The Wandsmith [LitRPG, Isekai, Harem]

For the second time in a week, Ori sat cross-legged in the forest with Echo Forging humming between his fingers, slowly knitting the rents and burns out of his coat. The cloth shimmered under his touch, threads of mana and memory stitching themselves back into place.

Around him, the forest was still. The sky above was grey with cloud cover, and the damp scent of moss and disturbed soil hung heavy in the air. Matted hair clung against his temple, still clocked with mud and rock from the earlier battle.

Panic had struck hard after the ambush. While the giant worms weren't quite the size of the mythical sand leviathans from Dune lore, the Aether-Warped monsters, Ori later learned, were hybrids of earth elementals and earthworms. Their archmage-level command over the earth came from this unlikely fusion of racial lines. With bodies weighing as much as several blue whales and magic to match, it had been more than enough to ruin their day.

He remembered Freya's raw terror, her scream echoing through their bond as they crossed the void for the first time. The memory was already fragmented and strange, twisted by the nature of the in-between. It had become a shadowy nightmare of half-remembered monsters and dead ends. Ori had needed more than ten steps to escape, a dangerously high number by Poppy's standards.

He emerged in a half-collapsed tunnel near the surface with the distant sounds of burrowing all around, only to look up and see Ruenne'del, flying, anxious but unharmed, wings humming as she hovered high above the cracked terrain and swarming worms.

Without further hesitation, Ori activated his Dream Domain. With Rue in his arms, he teleported sequentially, four kilometres every second until the backlash hit and subsequently lost consciousness.

Now, sat in the aftermath, a pile of ruined gear beside him, he barely acknowledged the hushed voices nearby.

"...hurtful words hurt people, Freya," Ruenne'del said, her tone clipped, sharp like a blade's edge.

"Whaaat? What words of mine have been hurtful?"

"Normally, he shrugs it off!"

"I tease him. He gives it right back. That's how we've always been." Freya snapped back, her wings flaring.

"You hit deeper, harder and more often, You don't even realise."

Freya folded her arms, her voice quieter but no less defensive. "You make it sound like I'm trying to hurt him."

"Just managing his ego, right?" Ruenne'del asked, her tone dry and pointed.

Ori tuned them out, at least for now. It was rare for them to argue, and rarer still for Ruenne'del to speak to anyone so directly. He didn't want to get in the way of her expressing herself, especially on his behalf. Still, he would have to say something before they continued.

He returned his focus to the tangled mess of metal and leather he was repairing. Echo Forging's steady demands on his attention became a form of meditation, helping to clear his mind of the self-doubt and second-guessing that had followed him throughout the walk. He sank into the rhythm of the task, the repetitive process lifting him in and out of awareness of his surroundings.

"He's stronger than you think, Rue," Freya said. "My words are nothing but the water off his back,"

"You chip away."

Freya's silence stretched, brittle and too long.

"I… It's not that bad," she finally said.

"It is," Rue said. "Maybe not to you. But I feel it."

"You think I do it to hurt him?" Freya's voice cracked slightly, more surprise than outrage.

"I think... we all make mistakes."

The wind whistled through pine and oak. Ori exhaled slowly through his nose, his pulse steady now, his thoughts clear in the quiet.

He finished repairing the last tear in his sleeve, smoothing his thumb over the reforged fabric. The crafting spell released with a whisper of displaced mana.

There were two rifts left. The one near the supposed cache of opportunities and one they had just faced. Both options seemed daunting, and after what he'd just faced, Ori was hesitant to retry the worm nest again right now.

But he needed the power. Needed to evolve spells and grow his mana. And needed the peritia if he wanted to stand even half a chance of keeping his promises and becoming the person he needed to be for the people he loved.

"All right, girls," Ori said quietly, rising to his feet. The argument stopped like someone had flicked a switch. "Rue?"

She turned to him, and he stepped forward, pulling her into a hug.

"Thank you," he said softly, his hands brushing gently over the strange texture of her wings. They felt thin and rigid, yet oddly weightless, with delicate veins of warmth and magic woven through them in fine contours.

