NOVEL NEXT 92 - “You’re a Wizard, Beatrice”
Things had taken a weird and awkward turn.
He'd asked Rory if he'd had a deathwish. Rory in turn had asked if he had a deathwish. He'd meant it as a joke. Presumably, so had Rory.
Archmund sucked in a breath. He wish he'd also attached Gemstone Lanyards to his Rapier and his Sword, so he could call them back with the slightest touch of his will, so he could avoid the question.
"I just mean…" Rory said, shifting uncomfortably. "You threw yourself at those monsters the first time we fought together. You took a punch to the chest. I almost thought you wouldn't make it."
"I was fine, though," Archmund said. As if that would change anything.
"You were in bed for a week afterwards," Mary said.
"That sounds like a lot. Is that a lot?" Rory said. "I don't know how much is a lot when it comes to recovering."
"It didn't feel like a lot," Archmund said. "It was a dreamless sleep."
That just made them more concerned, for some reason.
"A week of nothing," said Rory. "That's… I don't know."
Mary was looking at him in one of the ways she often did. "Are you sure you're alright? You don't have a deathwish?"
"I don't know why you'd possibly think that—"
"You work very hard, young master," she said, stepping up to him and grabbing his hands with her good arm. "Harder than anyone else. We all can see it. You might not be the best at it… but you try your hardest."
He was proud, yet at the same time, he was abashed. Wasn't it normal to work as hard as he did when you were running from a life of mediocrity? He was an isekai protagonist, for god's sake — except there was a deadline on the relevance of his knowledge.
"And you don't rest," Mary said. "Not nearly enough. Don't think I don't see the light shining from your bedroom past midnight. Don't think I don't hear you sneaking out to the garden to train. Barst isn't too happy about dealing with the complaints from the gardeners, by the way. Don't think I don't see how much… how much faster you pick up Skills and Gemgear compared to everyone else."
"I can't tell if you're praising me or insulting me," Archmund muttered.
"If a pretty girl said those kinds of things to me I'd be really flattered," Rory said. Mary blushed.
"But instead all I have is Betty."
Archmund glanced over to the corner. Beatrice met his gaze, while she slurped down a cup of liquid. Judging from the darkening of her tankard, it was coffee.
Mary drew a deep breath.
"The point is," Mary said, "Are you alright, young master? Are you really alright?"
"Yeah," he said.
Maybe it was the caffeine keeping him from being tired. Maybe it was the thrill of victory, of sniping practically a whole legion of Monsters from so far they couldn't detect him. Maybe it was just how he was.
He was on top of the world.
He cracked Mary a smile and hoped it didn't seem too forced. "I'm completely fine!"
He joined Beatrice and Gelias at the round table.
Beatrice held out her looted wand like it was a poisonous snake. "Gelias, can you look at this?"
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"I have been," he said. "There aren't any hidden secrets to it, at least before Attunement and Awakening. It has three Enchantment modes. Blue, black, and red. Black is a spike of sharp material. Blue disrupts the flow of magic. Red disrupts the motion of physical objects."
Beatrice nodded. "About what we saw in the fight, then. I think red and black will be most useful."
"I would think blue, actually," Gelias said. "Monsters are congealed will around a magical Gem, after all. Disrupt the connection between the Gem and the magic, and they'll lose their shape entirely, though probably only for a few seconds. You can go with your weak darts and barriers if you want, though."
"And does it have… deeper levels? More potential?"
"Gem always does," Gelias said. "I can't tell you exactly what it will unlock, because it depends on the interaction with your magic and the effort you put into it."
"Right," Beatrice said. "Of course it does."
She sighed. Archmund suspected that if he loaded the Wand with his magic and viewed it with his Gemstone Tablet, he'd be able to see a long list of hidden Skills and potentials. But if he did, she wouldn't be able to use it. And she'd won it, fair and square.
Still, it never hurt to ask. Especially since he would've loved to see what those blue spirals would do against Monsters.
