Identify (I) triggered.
A tooltip window appeared.
Chainmail Vest +0.7
Grants lightning damage reduction 4
Grants fire damage reduction 4
Grants cold damage reduction 3
Durability 63/66
Interesting... The flat damage reduction explained why Will's 2nd-level lightning spell hadn't accomplished much. It would cut a lot of the spell's power, which wasn't particularly high to begin with due to his lack of familiarity with the spell.
Identify (I) triggered.
Another murmur made another tooltip visible.
Chainmail Vest +0.4
Grants lightning damage reduction 2
Grants fire damage reduction 3
Grants cold damage reduction 0
Durability 42/48
The latter item had a big hole in its back, melted off by Will's acid arrow. The items were of an identical make, and Will assumed they had had the same stats to begin with.
Several corroded links remained in place, but they crumbled under a light knock with a dagger handle. Removing them did nothing to the numeric values given by his interface.
Mihatake's vest, on the other hand, remained fully intact, with just a few bent links in a couple of spots, presumably from some prior encounter.
"I want the better vest," Will spoke out loud.
He was back at the top of the magister's tower, where all of the loot from the mages had been brought. Will had checked the obvious pockets on the corpses but found only a few silver coins previously. The remaining four red potions on them, plus a few little purses filled with gold coins, had been hidden more cleverly.
"Good. Take it. I have to thank you for my life, after all."
"I merely fought to survive. Had the soldiers not made the ultimate sacrifice, I wouldn't be here." The lie flowed easily from his lips.
"It's a bit too shiny. You should wear it under a jacket or something... And remember, you never acquired it here!"
"Got it," Will promised. "Well, then. I think I'll be departing now."
"Of course! I'll come down with you to get the horse."
For some reason, the old mage no longer insisted on having him around to assist him. Perhaps it was because Albrecht suspected Will of something, or perhaps it was for a legal or reputational reason. Both explanations were fine by Will.
He was certain that the potions would not appear on any final report. For him, however, the magic item was sufficient payout.
"Ride it for one hour, then let it run back on its own! If the officer stops you, tell him you were dismissed this morning," Albrecht spoke to him for the final time.
Some remote communications had been conducted by a bird, a spell, or both. Apparently, an army officer was on his way to receive a full report on the loss of ten men.
"Got it." Will would claim he never even saw the fight.
A few armored men rode past him an hour later, but they barely even acknowledged Will, who gawked at them with wide eyes while hiding his fine clothes under a cheap traveler's cloak.
When they disappeared down the road, Will took the time to cast Elemental Steed. It was a fourth-level spell, but the headache it induced wasn't too bad.
Will supposed his constant practice with the stasis spell for the last several days hadn't been a complete waste of time.
A mule-sized, four-legged creature climbed up from the roadside mud. It was clearly some kind of earth elemental. Will didn't care much about getting his clothes dirty, so he hopped gladly on it and willed it to start moving.
The heavy-set, mud-dripping monstrosity accelerated to a surprisingly fast trot.
---
Will was back at the castle town, within the castle barracks, and out in the training yard.
He wielded a short wooden sword and a dagger. The blade of the latter had been blunted with some leather strips that were wrapped tightly around it.
"Get him, Flemont! Teach the mage some pain!"
"Boy! I have faith in you! Try to persist for a minute!"
Soldiers were cheering for either side based on the bets they had placed.
It was just a standard Saturday evening contest the garrison always held. Men who weren't on duty on Sunday would soon go out drinking, and this was the final, non-worklike hour of work for them.
Will hadn't selected a new feat yet, but he had gone through his previous ones again and thought about one description in particular.
Wizard's Weapon Proficiency (Class)
The wizard is more alert when fighting with a club, dagger, or quarterstaff.
The feat wasn't like it used to be. He hadn't suddenly become trained in daggers the way he had suddenly become a wizard. Instead, it was simply a more suitable weapon for him compared to most others.
Furthermore, the alertness persisted even when he moved the dagger to his left hand and used another weapon with his right.
Everyone knew that dual-wielding was often broken in old games. When there was no competitive multiplayer scene where things needed to be in balance, developers simply didn't care about fixing those issues.
