Hugh’s gaze snapped skyward. Breath lodged in his throat. Both cores hung vast and radiant—yet wrong.
He staggered back, pulse hammering. “A dual-core mage? No… that can’t exist…”
The four rings, two on each core, spun rapidly, at an almost suicidal speed. No regular mage could sustain such quick rotational force. Of course, they were in a mental field within the examination crystal, but the technique should've ruptured the space under its chaotic power. But as Hugh looked at them… he noticed something.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
Both rings on one core spun in one direction, but the rings on the other core spun in the opposite way. What should’ve been a torrent of rotational energy that would have torn the space apart was instead stabilizing.
“You’re maximizing the rotation and using a counterforce… This is ingenious. Somehow the rings are spinning in perfect harmony and keeping your mana core from being twisted into oblivion. Mages have tried this for decades, but it’s impossible to do on one core. The logic just doesn’t exist.”
He looked back at her—
And froze.
Light seared above her. A large spell circle unfurled across the air, its lines etched in burning white. He recognized the base of the spell. A destruction spell from the Path of Ruin. But this wasn’t the formula he knew.
As the magic tower’s head of study, Hugh knew all the basic spells from each path, up to the third tier. This included the one Veronica was trying to cast. However, it just looked too… different.
Its foundation twisted. Sigils bent, runes stitched in patterns that should not hold—and yet did. The shape of the spear remained, but clothed in an alien architecture.
Like a beggar draped suddenly in a lord’s silks.
“Who… what are you?” Hugh breathed, voice trembling.
At the range’s edge, Veronica stood steady. Violet light blazed in her eyes. Her arm lifted, channeling into the circle. Each mark brightened, each symbol fused into the next. The air thrummed with weight, the stone underfoot vibrating with the pressure.
And still she poured more into it.
“That circle—” Hugh’s voice cracked. “That spell—”
“Gilded Blade,” Veronica shouted over the hum, finishing for him.
A Fifth-Tier spear spell. Built to strike from afar and detonate through anything in its path. One of her old favorites. She had once built whole branches of her arsenal around it.
Mana surged skyward, symbol locking into symbol.
“Wait!” Hugh’s cry came sharp, almost desperate. “Miss Everwells. Answer me. Are you truly Tier Three? Don’t you dare lie!”
Veronica turned just enough for him to see her eyes. Calm fire burned behind the facade. “I’m not lying. I am Tier Three.”
The color drained from his face. “Then… show me. Show me the understructure. If you’re casting fifth-tier from third—” His voice faltered. “…I need to see how.”
Her gaze slid back to the range. Above, the circle steadied, its radiance pulsing brighter with each beat. The twin cores rumbled, shaking the false sky.
“Alright,” she said calmly.
The circle shifted—not collapsing, but unfolding wide. The magic circle expanded. Layers peeled outward. Sigils branched to glyphs, glyphs spun into chains of calculation. Equations lit like constellations flaring awake. A lattice of logic spread wide, each line increasingly complex.
The array swelled beyond the circle’s rim, dense and alive.
Hugh’s jaw fell open. “No… that’s not possible…”
The framework was unmistakable: fifth-tier. And yet every hinge, every anchor leaned on a third-tier base. Her core shouldn’t even be able to see those variables, let alone shape them. Studying upward by one tier was rare enough. But two?
“Impossible!” His voice rose, breaking. “Higher-tier spells require a reinforced core—advancement itself is what lets a mage perceive the deeper formulas. It’s like gaining a new limb! So how—how are you casting this? Not one tier up, but two?!”
Veronica smirked, keeping her gaze forward. The spell above her clicked and locked in place. She recombined the understructure, compressing it all into the regular-sized magic circle.
A new limb. That was a common concept mages brought up when teaching students. A person born with two arms knows how to use them. From bending at the elbow to flexing their fingers and twisting their wrist. But a person born without two arms—how exactly would they know how to move an extra limb they don’t have?
Could one imagine moving a third arm?
