Trail 62: Knives, Bandages, Rituals, and Magic

--- Jon Whitaker ---

“So, what is the point of today’s exercise?” Miss Edna asked, looking around their little forest clearing.

“Well, since you don’t want me doing anything to… ‘strenuous’ and Jon apparently can’t be trusted around firearms-”

“Not my fault!” He shouted from where he stood, juggling a couple of throwing knives.

“-today we’re going to focus on throwing knives.” His Ma continued, setting a wooden target against a nearby tree. “Something that Jon tells me you’ve got some experience with?”

“I do.” Miss Edna nodded. “Sometimes I’ll win free drinks at the watering hole by challenging people to throwing competitions. Me and a couple lumberjacks escalated all the way from darts, knives, cards and even ax throwing at one point.”

“Ah, then maybe you can give us some pointers.” His Ma smiled offering Miss Edna a couple of her throwing knives. “Hopefully, you won’t need magic this time.”

His mystical mentor scoffed before taking the knives and frowning as she gave them a once over, “Okay, these are not normal throwing knives.”

“Technically they’re throwing kunai.” His Ma admitted, before throwing one like a dart at the target and another from her shoulder. “I like this kind specifically because they’re easier to throw multiple of them at a time since you don’t have to account for spins, just force and accuracy. The real trick was finding a brand where the handle size wouldn’t mess with the throw since like with most other knives kunai weren’t really meant for throwing.”

“But wouldn’t the spin give them more hacking force on impact? I mean that’s how most throwing knives stick to the target.” Miss Edna pointed out.

“It would but I prefer a sort of shotgun approach to it.” His Ma explained. “One knife you can walk off, but having three sticking out of your gut is more likely to mess something up. And since you can only accurately throw so many knives at once, the rate of fire is important.”

“Then why not just focus on throwing darts or needles?” Miss Edna asked. “I know that’s a thing somewhere.”

“Eh, knives have more mass, so I think of it like different calibers of bullets.” His Ma shrugged. “Ya know?”

“I guess, whatever works for you.” Miss Edna shrugged back.

Scene Consequences

-Gained 2XP to Throwing.

--*Skill Rank Up* Throwing Lv. 4 (1/10)

---

“Okay, and while the cat ‘s away the mice shall play.” Miss Edna clapped, once his Ma had set out for her follow up with the doctor. Something she wanted done as soon as possible and had insisted on doing by herself after having both him and Miss Edna underfoot for so long.

He couldn’t help but frown despite Miss Edna’s excitement. “You know we’ve only got a couple of hours before she gets back, right?”

“I know, her being around is really making it hard to get in a magic lesson, due to your whole ‘keep magic secret thing’ which is kind of stupid.” Miss Edna told him. “I mean, your mom knows I’m an Arcane and she loves me. Hell, isn’t one of your aunts or uncles a Practitioner too?”

“The magic isn’t the problem, the problem is explaining why I wanted to learn magic.” He sighed, having had this conversation with her more than once.

“To be like your other mom?” Miss Edna offered, before pointing at Pix who’d flown out as soon as the coast was clear. “Or, I don’t know, can we point out that you’ve got Pix and wanted to learn how to take care of her? There’s got to be a lie in there somewhere.”

“You know I can’t lie to my ma…” He groaned.

Miss Edna gave him a dry look.

“Lies of omission don’t count.” He shrugged. “Her house, her rules.”

His other parent merely rolled her eyes at that. “Fine, whatever. We’ve only got so much time so let’s try to fit this lesson in before you make things even more complicated than they need to be.”

“And… what lesson were you thinking?” He wondered, happy to change the subject.

“Well, you’ve been messing with Spell Scripts a lot and while I myself am no expert on Spell Scripts I did remember this one thing I know that every expert does have!” Miss Edna explained as she reached into her hair and pulled out a roll of bandages. “Spell Bandages!”

“Spell Bandages?” He repeated, eyeing the blank roll of bandages that were actually a bit smoother than the medical gauze he was more used to from first aid. “I think I’ve heard of those before but… I’ve got no idea what they are.”

“Right, so you know how when you use Spell Scripts it destroys the script unless your control is insanely good.” Miss Edna began as she unfurled a second roll onto the living room table. “Well a fun little detail is that if you place the right script on the ends of these bandages you can actually create a simple Spell Engine that will instead burn out the Spell Scripts in the order they’re written rather than the one you use to trigger them. It’ll even use the trigger script as the trigger point!”

