It took another twenty or so attempts before he stumbled onto a method that functioned. Instead of trying to force more mana into the chamber, he forced more mana into the runes that lead to the chamber. Not being able to see any of the numerical values behind his mana use, he was unsure exactly how much more powerful the spell would be, but he estimated that he got five percent more into each rune. Originally it was much lower and uneven across the runes, starting with the first one at ten percent, and dropping to nothing by the end. The unbalanced mana allocation kept making the spell unstable, so while it was stronger, it no longer functioned correctly. He figured that to make it work and get the skill, if it was even possible, he needed to create an even distribution of mana across all the runes.

A runic formula to cast a spell wasn't just a singular rune. Instead it was more like a sentence, using a number of different runes to describe how the spell would function. Instead of being written out in a line, like a sentence was, it was instead inscribed in runes throughout a three dimensional space for normal casting. While using a tool like a staff, the original runic spell formula is formed in concert with the staff. The staff opens mana channels that lead to each of the different runes throughout its construction all the way up to the mana chamber. When the formula starts to build, the staff leads it through the correct paths, replacing pieces of the formula with the runes inside the staff until it is completed inside the mana chamber.

Dix simply slowed the process slightly to forcibly insert more mana into each rune, compressing the mana inside of it. He had a theory that actually having the still theoretical skill he was trying to create would actually speed up the process by slamming the full amount of necessary mana plus the extra against the barrier at the end of the rune that would open when the rune was full, using the rebounding force to compress the mana and increase the power of the spell.

After finally achieving a balanced increase in mana across all of the runes he figured he might have actually done it. With only a five percent increase on each rune, he would only have that same increase over the power of the spell. It wasn’t as much as he wanted, but it was a good start. And with the artificial skill increase effect this place had, he may be able to see it at full effect and learn how to do it correctly. With any luck he could take the things he would learn here from using his fake increased skill levels to speed up his leveling process when he got to Mantra.

In preparation for his plan working he had set up a number of wands in concentric circles around himself. They started just outside of the original range of force pulse, and were laid out in fairly small increments. He hadn’t figured out a good way to measure the possible increased force of the pulse, as wands weren’t exactly good measuring tools. For now, even a minor increase in range was a good proof of concept.

Taking a deep breath, he finally released his empowered force pulse. Dozens of wands blasted away from the rings, bringing a cheer from him. While it wasn’t a huge boost, it still worked. Furthermore, it was actually still circular, something his earlier attempts had failed at. This time he had successfully increased the power of the spell without disrupting its design. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the skill, but he wasn’t done trying. Most of his skill had taken a fair bit of trial and error before he got them.

Before his next attempt, he went through the skill creation process again. Now that he had the actual ability to flow his mana differently into the runes, he could try and refine the idea and ability into a skill. He had thought over different ideas for how to visualize the skill while working to understand how the runes functioned, and the best match he had found was waves. This time he imagined waves of mana pounding down into the runes, overfilling them, forcing more mana into them than they should hold, but inevitable, irresistible. He needed the runes filled as quickly as possible, with the maximum power they could hold without breaking anything. Quickly, he dumped his mana into the staff, and in a flash it erupted with power, and force pulse lashed out. This time every wand he had around him was blasted away, the spell reaching even those that had been knocked away before.

Shaking from the surge of mana he had released, he groaned as his head was invaded again by new knowledge. Finally, a new skill. After he caught his breath, he immediately tried it again. While the pulse wasn’t as large as when he had created the skill, it was still significantly larger than the base spell. Smiling, he jogged over, grabbing a couple of other weapons, and heading to the targeting range. Time to see how much his new skill could improve his other basic spells.

After yet more practice he had learned a few things. First, at its current artificial level, whatever that may be, it doubled every aspect of a spell that he could discern. Icicle was twice the size, moved at twice the speed, and penetrated twice as far. Dix could only estimate the damage increase, but figured four times the damage was conservative. Quite an impressive result.

The downsides were just as impressive. Overuse of the skill could tear the runes of a weapon apart. Cracks started showing after two casts of the same spell, tears and reduced effectiveness at the third, and a fourth would rupture it completely with no spell cast. Spacing out casts using what he tentatively called Overpower seemed to keep it from happening. Exact numbers were still unclear, but if he spaced them out about ten seconds apart the runic structures seemed to be fine. He also could rotate through different spells built into the same staff until about the fourth spell, at which point the mana chamber started to show the same problems, although it ruptured on the fifth.