That’s what tiered advancement was. Every tier was like gaining a new magical limb. Knowledge was imparted, new sensations and understanding that could only come from gaining that new limb. A first-tier mage couldn’t understand how to move a limb that a third-tier mage could. That’s how spells were formed. A first-tier spell moved the left arm. A second-tier spell moved the right arm. A third-tier spell, moved the third arm—an impossible concept for first or second-tiers to experience until they advanced.
It would have been impossible for her to reach the tenth-tier if she slowly killed herself by casting higher-tier magics. That’s why she rarely cast them unless absolutely necessary. Instead, Veronica focused on efficient spell theory. Breaking spells apart. Compressing higher-tier formulas into smaller frames.
That was Veronica’s area of expertise. It was her field of study. Her entire life—she dedicated to the study of spell compression. The use of higher-tiered spells, compressed down to a lower base. This was how she was able to cast upwards of two higher tiers of spells while in her exalted form.
Like Hugh had said—it was like gaining a new limb. Only she had already grown all ten once before.
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Of course, she mainly focused on using spells of her current tier, downgrading them to lesser stages, to prevent Medusa’s curse from accumulating. It was only in this life that she used spells above her tier and brought them down to her current level.
Veronica’s eyes locked onto the wooden dummy. Her trajectory and enhanced eyesight due to Sage’s latest quest reward activating.
Her gaze locked on the wooden dummy at the end of the range. The twin mana cores overhead rumbled, and her violet eyes sharpened. Sage’s latest enhancement hummed in her sight, trajectory lines stretching in perfect clarity. She wouldn’t miss.
With a low exhale, she thrust her arm forward.
The spell circle flared, sigils searing with light. From its heart, a spear of pure radiance shot downward, so fast it cracked the air itself. A streak of brilliance tore across the range, beaming into the dummy with surgical precision.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then the impact came.
The world bloomed white. The explosion wasn’t flame or thunder but light itself—piercing, concussive, blinding. A shockwave rippled out across the concrete, though from where she stood a hundred meters away, it was only a minor rumble. Her hair merely fluttered; her eyes squinted lilghtly at the flash of light washing over her.
When the glare subsided, nothing remained of the dummy but blackened fragments smoldering on the ground.
Veronica lowered her hand, chest rising with steady breaths. Her hair drifted back down, settling against her shoulders. A faint smile touched her lips. “That should do it,” she murmured.
Behind her, Hugh stood frozen. His mouth moved, but no words came.
She noticed his expression. It was one she’d seen a lot. Mages being impressed at her power. It was always a great, fulfilling feeling to be acknowledged. Even as a 10th-Tier mage, people looked up to her, but it was more reverence of legend, than reverence to reality.
It was akin to worship to a god, and not that of a war hero who saved an entire town.
She missed that feeling.
A short while later, they stood together in the front lobby of the Mage Tower. The puppets at the counter clicked and whirred, rearranging scrolls as Hugh guided Veronica toward the exit.
“I’ll send the application in right away,” he said, still glancing down at the notes in his hand. “Once you have your identification, bring it back to me and I’ll finalize the registration. Also, I can provide you with a temporary mage ID card for use around the city.”
He hesitated, pressing a hand to his brow. “Though, about your profile… I should warn you, the Association may not believe it. A Third-Tier performing a Fifth-Tier spell is, well, unheard of. Not to mention someone who survived Medusa’s curse. Sending all of this information of someone who doesn’t even have any identification? Honestly, my reputation might end up in the gutter for this.”
Veronica gave a quiet, sheepish laugh. “Sorry about that.”
She then smiled faintly. “At least you’ll have something to prove it.”
“That is true.” He raised a small bundle of papers—notes and diagrams that Veronica had handed him earlier. “These are simply remarkable. The reconstruction process alone… I’ll be sure to study this as quickly as possible before the association decides to fire me for fraud.”
The papers in his hands weren’t simple notes; each document included theoretical steps of how to reconstruct a higher-tier spell into a lower-tier one. Not the full method, of course, but enough to intrigue him. The notes demonstrated the theory by rewriting a simple Tier-2 spell into a Tier-1 variant, compact and refined.
