Suhara of Curses: Chapter 30 - Her Second

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Jaux Ballad has always wanted to enter the realm of magic, but could not do so by regular means. In his desperation to become a magician he finds himself with more power, and more trouble, than he could ever have imagined.

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Although she was healed, the medical department advised that Suhara should remain in her dorm for the rest of the day. The blood rejuvenation potion they provided her had a possible side effect of fainting, so any major activities had to be avoided. Suhara's friends immediately translated that advice into bed rest.

Desyi stayed in the room to keep her company. Tricks and Desyi agreed to keep Frey away for now. The red head was getting a bit overprotective of Suhara again. It was much like the reaction to the thief incident, but worse since Suhara had been completely alone.

Frey had finally taken off the novi collar from Suhara's neck, and replaced it with an enchanted crystal necklace. The necklace had been bought from Deledy Lynx, and had a skin hardening concentration pattern. Frey had seen how the anklet blessing had failed against Seventy-nine's silver blades, and she figured a durability improver might function better.

Tricks and Frey were currently up in the library. Since Suhara was stuck in the room, she asked if they could find her some books on Broken Space Ghosts. She needed the info to figure out how to use her new soul abilities.

"You shouldn't push yourself, Suhara." Desyi frowned and leaned forward on her seat.

Suhara had her curse textbook open in her lap. It was flipped to the page of an advanced heat ward that she was currently trying to memorize. She was stuck in the dorm, but she didn't want to idle.

"I really wanted to finish learning my required specialty spells by today," said Suhara. "Could you help me test this ward? I need high temperature spells."

Once the spell was cast, a vortex of dark magenta energy swirled at the tip of Suhara's wand.

Desyi sighed, but she complied and raised her hands. Tiny fireballs shot out from her fingertips and whizzed forth. The flame marbles scorched through the air towards Suhara. When they passed by the flat magenta vortex, they strayed from their flight course and were pulled in. When the fireballs touched the magenta energy, they broke down into loose flame and melted into the whirl.

The heat ward was able to absorb a variety of spells. Desyi's standard fireballs, flame throwers, burners, and heat waves all got sucked into the swirling energy. Lightning and heat beams were too fast to be caught in the ward, but their paths were bent when passing by.

The heat ward was a self-sustaining protection. Any heat that it absorbed powered it, allowing it to last longer. Casting any other spell with the wand would disable the ward. The vortex took a bit of time breaking down heat into magical energy, so spells that were too fast or too powerful would bypass it.

Suhara grumbled with disappointment. Roy used a lot of lightning, which the ward wasn't effective against.

"You know," Desyi got up from her chair and swiped Suhara's spellbook. "I think you've been focusing a bit too much on support and defense. There's got to be some good offensive spells in here."

"My staff is already my best offense." said Suhara.

Desyi began to flip through the pages of the spellbook. "You rely too much on that. Your staff is too crude. Do you have a single purely offensive spell above standard rank?"

Suhara took a minute to review her memorized spells. "Well, my master class spell stuns everyone close to me..."

"Master, eh?" Desyi giggled. "How long does that spell take you to cast?"

Suhara huffed and turned away. "Fine, I get it. I'll learn some more offense, too."

"Great!" Desyi placed the spellbook back down and pointed to the spell she had found. "Try this one, it's invisible fire."

The Unseen Blaze was a flamethrower spell with invisible fire. It was based on a standard flamethrower spell, but it was merged with a light-eater curse. The curse ate away at the fire's own light without reducing too much of the heat, thereby making the flamethrower invisible. The curse converted the absorbed light into concentration magic. Light from raw fire doesn't create a lot of concentration, but it made enough to give the unseen blaze some extra pushing power.

"Wow, this looks pretty cool," said Suhara. "I can't exactly practice it in here, though."

"Oh! I can handle that. Hold on." Desyi clapped her hands together and closed her eyes.

Desyi suppressed a snicker as she focused her thoughts. A few seconds later, she lifted up her eyelids and threw open her hands. A wave of indigo energy spewed out from her palms. The dorm's air cooled and crystalized. Then, a dozen identical white ice statues formed in the middle of the room.

Once Suhara got a good look at the statues, she started to giggle uncontrollably. She recognized them. Her laughing breath condensed in the cold dorm air, forming a steady stream of mist.

