NOVEL NEXT Ch. 35
The Stupenstone hit the scarecrow with a POP! The straw-stuffed dummy jerked back from the blow, one arm sagging like it had momentarily forgotten its job.
Fabrisse didn’t celebrate. He was already lining up the next shot.
Oval in shape, walled in with reinforced ward-bricks and segmented by invocation-safe channels, the training ground was one of the quieter yards on the northern fringe of campus. One actually had to book in advance, and Greg did so for Fabrisse after he’d asked.
He’d been here nearly two hours now. Just him, a satchel full of stones, and a growing callus between thumb and index finger from repeated short-channel charge techniques. Charging the stone. Flinging the stone. He hadn’t been able to call the stone back yet, which meant after each round of shooting, he had to come over and pick it up by hand.
[Mastery Training: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)—Progress to Rank III: 7%]
“Seven percent? That sucks,” he murmured to himself as he took three steps back and flung another stone at the scarecrow. This one was inaccurate. He hadn’t been able to hit the target at a distance longer than two meters yet. At least the arc was getting cleaner and sharper for a while. Then, it got worse again.
At least, he’d figured out there was another way to upgrade his spells without using Mastery Points, and that was to actually train like a normal person.
His extra hour with Lorvan had been marginally more fruitful than the last two, bringing his progress with Synaptic Thread Recognition to a total of 23%. He felt as though he had started to internalize the movement and timing, though there was much more work to be done. Lorvan had promised he’d spare a Saturday for him if he could train the first arc by himself at home and present his best stance to his mentor at the beginning of their next session. He had agreed to the condition.
He crouched, breathed, and held the stone again.
Train, he told himself, I must train.
Two hours in, and guesswork wasn’t cutting it anymore. He needed real data—something that could break down exactly where his spellcasting was falling short.
Maybe I can handle the data overload now.
He pulled up the system interface and navigated the subsections.
Diagnostics > Settings > Display > Aetheric Metrics
It was now set to Lite Mode, the choice he’d made when he was getting used to floating words in front of his vision.
He tapped the toggle at the bottom corner.
TOGGLE: Detailed Equations
The interface reshaped itself into a dense overlay of numbers, tags, and fluctuating sigils. He swatted them away for now and went into the [Skills] section to check if there had been any changes in the description of Stupenstone Fling.
There had.
Skill: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)
Type: Directed Aetheric Projectile (Force/Emotion-Harmonic)
Status: Partially Stabilized | Average Accuracy Variance: ±11.2%
Based Force: ~39 N (approx. like getting beaned with a fast-thrown stone—small bruises expected)
Charge duration: 1.8s (-10% due to Stonebound Synapse)
Cooldown: 2.6s between charges | Max Sustain: 2.1s
Core Equation:
40% Stupenstone Core Alignment (Stable) +
40% Thread Synchronization (Timing Delta: 0.42s) +
20% Kinetic Channeling Efficiency (Flow Rate: 66%)
→ Stupenstone Fling (Force, Blunt)
Casting Requirement: SYN ≥ 5
[ACCESS EFFECT DETAILS]
Okay . . . I’m getting used to the numbers now. But wait—my cooldown’s longer than my fling duration? That’s just sad.
Fabrisse hadn’t noticed how long he’d been at it until the glyph light made his eyes twitch. Time didn’t pass the same way when he had something to fix.
He saw there was another option below for even more details. How difficult to understand can it be? He thought as he opened the new glyph.
Effect Details
Velocity Scaling:
– Base velocity: 9.9 m/s
– Max charged: 13.4 m/s (+5% due to Stonebound Synapse)
Impact Force (Mixed):
– Physical: 30% from throw force (STR + technique)
– Aetheric: 70% from resonance intensity (SYN + charge time)
Range Limit:
Base range: 6.2m
Increases with RES and SYN
Arc Correction: Allows up to 1 minor trajectory correction during the projectile’s travel.
Requirements:
RES ≥ 8 to activate
RES ≥ 20 improves correction fluidity (reduced variance penalty)
Each correction can alter trajectory up to ~5°
SYSTEM NOTE
No current range or force extension detected.
To increase effective distance and force after releasing spell, improve:
→
RES (RES ≥ 12 recommended)
Warning: Repeated manual throws may cause channel stress blistering. Recommend upgrading to retrieval or auto-recursion variant before Rank IV.
Fabrisse had never closed a glyph that quickly. Okay . . . maybe I don’t need that much detail.
He vowed to never open detailed effects again.
He opened the glyph again—but only the top layer this time. Just the Core Equation.
Core Equation:
40% Stupenstone Core Alignment (Stable) +
40% Thread Synchronization (Timing Delta: 0.42s) +
20% Kinetic Channeling Efficiency (Flow Rate: 66%)
→ Stupenstone Fling (Force, Blunt)
That last one caught his eye.
Kinetic Channeling Efficiency.
He frowned. “That’s . . . physical, right? Kinetic, as in force.”
He rolled the stone in his palm, suddenly more aware of the slight weight of it, the tension he felt every time he coiled his arm to throw. Until now, he’d just assumed the ‘channeling’ was entirely aetheric—threadwork and sync timing. But this—
“Does this spell actually like it when I swing my hand harder?” he muttered.