“Okay, so how do we do that?”

“Well, first -since you’re a beginner and I need to look up the next version- we’ll cover this bandage in… a hundred or so copies of the same script, and then we’ll draw a sort of magical fuse through all of them connecting the first and last one.” Miss Edna explained as she began doing just that on her own roll of bands. “By the way since neither you nor your mom have any survival instincts, mine is going to be a simple healing spell.”

“Hey, we have really good survival instincts!” He frowned.

“That have you both picking fights with inhuman monsters that eat people.”

“Well… we survive those fights!”

Scene Consequences

-Thanks to Miss Edna’s help gained 3XP to Script Crafting.

--Currently: Lv. 5 (7/12)

Stolen novel; please report.

-Jon has learned how to create (Basic) Spell Scripts, this allows him to equip a single Spell Script and use it as a Melee Quick Action so long as he pays 1MP. (Note: That’s the base cost of a script, not an added cost.)

--Note: You can equip two of these at a time, but you cannot equip any enchanted rings or gloves onto your hands with these since they count as magical equipment in those slots. (There’s a perk that fixes this for Script Equipment, but standard magic rules until then.)

-Thanks to Miss Edna gained: Spell Bandage (Simple Healing Script)- For 1MP user can heal for 5 PHP.

-The Spell Bandage Jon makes will be voted on later.

---

“So glad to see you’ve decided to study this process for yourself.” DeSade told him as the man’s demonic butler let him down into the basement where a large spell circuit sat on the floor.

“It’s not every day someone jailbreaks the Arcane Nexus.” He shrugged. (Well, that and I have to make sure you’re not screwing me over.)

DeSades smirk let him know the man knew why he was really here even as he admitted that, “In reality people do try to jailbreak the system every day, just to… minimal success, but few of those people have my resources, be they my finances, knowledge, or suppliers.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that you were going to need a few days to get everything together, but you’re already drawing the spell circuit?” He frowned, looking at the half finished circuit and unable to make heads or tails of it.

Rather than answering, DeSade asked, “Hmm, tell me, have you studied Ritualism all that much?”

“No. The only advanced art I’ve really looked at is Arcane Shamanism.” He answered.

“Well, the dark arts are also considered advanced arts albeit dangerous ones, but I’m aware that despite being my apprentice you’ve let those studies fall behind.” DeSade passive aggressively reminded him, before explaining that, “Ritualism is the study of the flows and rules of magic, not dissimilar to standard Magical Theory, but distinctly different in the fact that it goes beyond simple theory and into practice. The Spell Scripts used by virtually all Practitioners, is actually the most widespread form of Ritualism, and is frequently tied together with the main art.”

“Okay, that makes sense.” And given what he’d picked up from using Contracting Catalysts as well as creating his own Contracting Circuit. “I’m guessing that in order to jailbreak the Nexus you’re going to need more than one Catalyst?”

“Quite.” DeSade nodded, before continuing his lecture. “Though it isn’t uncommon for Ritualism to make use of multiple catalysts in general, the circle and its material being the most common one as it forms a boundary for the magic to work. From there the placement of internal materials will allow one to amplify, control, or diminish the effects of various magical influences allowing one to perform greater feats than they could manage off of the cuff.”

“And given how jailbreaking the Nexus is a… massive feat, I’m guessing we’re going to need a lot of catalysts beyond the Void Core.” He figured eyeing some of the crates lying around the basement of a house that DeSade had bought not even a month ago.

“Theoretically, the Void Core is all you need.” DeSade corrected, as if that were a mere technicality. “But in such a case it would only allow you to summon one such entity and with no real control over that entity beyond the fact that it could not leave the initial circle. Which is not as strong a defense as many assume in the face of a creature operating off of a completely different set of metaphysics.”

“The rest of the materials we will be using are about controlling the flow of magic, protecting ourselves, and installing a… backdoor of sorts into the Nexus’s programming to allow us to repeat the feat.” DeSade explained as he made his way over to one of the crates before removing a handful of colorful stones and holding them up between his fingers. “One of the most common catalysts for such things are gemstones, due to both their chemical makeup influencing how each one works with the various Deviant energies as well as the symbolic effect that thousands of years of human psychology have placed upon their conceptuality.”

One by one DeSade continued from crate to crate explaining the most common catalysts, most of which they likely wouldn’t be using for this particular ritual despite the small fortune the Dark Lord had spent on the teaching aids.

