Chapter 86

Knowledge crashed into Tom’s consciousness. It was interesting. Harness Meteorite was a disturbing mix of taking the power of an astronomical body, seizing control of it and then gifting it with advanced golem intelligence. There were rules in place guiding what it could do, and his first supposition was that they were restrictive. A feature of high tier spells as far as he was concerned. Focus and then cast was the summary. It was possible that a true master might be able to change those guide lines, but Tom definitely couldn’t.

Physically, it was a meteorite the size of a soccer ball that would spin around the caster. An animated rock that would then intercept attacks that were launched at him. It was above average defence against physical strikes. It would bat aside arrows even many magic enhanced ones with a reasonable level of competency. Melee weapons were interesting. Tom could imagine someone attempting to hit him and instead having their sword bash against a fast-moving rock. It was an amusing idea, but practically only incompetent fighters would lack the agility to avoid the spinning meteorite… through currently all his friends would struggle given their low rank. It would be great against certain types of magic attacks such as thrown balls of energy, as they tended to move slowly but would be useless against diffuse wave strikes and instantaneous spells. Defensively for its cost, in his mind the spell got a four out of ten.

Offensively, that rating was higher. Potentially even as high as an eight. It could be directed to fight proactively against close enemies acting as a three-hundred-kilogram battle hammer with a similar range and speed. Then there was the pinnacle attack and why the spell existed. It could be launched at a distant target, becoming heavy hitting magical artillery. Over the first fifty metres of travel, it would expand till it was the size of a wrecking ball, that was a one and a half metre sphere of nickel iron and rock that was heated to three thousand degrees travelling at a couple hundred kilometres per hour.

Whatever it hit unless it was heavily reinforced was bound to have a terrible day, as it would pack sufficient punch to leave a crater.

“Nice,” he whispered to himself.

Harnessed Meteorite*

Create and control a meteorite to defend yourself or unleash as a devastating targetable attack. Starting duration is five minutes. Increased skill levels extend time limit, improve speed, enhance durability and impart heat damage.

Cost 300

*This spell has been permanently degraded to allow the challenger to cast the ability. Mana cost reduced from a thousand to three hundred. Power halved.

Tom smiled at that cost.

The system had broken the spell to allow him to cast it.

Technically, it was an upgrade as the damage output to mana cost had been improved, but that was the wrong way to look at it. One of the more powerful tier four earth spells would be stunted. When he was level hundred, there would be walls that other mages would have been able to break that he would fail to penetrate with his weakened version.

Same with any monsters that he fought with the spell. It would unfortunately reach a point where he would stop using it.

At high levels, spells that required more of the massive mana pools people had would be more valuable than those that used less. Fights usually came down to how much power someone could unleash in the shortest time possible rather than endurance, or at least that’s what his theory crafting in the tutorial had led him to believe.

Still, it was only halved in power and for the next five years, the fact he possessed the spell was a massive boon. He wondered about that three hundred cost. If he had never upgraded his mana crystal and had only a two hundred and fifty-four mana available, would it have cost that smaller amount and if it did would the power be halved or more than halved?

There was no way to know. He had improved his mana crystal and boosted his mana, and the trial had taken advantage of that. He had three hundred and one mana available and just received a skill that any mage class under level one hundred would have been giddy to possess. All those hours pumping mana into the crystal adding one mana to it for every five he used and then when it was filled expending all that mana to increase the size by a single point probably gave him a bigger payout than he ever expected. He had done that forty-seven times so far and he had another hundred and fifty more to reach the three hundred limit of the crystal. At that point, casting this spell would not tap out his magic though it made sense to get another ten levels in his elemental summoner class quickly to gain the same result.

The next challenge starts in one minute.

Destroy all five targets to progress.

Success will be measured by the time taken to destroy the targets.

“Targets.”

The dome flashed, and he was somewhere else. He was still underground, but he might as well not have been. The cave he was in must have been a kilometre high and then too wide for him to see the walls as anything more than a grey blur and a distant impression.