That broke a rule he’d had in his head since day one.
Strength was irrelevant for a spellcaster.
But if even 20% of this spell’s performance was tied to how well he channeled physical force through the cast . . . then maybe it wasn’t just about finesse or clarity.
He coiled his arm again, this time consciously bracing his legs, tightening his shoulder, and adding real swing behind the throw.
He hit the scarecrow’s head (it would’ve been difficult not to, as he was not even two meters away), but it’d dipped just before impact and hit the chin instead of the forehead like he’d hoped. The arc of the stone had held straighter, though.
“Huh.”
Not a breakthrough. But better.
He frowned, rubbing at the seam between his shoulder and collarbone. His body didn’t love that movement, but the stone had flown truer. That had to mean something.
Then he flexed his fingers into the Self-Directed Query Invocation posture and used the skill.
The air coalesced into a translucent, slow-replaying afterimage of his last throw: a twist of faint light tracing where the spell had moved through him and outward.
It was like watching his own aetheric skeleton cast the spell in reverse. He squinted. Faint glow appeared near his shoulder and wrist. He had never known why the glow was there, but he knew now: that was an indication of good physical force. Kinetic channeling looked like it was landing, at least partially.
But just beneath the wrist, where his threads usually bound the intent into shape, was a dull smudge.
“Faded resonance,” he muttered. His intent had dropped mid-cast, or he’d resonated with aether later than he should’ve.
Near the upper chest and neck, where the spell should have fully synchronized with his threadwork and timing—a haze. Fatigue marks.
The system’s overlay labeled them.
⚠ Thread Weakening (Light)
⚠ Partial Drift (0.4–0.6s mismatch)
⚠ Emotional Undercurrent: Stable, but Thin
“SYN’s still off,” he muttered, tapping the side of the projection. “That’s where my timing’s dropping. I’m overcompensating for the release and threw it about half a second late.”
Fabrisse realized he hadn’t been using the Eidralith to its potential so far. Sometimes knowing the composition of a skill could lead to fundamental changes in how he cast it. Now he knew he had to put actual strength into the spell, the most important thing to solve was how to channel his intent better. 40% of output came from aetheric timing, and that could only be solved with better Synaptic Control.
Okay. So two things I need to do. I need to upgrade my SYN, and for now, while my SYN’s still low, I need to just mentally time my aetheric channeling better.
He took a slow breath and reset his stance, rolling his shoulders to loosen them. “Earlier this time,” he told himself, keeping one eye on the fading afterimage of the prior throw. He held the next stone with both hands for a moment—just long enough to reset the thread-bind in his mind—then dropped his left hand and began the wind-up.
This time, he started channeling before the throw.
His threads warmed, catching the early rhythm of movement. The resonance nudged into place with a faint shimmer along his arm.
He stepped into it, put weight into the arc of his throw, and released.
The stone whistled through the air with a tighter hum, its flight a cleaner, flatter curve. It struck the scarecrow in the center of the forehead with a crisp thunk! that sent straw puffing out from the dummy’s eye sockets. The whole head jerked slightly, slumping at an angle as if the thing had just had a very strong opinion knocked out of it.
The system flashed an update:
[Mastery Training: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II) — Progress to Rank III: 8.8%]
“One point eight percent,” Fabrisse breathed. “Now that’s better.”
The feedback trace activated automatically this time. He watched the light-form of his last cast play out, noting the subtle shimmer along his chest and neck—stronger now, no haze, just firm threads pulsing on time with the movement. His wrist signature was clear. The dull smudge from before was gone.
Fabrisse wondered why it took him so much effort to synchronize and get the throwing right, but some spells like Veil of Shame came naturally. He opened the Aetheric Reaction Equation for Veil of Shame, and sure enough, the mechanics were very simple:
[Veil of Shame]
Core Equation:
68% Emotional Overload: Shame (Unresolved) + 24% Mnemonic + 8% Thread Synchronization (Delta: 0.42s) → Veil of Shame
For this skill, only 8% of importance was placed on Synchronization, and because he could reliably channel Shame as an emotion, he had no problem executing it. His SYN was much too low, so any spell that involved synchronization would present a massive challenge.
Suddenly, another notification popped up.
[WARNING: Focus dropped below 25%.]
Focus (FP): 7/31
[RECOMMENDATION: Take a short rest and rehydrate. Drink 2 liters of water a day.]
Why do the notifications always sound like they were written for a half-wit?
He didn’t need reminders to drink water. He needed to understand more about Focus Points.
He pulled up the description from the script.
Focus Points (FP) represent a caster’s mental stamina, cognitive sharpness, and aetheric discipline. Every spell, gesture, calculation, or channeling of aether draws from this finite pool, not because it burns fuel, but because it taxes the mind. If your FP drops to below 50%, you get a penalty of 20% for all stats. If your FP drops below 25%, you get a 50% penalty. If you have no FP, you cannot cast a spell.
Which made sense. Aether was in everything, and it wasn’t something you could store. What could run out wasn’t aether—it was you.
He was overcorrecting the arc, burning too many focus points just trying to make the flight look clean. He needed to take a break.
As he walked over to a corner and took a sip of water, he caught sight of a figure past the ward-post glimmer and the rune-stamped boundary line.
Veliane Veist.