Chapter 17: Something new
Once he was stable, Sam went over to where the saber lay on the ground to pick it up. The moment his hand touched the blade, a message from the system appeared.
[Holy and Darkness affinity detected] [Because of your affinity you may initiate the creation of the spell matrix from the skill contained within this piece of equipment. Choosing to do so has a 50% chance of destroying the equipment in the process.]
[Yes] or [No?]
Sam hesitated at the message. It did however answer some of the questions he had about how to get spells. He figured this wasn’t the only way but at least it was one way that he had access to right now. Still he wasn’t sure what to do. If he tried to get a spell out of the saber there was a chance that he would be left completely without a weapon, while he was alright with fighting hand to hand he would prefer the added safety of having a weapon. He didn’t know what spell he would get from the thing; his assumption was that he would get a spell similar or at least related to the darkness that covered the blade near the end of the fight. The thing was that the spell could prove completely worthless without a weapon to apply the spell to. Then again, he also didn’t know how soon an opportunity to learn a spell would come to him. For the moment he decided to hold off on trying to get the spell, with the reasoning that he could always try to get the spell later on as long as he still had the saber with him.
Pleased with his spoils, Sam continued on his merry way down this goblin infested road. Thankfully the goblins that he encountered were more normal than the saber wielding one. The problem was that the frequency of goblin interruptions was increasing. By his estimates he now ran into goblin packs at least once every fifteen minutes. That was until after his seventh encounter, at which point he ran into a pair of the heftier goblins. He wasn’t sure if they were actually hobgoblins but he would think of them as such unless he was proven wrong about the naming convention. He really couldn’t group them with the normal goblins, they were just too different.
After a battle with the pair of hobgoblins that went better than he expected, he went over the spoils of the latest encounter. One of the hobgoblins also used a saber, however it never got to use it as Sam went in for the kill while its back was turned and before the two could detect him. The other one took slightly more time but was still pretty easy because the thing only had a bow for a weapon so he mostly just chased it down, not letting the thing fire any arrows. The weird part was the hobgoblin didn’t even have a quiver or arrows with it so he wasn’t sure how it would’ve used the bow in the first place. All in all, the whole encounter took less than two minutes to resolve. In all his fights, despite killing the goblins with no mercy– Sam did his best not to let them suffer. While he enjoyed fighting, he did not revel in pain. The only reason he even killed the goblins was because of how outright they were about taking his life. Not prolonging suffering was actually one of the reasons that he didn’t immediately initiate the creation of the spell matrix from the saber. If he was left without a weapon, it would be that much harder for him to give a swift end to whatever fought him.
He went to pick up the saber first, and soon received a similar message from the system.
[Holy and Light affinity detected] [Because of your affinity you may initiate the creation of the spell matrix from the skill contained within this piece of equipment. Choosing to do so has a 50% chance of destroying the equipment in the process.]
[Yes] or [No?]
This time there was no hesitation, he immediately chose to get the spell.
[Spell matrix successfully imprinted] [The equipment was destroyed in the process]
The whole thing was quite intense. A glow emanated from the saber as he felt an energy touch him, not his physical body but his soul. As the light receded, he could see something of a tattoo on his soul, Sam assumed that those markings must’ve been the spell matrix that the system mentioned.
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[The spell [Soothing Light] has been imprinted]
[Imprinted spell matrices are different from simple spells. They allow far more control and customizability than regular spells provide. This comes with the requirement of being limited by one’s soul and affinities.]
It seems like spells getting imprinted provided him with the knowledge of its effects and capability, which was really nice. Also the message confirmed for him that this was not the standard way of learning and using spells. Soothing light was a fairly nice thing to have access to, but it definitely wasn’t an augmentation to his offensive prowess that he wanted from spells. At its simplest, the spell was one that eased the pain of the target of the spell. He would have to experiment to see the limits of customizability that spell matrices provided. However, he did wish he had at least one regular spell in his repertoire in order to have a point of comparison. He then moved on to the bow. Once again as he grabbed it the option was given to him to gain a spell.
[Light affinity detected] [Because of your affinity you may initiate the creation of the spell matrix from the skill contained within this piece of equipment. Choosing to do so has a 25% chance of destroying the equipment in the process.]
[Yes] or [No?]
Interestingly enough only one of his affinities was mentioned in the message and for some reason the chance of the weapon being destroyed was far lower than what he saw with the others. Satisfied with his one saber and wanting to see what the spell could be, he assented to the process of getting the spell.
[The spell [Ephemeral Arrow] has been imprinted] [The equipment was destroyed in the process]
“Well that explains why that hobgoblin didn’t have any arrows with him.” Sam exclaimed. Also this time when the light receded and he felt the imprinting process end, the bow was still in his hands. Surprisingly the bow seemed to still have an enchantment on it that had similar effects to the spell he just received. This wasn’t what he had in mind when he thought about wanting a point of comparison but it would serve its purpose nicely. Sam had shot bows before but he wasn’t specifically trained in them or anything. He knew his dad quite enjoyed archery but it's not like they had all the same hobbies even if a lot of their interests did overlap. He drew the bow back and aimed at a tree close by, not more than ten meters away. As he drew the bow, he fed some mana to the enchantment on the weapon and as he did an arrow materialized on the arrow rest. He released the arrow, it flew just like he would expect a regular arrow to. It embedded itself on the tree he was aiming for but nowhere near the spot he was actually aiming at. Then after a few breaths, the arrow in the tree simply vanished. Resetting, he drew back the bow once more, this time casting the spell version from the matrix that was imprinted on him. Intuitively he could tell that he could vary how substantial the arrow was among its other properties. He knew that if he wanted to he could make the arrow wholly immaterial while still shooting the bow without damaging it. He wasn’t sure what the point was of an arrow that couldn’t pierce anything physically but he was sure he could come up with something. This time he shot an arrow after feeding more mana to the spell than he had the option to when using the enchantment. He could sense that depending on his intent he could make the increased mana make the materialized arrow last longer or he could make it last as long as it normally would while dealing more damage in the process. He wanted to see what that extra damage would look like so he pulled his mana in the way that his intuition told him he needed in order to activate that effect. When the arrow landed on the trunk of the tree, there was something of a small explosion and chunks of wood were blasted away. Well it seemed he now had the extra damage he was looking for but he would definitely have to become a better shot if he wanted to actually be effective with it in battle.
Sam spent some time there switching between using the spell and the enchantment. He quickly learned that using the enchantment was a very precise and unchanging process. It was like his mana when it was fed through the enchantment following a predetermined path through a circuit that would lead to the materialization of an arrow; he could even feel the flow of the mana change its rate at certain parts although he could only really tell the difference when he tried really hard and paid attention to his soul since the overall process was very quick . He could tell that if he changed anything that it would fail to produce anything and he’d have lost mana for no reason. It wasn’t just intuition telling him that, he actually had tried changing the path and flow of the mana and the result was the loss of mana and no magically appearing arrow. While using the enchantment was a very rigid step by step process, the spell matrix was far more pliable and intuitive in nature. It was like he was making a drawing each time he cast the spell and each time he could use a different process while some principle of the matrix– that he didn’t yet understand– adjusted to have a usable result.