"I'm okay. Honestly, I'm almost as worried about all this power going to my head as I am about not being strong enough to protect everyone. And I do appreciate Freya for keeping me grounded, even if it stings sometimes."

He turned to the pixie now perched on a fallen log, her sullen expression lifting slightly, only to sink again as he grinned.

"Also, you shouldn't bully her. She's been through a lot. And besides," he added with a mischievous glance, "bullying Freya will be Seraphine's job."

Freya let out a sharp harrumph, her arms folded even tighter, before flashing into her sprite form and zipping a lazy loop around his head. She disappeared into his soul space with an annoyed buzz.

Rue looked up at him with the faintest of smiles.

"Next steps?" Freya asked. Her tone was calm now, her earlier frustration buried beneath her professional lecturer's mask.

Ori nodded toward the eastern tree line. "We head for the cache and the aether rift within."

"You think it will be easier?"

"No," Ori said. "But maybe we might be a better counter for what's inside."

Rue fell into step beside him as he retrieved his stuff and left.

They had been walking through the forest for the better part of a day, the next rift now half a day's journey ahead of them.

Ori had been thinking about the nature of combat. When he had left Ghigrerchiax, he had considered himself relatively versatile with access to magical and physical damage, limited but potent movement skills, shielding, healing, and cleansing abilities. But only now was he beginning to understand just how uneven his capabilities were when compared to the vast spectrum of power that was the Sovereign rank.

It was the final bottleneck before true, unconditional immortality, and for many, it presented a hard limit to their potential. Some chose to by-pass the slow accumulation of Peritia altogether, spending their reserves to enhance their characteristics instead, making themselves vastly more powerful in a few specialised areas. This allowed them to compete for the scarce resources that could push them beyond the Sovereign rank through other means.

As a result, the baseline range of attributes in Sovereign-ranked combatants could spin out wildly. Values for toughness or spell damage could vary by entire orders of magnitude, far beyond the predictable ranges seen in lower ranks. Here, every fight became unpredictable and fraught with invisible risks.

At one point, Ori asked Freya how she would rate his capabilities out of ten, his offence, defence, healing, and utility. She refused, suggesting instead that while his peak damage output was high, his fundamental weakness, his toughness, could not be easily overcome. Also, at Sovereign rank, elemental diversity mattered more. Initial resistances or vulnerabilities to specific affinities could have an outsized impact on the outcome of a battle. Focusing too much on raw damage output could leave him exposed to enemies that simply did not care about the kinds of damage he dealt.

Worse, she noted, his shields and healing spells couldn't be relied upon during pitched battles. They were effective but not fast or flexible enough under pressure or unseen dangers. He lacked battlefield control options, and his reactive spells came too late to turn the tide once things went wrong.

Freya suggested he use Greater Stun more often to break the enemy's momentum. She also recommended small, well-timed uses of his Dream Domain, not just for escape or traversal, but as a tool to disorient enemies and to instantly cast high-cost, wide-area spells. By pulling exhausted or ambient mana from the environment, he could force powerful changes without overdrawing upon his mana.

"Then again, there's no reason why you need to do all of this alone. Consider specialising. Focus on your spell power and healing, and let someone else take on the burden of utility and defence," Freya said.

"Someone else??" Ori asked.

"Build a party. Find new members. People you can grow to trust."

"I will help," Ruenne'del said.

"Oh yeah?" Ori smiled.

"New bonds. People to fight with. People to look after you when I leave," the pink-haired fairy replied.

Ori let out a soft grunt at the reminder of their limited time together, but even so, he pictured it: a team he could rely on. Warlocks or other bonds he could raise, companions he could train and grow alongside with. A group built not just for survival but capable of standing against whatever fate decided to throw their way.

Ori considered all of this in silence as they walked. The ideas sat with him, growing heavier as the day wore on. Sovereign rank was not just power, it was depth and control. And he was only just beginning to see how deep he still had to go to understand his path forward.

The woods had thinned out since dawn, the light filtering through gaps in the canopy's tangled branches. The quiet was near absolute, the kind of silence that made the hairs on Ori's neck stir without cause.

