Chapter 14: Strength

April 7th, 2034

New York, New York, Sol HQ

What made someone strong?

I had turned to research to answer such a question. I knew Wrath was strong in the sense of literal strength—he had a natural affinity for slaughter and was nigh-impossible to kill. However, tracing through some old subspace records turned up that he had a few utility skills in his repertoire as well.

Lucian was a similar case. He was a genius in magic and prior to the apocalypse, he had a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. His currently-known skill set allowed for a wide variety of spells, from area-of-effect to damage-over-time to crowd control.

Even below the notable Divines, there were countless famous hunters out in the world, each with logged skills and spells. Aside from those with dedicated teams, the one thing they all had in common was the ability to adapt.

Hence, it was easy to find out where I was lacking—I needed more utility and flexibility. If I had been able to fly, quite a lot would have changed in that deathtrap. If I were able to enchant and craft things myself, then perhaps I wouldn't be nearly as fragile.

"And so, Streya, you can help in that regard, right?" I asked the voice in my head.

"Without accidentally killing you? No promises. I said it before: I'm horribly untrained in using others' mana and even then I don't know that many spells. Demons aren't really 'life forms' so to speak—whenever I made myself a body, it was just for fun."

"Let's just start small, baby steps. You were able to identify the ring, albeit costing me a ton of mana. What spell was that?"

"The tier-4 spell, Analyze. It's able to identify up to Abyssal-ranked equipment consistently. It's supposed to take less than 100 mana under normal circumstances; I'm just bad at using you."

"And do you think that would allow you to be able to identify my class?" I had only discovered the properties of the class through trial and error. My hope was thus that being able to fully expand its information would beget new discoveries.

"I'm not sure, but it's worth a shot."

For the first time in months, I went through my entire status page.

—Status—

Name: Thomas Eaton

HP: 679/679

Mana: 609/609

Level: 85

XP: 1,383,758

XP Required: 32,367

Class: Aspect of Sun

Age: 29

Race: Human

—Stats—

Divinity: 3.3x

Might: 33

Agility: 66

Vitality: 69.3

Concentration: 92.4

Soul: 214.5

—Skills & Traits—

Tier-1: Mana Manipulation I.

Tier-2: Radiation Resistance I, Quick Casting I, Innate Fire Mana.

Tier-3: Ultraviolet Resistance II, Dual Casting.

Tier-4: Heat Immunity, Fire Magic Genius, Fire Affinity II.

—Spells—

Tier-0: Flames, Fire Pellet.

Tier-1: Fireball, Flaming Weapon, Flame Mine.

Tier-2: Melt, Blazing Orb, Fire Shield.

Tier-3: Flame Lance, Summon Flame Weapon, Immutable Fire.

Tier-4: Nova.

Before I had the chance to scrutinize every detail, I felt my mana pool start to dissipate. A wave of nausea overcame me as the amount of mana Streya was using continued to grow. Not long after the initial feeling of being drained, a new information box appeared over the default status.

—Identified: Aspect of Sun—

[Aspect of Sun] (Class, Epic)

Description: The chosen representative of Sun. Grants an unprecedented affinity for all things fire-related, including spells. However, the downside of such power is the restriction to only be able to use fire spells due to the Innate Fire Mana skill. But what if there was a way to make all spells fire-aspected?

"Sorry," Streya apologized. "I just ended up using a chunk of your health to brute-force the analysis of something Epic. Thankfully, that didn't kill us."

"Please never risk my life to cast a non-essential spell again." I paled at the idea that Streya was able to just blow me up whenever she wished. However, that would also kill her, so there really wouldn't be much point in that.

Having at least verbally told the demon off, I went through the description of the class. Unsurprisingly, the information found within wasn't incredibly new to me. Once again, though, the system was giving me a hint of some sort.

I smiled, having received the desired result. I still needed to implement the hint, of course, but it was a good direction to move toward.

Another benefit of the Analyze was the specific wording. It allowed me to comprehend what exactly the requirements were. Initially, it read "fire spells" and then later "spells fire-aspected." Those had very different connotations—what if the latter sentence was tacked on after the fact?

"Streya, what do you think? You've said before that the system effectively exists to help us. Why does it have to give semi-vague hints and require people to learn spells just to utilize it fully?"

She pondered for a moment before giving me a response.