Finally, the mana costs. Again he couldn’t see any numbers, or even get an accurate feeling about how much mana he had spent due to the mana constantly funnelled into him, but the mana cost felt staggering in comparison to the original cast. It was also physically exhausting to use. Every indicator seemed to be pointing to it being a skill with a required cooldown. It definitely wasn’t spammable. Still, it was a wonderful addition to his repertoire.

Noticing an ache in his hand, he looked down at it while flexing it open and shut. Then his eyes flew wide. What an idiot. Other than Conjure Weapon I’ve totally forgotten to cast spells normally. All I’ve done is use these weapons. Haven’t even made it to Mantra yet, and I am already using crutches to do things. Scowling in disgust at himself, he cast aside all of the weapons he’d been working with for some time.

He quickly started forming and throwing bolts at the target from each hand. Unbeknownst to him, he learned another couple of skills almost immediately. He tried combining them to see the different effects they could have. Would Lightning and Water react to each other, and increase the damage? How about Fire and Wind?

As expected, the answer was yes. A Wind Bullet into the back of a Fire Bolt made the bolt larger, faster, and mildly explosive. It was like a poor man’s Fireball. Lightning and Water went well, but relied on timing to really be useful. Use the Lightning Bolt before the water, and it got there long before. Use it into the Water too early, and you could even shock yourself. But with the right timing it was pretty devastating. His favorite though was Lightning Bolt into an embedded Icicle. When the Bolt hit, it shattered the Icicle, throwing off electrically active shrapnel that would damage any nearby enemies, as well as briefly shocking them. Decent area of effect damage and crowd control in a cheap two hit combo. As a bonus, it would wreck the initial target as well.

He was still mad at himself for not trying any of these things earlier, but he had been too excited about fixing his skill problems, and getting his new one. Speaking of his new skill, it still had the same effect of increasing the power of his spells, but the downsides were a bit different. For one, part of using the skill without a weapon was that his runic structure was larger and more solid, massively increasing the cost. The spells also were borderline unstable, making them harder to aim. And finally, they took longer to cast, nearly double that of a normal spell. The damage was still worthwhile, but it was actually more exhausting to do than it had been using a staff.

Briefly, he debated trying to figure out how to create a skill like Fast Casting, or Rapid Fire with spells, but decided it would be pointless. In the end, he was still going to be a different race, and most of the mana and casting skills he could learn now would end up useless. There were still a couple of silly things he could try though.

Conjure Weapons was his favorite spell. He could make any weapon he could imagine, and cost was dependent on size. It had some strange idiosyncrasies though. For instance, you had to summon a bow in one hand, and the arrow in the other to be able to fire the thing. And you couldn’t summon the arrows straight onto the string. Crossbows on the other hand were summoned with a single bolt already cocked back. You just couldn’t summon more bolts and fire them. If you wanted to fire another shot with a crossbow, you had to dismiss it and summon it again. Flails and nunchucks were also a little strange, as the chain connections didn’t work quite right. The oddness was focused on the chains, which behaved more like rope than a normal chain. They were still strong, but moved wrong. In some ways it was nice as the weapons moved a little more smoothly, however it was still disconcerting to see a link of a chain bent in half only to spring back upright an instant later.

For fun, he tried injecting elemental mana into the runic formula for Conjure Weapon, starting with Lightning. Why he always started with Lightning when all it did was shock him half to death every time he did something stupid, he just couldn’t figure out. And it was no different this time. At least he had summoned a Healer, and cast Regen before he started his experiments. It was actually a habit he had decided to form specifically to prevent things like this from killing him. Sometimes he did things without really thinking them through. The second time he tried using Force mana, but the weapon just shattered. Once more his Healer and Regen patched him up. Realising that for the moment at least he was stuck with no way to modify any of his spells, he gave up that line of thinking.

