timewalk
Aliandra Ali stretched and sat up, unhurriedly freeing herself from her sleeping bag, refleg on just how much the small forts of a good tent and warm sleeping gear had improved her quality of life.
Yesterday she had goo bed with a throbbing headache – the result of cumutive stress and pressure of the intensely oppressive mana she had endured as they explored the ke of light and its ability to spawal monsters. She had been feeling so out of it that she had not even checked her own notifications.
It’s almost like a dungeon, she reflected, sidering her experieh the Ruins of Dal’mohra respawning wolves on top of them as they explored. But much less… iional? The qualities of the jungle seemed much wilder, chaotid less pnned or purposeful thawo dungeons she had experienced so far. A, it was still a mana phenomenon that cimed aire area, spawning dangerous monsters within it.
It was an exceptionally productive excursion though, she thought.
Grove Warden has reached level 39.+10 attribute points.
Are Insight has reached level 22.Are Bolt has reached level 22.Barrier has reached level 29.Martial Insight has reached level 22.
Identify has reached level 12.
She pursed her lips. I o be even more careful. In her eagero secure the Luminous Glo mushroom imprint, she had exposed herself and her friends to the dangers of the spawning pool. The battle against the brawlers by the ke of light had been challenging, but fortunately, Malika had been able to take care of the situatioactical bat awareness had provided a rather remarkable solution to the problem of haste – Ali had watched in amazement as her friend had learo exploit Mato’s skills to defeat the elementals iime. Her personal involvement had been simple – uo keep up with the speed of battle, she had helped mop up the monsters as soon as Malika rehem retively helpless by draining their mana. But the whole situation could have been avoided if she had listeo Malika and ighe pretty mushrooms in the first pce.
Though it really underscores the importance of knowing everyone’s abilities well.
Ali assigwo points to perception and four each to intelligend wisdom and then turo the rest of her notifications, s through just the list of new variants she had learned. Undoubtedly, her Grimoire had shown the biggest source of growth in the rich jungle. Ign the many murees, mushrooms, and mosses she had learned, she focused instead on just the variants with light mana affinities – the variants she thought had the rgest potential for practical use.
Variant: Lux Drifter added to Imprint: Ooze.Variant: Sparkling Ooze added to Imprint: Ooze.Variant: Radiant Larch added to Imprint: Tree.Variant: Luminous Glo added to Imprint: Mushroom.Variant: Glow Moss added to Imprint: Moss.Variant: Corust Ray added to Imprint: Elemental.Variant: Radiant Brawler added to Imprint: Elemental.
Two new oozes, three glowing pnts, and two elementals to study. The oozes were iing, simply for the fact that she could share them with Naia. Besides that, Ali wasn’t certain how she could take advantage of the swarming Lux Drifter, but it did have the ability to fly – something she had e to learn was remarkably powerful in bat. The Sparkling Ooze attack seemed to be an alternative to fireball – the standard fire version seemed more powerful, but having an alternative mana type might prove useful. Also, the Sparkling Oozes were substantially higher level than her Fire Mages.
The elementals wouldn’t be immediately useful tiven she probably couldn’t summon live ones. But she was eager to study them in the same way she had studied the Glimmer Shards – who knew what she might unlock from them?
But it was her new pnts that held most of her immediate excitement. Emerging from her tent, she found their camp around the shrio be quiet, other than her minions, only Malika , and she was keeping wat meditation. Her eyes drifted to the obvious squishy lumps of dead Toxic Slimes that had crept into her domain ht and had run afoul of her minions. I’ll destruct them ter.
Choosing not to disturb her friend, Ali hopped onto a barrier and slowly flew off toward the glowing blue ke with several of her minions following along to act as escorts. Sihe destru of the Ruins of Dal’mohra dungeon, there had been no more respawned dungeon monsters, however, more and more often of te, kobolds or slimes wandered into her domain and she woke to find occasional corpses littering the moss amorees. She was well aware of how vulnerable she was without her minions, and so it rudent to keep an escort at all times.
