Undisturbed by any inquisitive eyes, he went to work on the spear. The first step was changing the design on the weapon to shift it as far away from butterflies as quickly as possible. Warping the wood to give the butterflies a head was the most efficient way to butcher the current design. That was what he focused on while consuming all of his natural and precognition affinity mana generation. Both sources of magic were used to continue to practice his spell. The routine resulted in about five minutes of wood-shaping for every one of magic practice.

  It was a solid use of his time.

  Two hours later, he paused briefly.

  He had been forcing the maximum through three skills for hours, and he felt fine. That was a massive contrast to the way the battle had progressed on that first day on floor one.

  Skill exhaustion had always been a complex subject. All skills originated from the soul, which made them intrinsically linked. Once overuse kicked in, the expression of all abilities suffered. No one had the flexibility to abuse a focus-hog ability like Power Strike and then continue using the other ones independently without paying that cost. Once you dipped into the red, everything deteriorated. Yet there were differences, too.

  Danger Sense was a passive ability and seemed capable of functioning, admittedly at a lower level, no matter what state his soul was in. Living Wood and his Precognition Affinity set of abilities were the next step down. He could use them, like he had just done for hours, with only a slight amount of strain. They were effectively indefinites, but, unlike with Danger Sense, once the soul was impacted as the trial floor had shown him, they became useless.

  Too much use of the Power Strike skillnot only crippled his capacity to inflict emergency melee damage - it also stopped him from using other skills. It would also prevent him from generating precognition affinity mana, which was a big deal. The loss of ready access to that mana had almost cost Kang his life.

  Continual improvement was what Tom had to choose; that went beyond creating a new spell, or gaining extra equipment, or even improving spell levels to boost their impact. He also needed to hone his decision making and avoid the mistakes he had made before. It was important for him to be a lot more careful about pushing Power Strike too far. Unless it was a life or death situation, he had to ensure he never got to the state where his soul stress would stop him from using his light touch skills.

  Burning it down until using Power Strike became an iffy proposition was fine. Pushing so far that he couldn’t generate mana and / or Danger Sense started malfunctioning was too much, and he promised himself it wasn’t going to happen again.

  Discovering the limitations and finding out how far he could safely push was important. He made a mental note to do tests during his next bouts of physical training. The real issue, he guessed, was sustained damage. When fighting those strange, wrinkly, hairless creatures, he had been incapable of harming them without using Power Strike. That was a problem, and he wished he had an ability like Kang’s Shadow Edge spell to supplement his fighting and remove his reliance on skills to elevate his melee damage levels.

  It was definitely a hole to address in his next set of chats with April. There had to be something similar in his earth and lightning affinities; something like an Earth Point spell combined with Lightning Piercing that would let him cut through resistant monster skin, perhaps. If he could enhance his weapon with spells, he wouldn’t have run into his skill exhaustion issue.

  Then again, things were never that simple.

  His current circumstances were aberrant. In the Divine Champions’ duels, wins were decided by burst damage, not sustainability - unless you specialised in some kind of dodge tank build; then high burst damage was almost always better than endurance. When he was as powerful as Everlyn currently was, he would be able to sustain something like Power Strike for every blow, and, at that level, relying on spells to supplement spear strikes would be foolish.

  Tom laughed at himself.

  It was easy to get caught up in his own head. The five weeks they had spent in this trial were impacting his decision making. It was natural to see one’s current circumstances as normal and lose sight of what the future was most likely to look like.

  His plans didn’t need to change; he just needed to survive the next month.

  “If only it were that easy,” he whispered. Then he looked at the weapon he was working on and felt like crying.

  The spear represented cheat mode.

  If he killed… no, if he allowed the others to die, then he could use it for both floors without it reverting back to its useless, original tier. If he did that he could survive easily. Unfortunately, that was not an option.

  It was keeping the other three alive that was the challenge.

  He sucked in his breath and kept training, and didn’t let his frustration show when interacting with the others.

