I hate feeling surplus to requirements. Voice was able to pull a boar or two over to us. He and Sam would then dispatch it with the minimum of damage to the hide. Kelsey was showing off her upbringing by skinning and butchering the beast. Daisy would harvest the plants as we cleared the area around them. I tried helping, but I was either in the way or I did too much damage.

  I can only take so much of that feeling before I do something reckless. I told the party to let me know if I could help with anything. I got a series of relieved nods, which pretty much confirmed that my attempts to help were more annoying than helpful. Found a safe spot, pulled out the book ‘Introduction to Spellcasting by Wendy McCoy’ and then proceeded to get lost in the concepts it explained.

  Turned out, the hypothesis I had been building about the magic was correct, but in the same way Newtonian physics is correct, if you ignore everything which happens on the extreme scales and temperatures.

  I looked up from the book to see that my party had cleared about a third of the field and seemed to have gotten into a real rhythm. Kelsey had a focused smile on her face, her tongue sticking out, lost in concentration as she carefully lifted the hide.

  I stored away the book and pulled up my spell list.

   was on its own. I had nothing else like it. If I had another ice spell, I’m sure I could separate out the components, but right now. No. None of its components seemed to match anything from the other spells I knew.

   and were practically the same. To the extent that I was feeling pretty confident, I could identify what makes Storm and what makes Inferno spells from those two alone.

  I eyed up ... Could I… I imagined its shape in my mind, and pictured the Storm bit looking more like an Inferno spell’s core… The shape looked strong… felt right… could I…

  I pushed some mana into the shape like I had many other spells…

  Felt something wet dropping down my cheeks…

  My hands came away with red on them and a smell of iron hit my nostrils.

  Well shit.

  I checked my health; I was down a sliver of the bar.

  I pulled out the book again to re-read the section on spell modification. What did I miss?

  It took me three re-reads and a couple of minutes of mentally staring at the construct before it occurred to me. I headed over to where the others were.

  “Mind if I try something on the next one?” I asked Sam and Voice.

  “Go ahead,” Voice said, inquisitively.

  When Voice pulled the next boar over, I waited for it to get into range of him, stepped forward and punched it in the side. The spell triggered and the boar erupted in flame. Voice regained aggro with a well-timed shield bash and the three of us finished it off pretty quickly.

  “What was that?” Voice asked.

  “I tried a spell modification, but it needed a target…” I responded.

  “Is that why you have blood on your cheeks?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah, my first attempt failed.”

  “So, what spell was it?” Voice asked once more.

  “Errm.” I pulled up my HUD and hit the notifications tab.

  ‘New spell discovered - Burning Touch’

  ‘Your intensive experimentation with spells has brought a deeper understanding of your magic, resonance point gained.’

  ‘As your resonance with magic deepens, so does your knowledge. Refer to your spellbook to select a new spell.’

  “Burning Touch,” I said with a grin. “Resonance hit five, and I’ve gained a new spell as well. What?” I was getting some dirty looks…

  I retreated to my corner of the field. Yeah, maybe I won't tell them yet. I meant a new spell on top of the one I had just figured out.

  I looked at my spellbook and clicked on the new tab that was there. This time, though, it was different. It didn’t give me a choice of three spells; it gave me a choice of the three schools. I chose Arctic.

  The page changed and I now had the choice of three spells. Last time I had only access to Storm, so it must have just been limited to that one school or maybe the rank 5 resonance is a wider choice…

  Ok, choices:

  ‘Snow Ball’

  ‘Attack an enemy with a projectile of Ice.’

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  ‘Hail Storm’

  ‘Dominate a zone with a pummeling attack of a hail storm.’

  ‘Frozen Weapon’

  ‘Enhance a weapon with the power of the Arctic.’

  Dominate a zone? Ok… No, no. Don’t rush these things. Snowball sounded like Spark and Fire Bolt. Frozen weapon is what Kelsey has. Good, that makes picking Hail Storm a rational decision, not a reactive one.

  Having convinced myself, I selected Hail Storm.

  Then swore when I saw how complicated the spell was.

  Bloody hell, this is a rank five spell.

  Do I risk it? I looked over at how much was left of the field… I got time…

  -- Vox Veritas (aka Voice) --

  Vox bumped fists with Sam. He was glad his old housemate had found this one; they made a good team. He looked over at Sam’s niece, who was skillfully skinning the second-to-last of the boars and Daisy, who was at this point masterfully harvesting the last of the plants. Both were solid finds and would be great additions to the guild. Assuming the teenager kept acting like an adult, as she had been. If anything, they might lose her if Sam embarrassed her in front of the others.