Grounding herself on the bank of her ke, she idly reflected on how much more calming hers was pared to the aggressive iy of the spawning pool they had fouerday. Her ke was calm and clear, with soft ripples on the surface scattering the gentle blue glow all about. Deep within the pristine mana-purified water, she could clearly make out the knots of mana that represented her Aetheric Slimes swimming or crawling around otom. She watched for a while as they wandered about and then summoned a new group and turhem loose on the ke. They barely cost any mana at all.
She turned her attention to the surrounding terrain, choosing a promising spot o the bank of the ke b up against a rocky wall. The hard-packed stony ground wasn’t particurly suited to growing anything, so it was currently empty. But that’s what Domain Mastery is for.
P mana into her skill, she began sculpting the terrain, ftteniions, and pulverizing rock, turning it into gravel and sand with the simple application of willpower and mana.
Perhaps some terraces, she thought, examining the now-sloped ground critically. Summoning her Grimoire, she turo the chapter for the stone imprint and began to summon what was likely her stro stohe Aether-Fused Obsidian she had learned from Naia’s dungeon. However, for this task, it wasn’t the strength that she wanted. Ali was rather enamored by the midnight-bck, vitreous rock, and how it might trast with the light. She turned mana into stone, a it with her Domain Mastery, shaping and sculpting it into several rge, yered terraces.
When she was finally satisfied by the rapid terrain adjustment, Ali turo the tree imprint, and filled the area, pnting a deand of Radiant Larch trees, trying to emute the density and growth patterns she had observed from the jungle valley. In a surprisingly short time, she had a respectable stand of trees that together put out an impressive amount of yellow-white light, trasting well against the blue of the ke, and the stark bck of the terrace walls.
Domain Mastery has reached level 6 (+2).
Oh, nice! she thought as the notifications sounded in respoo her efforts.
Switg imprints, Ali filled the spaces betweerees with Luminous Glos – the mushrooms she had won for the cost of a probably unnecessary fight – and Glow Moss. The new pnts quickly hooked their mana into her domain structure, but as she had observed before, the inpatible mana affinity had the effect of suppressing her domain somewhat in the immediate area. It wasn’t such a big deal though, she had space to spare, and she had already grown her domain capacity so far in excess of what she could add to her mana pool that she could probably afford a lot more areas like this without impag her strength.
Looks beautiful, she thought, examining the results of her bors. She found she didn’t mind the interfereh her domai, and she was smiling happily wheuro camp.
There was no sign of the boys waking, so she took her time, destrug the corpses of monsters her minions had defeated ht. Whetled herself down onto the moss carpet he shrine, Malika looked up to greet her with a smile but immediately returo the subject of her focused attention. Curious, Ali watched. Malika sat cross-legged with some paper across her p. With great focus – and the point of her toig out the er of her mouth – Malika was drawied sequences of symbols that seemed to require painstaking attention to detail.
“What are you w on?” Ali asked, the attempt to draw a difficult symbol, crammed into the only remaining open spa her page.
“Practig my Calligraphy. I haven’t had time to work on it in a while,” Malika said, taking exaggerated care to form the curve of the symbol.
“What nguage is that?” The script had a beautiful curving flow to it that Ali found mesmerizing, and eveh of the pen seemed to evoke Malika’s uniquely graceful, flowing style of bat.
“It’s Ahn Khen – the nguage of my aors.”
“Do you think you could teach me sometime?”
Malika looked up at Ali for a moment with a strangely sad, wistful expression on her face. “There are very few books left in the Ahn Khen nguage. In Bakahn Vilge, where I grew up, the childreaught to read and write in on instead. It’s far more useful. Ahn Khen is only taught at sixteen to those who wish to study the books of the Elders or the hs of Ahn Khen – but so few copies are evehat the nguage is dying. The Elder who lived in Bakahn was one of the few entrusted with a surviving copy of the hs, and I had been looking forward to studying it when I was old enough. But the vilge was razed in the dungeon-break, and it was all lost, so all I have is a few children’s rhymes.”
