Explorer of Edregon

Finding a quiet, empty meadow within the valley with plenty of those sugary berry bushes nearby, Vin took a seat and pulled out his journal. At this point, even with spending those five days in Terra waiting for the monsters to attack alongside the fourth wave of Earthers, he'd only managed to cross a single item off the magic to-do list he'd put together the other day.

Figure out some form of area-of-effect offensive spell for situations with lots of small monsters like the insect dungeon

Learn fire affinity from the heat resistance artifact Nohral had given him

Grab the next tier of spatial magic from Lumel and finally learn either

Dimensional Pocket

or

Dimensional Shift

for himself

Master his first tier 3 spell

Create artifacts for Abby and the new guards

He'd already succeeded in learning not just one spell with a fire affinity, but a second one as well, thanks to his fire-knife artifact. Sense Fire and Create Flame were two of his newer spells, and while he could use Runic Recalibration to transform Create Flame into something like a weak flamethrower, it burned through mana to an absurd degree, so he wasn't counting that as his area-of-effect spell he still needed to learn.

While Vin wasn't a big fan of the thought of adding more combat-specific spells to his arsenal, running into the drifters and seeing just how ineffective his Stone Shot had been was an excellent reminder that he'd need to do so sooner or later if he wanted to continue being able to protect those he cared about from danger. The only problem was…

He didn't have any artifacts he could snatch such spells from.

At this point, all of the spells he knew had come from either another mage drawing out the runic formation for him to copy, or from him very carefully extracting the formation from within an artifact or simple runic object. Even if he wanted to learn a spell with a specific effect, such magic was largely dependent on what he encountered.

Though that didn't mean he was entirely without options.

Carefully looking around to ensure Shia wasn't anywhere nearby, Vin sucked in a deep breath as he decided it was finally time. For the very first time ever since he'd first learned magic…

He was going to try and create his own spell.

Now, he wasn't going into this entirely unprepared, to be fair. At this point, Vin had personally recreated the runic formations for almost thirty-five different spells from the ground up, which was no small feat. On top of which, he'd come to the understanding that affinities were more so tags slapped onto root spells rather than the actual base of each spell, a revelation that had granted him the Flexible Formations Capstone. This was a remarkably useful Capstone as it allowed him to use bits and pieces of runic formations from similar spells, entirely independent of what affinity they were, while learning new ones.

All that to say, he'd kind of been practicing putting runic formations together on his own for a bit now. Sort of.

At the very least, Vin had one other massive boon that no other overeager mage did. A divine boon, in fact. He got a 'get out of death' free card once a day, so even if his magical experimentation resulted in him blowing himself up, his divine boon would simply trigger instead, saving his life. With an ability like that to rely on, why shouldn't he give constructing his own spell a shot?

Realizing he'd managed to talk himself into giving it a go, Vin grinned as he went over his list of spells and tried to come up with an idea that would work for what he needed.

An area-of-effect spell for lots of tiny enemies… Create Flame seems like a good choice of course, as when I think 'wide-spread attack,' I think 'fire'. But that doesn't give me all that much range. I could just go with the stereotypical choice from Earth and try to put together my own Fireball spell… Maybe merging Create Flame with Stone Shot would work…

Seeing as he was already flying by the seat of his pants here, Vin shrugged and activated Introspection, slipping deep within his own mana pool. As the familiar black void sprung up around him, he first directed his streams of mana to flow into the two familiar runic formations.

The first issue he ran into was in the details of Stone Shot. Though it would be more appropriate to say it was the rootspell, Summon Stone, hidden within the tier two spell that was the problem. Summon Stone was based around the central rune for Rock, which meant he could summon all sorts of different rocks just by adjusting his own mental framework for what constituted a rock. So long as the Gods agreed, the spell would work. While trying to come up with a way to create Fireball, he first wondered if he could just yank out that rootspell in Stone Shot and shove Create Flame in its place instead.

But of course, it wasn't nearly that simple.

The biggest issue was that fire simply wasn't a physical object. Stone Shot had runes to handle density, hardness, and other physical attributes of rocks that flames just didn't have. He could tell just by walking around the runic formations floating within his void and looking at it that swapping out rootspells like he'd planned wouldn't work.

However, that didn't mean the idea was impossible.

From his brief time spent in the floating library, while Shia and Scule had been hard at work finding the golem for Alka's body and the mana gems required to power it, Vin's job had been to actually find a book and read, to make it look like they didn't have any ulterior motives to the librarian. He had been fortunate enough to stumble upon what was basically a primer for the intrepid spellcaster. A Beginner's Guide to Runic Formations had walked him through many of the more basic runes, functionally giving him a crash course on the language of magic. He'd been able to use that knowledge here and there to better help him decipher artifacts and learn the spells hidden within, and now, that blessed glossary he'd discovered in the back of the book might very well give him the tools needed to make this work.

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Ever so carefully, making sure to take his time and not make any mistakes, Vin began putting together the runic formation for Stone Shot from the ground up. But rather than using Summon Stone as the rootspell, he instead replaced it with Create Flame. He didn't connect it to the rest of the spell just yet, however, as he had quite a few tweaks he had to make first.

