Mage Among Superheroes

Since Acid Man wasn't going to be able to perfectly replicate a spell anyway, we began with offensive uses of his powers that he was comfortable with. He could grapple a target or become a pool of acid underneath them. By controlling his power, he could change the rates at which certain materials dissolved, including organic matter. Most of the time he didn't dissolve flesh… much.

The threat was good enough for most people. Moreover, since his powers were so valuable defensively he could use them to reach a foe and perform standard takedowns without fear. But that wasn't what we were concerned with.

I was watching him melt targets. It took a lot out of him to actually dissolve a large mass, but he demonstrated his effects on different materials that the training rooms could cobble together. The whole time, I was focused on him with my magical senses- along with having active divination. It wasn't precisely Arcane Sight, but that was the basis of what I was doing. I'd been lucky to cobble together a useful form of Advanced Divination Magic, propelled in part by necessity.

Perhaps I should thank Doctor Doomsday. If I had the opportunity, I would do so. Probably over his dead body, because at any other point our interactions would be too busy.

He might not remember that I existed, but that was okay. He was too dangerous to directly confront, and not at all fun about it. I felt like I'd need a million more defensive spells before I was comfortable with the idea. He had so many minions though, and they were far weaker. I didn't mind running into them.

Acid Man then made use of his powers to launch something similar to an Acid Splash. It didn't have to be big, but the separation was important. Otherwise, I'd be developing some sort of Acid Grasp spell, which I wasn't even certain was possible pre-mastery. The problem for Acid Man was that he had to imbued anything that was going to leave himself with all the power it would ever need, which didn't leave a lot of options for granularity of control.

He lobbed a bunch of acid that didn't go very far and ate through a half inch of artificial flesh in a fist sized area. That was the sort of thing that people would hope killed them. No wonder he didn't do anything like that regularly.

I had no idea how to convert what I was seeing into magic. No, I wasn't even sure if I could get close. At some point, I just began gathering mana in chunks of 2, which I knew was how much I needed. Sometimes, the spell was so far from forming that most of the mana just returned to me. Other times, I got it to try to do something, and most of it sputtered out. Spending it 2 at a time when I had over 50 mana remaining meant I got through something like thirty iterations before I was out of mana.

Or rather, before I was expected to be out of mana. I still had my second half, a full 62 points. It was just going to be less stable. I wasn't sure why I was having such trouble with replicating a simple spell. I'd spontaneously learned Water Breathing a while ago, back when I barely knew anything. Was that the problem? Did I know too much? Was there some sort of unknown limit? Had I used too many points to actually learn things now?

There was no way for me to know. I kept using magic, even though it would be less stable. The main thing I focused on was wanting acid and also for it to go over there instead of anywhere near me. Plus the proper amount of mana. I had to exert more control over details that were normally handled automatically, but I had gotten used to it. Normally, I didn't do it so many times in a row. I preferred larger spells these days, when I could.

It took me about half of what remained until I got something that actually felt right. I'd gotten a few green globs before, and a few strands of clear acid that rapidly dissolved without properly interacting with the target at all. But the last one was a proper fake-acid green blob that clung to the target while at the same time exploding atop it. It did about as much damage as could be expected… which is to say enough to kill a normal person if applied in precisely the wrong way, and an insignificant amount against anyone powered.

I now knew Acid Splash. That meant it would go a lot more smoothly in the future.

I still didn't have Basic Energy Mastery. Did I have to also get a natural increase, or was there more I was missing?

"Well, that's about it," I said to Acid Man. "Thank you for your assistance."

"No problem," he said. "So… are you sure you can't summon an acid elemental? Because it sounds like you should be able to."

I sighed. "I thought I pretty clearly explained that elements and energy are different."

"So, try it," Acid Man said. He wasn't listening at all.

"Ugh, fine," I said. "But this is space magic anyway, and it's not going to work." I waved my hand after gathering the proper 6 mana. I felt it flow out of me. "See? Nothing." What did he think was going to happen? There had only been four portals in Ignis' room anyway. Well, I was presuming those all went to the same world or whatever, but it was possible that Ignis simply had a far greater connection to me somehow. Either way, there wasn't an acid place. Besides, what was it going to do-

A rift in space tore open and Ignis stumbled through, carrying a pot that it was rapidly stirring with a stone spoon. Inside the pot was a bunch of clear liquid mixing with something green. The spoon dissolved in the mixture. Ignis dropped the rest of the handle in and proudly held the pot over its head. Was that the same one that held water normally?

"... Good to see you made it," I commented.

Ignis looked around, before pointing towards Acid Man. I still didn't speak its language. Maybe Ignis didn't know how to speak its language.

"Uh, no. He's a friend. Also I doubt it would hurt him. Just splash that target dummy I guess."

Ignis saluted, then dumped the green liquid from its pot. There was certainly more than fit, just like with the water. The target dummy melted, as expected from spending significantly more mana than an acid splash. However, Ignis seemed to exhaust pretty quickly from that and went back home.