She began a sing-song t pointing at each symbol in turn, expining how the rhyme eed the various basig and kig teiques in her drills.
Ali ighe sensation of Sage of Learniing her mana pool, simply fasated at the intonation and the rare intimate insight into the sadness of Malika’s past life.
Malika fell silent for a while and then tsked quietly as she turhe paper over several times, but finding no room for more practice, she made it, and her pen, vanish before settling bato her familiar meditation pose.
We should probably go to town for supplies today, Ali thought. had pihat he was running low on mana potions again, Malika was clearly out of practice paper for her calligraphy, and Ali wao visit with Ryn. But and Mato were both still asleep, and there was nency to wake them early. The underground jungle would certainly keep while the two slugabeds caught up on their beauty sleep.
Ali sat quietly beside her friend and pulled out her Grimoire, making it hover in front of her – just above her p. If the boys were going to be a while, and Malika was going to meditate, she was going to take the opportunity to study her magic a little. It had been too long since she had really dug into the spell stru, and she had some of the most advanced inscribed runic magic at her disposal, simply waiting for her to take time aside from all the monster-sying and expl.
She paged to the chapter on her elementals, thinking of studying some of the new ones she had just learned, but then she gnced back at Malika. With the stirring of an idea in the back of her mind, she turned back to her book imprint. She stopped and stared at the chapter for a long moment. It had been a traumatic day when she had forced herself to learn this, and so far, it had provided no value. She had told herself she would keep it for study, and hopefully turn it into something worthwhile, but she knew she had been avoiding it.
I wonder, she thought, gng at Malika once again and then back to the softly gleaming runes on the page in front of her. Removing something should be easier than adding… Fog on her mana sight, she activated her Sage of Learniering the study trance seamlessly as she began to feed mana into the imprint. For now, she simply watched it form, trying to uand the major flows and es as the runic expressio from the page, swirling, and bining in a stunning dance of nigh inprehensible plexity.
The spell pleted, and a small, browher-bound book dropped into her p, barely missing the h Grimoire. Without droppiudy trance, she picked up her creation and ope, studying the text within. It was a plex jumbled mishmash of script and nguage – some words reizable as Dwarven or Elvish, but many were simply mixed binations of many nguages and alphabets.
It's not even reizable as a nguage.
She focused her mind on recalling the shape of the magic as it had unfolded before her – the enormous plexity somehow magically recorded within her memory iraordinary detail, thanks te of Learning. It was like trying to untangle aire ball of kwine using only her mind. In the end, she was only able to decipher a few tenuous es using her powerful skill and the uanding that came from the Basic ization adva for her Grimoire. Figuring out how to stitch together an intelligible textbook or story seemed so far beyond her current capability that she felt a pang of sharp disappoi and despair before she reminded herself that she was after something vastly simpler.
And this is the perfect study subject. Regardless of how plex the magic was, she had the unique advantage of her Sage of Learning to enhance her memory and the es or any patterns she could find. And most importantly, she could repeat the test as frequently as she wanted. So, she did just that, p her mana into making book after book, repeatedly studying the formation of the magic, drilling into the precise es and how the text was created, how the variations ied, and where it all came from. With each try, she teased apart the threads of the Gordian Knot just a little further and gained just a little more insight as to the struct she was studying.
Ali took a deep breath, and turned on her Inspiration, sitting quietly for a moment as her mana repleo one side, she had a rather substantial pile of discarded books, all of which were worthless gibberish. But the size of the pile was an eloquent representation of her painstaking progress at uanding this spell.
stage. She had a sed powerful tool t to bear on this problem. And it was ed up in her Grimoire’s adva – she was able to modify the sele of variations with her skill. It was not something she felt in any rofit at, but she could certainly ge things in the middle of the stru. If she could repeatedly create more and more, while studying what exactly the ramifications of her ges were, she would be able to explore her skill in far more detail.