Then Ruenne'del flinched.

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Instinctively, Ori cast Prismatic Shield. He turned to speak, but it was already too late.

White talons, the size of a scrapyard's claw, seized him mid-step and lifted him skyward before he could even cry out. His arms were pinned to his sides, the impact and sudden ascent forcing the air from his lungs. Breathing, let alone screaming, was impossible. The trees fell away beneath him as the sky opened, and above, a shape blotted out the stars.

A beak, sharp and pale and wide enough to swallow his head whole, curved towards him. Behind it, two massive black eyes stared, unblinking and devoid of expression.

Instinctively, Ori forced all his mana into Prismatic Smite and channelled.

The world exploded with light.

The radiant burst seared the air and scattered the clouds. The creature shrieked in surprise and released its grip. Ori tumbled, spinning through the air like a rag doll, his spellcraft faltering as he lost sight of the beast. Trees and sky traded places several times as gravity reclaimed him.

But before he could hit the ground, he was caught again mid-fall. He did not hear nor see it. One moment, he was falling, the next he was trapped in its talons.

Then came the pain.

The beak descended again, this time slicing clean through his right arm. Ori unleashed Radiant Smite, this time fuelled as much by fury as mana, and again he fell. The shock of the severed limb stole his breath, leaving only instinct behind.

Split Mind compartmentalised the pain while Dream Domain unfurled with a spark of will. His intent to subvert natural law took hold, reshaping the world around him into a portion of the dreaming. Gravity, direction, momentum and force no longer mattered.

His descent vanished, the domain caught him, cancelled his fall, and reset his momentum. He landed in a crouch, one arm gone, blood soaking his side.

With Seraphine's Beacon in hand, Ori released Light Field. A galaxy of light erupted around him, thousands of tiny orbs racing outward like stars spilling from a shattered sky. The forest clearing bloomed in a wash of pure light. Every shadow burned away.

And then he saw it.

Perched silently on a broken tree limb was his nemesis.

A giant owl. White as bone. Its feathers were smooth and flawless, unmarred by any of the grotesque mutations common to Aether-Warped beasts. No tentacles or extra eyes, no jutting bone or broken symmetry.

Only silence.

Ori stared at it and felt no hate. The creature was not evil. It was not corrupted or maddened. It was pure, refined. A master predator at the apex of its craft. A reminder that life was always earned. That even here, there were hunters and prey. That to live meant risking death, and even the smallest fungi consumed and were consumed in turn.

He let go of his Dream Domain just after landing, narrowly avoiding its backlash.

Raising Seraphine's Beacon, Ori cast Channelled Lightning before the owl could react. Flux surged through the air. A bolt of positrons snapped across the clearing, striking the owl in the chest with a thunderclap, its chest exploding with feathers and blood.

The owl recoiled, flared its wings and with a powerful backward lurch, it vanished, slipping through the trees with silent grace before Ori could fire again.

Ori panted, his body numb with pain and disorientation. His right side was a screaming claxon of pain. Blood soaked into the dirt beneath him.

He looked down to confirm that his right arm was indeed gone, and along with it, his void storage ring.

Silence returned to the clearing.

"Fucksake."

It was Ruenne'del who found his arm before any scavengers could reach it. Mangled and missing a sizable portion of the forearm, Channelled Restoration took longer than usual, slowly regrowing the lost length after reattaching bone and restoring blood flow.

As part of the process, Ori spent hours comparing his left arm with his newly restored right, noting subtle differences in the circulatory system and quietly worrying whether both arms were now the same length. Eventually, he decided to rest and recover both mentally and physically before attempting the next Aether Rift.

During his dreams, he informed Poppy of his recent misadventures and the successful use of Void Dance. She agreed with him that his ten or eleven steps were far too many and that getting it down to two or three was needed for his proficiency to be considered adequate. A rare meeting with Harriet in the dreaming followed, where he recounted much the same while receiving updates on her situation in Lunaesidhe. Awareness of a new transcendent affinity and its connection to a newly formed demiplane was beginning to spread, thanks in no small part to her curious niece who had discovered the alteration in the divination records at Everlight in Orith.

