I took a good look at the mirror in front of me as the majority of the mana I had gathered was reabsorbed back into my… me. Wherever mana went. That seemed like something I should know, but I didn’t.
It was showing a spell. The thing I’d been doing for a while. Except, it cost less. “You got the wrong powers,” I said to Great Girl.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You should have been a mage.”
“That wasn’t even an option,” she pointed out. “And… I like my powers. I wouldn’t have wanted my hobby to become my career.”
“You’re good at this, though,” I said. “Though I guess you’re also good with your actual powers.”
“Am I?” she asked. “Do you know how long it took me to figure out I could… invert my power?”
Nobody who didn’t already know was in range to overhear, but she mostly just didn’t like being small. It was pretty useful, though.
I shrugged. “Do you know how many years it took me to learn anything real about magic? I only knew the surface level before I came here. And that was like twenty years of being a mage.”
“That’s because you didn’t have access to natural upgrades, right?” Great Girl commented. “Wait, aren’t you twenty-five? Or twenty-six or something. Did you get your powers when you were five?”
“Anyone can pick a class as soon as they can operate the system windows,” I commented.
“That’s pretty risky,” she said.
“I knew what I was doing. Mostly.” If it hadn’t been for Aspect of the Barbarian, I would have been fine. “But back to the topic at hand. This is a different spell,” I said, showing her the replication of the Mage’s Reach spell in the mirror. It repeated the casting process over and over. It also didn’t come with any sort of magical sensation, but it was cheaper than the first spell and seemed like it would repeat for a while. “So that means the other one was doing… something else.”
Midnight leaned forward slightly to see the mirror better. “Presumably, it did what you were trying?”
“I sure didn’t see any material components in the previous ones,” I grumbled. “What was different between that one and this one?”
“We’ll have to repeat with a known point of comparison,” Midnight said. “How about… Firebolt?”
At least this spell was cheaper. I sought out a vision of the spell Firebolt, and I got pretty much the same thing as before. This spell was just cheaper. Except…
“It’s not as flashy,” Great Girl commented from the next seat over. “The recording of the expensive one had that flash.”
“... Does that mean I should shove the mana into an initial burst to get more power?” I pondered.
“Was that what you were looking for?” Great Girl asked. “Did you want more power, or did you want material components?”
“Material components, I guess. But I don’t believe I can put a flash into my pocket.”
“It’s ignition,” Midnight declared. “I mean, I think that’s it?”
“Ah,” Great Girl nodded. “Bat guano.”
I was extremely confused. “What?”
“Like for Fireball? Oh that’s right, you don’t know Fireball. Why don’t you know Fireball?”
“How many twenty foot radius areas of non-flammable material do you think exist in this city?” I countered.
“Probably at least… a cooouple?” she said uncertainly, drawing out the word. “You could go out to the bay.”
“Throwing a Fireball into the bay isn’t useful. Even if there was a villain there. What’s this about bat guano?”
“It’s the traditional material component. A costless one,” she explained. “Usually wizards carry around a pouch full of random crap like that. Some of them are kind of jokes. Guano is flammable so… fire.”
“... There have to be better options,” I said. “Why does it have to be that?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t, really. But if we assume Midnight is correct… the spark might actually be a clue as to what sort of material components you would need? Maybe tinder. You know, the kind for lighting fires.”
“I know what tinder is,” I said. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try that. But Storage didn’t look like much. And Shocking Grasp was… even more just the same.”
“Maybe you already know that one,” Midnight said. “Maybe the material component for Shocking Grasp is… us?”
“Why would that… but you have to-” I stopped myself. There were tons of things that I thought had to work a certain way that experimentation had shown very much did not. I summoned just the tiniest bit of mana, focusing a Shocking Grasp spell on… nothing. Just the air in front of me. A tiny little more of electricity floated in the air there, and I reached out to grab it.
It would have already been pretty weak given the small amount of mana- thus why I felt comfortable using it outside of a proper training area. But it barely even felt like a static shock. We’d have to try that in the actual training area, but I was pretty certain how it would work. Though if we were giving up a material component, then it was bound to be weaker for distance. So just worse than taking a small portion of Chain Lightning, which was a spell with a better base for such things.
“Technically we’d be a focus,” I decided. “Since we’re not consumed, fortunately.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Right,” Midnight agreed. “So what now?”
“I guess we go buy stuff,” I tilted my head.
“Shopping?” Great Girl said, seemingly invigorated. “Let’s go!”
-----
Shopping with Great Girl was exhausting. She dragged us along to a million places, sweeping things off the shelves. Even with her carrying all the heavy stuff, we still had to throw a lot of things in Storage. After we paid for it, obviously. The biggest thing was all the hurrying from place to place.
“And here’s a bar of soap. Cooking oil. A moustache.”
Great Girl sure was taking a lot of random crap. “Are you sure we need all this?”
“It can be paid for by the Brigade. This is work!” she shrugged. “Or I’ll pay for it. Whatever. Ugh, paparazzi.”
“Is that some kind of pizza topping?” I asked.
“It might be, if they’re not careful,” she said. “Excuse us, we’re trying to get by.”