Excruciatiail. Chug to herself at a mental picture of being buried under an avanche of useless books, she set to work.
Her first several attempts were disasters – books without pages, books without covers, loose colles of decayed paper. Even one loose colle of unbound mana that simply disied with a op. But with each failure, she homed in on the regions of the imprint that affected the text that would go into the book, and she got better remarkably quickly. Her Sage of Learning began drawing more and more mana with each attempt but providing more and more insights, es, and possibilities to try .
Again. She made another book, ing the text variations, but still getting a garbled output. She studied the output of the book, tying the random text back to her memory of what had ged in the spell’s stru before discarding it onto her ever-growing pile of failed attempts.
I think I see where the text is ing from. Something i attempt had seemed to ‘click’ in her mind, although it seemed like a double-edged sword. If she was right, it meant her Grimoire had not stored the individual books separately – the inal meaning forever lost to the entropy in the eng – and her desire to uhe mess was a fool’s errand. But it also showed her how she could perhaps influehe text herself to reach her modest goal.
If I’m right, I should tweak it here, and close off this e. The threads of uanding blended with the flickers of mana as she wielded her magic to create a new book. Holding all the moving pieces in her mind simultaneously strained her mental capacity immensely. Still, she simply leaned into her focus, enjoying the challenge of creating something new, uanding the pathways, and stitg it all back together into a new pattern.
The sensory experience of creating with magic.
The small book dropped into her p, and she cautiously ope, examining the results. Her heart leapt to find the first two pages bnk, but it was not perfect. Everything else in the small book was still filled with gibberish. She examined her memory of the attempt, studying it, searg for the pce where it might have gone wrong. And finally, she found it – a small detail she had overlooked that had resulted in her ization being ignored for the remainder of the book.
Iing. As she examihe mistake, several important structures in the magic of her imprint suddenly became clear to her. The way the text was created, the way it was transmitted to the stru being a part of the page – even the way the cover roduced. She could see how she was simply at the precipice of an enormous valley of potential with her ization, most of it well beyond her current skill, but still visible as a perhaps lofty far-off goal to be achieved.
But I do this much, she thought, p her mana into another book. This time she wielded her magic with clear purpose and precision, weaving the spells and runistrus to create her will. When the proper moment arose, she seized it, p more mana into her Runic Script, and feeding it into the creation that was materializing before her. When the spell pleted, she k erfect, even without looking. The lines of magic were all uood, the es were all in pce, and it had sogether correctly.
But of course, she still seized the book instantly, excited to check her work. In her hands, she found a small brown bound book, full of bnk pages, just like she had envisioned. As she closed it, she saw the softly glowing golden runes on the cover – the magical script she had ied using her Runic Script – spelling out ‘Malika’. She smiled at the result, excited that it had worked, and even more so, that it looked remarkably elegant. The runes pig out Malika’s name were nanized in any formal magical stru but were imbued with her are mana. They glowed softly golden in the same way that many authors of magical texts chose to demonstrate the value of the tent within.
But does it really work? Ali had beerained for researd study. A single success was easily attributed to fluke or ce. So, without much thought, she eled her mana into replig her new uanding by creating a sed bnk book with Malika’s name inscribed on the cover. The sed book was pleted perfectly. She was makiensive use of ization to suppress the natural text in the book, but she had made no effort to influeny of the other variant properties, so this sed book turned out to be much rger, with many more pages, bound with a blue scaled leather that looked like it might have e from some kind of lizard or wyvern. Again, the runes on the front cover representing Malika’s name glowed with the soft light of her mana, and she quickly verified that the entire book had beeed bnk.
This one will be a lot better for her calligraphy practice, Ali thought, carefully setting both of her successes on the ground in front of Malika for her to find when she was doh her meditation and then she destructed the entire rge pile of her failed attempts and sat back closing her eyes while waiting for Inspiration to restore her mana.