"Are you planning on using this?" Archmund said.
"You saw how I did back there," Beatrice said. "I was…"
"You won," Archmund said. "You took all the kills."
She snarled. She actually snarled. He stepped back instinctively.
"I took three kills. You took… what, forty?"
"That's as many as four tens. And that's—"
"Shut up. I took three kills, three kills that you let us fight because that was the best you thought we could handle."
She was practically bristling. She didn't like Rory's form of patronizing protectionism; it seemed some of those feelings were leaking over to him.
Honestly, he kind of got it. He wouldn't have liked it either. But hurt feelings were nothing next to lost lives. And like or not, he was the guide and the leader this time around.
"And if using a piece of Gemstone Gear like this is what I need to be at your level…"
She took a deep breath. "I don't care what my parents think. If it makes me stronger now, I can fight more and learn more and gain more experience now. And that'll give me more leeway than going into things blind."
"But a wand?" Archmund said, frowning. He'd had her pegged as kind of his shadow archetype. He had an invisible laser beam, while she had an invisible knife. He fought from afar, while she had to get up close. He had a ruby that projected light, while she had an onyx that cloaked rooms in darkness. He was wildly successful and terrified of failure, while she was a failure and desperate for success—
Okay, that last one was mean and probably untrue. Probably.
"It's got so many options!" she said.
She put her fingers on the hilt of the wand and held it up to the mysterious Dungeon light.
It flashed blue, then red, then black as her magic filled it.
"That was fast," Archmund said.
"As easy as activating an Enchantment," said Beatrice, somewhat ruefully. "Too easy."
"I'm sure it won't like. Start warping your soul if you only use it for one Dungeon delve."
Beatrice flicked her wrist, and a black dart shot from the wand to embed in the far wall. It slowly dissolved into smoke.
No — not smoke. Archmund walked forward and brushed his fingers through the residue, which lingered instead of vanishing like Monsters did. It almost felt like… burnt wood?
"But it's so easy… I can see why people just keep using them, when they know it's not good for them."
Archmund frowned. This would be right around the time he should give some wise and sage advice about how taking shortcuts for short-term gain could lead to losing out in the long run, but he also suspected that that sort of advice would fall on deaf ears.
"I would caution you, Beatrice," Gelias said, "that shortcuts have a nature to compound. You may win much through using Enchantment, but… that will weaken your fundamentals. One day, you will meet a foe with a barrier too strong for this Gemstone Wand to breach. On that day, you must either have a stronger weapon… or have mastered and unlocked your own power."
Beatrice rolled her eyes. "It's just a stopgap. If I can do the same things with my real Gems, I will."
She reached for a Lanyard and affixed it to the hilt of her wand. "This kind of shortcut should be fine though, right?"
Gelias shrugged.
Archmund did the same thing. He attached Lanyards to the hilts of his Gemstone Sword and his Gemstone Rapier. It was unnecessary to do so with his proper Gems, since they already responded to his will.
He pulled out his Storage Gem, a glowing blue orb he'd received from Raehel of the Arcane University. It still glowed bright blue, a luminescent star. He didn't want to pull out his Gemstone Tablet around Gelias, Rory, and Beatrice, but he estimated he still had around 90% of his magical reserves left based on experience — and his soul was a load-balancing system. If this Gem had around 90% left, it meant that the average magic in all his other gear was also around 90%.
He had quite a ways to go.
"Tell you what," he said to Beatrice. "How about a small competition? The next Monsters, you try out your wand, and I try out my Gems."
"Why are you calling it a competition when you're just going to win anyways?"
"Well, that's not how we win. You know how Mary worries over me?"
"Yeah?"
"And you know how Rory worries over you?"
"That's completely different."
"No it's not, but that's the competition. Whoever manages to get less complaints after killing, say, 3 Monsters is the winner."
A smirk drew itself upon Beatrice's face. "Oh, you're on. You're so on."