Every spell had its own unique structure. Each one required a slightly different approach, but this sample would be enough to set the scholars buzzing. She had given him an appetizer of what was to come once she advanced a few more tiers.
Her hand brushed the pouch at her waist, now pleasantly heavy with coin and her temporary ID. He had been eager to compensate her for something so “groundbreaking.” Not that she minded.
Two thousand vix. A rather hefty amount compared to what she had back in Greystone. It was a bittersweet reward, however. What she gave him were real, legitimate and tangible notes. Considering it was a find of the decade, it would’ve been worth much, much more. Nearly hundreds of thousands of Vix, if anything.
Unfortunately, since the notes were from an unverified mage with no credentials, without existing proof of concept besides her—he couldn’t offer more.
What she showed could’ve been some clever trick to scam him—is what she assumed he was worried about.
“Once these are verified, I’ll be able to pay you a lot more, especially with the association backing you. But for now—ah… I’m probably going to receive a stern talking-to from the tower master for spending these funds without permission,” he said uncomfortably, more to himself than her.
She had sold him the theory itself, not the process.
The difference was crucial.
In return, she’d asked for a single condition: once he had examined the paper, he would forward the formula to the Magic Association for official record once her identification documents were finished. It was a fair trade.
If humanity were to survive what was coming, then every mage in the world needed to advance.
For now, though, Hugh simply had the head start—and the prestige that would follow. Veronica needed someone she could trust to be her anchor to the Mage Association while in Ronswick.
She’d held back from giving him more. Too much, too fast, would only disrupt the foundations of study. The Association would call it heresy if she handed them a formula converting a Ninth-Tier spell down to Fifth. They’d call her a witch again.
The Witch of the Abyss.
She much rather preferred ‘Exalted Mage,’ that Maeve had coined her as. The other was… embarassing. They were both embarrassing, but at least one of the titles didn’t have the word “witch.”
“Thank you again for your time, Mr. Hugh,” Veronica said lightly.
“The pleasure’s mine,” he replied, still awed. “If your other works are anything like this one, Miss Everwells, then the Association’s due for a revolution.”
She smiled faintly and inclined her head. “Let’s hope so.”
The afternoon sun greeted her as she stepped out of the Mage Tower. The streets of Ronswick were brighter now, busy with merchants and passersby. Veronica adjusted the strap of her pouch and began walking, the stone road crunching faintly under her boots.
[What is your next destination, Veronica?]
Probably the adventurer’s guild.
[You intend to register and take on some commissions?]
While the money I received from Hugh isn’t insignificant, I could at least use a bit more funds, especially for travel. Registering there will also give me some more credibility in the future. In the past, being an S-ranked adventurer came with many perks.
[Are you planning on attacking the goblins and retrieving those items for the merchants at the gate?]
I’ll do another commission first. See what type of quests newcomers are doing and maybe explore the area before going for those goblins. Maybe I'll do them all together if its close enough.
She continued on, following the directions on the map given to her. The adventurer’s guild lay only a few streets ahead.
A burst of raised voices drifted down a side street. Sharp, irritated, and edged with tension.
Veronica slowed and turned the corner to see what the commotion was.
A small crowd was gathered along the sidewalk. Fifteen, maybe twenty people at most. Others walked along, minding their own business, but several stopped by to look for a few moments. Veronica was now one of them.
“Ah—no!” someone snapped.
Veronica moved along the edge of the crowd, drifting closer to the front.
At the center was a low, semicircular table. Three people sat along its curve, shoulders angled inward, their attention fixed on the tabletop. Opposite them sat a fourth man, posture relaxed, hands resting easily near a small leather cup.
Veronica barely registered their faces.
Something else drew her eye.
The dice.
A pair of ivory cubes lay on the table, edges worn smooth. Another cup sat nearby, turned on its side. Coins were stacked in uneven little piles between the players.
“Damn it,” one of the men snapped.
He slammed his fist down hard enough to rattle the table, dice skittering across the wood. He pushed his chair back and stood, muttering under his breath as he forced his way through the onlookers.
The dealer merely smiled, calmly gathering the dice and setting them back into their cups.
Path of Veils and the Path of Tempests
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