quartz had surely helped.

He caught a glimpse of Ilya from afar. Her eyes were half-lidded as she anchored her feet in a stance meant for stillness. Thin strips of milky white sparks snaked between craters, through the wreckage of shattered stone and scorched feathers, searching.

We can find it, Fabrisse thought, heart pounding. We can track the leak and end this before the real collapse begins.

A sharp crackle echoed across the perimeter. Fabrisse turned just in time to see the outer wards wrinkled, but not shatter. Something had slipped through.

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Distortion spread beyond the dome's boundary, mist coiling in from some quiet fracture in space. A figure emerged, not with the violent shock of teleportation, but with a bizarre, liquid smoothness. One more step forward, and they were inside the barrier. They were cloaked head to toe in layered wraps of dusky gray and black. No skin showed—only folds of fabric stitched in overlapping bands, like ceremonial bindings. Even their eyes were veiled behind a mesh so fine it seemed to drink in the light.

They launched forward, a blur of motion that barely seemed to touch the ground. Their velocity was unnatural, a straight-line streak aimed directly at Ilya like a drawn blade loose from its sheath.

"Too fast—!" Fabrisse choked out.

Tommaso's arm slashed outward, palm flared open. "Whiplash!" A spiraling jet of compressed air tore across the path of the oncoming figure, sharp as a cyclone's edge.

The force howled through fractured light. But the figure raised a hand, barely more than a flick of the wrist.

A translucent plane of violet shimmer materialized.

The wind slammed against it with a thunderous crack, then dispersed. All their spells were silently cast; no mnemonics, yet they retained astonishing consistency.

That's three high-tier elements already. There's no mistaking it.

The masked figure was Ganvar.

Tommaso gritted his teeth. He twisted low into a stance, wind and fire curling around him in dense coils. His foot scraped against stone—just enough to bait a reaction.

The masked figure took it.

They surged. A sudden burst carried them in a seamless lateral dash. The movement barely stirred their cloak.

Tommaso smashed his palm down. "Whipspin!"

A vortex of wind and fire snapped to life at her flank, an angled spiral probably meant to force a dodge upward.

They launched themselves into an arc, vanishing and reappearing at an oblique, inverted angle. A spear of bent light formed in the air, barely visible until it refracted into a blinding crescent midflight.

Tommaso cursed, raising both arms. "Scattershield!"

A fan of compressed air burst forward, deflecting the arc just enough to shear it into the pondyard tiles. The ground exploded behind him in a glare of heat.

From the edges of the broken courtyard, more Voidspawn spilled through. One leapt for Tommaso's back.

He twisted, slammed his heel down. A coiling tether of wind wrapped around his legs and blasted him skyward just in time to avoid the creature's lunge. He spun in the air, wind hardening beneath his boots as a platform. Another beast leapt toward him. He cut it down with a crescent of flame before pivoting back to keep Ganvar in view.

Tommaso's next spell hit like a declaration.

"Searing Judicant," he roared, both hands flaring with sunfire. It was always funny to Fabrisse how Tommaso's mnemonics would always be the spells' literal names, yet they worked anyway.

Strands of molten radiance spiraled into the sky, plunged like a falling sun, then converged into a single column of flame aimed directly at Ganvar. Fabrisse winced at the sudden whiteout, even from meters away.

That was Tommaso's execution move.

Ganvar raised one palm and shot out . . . something that Fabrisse couldn't track. A sigil, maybe, in the shape of a sharp blade. The moment they connected, the blade skewered the conflagration of fire and unmade it thread by thread, as if the very essence of combustion had been dissected.

That's Rimmar's skill.

But the lance didn't stop there.

It punched straight through the gutted remains of the flame, hurling forward. Tommaso's eyes widened as he swept his arms, and knocked the lance off course by inches. It shrieked past him, the force shearing a groove into the stone.

That's such a powerful move, and looks like it's supremely effective against single-shot fire.

How are they able to fire and counter-fire spells instantaneously like this? Fabrisse was certain not even ten seconds had passed. Tommaso had a DEX of 89; of course he would be rapid, but Ganvar could keep up with spells that clean while casting with minimum movements. She must not only be dexterous, but also possess a synaptic control so fine she could line up her aetheric discharge whenever she felt like it.

Meanwhile, Ilya remained in place, boots anchored into the cracked terrain. Her arms glowed with tracing lines again. "I've almost locked the core leak," she called. "Just keep them off me!" At the same time, she fired a volley of Snowshots—needle-thin darts of frost that zipped toward the masked figure from the side.

The cloaked figure didn't even dodge. The snow projectiles vaporized inches from her cloak, steam curling without a sound. They must've cast a spell, but Fabrisse didn't know what.

Curses. That's Ganvar. Why isn't Tommaso going for a disruption spell? He has to know, doesn't he?

"Celine," Fabrisse whispered. "Can you move me closer to the dome?"

"Why?" She furrowed her brows. She knew the plan. This wasn't part of the plan. But so was her being here.

"I have just the thing to disrupt her pattern."

"How?" She asked, but walked backward to move closer to the dome already.

"I'll collapse the structure," he said with conviction.