"It likely has something to do with causality, in the sense of equivalent exchange. I'm not entirely sure of the details, naturally, but whatever Law conjured the system isn't omnipotent. Perhaps it was either the Law of fate or karma that was involved."

"So you're saying that the stronger I am, the more the system is able to help? Isn't that just an infinite feedback loop?"

"The more you spend, the more you're able to buy. If you sell what you buy with a positive profit margin, just to buy more stuff, that's capitalism. Repeat ad nauseam and you might end up as a billionaire."

"The system's a goddamn capitalist." I wasn't sure how that made me feel.

"It's more than that—it's effectively its own economy. It just lets you use it as you see fit. For all we know, there's a communist way of using the system, too."

"Say that we take this loop to its logical culmination, then. What sort of meta-knowledge of the universe would we get from using a tier-9 spell to identify various things?"

"We saw a bit of that with the ring. I guess you get lore, right? Well, if you're using a tier-9 spell, then things might get even more absurd. It could let you see into the future of the object or instruct you on the most optimal way to utilize it."

It was frustrating to think about how far off such magic really was. And thus, Wrath was also that far off. Even though I had been there, the battle against the goddess of pestilence really was way over my head.

Speaking of Wrath, he had truly fallen off the face of the Earth since his resurrection. It was enough that doubts it was just an elaborate prank of some sort were starting to surface.

However, I knew better.

I told Streya, "Well, metaphysical nonsense aside, I have a bet. Whenever Wrath shows up again—and he will—he's going to do something that flips the world upside down."

"It would be interesting to meet this 'Wrath' guy. You have a very strong sense of fear of him, enough so that I tremble just thinking about him."

"And you want to meet him because of that?"

"It's fine," she laughed. "Worst case scenario, you finally let me try to invoke my Law and turn you into the perfect genetic human."

"Oh, God." I couldn't help but laugh in mock horror. "I would just be a completely different person. Even my own mother wouldn't recognize me."

"We can use the sudden transformation to shock Wrath into letting you go!"

Streya's bad jokes aside, I decided to start looking into the lead the system had given me. Before anything else, I did a quick internet search to see if there was some blatantly obvious information out there about fire-aspected spells I had missed. Of course, there wasn't.

Not disheartened, I decided to go downstairs to give the R&D team a visit. I easily found Gerrath this time and asked him my main question.

"You want to make non-fire spells fire spells?" He repeated back to me, confused. "I can't help you with that, but we have been making good progress in mass-producing spellbooks."

"That's great. Hopefully, we can get those out to everyone sooner than later. But, I have a very specific purpose in mind today. I'm going to gravitate over to the mana-conversion machine again, but it's good to see you."

"All right, then. Oh, and Tom?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry to hear about everything that happened the other day. I know it's not much, but take care of yourself, okay?"

"I'm just putting one foot in front of the other. Thanks, man." I gave him a stiff nod and went over to the mana-conversion machine.

To no one's surprise, Macy was lounging around the thing again. I didn't have it in me to make fun of her for it, though. I ended up just explaining the situation and asked if the machine could be used to help out.

"It's a very interesting idea, and I'd love to try it out. But, this isn't the machine for it," she explained to me, drooping like a sad dog.

"Do you have any pointers? I don't even know where to start. Is it just as simple as using fire mana to properly cast something like Inspect? But, if that were the case, I would have been able to figure it out by now."

"No, that can't be it. As you've said, that's too obvious. No, no. Wait! No, never mind… Okay, okay, hear me out: Spells are deliberate creations using complex runic arrays to establish a proper flow of mana. Thus, using raw fire mana for a spell that asks you for 'flavorless' mana or any of its other elemental forms wouldn't work.

"However, would it not be possible to learn how to adapt spells to take fire mana? I've never heard of anyone but Lucian Merrileth himself creating a spell, but you might just be able to convert one."

My knee-jerk reaction was to scoff at her idea. It was as she had said, there had only been a single person able to create spells acknowledged in the public realm. People either used spellbooks found in subspaces, copied them like Gerrath was doing, or obtained them passively from leveling up. Being able to replicate something previously established was worlds apart from innovating the entire world of magic.

I was sure that Macy had heard of my ability to adapt fire spells on the fly—that would be the only reason she would ever suggest it. But, there was a difference between being familiar enough with a spell to make some minor adjustments and recreating an unfamiliar spell with an entirely new purpose in mind.

"Streya, when I restore the rest of my mana, are you ready to Analyze my Fire Magic Genius skill?"