Will didn't know if his new reality counted as an old game in that sense, but with the wording of his feat, it was worth finding out.
"Fight!" The sergeant next to the ring bellowed, and Will felt a rush of fear and excitement when he moved into the ring.
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The fighter he faced was wider and stronger than him, but Will was considerably more nimble.
He dodged the first attempt to hit him and parried the next with his wooden sword. By now, he had learned to tilt it so that his opponent's sword was deflected gently instead of meeting its full force in a hard block.
The fighter was now overextended slightly, and Will tried to capitalize on the opening with a quick but clumsy stab with his left hand. The more experienced man had a read on his intentions and dodged the weapon easily.
Will, on the other hand, did not know to expect the leg sweep accompanying the effortless dodge. Luckily, he noticed it in time and jumped back. With that, the fleeting moment where he'd held the advantage was over, and the other combatant started to press him relentlessly.
The pain followed soon after. A wooden sword hit his forearm. A wooden shield bashed his side. A ringing hit on his cheap helmet. A hit catching the hilt of his dagger and his fingers around it. His hand was numbed by the hit, and his fingers went limp. The dagger hit the sand a moment later.
The last bit was finally too much. The moment he lost the weapon, he felt a little less focused.
"I yield!"
He had to be holding the weapon for the Proficiency Feat to work. The alertness he gained from it was very real and beneficial. Training without it was a waste of his time.
"Come on! Ten more seconds!" someone yelled in disappointment.
Will uncorked a potion bottle and took a little sip.
It was a waste in a monetary sense, but psychologically it was great. When you knew you could be instantly fixed up later, your outlook on pain changed a lot.
Besides, Will had always believed in making money to spend it.
He waited for a moment until feeling returned to his fingers, then picked out a silver coin from his pocket.
"Who's got the time to spar with me? Saturday night bonus!"
Five volunteers emerged immediately, and Will picked the one he liked the most for his calm and dispassionate attitude toward training. Some of the others cussed out loudly for missing out on the generous pay yet again.
"Are you going to use two weapons again?" the young man asked.
"Nah. I'm going back to the staff. Dual-wielding is just a project for the future."
The staff could actually save his life any of these days, so he had the good sense to prioritize it.
They started the next practice session, and Will felt some of the alertness returning. It wasn't as intense as it had been during the contest, but at least it was tangible.
The feat effect was at its worst when he practiced alone. He had to really spin his imagination to see an enemy with his mind's eye to get a little response from the feat.
With a partner, however, he felt so awake that the hard practice was almost fun.
After an hour more, he was drenched in sweat and called it a day.
Will lay in the sand until he got the chills, thanks to his wet clothes and the rapidly cooling night. At that point, he got up and cast his cleaning cantrip on himself. The sand still sticking to his training clothes was immediately blown off along with a mist of sweat.
He proceeded back to his own room, in the privacy of which he repeatedly performed a minor illusion cantrip.
A glowing, illusory spellstone appeared in his hand. When Will closed his fist, it flashed brightly before crumbling down into fading fragments.
The point of the trick was obvious: to give an acceptable excuse for his spell-slot-based, fast casting.
It had been simple enough to hone the cantrip preparation time down to three seconds, but Will needed it to be much faster. If he was in dire straits, fractions of a second mattered, and he could easily be forced to give up any pretenses.
Thus, he kept practicing, cutting the somatic and verbal components down as much as he could, until he got a small headache from the major challenge that the puny cantrip had turned into.
He knew he had to continue later, but it was time to take a break.
As he exited his stony little chamber within the castle to go for a brief walk outside, Will ran into Limul.
"Hey, did you hear about the mission yet?"
"A mission? Now?!" It was getting late, and Will was pretty tired already.
"No, in two weeks."
"Oh." Will was relieved. "Wait, that doesn't sound like a fast response job."
"It's not. It's a raid. Elite soldiers only. And several mages."
---
Two weeks passed, and Will was taking part in a special mission.
He, fifteen fighters, and six other mages had crossed the border yesterday. Today, the large party had reached the edge of some grand mage's territory.
"What's that thing in the air?" Will asked, peering ahead.