The white statues were in the form of Roy Intone... stripped down to his underwear. He was depicted in the middle of an arm flex, but all of his muscles were sagging like cookie dough. A beret rested on top of his head with a long feather sticking high up into the air.

Desyi spoke once Suhara got over the laughing fit. "Thought you would like that, go ahead and practice away!"

Suhara nodded and started to memorize the spell pattern in the book. Desyi helped with some advice and shortcuts on temperature genre patterns.

Once Suhara finished studying the pattern, she pointed her demon root at the statues. Aside from the heat, there was no other indication that a spell was fired off. The statues only started to emit white gas as they were sublimated. The image of a disintegrated Roy was morbidly amusing for Suhara. A few of the statues in the front cracked and burst into a pile of shards due to the sudden increase in temperature. Since the flame had a bit of concentrated force, once the statues became small enough, they were tipped over onto the floor.

When the two girls tried it again, Suhara repeated the exercise with the Winter Sight turned on so that she could see the trail of magic. There was a bit of magenta energy spewing out from the tip of the want, but most of the invisible fire was laced with black.

Theema didn't say anything about what Suhara was seeing. It didn't seem to interest the goddess.

After Suhara completely memorized the Unseen Blaze spell, the two girls continued to find more temperature based curses in the spellbook. At one point, Desyi had to rush over to the bathroom to get some water for a standard spell they were going to practice.

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Tricks waved her arms around to feel the room's air. "Gods, Desyi, what did you do? This room is both hot and cold at the same time. It feels like I'm swimming in poorly heated soup."

"I was just teaching Suhara a few spells," said Desyi. "Hey guess what Frey?"

"Hm?" Frey looked up from the pile of books that she brought up with Tricks.

"I'm a better teacher than you! I helped Suhara learn three whole spells in just a couple hours!" Desyi taunted and stuck her tongue out.

"Oh please," Frey dismissively swung her hand through the air. "You obviously focused on temperature, your genre is the simplest genre."

Desyi playfully crossed her arms and lifted her chin high up in the air. "Progress is progress!"

Suhara chuckled to herself as she watched the exchange. She was a bit tired from magic fatigue, so she was curled up in her bed. She had learned two more standard spells with Desyi. Now she could flash freeze targets, or turn water-based ice into snow. Her flash freezing curse was a simple freeze spell with an added heat-eating curse component that sped it up. Her snowmaker spell breaks apart large portions in the fractal grid of water-based ice, crumbling it into soft snow.

All the spell practice deprived Suhara of enough magic that the blood rejuvenating potion's fainting side effects didn't activate. This was a useless benefit though, since the magic fatigue made her fall asleep anyway.

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The next morning, Frey and Tricks presented all the information gathered from the library regarding Broken Space ghosts. A large amount of the information was worthless for Suhara, since she only received the soul from a ghost from one of the five sectors. Thankfully, there were two passages that informed Suhara about the ghost that she encountered.

The calculating ghosts of Broken Space's third sector were very simple spirits that took on featureless geometric shapes. They had the ability to harden vacuums by separating it into a controlled pocket dimension. In order words, they could create solid objects out of nothing. Since the objects technically had no mass, they were weightless. The only thing that gives the vacuum objects force was the ghost's magic. Thin, sharp, and other aerodynamic objects were preferred by the ghosts, since they required less energy to move around.

All vacuum objects must first be formed within two meters of the ghost. After that, the objects are able to fly as far as the ghost can see. The third sector is often completely flat so that the ghosts have a superior line of sight. The vacuum objects took complete focus in order to sustain. Any lapse in concentration would cause a vacuum object to fail and disappear. It was why Suhara's brute force method was effective against Seventy-nine, since the ghost was unable to form clear thoughts while the staff was whacking it.

The power was easy enough once Suhara understood it. She could form any object that came into mind. While focusing on using the vacuum object power, Suhara couldn't cast any new spells. Simple objects, like triangles, were easier since they only had a few parts to keep track up. The concept was a lot like her first magic pattern development lesson. Luckily, Suhara was really good at that class, minus the aiming half.

The ghosts had the power to make portals as well, but Suhara couldn't do anything with that until she learned dimensional genre magic.

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Comments

I like this

Waiting for the next one is going to be hard time.

so a new power

interesting ability

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