The last set of experiments that he wanted to perform was perhaps the riskiest of them all. He wanted to see if he could understand the buff spells he had been given. Well, not the spells themselves, just their effects. He was curious to see if he could mimic the effects just with mana control. He would be more nervous about this plan, but after what he had done to his eyes, he thought he had a pretty good chance of not dying immediately. Besides, he had Regen, and his Summoned Heal- Oops, need to resummon that guy. Might as well redo Regen as well. And just to make sure I’m ok, I’ll cast Rejuvenation before I actually start messing with anything.

For this experiment he decided it might be safer to extensively study each spell, then move on to all of them combined. His actual attempts to recreate the effects would be done the same way, but only in small portions of his anatomy at a time, if that was even possible. Sitting in the lotus position, he decided to start with Might then cycle through the others until he understood their differences and what each of them did. The spells were just a simple cast, which he did without a tool. There were tools to boost their effect, but he wanted to work with the basic versions before he got crazy.

Might, perhaps unsurprisingly, did more than just increase the size of his musculature. It also increased the size of the muscle cells themselves. Luckily Mana Sense worked even better on himself than it did on other things, but there also seemed to be another spell working at the same time, causing some confusion. After some thought he cancelled Regen, and looked again. With a clearer view of his muscles he could see what else was going on. Inside the cells the mana seemed to be working on certain structures, increasing the number of them. Since these structures were inside the cells themselves, the cells grew larger, and subsequently the muscles as well. A detailed search throughout his body showed that every muscle had the same duplicated structures made of mana.

Speed was completely different. And also completely confusing. Somehow it seemed to have enchanted his entire nervous system with Lightning. There was a moment, when the spell first started to affect his body, where everything seemed wrong. His vision was off, his movements were going in different directions, and his heart seemed to want to tear out of his chest. But all of it only lasted a split second. After the third or fourth cast he tried something new, and dropped a summoned dagger. It seemed to fall slower than it should, and he managed to catch and release it several times as it was falling. Concentrating on catching and dropping the falling dagger while also concentrating on how his nerves were reacting was what finally clarified it for him. Speed didn’t just make him faster, it affected every piece of the nervous system, which included the brain, heart, eyes, everything. That was why he had that weird hitch whenever the spell activated, but since it also increased how fast his brain processed information it caught up and adapted to the changes. After figuring out the after effect of the spell, he focused instead on how it functioned on a physical level, something that was actually made harder by the spell itself. How do you study something that moves at the speed of lightning, even with an accelerated brain.

Eventually he had to cancel the spell and study how it all normally worked. After watching nerves pass something back and forth faster than he could have seen, but his mana captured the motions for him, he eventually had a thought on what was going on. The spell was actually using lightning mana to pass and receive the messages, speeding up the entire network by a huge amount. He was incredibly worried about trying to do this to himself, messing with your brain with magic seemed like a good way to get very dead. Maybe Toughness would help.

Toughness held the secret to making the entire thing work. And it was incredibly simple in comparison. Toughness strengthened the cell wall and its bonds to other nearby connected cells. The mana basically gave armor and binding chains to most of the cells in his body. Bone, skin, muscle, tendons, neurons, lung tissue, all of it. Even blood cells were tougher, and clotting cells linked more easily. The mana structure was a little tough, but he had a different idea about how to enact the whole plan now.

Out of curiosity, and a hope that it would be possible, Dix decided to reactivate Regen and see if he could copy it too. It turned out to be easier than Speed, but still fairly complicated. It created interconnected power cells of mana at certain areas of the body, roughly near the major joints and arterial junctions. If a wound is sustained, Dix stabbed himself, the energy from the power cells would spread out, calling the entire body to help recover and repair. The mana from the energy cells mostly promoted cellular mitosis, but it also affected blood flow, turning the entire body into a rescue squad for damage. Some of the mana would also help replenish energy stores of cells throughout the body.

Finally, Dix started cycling through pairings of the buff spells, studying how the spells worked together, or if they disrupted each other. Slowly he worked his way up to all four spells running at the same time. It was at this time that he had a revelation.

He had been an idiot trying to force the mana through the staff while trying to make Overpower. Skills didn’t require you to know how they would work when trying to make them, they just needed you to follow the steps Roanoak had taught him: visualize, intent, power, action. Maybe when he finally got out of here and down to Mantra he would need to understand things better to get a skill to work, but for now this place made it all easy.