"Told you," Acid Man said.

"Stop ruining my magic," I said. "If you suggest anything else to make it more complicated I'm going to be annoyed."

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"Have you done lightning?" he asked. "That's also an element."

Ugh. Fine. I also tried to get a lightning one. Just as before, Ignis didn't show up immediately. No, this time had a far more noticeable time lag. I wondered if Ignis was spying on me, because of the green acid. More likely, Ignis was reacting to the image I had when I summoned it. My image for lightning had been pretty vague, though.

About a minute later- beyond the normal duration of such a spell- the air suddenly tore open and Ignis came stumbling through. As it did so, bolts of lightning dropped out of its arms as they caught on the edge of the tear in space. They bounced around and sparked. Ignis tried to pick some up but kept dropping more, before finally putting them all down, arranging them into neat rows, and picking them up like a large bundle of sticks. It looked at me expectantly.

"I guess the same target?" It was more than half melted, but I hadn't really expected this to work.

Ignis nodded eagerly, awkwardly balancing the bundle of lightning bolts and tossing them one at a time. They zapped the target pretty good.

"Neat," I said. "Good job." Ignis came close, and I decided to pat it on the head. It was hot. Good thing I had combat grade gloves on. Ignis probably looked happy as it departed.

"Okay what about-"

"Nope," I said. "That's more than enough."

Acid Man sighed. "Fine, be boring. Have fun with your elements or energy or whatever."

-----

It was Acid Man's fault that I was still on the same task a week later. Midnight got dragged into it too. I got a natural upgrade for Acid Splash and it didn't matter.

"Are you sure this makes sense?" he said. "Couldn't there be a whole lot of other elements or energy like-"
"No!" I said. "This is all there is! The end of things! We just need one earth spell and one air spell and that's all!"

Normally, I wouldn't be so insistent. But this needed to work. I'd already spent so much effort. Even if we had to invent new spells, we'd do it!

"We're just going to uncover hidden spells," I said. "Somehow." I knew Spatial Rift was one of those. Maybe crossdimensional inspiration would have hidden something in other editions of tabletop RPGs.

"Gust?" I checked. Nope. "Aeroblast?" I wasn't sure if focusing on a name would tell me if a spell was real without actually knowing. I'd been told about Spatial Rift by Wrickle, and I believed her because she wrote a book on it. "Gale Blast?"

Huh. I hadn't expected that to work. I would have begun randomly looking through things a long time ago.

"Let's try this one," I told Midnight. The description might be nothing like what we had, but we could start there. A bunch of air around us to try to push things back.

I immediately avoided stabilizing my magic. I had fallen back into the habit of letting my magic be stabilized by half of it, which wasn't bad. It just wasn't good for learning and practice. It wasn't automatic, but it was my default choice for when I used magic now. This time, I just chose to forgo it. I shouldn't be able to cause any significant damage with the amount of mana I was using.

It took me six proper attempts, during which time Midnight tried twice. He was a bit slower with gathering mana and stabilizing himself between spells, but I'd also started right away while he had to take a moment to read the parameters.

It would be very hard to kill anyone with this spell… which was fine. It really didn't need to. It just went woosh in all directions and could probably shove someone back a step. The power was far more diffuse, but that was fine.

Midnight checked his window to confirm along with me, and there it was. Gale Blast.

"I guess we just need to find an earth one?" Midnight said. Regardless of whether these were energy or elemental spells or whether those were somehow the same even though they shouldn't be, it was reasonable that there should be some spell.

"Scatter Scree?" Nope. "Mold Earth?" Hah, no way. Not with those parameters. How much power did they think could be packed into 2 mana? "Earthen Force?" Nothing there. "... Rock?"

I was extremely glad there wasn't a spell named rock. But I was kind of annoyed that there wasn't a name we could find. We spent hours on it, during which our mana recovered to full. So we then spent a while just trying to do magic anyway.

In the end, we never did learn a spell name. I did form a chunk of rock that hit a target's head, exploding into shrapnel. Both the rock and the fake head, but the rock didn't stay after.

Well, it was something like that. And it appeared that Basic Energy Magic was the name it ended up on. I was kind of motivated to get more masteries to squash things together so I wouldn't have to look at as many things. Possibly Advanced Energy Magic but I was really tired of all that right now. Perhaps far in the future. Advanced Spatial Magic might work, but I might not have enough things within that threshold. I was pretty sure Teleport fit in whatever the highest category was. Gate and Spatial Rift definitely did.

I noticed my latest two masteries had more natural upgrades than points based. It didn't seem to be a hard requirement for them to form because of how Basic Light Magic had ended up… but it also seemed to be easier if that was the case. Which made sense, probably.

I needed to go fight things and get more levels. If not for points, for mana. And also the good of the city or whatever.