  It was the afternoon of the third day. Tomorrow, they are going to be challenging the next floor, and Tom sat by himself as he prepared to gain what he saw as a critical part of his spell repertoire. He reviewed all of his notes carefully as he envisaged exactly what he desired.

  Lightning Javelin had two key functions to perform, at least from a spell form perspective. The first one was delivery, and, given how fast lightning travelled, that was not something he wanted to address specifically. The second, which was really a combination of two components, was the sharpness that could physically cut into the wounds or go through armour, and then the delivery of rampant electricity currents to fry, burn, and shock the enemy. Basically, it meant the physical impact of the spell landing followed by the transfer of the payload.

  Tom wanted another sideways evolution, but he didn’t know which of those damage aspects would be best to lean into.

  Both were important for the coming fights, the duels, and even his longer-term growth in Existentia. He intended Lightning Javelin, or an evolved form of the spell, to be a critical part of his long-term damage potential. When he reached rank hundred, he was still going to be using the spell, so it was important to get it right.

  The benefits of adding additional penetrative power were obvious. Increasing the probability of blasting through armour could only be a positive thing, but so too would be a boost to the intensity of the electricity delivered, or the advantages that would be associated with improving the stun duration. A small part of him knew he should have decided this weeks ago, but he had been distracted.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  The fact that he was so uncertain made him pause his preparations for a few minutes to meditate on the issue.

  Finally, he stood up and flipped through the pages once more. He knew what he wanted, and there was no point delaying and agonising over a decision around the direction of a sideways evolution he might never get.

  After he had formed the correct image, he spent his completely full fate pool towards improving the probability of making the idea a reality.

  Exclusively using only precognition affinity mana, he started to shape the spell.

  He referenced the pages of wireframe diagrams.

  He merged the input spells carefully and watched the occasional line slipping out of position with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. The angle shifting slightly away from the representation shown in his documentation: a spinning curl turning into a smooth helix, a fractal being broken to become just an ornamental link. The changes were small, almost at the microscopic level, but they were there, and he wondered if it was the precognition affinity at work, or fate, or if it was just him making mistakes. The last possibility concerned him, because it meant that what he was doing was going to fail, and, until his attempt was over, he wasn’t going to know the cause of the deviations.

  Finally, the magic spell clicked together and hung there, stable and ready to use. He waved a hand at the distant wood-and-metal dummy and triggered the spell.

  Briefly a javelin created out of lightning appeared in his hands before shooting away, leaving the afterimages burnt into his retinae.

  A moment later, there was the crash of metal being twisted and broken as it struck the dummy. Metal armour was shattered and fragmented at the point of impact, and chips of wood flew away. Lines of electricity rippled over the entire surface, and, when it faded, there were dark scorch marks on the resistant wood.

  There was also a simultaneous ding.

  He flicked his hand again, and then a second javelin shot out, using the ten free mana granted by his trait. It was weaker than the first one, but it hit the target with a similar, though less impressive, display.

  Over the next twenty minutes, he tested what he could do with the spell before checking the notification. He wanted to understand what it could do before descriptions of how it was supposed to be limited influenced him. The spell form was surprisingly flexible. Not only could he bend the trajectory of the javelin mid-flight – he could create the starting point over two metres away from him. When he did that, his aim was slightly off ,but the tests were accurate enough for him to know that, with a bit of practise, he could hone the aiming to perfection.

  It would help in the coming fights to a limited extent, and he was particularly excited about combining it with Remote Power Strike. The spell was fast, and, if a single action could shield-break and stun an opponent within a second of a battle commencing, he would be able to start winning duels. Potentially, he might even be able to win regularly.

  He cast it again and tried to force it to divide into multiple javelins, but the spell fell apart. Well, that had been too ambitious; for now, at least. However, he was sure that, in time he would get it to the point where he would be able to split it into several attacks. It might take a threshold benefit to push it that far from its intended form, but he was certain that he could achieve it.

  “Adam, can you show me the spell…”

  He didn’t even need to finish the sentence before the details of his new spell appeared in front of him.