What happens if I take this portion here that relates to density… and change it to 'temperature,' instead? He thought, doing just that. And this section that stabilizes the stone's flight path… If I change it to focus instead on 'pressure' and 'containment,' that might keep the fire stabilized in the form of a ball!

Editing the known runic formation while he withheld mana from flowing into the structure was scary as all hell, but Vin couldn't help but grow excited as he made change after change to the spell. Finally, he felt as though he was truly combining his two greatest loves of exploration and magic. He was venturing into the truly unknown, doing his best to put everything he'd learned to the test to create something brand new to him that he'd never seen before. A small part of his mind pointed out that it was things like this that he needed to do in order to embody his Magical Explorer class and earn his next prestige, but he shushed that down as he concentrated.

Vin wasn't doing this in some attempt at pushing himself up to the next level.

He was doing this out of the simple excitement of discovery and drive to learn new magic.

Finally, after who knew how much time had passed, his prototype was complete. Taking a step back within his void, Vin scanned over the nearly completed spell, double and then triple checking his work. In theory, the spell should work, but there was only one way to actually test it. Mentally preparing himself, Vin made sure he had a firm grasp of his nearly finished spell before he slipped out of Introspection. Getting to his feet, he held out a hand before him, focusing on the distant wall of the canyon as he finally connected the two different haves of his spell together and flooded them with mana.

And promptly exploded.

"Fireb-!" Was about as far as he got before his mana flooded through the 'finished' runic formation, touched upon the portion he'd personally constructed, and promptly detonated with himself. Vin went temporarily blind as fire blasted out of his body in all directions, sending him flying backwards and slamming his head into the ground. The flash of golden light that erupted from his core and washed over his body was all the confirmation he needed that he'd just 'killed' himself again, and he decided to simply lie there for a second, groaning as he stared up at the distant mist high above them.

Well… that wasn't supposed to happen.

Runecraft increased to lvl 18! 3,600 exp gained.

Introspection increased to lvl 16! 3,200 exp gained.

Level up! Magical Explorer lvl 39.

+3 attribute points

Not even the notification that his failure had caused him to level up was enough to stop the pounding in his head, and he aimlessly shoved his new points into focus to help with the gulf that was growing once more between it and his magic attribute.

"Vin!" he heard Shia call out, and he squeezed his eyes shut in preparation of the chewing out he was about to receive. Even with them closed, he could easily hear the Druid rush to his side, and he cracked one open to find her standing over him, glancing back and forth between what he was pretty sure was a scorched crater a few dozen feet away and his current position.

"...What did you do?" she asked accusatorily, crossing her arms and frowning down at him.

"I may have tried building my own spell," he admitted, grinning weakly up at her. "Turns out, Fireball is a tad trickier than I expected."

"Oh, Vin…" Shia sighed, looking more resigned than disappointed, at the very least. "I knew you'd try this sooner or later, but I figured you'd at least wait until your second prestige to do something so stupid. I told you how dangerous building spells from scratch is! It's why the master-student relationship exists in the first place!"

"Yeah, but most people would fail once and then have to give up on account of being dead and all," he pointed out, pushing himself up onto his elbows and staring at the still-smoking crater that marked where his spell had gone wrong. "I have my boon. Might as well put it to good use, right?"

"While you have a point, I highly doubt that was the intention the Gods had when they gave that to you," Shia said, shaking her head. "That said… I can't help but feel as though my master would approve of this training method. I don't very much like it myself, but I suppose the only one you're hurting is yourself."

"It's only aches and pains," he said, holding in a groan as he forced himself back to his feet. Shia pointedly didn't offer him a hand up, the Druid clearly still not a fan of this learning style, regardless of what she'd just said. "Honestly, I already have an idea or two of the things I need to change. Just before the runic formation detonated, I could feel the points in my spell where the mana failed to flow through. Even if I don't know exactly what changes need to be made, at the very least, I know where the changes have to be. Now it's just a matter of trial and error."

"Really?" Shia asked, suddenly looking far more curious than annoyed. "Huh. I guess I never thought about the synergy between your divine boon and crafting new spells. Using it to protect yourself from runic backlashes was one thing, but this is something else altogether."

"Let's just hope it doesn't take me more than a few attempts," Vin chuckled, casting Renewal and waving the life mana over himself. "I didn't interrupt your conversation with a bush, did I?"

"I was talking to a tree in fact, and no, you didn't," Shia said, rolling her eyes. "For what it's worth, these people have taken very good care of the valley they call home. The plants are more than happy with how things have been."

"Really?" he asked, peering over her shoulder at the decent-sized crater he'd left in the meadow. "...The grass too?"

"Plants like grass function more as one massive entity," Shia snorted, following his eyes. "I wouldn't expect you to understand, seeing as you're not a Druid, but don't worry about it. It's basically the same reason why you don't see me freaking out about stepping on grass everywhere."

"Fair enough. Anyway, I'm done blowing myself up for today. You can go back to whatever you were doing."

"I'll hold you to that," Shia said, finally turning and heading back the way she'd come. After she left, Vin picked a spot a bit farther from where he'd blasted a hole in the meadow, quickly summoning a few Stone Walls around himself to give him cover. Now that his divine boon was gone, he didn't want his original idea of giving the valley-goers a target to go after to bite him in the butt.

Even if his attempts at creating new magic were to be put on hold for the rest of the day, there was one other thing he wanted to work on.