Are Insight has reached level 23.Runic Script has reached level 17.Sage of Learning has reached level 16.Grimoire of summoning has reached level 23.
Your Basic ization has improved.Grimoire of Summoning gains ization.
Rexing quietly, she smiled. She was no longer using her Sage of Learning, but she still reflected on the memory of the plex spell stru she had wrought. Four skill increases were a substantial gain for a siudy session, but, more importantly, Ali could sense a powerful ne of what her Grimoire ization otentially capable of. She had ied her Runic Script on a hunch, based on how she had uood the magical stru in a moment of inspiration. She knew she was barely scratg the surface of uanding, but the potential of what she had achieved seemed unlimited. With enough study, how much could she ge?
Will it be like sculpture? I create whatever I imagihe tantalizing thought sent a thrill of excitement through her, like opening the door to a fresh spring m, and the excitement of disc what might be out there.
“What is this?” Malika’s surprised excmation pulled Ali out of her reverie, and she looked over to find Malika turning one of the books over in her hands.
“I was studying my magid that came out. I thought you could use it for your calligraphy.”
“Ali, it has my name on it,” Malika said, holding it up and pointing to the glowing runes. “You made this on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Ali admitted, feeling a little embarrassed. “I saw you struggling to find spa your paper, so I thought I would try. I didn’t know if I could do it, so I didn’t tell you. But it worked!” Ali couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice at the end. The fact that she had been able to turn her book imprint into something useful had meant more than she had expected – even something as trivial as a bnk workbook for Malika to practice calligraphy.
Maybe I i in a new notebook?
“That’s really thoughtful, thank you,” Malika said. And before Ali could wonder if she really meant it, Malika’s pen appeared in her hand and she opehe rger book, immediately returning to her calligraphy practice.
***
Name: Aliandra AmarielRace: FaeTitles: A
Active Buffs: Empowered Summoner
Css: Grove Warden – level 39- Are Insight – level 23- Are Bolt – level 22- Barrier – level 29- Grimoire of Summoning – level 23- Runic Script – level 17- Sage of Learning – level 16- Martial Insight – level 22- Empowered Summoner – level 19- Domain Mastery – level 6- [Locked]
General Skills- Reading – level 8- Identify – level 12- Sculpting – level 3- Inspiration – level 7
Aptitudes- Languages: A Dal'mohran, Elvish, Dwarven, on, Draic, Goblin- Mana (Affinities): Nature, Are- Tiny (Racial): The effects of Strength and Vitality are reduced by 50%- Magical (Racial): The effects of Wisdom and Intelligence are increased by 50%- Domain (Css): Your mana increases with the size of your domain, up to +100%- Domain: -10% maximum health per day domain withdrawal. You have Domain Sense
Attributes- Vitality: 54- Strength: 4- Endurance: 15- Dexterity: 26- Perception: 76- Intelligence: 178 (+45) - Wisdom: 152
Equipment- Body: Tailored Cotton Clothing – level 25- Hands: Wooden Bracelet – level 11- Ring: Silver Guild Ring – level 30
Resistance: 360Magical Damage Redu: 24.79%+21% to mana regeion.
Health: 270/270Stamina: 150/150Mana: 3083/4560 (1477 Reserved)
Grimoire Imprints1- Stone2- Armor (Body)3- Arrow4- Bone Bracelet (Hands)5- Book6- Bow7- Dagger8- Shield9- Sword10- Creeper11- Grass12- Moss13- Mushroom14- Tree15- Dragon16- Elemental17- Goblinoid18,19- Kobold20- Ooze21- Wolf22- 23-
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https:///DungeonOfKnowledgehttps:///series/1135403/dungeon-of-knowledgehttps:///fi/80744/dungeon-of-knowledge-raid-bat-litrpg
timewalk