Scene Consequences

-A/N: Reminder -to Spacebattlers- I warned he was going to overwrite the subject with one of his choice related to jailbreaking the Arcane Nexus.

-Jon has unlocked Ritualism.

--Ritualism can be used to amplify the effect or power of a spell by using additional Items and/or AP when casting it. Effect scales with Skill Level.

--Thanks to Occultism gained 8XP to Ritualism.

--Thanks to overlap with Spell Scripts gained 5XP to Ritualism.

--Gained bonus 4 XP thanks to DeSade. (Reduced by 2 due to being a new skill.)

--*Skill Level Up* Ritualism Lv. 3 (7/8)

-For Learning a new Magic Art, gained 1XP to Occultism.

--Currently: Occultism Lv. 8 (12/18)

---

“Alright, what do you think?” Artemis asked him as she removed a cover from the piece of the Horror’s arm that they’d dedicated to Val’s project.

“It’s safe to touch right?” He checked remembering his last interaction with the arm, before picking it up when the other teen gave him a nod.

He gave the flattened piece of what looked like black leather a once over. “Well, as a base it should work, but uh how is it supposed to stick to her arm?”

Rather than answering, Artemis merely waved off his question. “I’ve a few ideas for that but adding them now would detract from the next part.”

“I’m guessing that has something to do with the massive Spell Circuit on the ground?” He figured, noting how it took up most of Artemis’s workshop floor. “As well as the empty ones you set up on the walls?”

“Yeah, since what we’re doing is extremely complicated I went ahead and anchored a few additional circuits to the main one with some Ritualism to keep the whole thing stitched together.” Artemis explained, her manic eyes looking extremely pleased with herself in spite of the tired rings surrounding them. “Spent all night getting it just right, This should allow us to add anything we can think of while mitigating any potential blowback from the enchantments since we have to add more than one at once. Though I did have to draw on the ceiling to anchor it all.”

“So you did.” He nodded, because while he was only just getting how Ritualism worked, he thought he understood what she was doing with the mirrored circuits on the ground and ceiling, with the latter being connected to the wall circuits via string. “I’m guessing just connecting the circuits naturally would’ve made things… unstable?”

“For someone like Miss Edme, no.” Artemis assured him, before less reassuringly adding that, “At my level? I’d probably blow the whole shed up and that would piss my parents off… and kill us… maybe.”

“Right… I’m just going to uh.” He put his fingers to his chest before flicking them out and summoning Pix in a small explosion of lights.

“Oh, right you’re contracted to a Fairy.” Artemis blinked, staring at Pix as she got her bearings. “Did you have an idea for using her?”

Pix gave Artemis a contemplating look, as if she couldn’t decide if she should be offended at the words ‘using her’.

“I was just going to ask her to heal us if everything… explodes.” He shrugged.

“Ooh, she can heal. Right, some fairies can do that…” Artemis nodded, her tired mind seemingly going off on a tangent as she kept looking at and away from Pix. “Most people use them for fairy dust, but you did have that light the entire time. Thought it was just one of your spells… I wonder, is it a spell or a conceptual affinity?” Artemis asked, looking at the little fairy with a mad gleam to her eyes.

“Uh, an affinity?” He answered as Pix decided it was better to put him between her and the… inquisitive Arcane.

“Then I have an idea but ooh, we’d have to convert that with… Wait, if we can do that with her then we can also do it with the Horror! Actually, why limit it to conceptual affinities? If we can do concussive then why not something sharper?!” Artemis began to pace, a smile on her face as she grew increasingly manic.

“Um, uh, maybe, maybe you should tell me what you’re thinking?” He frowned, rubbing the back of his neck.

Artemis gave him a confused look. “But I am?”

“I, I know but… maybe we should write out what we’re actually going to do, I mean… the arm only has so much magic to power itself after all?” He tried reminding her.

“Eh, it’s got enough power to run for decades without running out, especially if you supplement more complex functions with your own supply as a sort of ignition sequence.” Artemis shrugged. “But you are right, we can only fit so much in here without blowing the whole thing up!”

The manic arcane stood still in the middle of her workshop for a moment. “Uh, what should we add to this thing?”

Scene Consequences

A/N: Due to the complexity of a shopping vote, this one will only be available on Spacebattles but as a consolation to the people on Royal Road the Throwing Perk vote and the starting Spell Bandage vote will be restricted to them. Fair? Fair.