Five massive targets hung in the air. The closest was a hundred metres from him and the furthest almost a kilometre away. The safe area he stood on was on a pillar of rock, and when he peered over the edge, the abyss descended endlessly.

Tom gingerly retreated to the centre of the platform and focused on engaging Harnessed Meteorite, but nothing happened.

No magic may be cast till challenge starts.

With a shrug, he studied the dark cave, and the glowing targets each of them over twenty metres wide. This was not real, or it was real, but not in a way that would be possible on earth. What he was looking at was the will of the GODS and there was no point pretending otherwise. You could scream, rant and rave as much as you liked, but it would change nothing all humans could do was to play with the rules the GODS had come up with.

The dome that had encased them fell away. From what he could tell, he was on a floating platform. There was no way to move it and he didn’t’ have any flight abilities. Tom glanced at the distant targets and shrugged. It made sense the only way to hurt them was his new spell. Throw Rock might allow him to hit the closest one, but the minor explosions he could create would be like a matchbox car pushed by a toddler running into your foot versus a train crash when compared to Harness Meteorite.

He had to destroy the targets, and the only way to do that was through his new spell.

With one hand clutching his mana crystal, he cast the spell by wishing it into existence. The mana was drained from his crystal and his personal pool. Burst Healing accelerated the process and thirty seconds later a single rock snapped into reality next to him.

It orbited him. Whizzing past his head faster than once per second. He physically could not spin on the spot fast enough to follow its motion.

Impressive, if slightly nauseating, when he focused on it.

Tom knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, it had the word meteorite in its name and they were hardly slow, but it was fast, and the air hummed with its passage. For twenty seconds, he observed it spin around him with that dizzying speed. Less nausea than expected and despite the noise and the flickering in his peripherals he could put the spinning rock out of his mind if he wanted to. Tom guessed it was a hidden feature of the spell that he had cast.

He raised his hand to point at the target and then stopped himself. That was unnecessary, and revealing your intention by telegraphing an attack by pointing was ridiculous. He would not allow himself to develop bad habits. Instead, he lowered his arm and imagined the meteorite shooting off and striking the target. There was a roar, and the stone rocketed away from him. It expanded in size and began to glow red. “1 cat a–”

Boom!

The meteorite smashed into the target about two-thirds of the way. A hole the size of a minibus was torn into it and then cracks radiated outward. He could hear the disk breaking and a wave of heat reached him. Chunks of it tumbled away. It was like a miniature avalanche radiating outwards from where his spell had struck it. First small slithers and then, as the cracks spread further larger sections. The entire top third slipped off the top and fell. The collapse stopped and only the bottom third remained. It floated in the air, transformed, the perfectly pristine surface gone. There were scorch marks on it and ragged edges.

“Shit.” Tom blinked. “That’s extraordinary.”

Of course, no one responded. He was alone till the trial ended.

He checked his mana.

Two.

His crystal

One

Tom sat down to recover. It would be thirty minutes before he could cast it again.

“What am I going to do?” he muttered to himself glancing around. There was nothing to be seen, just open air in all directions, excluding the roof and all of it out of reach. Practicing his magic wasn’t even an option because he needed to regenerate mana.

Tom tried to step into the system room, intending to study the auction house, but nothing happened.

“Damn.” There was no effective training available. Possibly he could train his spear forms, but he would be worried about stepping over the edge as all the kata’s he knew required him to practice footwork. Bored, he flipped a rock in his hand, getting used to moving the pebble between his fingers. Maybe once he bought a throwing skill, it would be useful.

He monitored the mana in his crystal. Twenty, forty…

Time Expired.

“What?” Tom blurted out. There had been nowhere near enough time to complete the challenge.

Zero targets destroyed.

Calculating Rewards…

“Wait!” He felt Susie pause. “What’s happening? Why has time expired?”

The entire challenge had a set amount of time assigned to finish it. That time period has elapsed. You effectively took too long on previous stages to allow you to finish this stage.

Tom looked out at the four, and a bit targets remaining. Even if he shot perfectly, this would have taken a minimum of five hours complete. But he instinctively knew each of the other targets, excluding the first would take two or more meteorites and the most distant one at least three. That was over ten hours. If he had rushed through stages? Created a better golem? Nope. No matter how he performed in previous stages he would never pass this one.