Meanwhile, Harriet's nemesis, Rufus Terradi'del Osson, had begun making new moves. Court politics and tensions beyond were escalating in the wake of the announcement of the High Human.

As Ori split his awareness three ways in the dreaming, his third astral avatar continued its nightly vigil, scouring the ethereal realm for the scattered fragments of Lady Seraphine's soul while processing the events of the last few days.

Ori and his bonds set off early the next day, reaching the outer edges of the region surrounding the Aether Rift by late morning. What greeted them was a deep ravine, a mist-shrouded gash in the land. The hairs on the back of Ori's neck once again stood on end, and Ruenne'del looked visibly unsettled.

Twisted strands of Grace coiled through the air like notes in a broken melody while faint whispers brushed against the edge of his mind; some were half-formed promises, others cruel warnings. Echoes of intent drifting just beneath conscious thought. Were it not for the prize hinted at by the Librarian, Ori might have turned back then and there. The knowledge that an Aether Rift lay at the heart of it all worsened his apprehension. Whatever foulness had settled here had not only been drawn to the Rift but shaped by it. More worrying still, the very land appeared to have been carved intentionally, the ravine a manufactured scar at least two hundred feet deep and stretching more than a mile in length. Whatever waited below, it was no natural formation.

He crouched by the cliff's edge and pulsed his domain. Thousands of signatures answered within its radius, from minor Awakened to hundreds of Sovereign-ranked presences.

Ori sighed. "I'm going to try something. If it doesn't work, then we turn back."

Ruenne'del glanced at him but said nothing, her eyes already fixed on the swirling mist below.

Activating the full range of his enhancements, the High Human pulsed his Dream Domain once more. This time, casting Light Field across the entire ravine. The spell blanketed the chasm in light, his field effect stretching four kilometres in every direction. Millions of prismatic marbles burst into being, flowing outward like a swirling nebula. Their combined glow began to burn away the heavy mist revealing a nightmare.

Below them, thousands of spirits stirred. Enraged ghosts filled the ravine, their distorted forms writhing beneath the surface of reality.

Ori's Dream Domain was dispelled before it could collapse, but the spell remained. The suspended orbs of light floated in place, casting a glow that turned the once-foreboding landscape into something otherworldly and divine.

With the field in place, Ori began to channel, drawing on the stars as his source. Light shimmered around him as he imbued the entire spell with the Law of Radiance, saturating the region with purifying force. He poured the entirety of his mana into the enchantment, willing the light to blaze with radiant clarity and pass through all that fell within its reach. It called judgment upon what should be dead or living, what should remain joined or be severed, what should be dispelled or cured, and what should be fixed or unmade.

Peritia surged through the land in a thick, billowing tide as Ori's page in the Library of Fates rewrote itself. Tens of thousands of Awakened, Nascent and Greater-ranked phantasms were instantly reduced to dust, the thick mist evaporating under the pressure of the cleansing light. Meanwhile, the suppressed hundred or so Sovereign-ranked ghasts and semi-corporeal monsters, Aether-Warped into strange, mutated spectres, were driven back. Their movement slowed, and their awareness dulled, stripped from them by the unrelenting weight of Ori's hybrid spell.

Taking advantage of the suppression caused by Law of Radiance, Split Mind maintained the enchantment while Ori began spell-sniping from hundreds of yards away. With Seraphine's Beacon aiding his accuracy, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

As he did this, Ori felt tendrils of twisted grace latch on alongside affliction notices on his page of fates.

You have been afflicted with Withering Grasp. This necrotic curse will cause your limbs to weaken and decay, reducing strength and agility for seven days or until dispelled.
Curse Dispelled.

You have been afflicted with Echo of Regret. This mental curse will force you to relive your worst memories, reducing focus and casting speed for three days or until dispelled.
Curse Dispelled.

You have been afflicted with Tongue of Lies. This social curse will twist your speech into falsehoods, making all verbal communication unreliable for five days or until dispelled.
Curse Dispelled.