  Spell: Lightning Javelin – Tier 3 (Level 3)

  Create a javelin out of electricity, one that that travels at the speed of lightning and does physical and electrical damage on impact. It is currently limited to a range of fifty metres.

  Sideways Evolution 1: You have improved control over this spell by 20%.

  Sideways Evolution 2: This spell has improved potency. The stun component ignores 100% of resistances and has a 30% increased chance of stunning.

  Sideways Evolution 3: Lingering effects such as burns, stun and muscle weakness will persist for twice as long and be eight times as difficult to magically clean.

  Tom read the description with a big smile on his face.

  Based on his proficiency in Spark and this as a tier-three spell, it was supposed to have started at level one, but his brief practice had already pushed it up to three. That fact moved it so much closer to level four when the first threshold bonus would kick in.

  Then there was the range of fifty metres. Given how fast these things moved, that was quite frankly ridiculous, and far better than he had expected. It was hard to visualise, but fifty metres constituted five bus lengths, and meant that he had a genuine ranged attack that would hit before most people could respond effectively. It was nothing like what Everlyn had been able to do with her bow – she had hit targets that were hundreds of metres away - but for a kid of his age it was a nasty addition to his arsenal.

  The other reason for his smile was the extra sideways evolution that had been added. For a spell whose purpose was to paralyse someone, it meant a direct upgrade in its effectiveness, especially the increased cost it would take targets to clean the stun effect. Eight times was a difference maker.

  There was one other gain.

  Tom looked up in surprise at that those new words from Adam. He had only registered one ding. “Well, show it.”

  Title: Underage Spell Development (I) - Upgradable - Grants 1 free attribute point every eight levels.

  

  
• Awarded for. Developing spells sufficient to be awarded eight points from raw mana manipulation into spell forms..
  
    
  
  
    
  • Each uniquely created skill will award spell points equal to the tier level squared. This means the following.
    
      
    
    
      
    • A tier 1 spell contributes 1 point.
    
    
      
    • A tier 2 spell contributes 4 points.
    
    
      
    • A tier 3 spell contributes 9 points and so on.
    
    
      
    
    
      
  
  
    
  • No double counting of spell points may occur.
  
  
    
  • Eligible skills must be wholly created. If any part of the merged spell was acquired from a spell stone or trainer, then no spell points are awarded.
  
  
    
  
  
    


  
• Uncommon Title: Competition Rank: 2741, Experience: NA. Ranking Points – NA.


  

  He had speculated that the title existed, but when he hadn’t received it after acquiring a tier-two spell, he had assumed that it was not available. The reason for that was that, apparently, the title started awarding benefits after eight assigned points instead of after four, the way the skill version had done.

  It was going to take twice as much advancement to promote it to a higher level when compared to the skill version, but Tom guessed that made a lot of sense. It was a lot easier to create spells from scratch than to do the same for skills, even with the restriction on “no double counting”.

  To get one free attribute per level, he was going to need to get sixty-four spell points. That was a single tier-eight spell or four tier-four spells. There were other combinations of course, but that gave him an idea of the difficulty of what he was facing.

  Mentally, he assessed what it would take to promote his lightning and healing spells that far. After a moment, he decided he was probably looking at a year or two to get both of them to that level. Given that two years had already elapsed, that meant that each tier-four spell represented two years of development. His mind raced to calculate the numbers. After hitting those first two milestones, he was going to have under seven years to acquire additional spells to count. The bonuses from the divine champions’ trial would help him, but he wasn’t sure it would be enough. Improving it to get one attribute per level looked very achievable. The question was, could he get two?

  The answer was possibly yes, but also possibly no. He was going to put a watching brief on the effort. Pushing to get plus two in both skills and spells might be biting off more than he could chew. One in each would have to be enough, and maybe two in the skills titles, as that seemed easier to achieve.

  He was happy with the sideways evolution and the title, but it changed nothing about his immediate circumstances. He still needed to save the other three, and he was not looking forward to starting the second floor in the morning.