Bab 16: Spring Cleaning

April 9th, 2034

New York, New York, Hoffman Island

I smiled happily upon seeing the flaming bolt of arcane energy fly out of my hand. Picking up the spellbook I had tossed to the floor, I started to make the final adjustments to the spell before calling the project a success.

It had been a couple of days after my initial experiments with making spells compatible with my fire mana, and I had finally gotten a working version of Arcane Bolt. Detect Magic was still outside of my reach, however. After putting heaps of effort into it, I just ended up deciding that despite my initial theories, fire mana was incompatible with the spell.

I had spent all of yesterday trying to re-reconstruct the spell into something that would actively transmute my fire mana into arcane mana. Then, the spell would use the arcane energy it had created to cast itself.

Although it was a neat idea, in practice it was way beyond my abilities. My preliminary research revealed that I would likely need to create a spell circle to do the conversion. Hence, I would need to create a tier-1 spell in order to make a tier-0 spell functional—it wasn't efficient.

Regardless of the struggles I found myself dealing with in that regard, Arcane Bolt ended up being a lot more user-friendly. Of course, the spell was worthless to me, but it proved that I was able to convert spells into fully-functional versions of themselves. Arcane Bolt in particular ended up acting nigh-identical to a meager variation of my Flame Lance spell—thus, worthless.

It was the success of this conversion that led me to a new train of thought: What if I were to apply these principles to hybrid spells?

For example, I had heard of someone using a sort of "soul fire"—fire that burned the soul. Clearly, they had found a spellbook in a subspace that had a profound knowledge of both elemental fire and soul. While combining elements was difficult, it could be rather rewarding.

I thus wished to see if I was able to create a hybrid spell, at least at some point. The postulate was to convert roughly half of a spell into a version that used fire mana. Next, I would create a spell circle that converted half of my fire mana into whatever elemental mana the original spell used.

As I was lost in thought, thinking about the far future, I finished writing down the freshly-made Arcane Bolt spell. It was surreal to compare it to the original—they looked nothing at all similar.

With the heady feeling of success guiding me, I took the rented jet ski from the training island I had "discovered" and went back to the city. On the way back, I took in the sights of the monoliths raised high into the heavens. It was good to take deep breaths and calm down every once in a while.

Once I got back to the city, I deposited the 2 usable spellbooks with Gerrath. We joked about how the version of the spell using fire mana was useless to me before I went back up to my office.

As I opened the door, I noticed that Christina was waiting for me inside. Similar to Gerrath, I took a deliberate glance at her.

She was a lithe woman in her early 20s with dirty blonde hair. Currently wearing a blouse and jeans, she had a pretty face and radiant blue eyes that stood out from the rest of her.

Satisfied with my analysis of her looks, I asked, "What's up?"

Despite my friendly demeanor, she looked at me with a frown of annoyance.

"...Were you just checking me out?" she asked after a few moments of deliberation.

Ah. I realized my error now.

"I don't think there's a good way of explaining that one," I said hastily. The reality of me forgetting what she looked like probably wouldn't sit well with her, either.

Christina sighed and stretched awkwardly. "Okay, then. I'm here to tell you that Mateo Serrano is going to be staying with the American Society of Hunters for the next 5 days. We're unsure what his goals are."

I frowned at the news. If the so-called divine assassin was publicly coming up here from Mexico, then something was going to happen.

"Is there any news about a supermassive wormhole possibly appearing?" I asked.

"Nothing's been released as of right now. Mateo could just be interested in tormenting us, for whatever reason."

"Ugh, what a pain." I walked across the room and plopped into my chair. I wasn't liking the implications of having to deal with that creep. Anyone that was considered the best assassin in the world had to have some personality disorder, and Mateo was no exception.

"Are there any preparations you would like me to make?" Christina asked.

"No, not really. If Mateo wants to stop by and calls ahead, we'll prepare a place for him. If not, screw him. He's not going to start slaughtering people for the sake of it, so it's whatever."

"If you say so." Christina gave me a curt nod and left the room.

Once she left, Streya spoke up.

"I get to meet an interesting human," she said happily.

"Hopefully not. Like any Divine, he has the need to be the most noteworthy person in the room at any given point in time. That's why he's famous despite being an assassin. I'm starting to get a headache just thinking about dealing with him."

"Sad."

"You're telling me. Anyways, now that I've gotten the gist of how to convert spells, is it time to get Identify working?"

"It's worth a shot. It's going to take exponentially longer than the tier-0 spells, though."

I was prepared for as much. I went over to the closet and pulled out a cardboard box filled with miscellaneous tomes. They were all the spellbooks I had grabbed over the years that I had never been able to make work. Chief among them, of course, was the incredibly useful Identify.

It took a bit of digging but I eventually found it. As a tier-1 spellbook, it was about twice as thick as the previous 2 spellbooks I had worked with. The cover itself was a gorgeous, 2-dimensional representation of what the spell circle was supposed to look like.

Seeing how much dust the rest of the books had collected, I did some spring cleaning while reminiscing about the past. Terror, Moon Raiment, Force—there were a lot of fun spells to be found.

Unfortunately, I had given up on trying new magic by the time I had reached level 50, so there were no tier-3 or 4 spells in my collection. Then again, selling a tier-4 spellbook could net someone well over a few million dollars. Perhaps it was for the best.

I found the spellbook for Grease at the very bottom of the pile. I looked at it fondly as memories flashed through me.

I had gotten Grease way back at the start of it all. It was well before there were official thresholds for divinity—before any of us were considered Divine. I was just a 20-year-old that could cast fire magic.

In those first few days, I had gotten together with a group of 4 others and we ventured into a simple E-ranked wormhole.

Thinking back on it, I wasn't even sure what the enemies in that place were. They were probably slimes, given by RPG tropes.

Regardless, my group and I ended up clearing it without a hitch. After we slew the boss, it dropped the Grease spellbook and I received it due to being the only spellcaster in the party.

I was naturally frustrated with not being able to use the damn thing, but I had held onto it just in case. After that, we all kept in contact and worked together to clear manifold beginner wormholes.

At some point, though, the disparity of power started to rear its head. I was gaining over 2 points per level more than anyone else in the party. What they found challenging, I had found trivial and routine.

It was likely around then that the title "Divine" started to become widely used. I had discovered that I was special, and that was the end of our idyllic times.

I never had any massive falling out with the rest of them, of course, but we organically parted ways and stopped staying in touch. Who knew where they were at now?

I started to feel tears welling up, blurring my vision. I had my regrets.

With nothing left of those times but the Grease spellbook, I decided to give it some attention. I dusted it off and placed it on my desk, next to the photograph of myself. Realizing how truly disgusting that was, I tossed it into the trash.

After wrapping up the cleaning and organizing, I started to draw up a few drafts of what the Identify conversion might look like. I kept working on that for the entirety of the evening save dinner. Before I knew it, it was already midnight.

I laid down to sleep and once more found it to evade me. I had too many regrets in life weighing me down. Whenever I closed my eyes, I would see either Sera's corpse or the fighter's, whose name I didn't know even now.

Eventually, I was able to fight off the visions and found rest, hours after I had first lain down.