You have been afflicted with Choking Silence. This silence curse will prevent spellcasting that requires verbal components for six hours or until dispelled.
Curse Dispelled.

You have been afflicted with Iron Hunger. This metabolic curse will consume twice the usual amount of food and water for every action taken for four days or until dispelled.
Curse Dispelled.

You have been afflicted with Curse of the Tethered. This binding curse will prevent teleportation or spatial displacement for five days or until dispelled.

Curse Dispelled.

Ori stood near the edge of the ravine, half-lit by the fading orbs of Light Field. The starlike motes drifted slowly, dissolving as the spell's duration ran out. Mist clung to the rocks like old breath. His silver eyes were half-lidded, Vision of the Progenitor's gaze watching not the world but himself.

The curses had started light. Most didn't stick; the ones that afflicted his will or soul simply bounced off, too weak and of too low a rank to have much of an effect. But many others twisted in, bypassing Aura of the Progenitor's protection and ignoring his Prismatic Shields as if they weren't there.

Ori's brow furrowed in annoyance. One curse had sunk into his chest like frost down bone. It didn't hurt exactly, but it sat wrong, like a thought that wasn't his.

Freya landed, transforming into her Pixie form upon her customary spot on his shoulder, her twisted wings fluttering as her weight settled. Her gaze flicked over him before returning to the sight below. She seemed more curious than worried.

"You're allowing the curses to settle?" she said, more a conclusion than a question.

"Some of them," Ori replied.

"You're aware that curses function by using Grace to hijack remnant Peritia? By definition, they subvert the soul's intent and convert healing structures into frameworks of harm."

"Yeah, I'm starting to see that now," Ori said, eyes still half-lidded, watching the shimmering distortions against his inner vision. "Shields, spells, nothing stops them. They cut right through."

"As expected," Freya replied. "Curse magic operates conceptually. Mana, unless elevated or filtered through Grace, lacks the authority to intervene. It is why traditional spell shields, even those reinforced by a strong Will, often fail."

"I know. But… I think mana should be able to do better."

Freya tapped her lip in expectation. "Go on."

"I've just made mana behave conceptually, sure it required a lot to upgrade, but Law of Radiance works at the same level of authority. It judges corruption. Mana should be able to do more if it is properly guided."

Freya's tone shifted, measured like a formal recitation. "The manipulation of magic beyond its natural scope is classified as High Magic. Specifically, the creation of novel interactions between paracausal systems places you in the fourth tier of spellcraft difficulty, far beyond journey man mage level. That sort of work is not only dangerous, it's always unstable without a fully realised comprehension and framework."

"Good thing I've got you, then."

Freya blinked. "What?"

Ori turned to face her fully for the first time since she had arrived. "Help me. If I'm doing advanced spellcraft without a textbook and a diploma, wouldn't it be useful to have an actual spellcraft lecturer sat on my shoulder?"

Freya narrowed her eyes, not unkindly, then chewed the corner of her lip in thought before continuing hesitantly. "One does not simply ask someone like me for help with something like this. It's a service. A valuable one. Most would pay a small fortune for the privilege."

"Okay," Ori said, his gaze narrowing slightly as he tried to work out her angle. "So you want something in return? You know I'd do anything for you—"

"Ori... I already owe you more than I could repay in several lifetimes," she replied softly. "I just need you to understand the value of what you're asking for. If we do this, I want you to make this the beginning of a commitment, to truly invest in academic spellcraft"

"Sure, I absolutely agree." Ori answered enthusiastically.

There was a pause, stretched thin by shared understanding. Then, with a quiet sigh, Freya gave a single nod.

"Very well. I'll help you. But you will eventually record everything. We'll do this properly. You will catalogue every detail for peer review even if I have to drag you back to the Collegium myself."

Ori allowed a small smile. "Deal."

She folded her arms, her twisted wings giving a single twitch. "Then consider this the start of your formal research period. We'll need a title for our paper."

Ori tilted his head in mock thought. "Hmm… How about Seeking Mana-Based Conceptual Supremacy Over Grace-Bound Curses?"

Freya squinted at him, unimpressed and unsurprised. "You are such a boy."