I noticed she grew a few inches taller as she said that. I supposed it was supposed to be intimidating, but she’d stopped trying to match my height and settled on something closer to her ‘actual’ height of six feet, so she didn’t end up any bigger than me.
“Your mother is a hamster,” Midnight said- rather aggressively- to one of the people with cameras- and phones.
“... Can you just say things like that to people?” I asked Midnight as we moved along.
“To them, it would sound like a hiss.”
Oh right. Celmothian.
“This is probably enough stuff,” I commented.
“Yeah,” Great Girl nodded. “We’d better get back to the Brigade.”
It took a few minutes to get a proper vehicle, but that was better than walking the rest of the way back. We had to go to quite a few places to get all this junk. Hopefully, some of it did something. It would kind of be a waste since we hadn’t actually tested any of it.
-----
“Here’s an easy one,” Great Girl said. “A proper focus for Storage.”
“... This is a bag,” I commented. It was one of the kind that had one strap that went over a shoulder. A messenger bag, I guess?
“Obviously,” she said.
“For Storage? I don’t put things into something,” I pointed out. “It’s magic.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know it’s magic. Now hurry up, my break is almost over.” I was pretty sure it was over like an hour ago. “Storage is putting something away or taking it out. So it should be better if you have something like this to represent the action. Also good for making it so people don’t know you’re magically pulling stuff out.”
“... I occasionally pull stuff out of pockets,” I said.
“Is that more effective?” she asked.
“Never thought about it,” I admitted.
Storage was cheap anyway. Its efficiency grew quickly with upgrades, so there was little mana to be saved. I put a few things into the bag, using Storage once they were out of sight. It might have been a little bit different.
“Maybe you need to keep experimenting with that one,” she said. “It has to be better. Okay, how about this one? Your phone sends texts, right? It could make Sending better.”
“I don’t know how we would know it’s better,” I said. “Certainly not in a short time.” Maybe I could message Comhghall? He was in a really hard to reach plane. “It’s expensive and usually just works.”
“Gate!” she said, holding up an actual gate she’d bought at the hardware store.
I put my face in my hands. “Is that why you’ve been lugging that around this whole time? There’s no way. Also, can’t do that here.”
She sighed. “Fine. Uh…” she pulled out a dollhouse she’d bought. “Use Shelter. Make it like this.”
“Aren’t these all foci? Not everything uses a focus,” I complained.
“You don’t know that. Try it.”
“Sure, I guess,” I shrugged. I’d rather have done something with the combat spells, though. I held in my hands the awkwardly sized structure as I gathered mana. The training rooms were more than big enough to fit Shelter, so it wasn’t crazy. “Huh.” There it was. “I might have already been able to do this.”
“Isn’t this bigger than normal?” Great Girl asked. “Besides, do you usually get such detail?”
Midnight took the opportunity to stab me in the back. “He usually makes a military bunkhouse.”
“Hey! It’s practical! And I made the beds more comfortable.”
It might be useful to have a predefined layout I could call upon without just using my memory. And if it was bigger, it might be interesting.
“Slight problem,” I said as we came to the entrance. “It’s uh… not enough bigger.”
“Normal people would fit,” Great Girl said as she allowed herself to shrink to her normal height. I had to duck to not bump my head on the doorframe. “It is a bit cramped still. But the total volume is definitely more. This has a whole layout.”
“I have to agree,” Midnight said. “It’s bigger.”
“Maybe I just wasn’t getting to the limits?” I suggested.
“I’ll test it,” Midnight said, jumping down to the back of a couch then scurrying out. A few moments later, he created a proper Shelter next to the building. He scurried back inside. “Nah, see, this is at least fifty percent bigger in two directions.”
“Shorter, though,” I commented.
“That’s just the doorway. The ceiling is high enough.”
Just barely. It certainly wasn’t that much lower than the other. And with the roof on this thing, the total volume had to be nearly double or triple.
“Alright,” Great Girl said. “Now time to test durability. Everyone out.”
By everyone, it appeared she meant everyone that wasn’t her. Once Midnight and I were safely outside, she burst through the ceiling, arms over her head. Shards of wood flew everywhere.
“Pretty fragile,” she said. “How tough is it normally?”
“Smash Midnight’s,” I suggested. As she shoved her way through the rest of the Shelter spell, it hit its limits and dissolved into nothing, the splinters of wood fading away. Great Girl kicked through the wall like it was made of balsa. Maybe it was, effectively. Though she could probably do that with solid brick, especially at house-crushing size. Nearly her limit, somewhere around twelve or thirteen feet tall.
“I can’t say either of them are especially durable,” Great Girl said. “The structure is too different to know for certain. But I’d say they’re close. And one is bigger. So next time you go camping…”
“You have to carry the house.”
“Put it in your bag!” she said.
“Way too big for that. And it’ll take up too much of Storage’s capacity.”
“Hmph. Maybe a small but detailed model?” She suggested.
“Sounds expensive. Practical is fine. It was big enough like that.” Still… it did something. That meant this wasn’t all some sort of weird sidetrack. “Did you grab any actual consumables?”
“Candles?” Great Girl suggested. “If there’s already fire, then Firebolt might get a boost.”
But we’d have to light them first. I wasn’t going to carry around lit candles.