  He looked over to the far side of the field at Vaxil. As much as they might joke about overkill, those spells Aenara could throw around really were hitting that point. He’d have to suggest practising more and seeing if they couldn’t be cast at reduced damage or looking into non-damaging spells… Typical of Vax, when he realised he was more of a hindrance than a help, he moved out of the way.

  They’d had a chuckle when Aenara pulled out the book, more relieved, he thought, that she hadn’t insisted on helping out and costing them on the hides. Kelsey apparently knew where to go to sell them when they got back to town, and the better the quality, the better the prices.

  After the conversation they had had about how the spells could be broken down into different components, he had gone looking for screenshots of other people's spells. Thought maybe it would allow him to learn some more spells himself and… Wait… what was happening at the other side of the field?

  “What is she casting now?” Sam asked incredulously.

  A dark cloud had appeared over the field between them and Aenara. Small pellets of ice were falling rapidly, forming a white circle of frost about 30 metres across; they could barely see the diminutive redhead on the other side through the curtain of hailstones.

  “She’s unlocked another spell… hasn’t she…” Kelsey said, her hands elbow deep below the hide she was skinning.

  The storm of hail lasted about five seconds; in that time, Sam and Vox had moved closer to get a better view. They saw the circle seem to sputter briefly, and then the clouds dissipated. The woman on the other side dropped to her knees and then fell face-first.

  “Fuck!” Vox said.

  “Not again.” Sam exasperately exclaimed.

  They sprinted across the field to see if their teammate had survived playing with the forces of nature.

  -- Aenara --

  It all went dark… headache… tunnel vision… I emptied my mana again, didn’t I… yeesh… that spell though… so pretty… I’d gotten distracted appreciating the beautiful chaos of it all, like watching a snowstorm from the comfort of a heated conservatory while sipping on a hot drink.

  All I could hear was the throbbing pulse of the blood passing through my veins. Like I was floating in nothingness. It was exactly how I would imagine a sensory deprivation tank would feel.

  It took a moment, but my sense of touch returned; I could feel grass on my face. Oh, I was on my stomach… OK, roll over. Ah, I could see a speck of blue, and it slowly grew wider. It was replaced with a copy of Voice’s ugly mug. Daisy looked concerned, then relieved. I forced myself to sit up. I felt woozy, light-headed, and my stomach was filled with butterflies.

  ‘Ohh, that's sound,’ I thought as my friends' voices became audible and the throbbing receded.

  “...’nara. Are you OK?” Daisy asked, as I followed her finger with my eyes.

  “Mana drain.” I managed to get out.

  “From one spell?” Daisy asked. The headache started fading as my natural mana regeneration put a sliver of blue into my mana bar. The other strange feelings, going with them.

  “What was it called?” Sam asked.

  “Hail Storm,” I responded.

  “What rank?” Voice asked.

  I muttered.

  “Sorry?”

  I muttered again and then looked away from his gaze. “Five. In my defence…”

  “No.” Voice stopped me. “Get your mana back up, we are going as soon as Kelsey finishes.”

  “What were you thinking, El?” Voice berated me, once we were on the road heading south towards the ruins with the antenna. “For one of the smartest people I know, you can be a complete dumbass.”

  I stayed quiet for a few steps. “Got a little carried away; only intended to hold it for a second or two…”

  “Rank five… if that is what a rank five looks like…” he said, a slight tone of awe in his voice.

  “What are the even higher tiers of spells going to be like?” I said. “It’s an interesting speculation.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “I got a resonance point when I worked out how to cast Burning Touch. It seems you get the choice of a new spell on the odd resonance levels.”

  “Choice?” Daisy asked.

  “Yeah, at three, it just gave me three Storm school spells, at five, I got to choose the school and it then gave me a choice of three Arctic spells. Frozen Weapon and Snowball were my other choices.”

  “I got a point in resonance when I started using Frost Weapon more often, so I should get a new spell next time it increases?” Kelsey asked.

  “I think so. Based on my experience, at least. I was mostly using magic, though.”

  “How is your Aether?” Daisy asked.

  “Four,” I replied.

  “Which might explain why you bottomed out so quickly,” Voice considered. “Your pool of mana just can’t sustain that much drain.”

  “How are your other stats?” Sam asked.

  Which was how the humbling experience of finding out I had the lowest average stats out of the five of us started. Voice’s strongest were his Constitution and Endurance, both at six. Sam had Strength and Dexterity at six. Daisy had Wisdom and Focus at five, while Kelsey surprised us all with Dexterity, Endurance and Perception at six.

  “You’ve been spending too much time with your nose in a book,” Voice told me.

  And that is somehow the reason why we started jogging.