They had been riding along a minor forest road—little more than a narrow path with a hard groove on each side, where the wheels of passing carts had been digging into the soil over the years, compacting it.
Ahead of them, the air fluctuated like it sometimes did above a hot road on a sunny day, except this fluctuation reached far higher.
"That's In-gwi's wall. It's just an intimidation tactic. We'll be walking right through it, and you'll see that it doesn't do anything," their somewhat elderly leader assured Will.
"People say that Grand Mage In-gwi knows everything that happens within his wall," another mage commented.
The leader, High Mage Holmstr?m, nodded at the words. "A well-known rumor, but I wouldn't give it much credit."
"I don't like it," Will declared.
He hadn't concentrated on PvP in ASA, but he'd played a couple of short four versus four matches and watched recordings of some fifty more.
One thing that was clear about the game mode was the importance of divination spells. You either had a reasonably good idea of where your enemy was, or you lost the match.
"Sir, could we take a break here?" he suggested. "I want to prepare before I cross that."
"Hmph. I doubt there's anything you can do."
"No. I have a certain spell..."
"Very well. We'll take the fifteen-minute break earlier than planned."
The other people let their horses sample the grass on the roadside and took out something to eat for themselves, while Will immediately began casting Resist Scrying.
It was his first attempt at the third-level spell, and he was happy to finish it in just nine minutes. The spell successfully took shape, and Will chose to cast it on himself.
Since there was some more time left, Will cast it once more—this time on the High Mage. The man in question glared at Will, who was still mouthing arcane syllables when the he was already motioning for everyone to get moving again.
"Calm your nerves yet, boy?" He asked when Will was finally done. It seemed like the High Mage didn't notice the spell being cast upon him at all. Will had felt nothing either.
"Yes, boss. I'm a little less worried now."
They crossed the barrier, and as Holmstr?m had promised, he felt nothing.
After an hour, the party skirted around a large village and got on a larger road, where they set up their trap: the trunks of two trees were hacked almost fully through with axes. They remained upright only with the support of some ropes that were tied to them.
"The shipment should arrive in just a couple hours," Holmstr?m told them after they'd had another quick meal.
After a long wait, a caravan of several carts appeared on the road.
"Get ready..."
When the progression reached the point of ambush, ropes were cut, and a tree fell across the road right in front of the first cart. Another tree fell a moment later, a few dozen yards behind the last cart, cutting the retreat path.
A fight began immediately.
Will cast his trusty Magic Arrow repeatedly. He hadn't practiced on the first-level spell lately, but he noted that his casting time from preparation until the trigger sequence had gone down from ten seconds to perhaps nine and a half. He was simply getting better at magic in general.
The power level of the spell remained pretty low, and Will knew it still had more potential to realize if his displayed class level of 14 was any indicator.
The enemies soon gave up and escaped into the forest where they could. Will's people looted the valuables and torched the rest.
It seemed like a successful mission, and the raiding party started to head back home.
---
In a tall, tall tower at the center of a nearby town, an ancient man perked up.
"Grand Mage," a voice spoke in his ear. "An emergency signal from a caravan on the Wolf Road. Three apprentice mages and ten spellstones are unaccounted for."
Thick, white eyebrows scrunched up into a frown. The loss wasn't big, but the fact that it had happened was a problem.
"Within my borders?"
The old man got up from his chair in one, surprisingly spry movement and walked one flight of stairs down into a wide chamber that occupied the whole segment of the tower.
In the middle, there was a nebulous mist that looked like some kind of slowly shifting star chart.
"Hmm. Those five could be new spell signatures," he murmured after observing the floating dots for a while. "Middling ones at best."
Wrinkled fingers spun something invisible in the air for half a minute, until the Grand Mage spoke again.
"Chinita, gather a suitable force. There are five hostile mages near Wolfmoor, presumably on their way back to the West."
"So many! Any other forces?"
"Obviously!"
"Ah. Yes, sir. I'll just assume the worst. I need Oki's men. And the village guard, even if they aren't much."
"You shall have them. Also, take an emerald spellstone, just in case."
"I hope I won't be needing it."
"So do I, girl. But the raiders must die. This is my domain!"