“I could never complete it.”

That is true. Theoretically, an individual attempting the challenge with a couple of earth specific titles may have had a solution to getting past this problem.

“I understand.” Tom did. He had got further than he should have because of his advantages. There was no reason to think that out of the presumably trillions of people out there than there wasn’t someone luckier than he was.

Calculating Rewards…

Rewards assignment complete.

Transferring to a more comfortable location for the challenger.

He appeared in a library sitting across from a beautiful woman.

“Dux?”

She smiled and shook her head. “No.” Now that he was looking, he could see the slight difference to what Dux had. If he examined it closely, it was Dux with a few minor parts shifted to be like Everlyn. Skin tone was a shade darker, nose a little more button like a freckle on the cheek near the ear. “No,” she repeated. “I’m Susie. This is an avatar created to be close to your perception of beauty.”

“I can see that. Sorry for the confusion.”

She beamed. She was literally the personification of beauty to him. His heart thumped at that expression he couldn’t help himself. It had done the same with Dux and he had gotten over her.

Dux had taught him a lot and one of them was that biological reactions did not need to flow through into your life choice.

“This is for you.” She handed him a piece of paper. “It’s your results.”

Tom deliberately did not look at it for a moment. “How did I do?”

“You can check.” Her smile was teasing.

“I know.”

She shifted her seating position. “Your battle instincts and on-the-fly tactics were off the chart even versus expectations. You had a couple of tactical errors in later stages, but they were more than offset by summoning the elemental to help with your Golem. You should be thrilled.” She nodded at the paper and he looked at it.

Result: Outstanding +

Tom glanced up at her, seeking clarity.

“The plus indicates you were on the borderline of qualifying for Exceptional. For example, in the second last challenge, if you had not got cut up by the sonic boom you would have got an Exceptional tag or if your meteorite had been aimed a fraction lower and knocked over that first target or if you had used the crown of clarity.”

“What?”

Her face softened. “Don’t worry the rewards between Outstanding plus and Exceptional barely differ. You’ll be assigned a rare title instead of epic and have one less sixty-four spell level bonus.”

Tom nodded. That did not sound like a huge blow… but the crown of clarity. If he had worn it, then his design of the golem would have been more efficient. Joy and anger warred within him.

“It would have made little difference.”

“Still stupid.” Tom admitted. “I was fixated only upon the golem. I didn’t even consider putting it on my head.”

Susie frowned. “It’s easy enough to do and the vast majority of decisions were correct. Nobody but GODs do perfection.”

Tom wasn’t sure that was correct. Not the nobody bit, but the GOD’s bit. He was sure from the temporary trials that the GODs made mistakes just like everyone else.

“Are you going to check your rewards?”

Heart thudding for a reason other than the gorgeous avatar sitting across from him, he opened the folder paper to read the details of his reward.

Challenge Trial - Earth Mage

Result: Outstanding Plus

• Spell: Earth Manipulation (Tier 0)
• Spell: Throw Rock (Tier1)
• Spell: Stone Skin Partial (Tier 2)
• Spell: Remote Earth Manipulation (Tier 3)
• Spell: Stone Golem (Tier 4)
• Spell: Harnessed Meteorite (Tier 4)
• Choice of any earth mage spell up to Tier 3
• 128 spell skill level (Tier 0) in all challenge acquired earth spells.
• Boost one spell by 128 spell skill level (Tier 0) to be assigned to the spell of choice
• Boost one spell by 64 spell skill level (Tier 0) to be assigned to the spell of choice (two times)
• Earth Affinity from 82 to 91
• Legendary Title: Stage Advancement (Earth)
• Epic Title: Earth Friend
• Rare Title: Stone Skin

Tom’s eyes immediately fell onto his new legendary title

Title: Stage Advancement (Earth): All Earth Spells will gain an additional threshold benefit.

• Awarded for: Outstanding performance in the first Challenge Trial (Rank 90) attempted.
• Legendary Title. Competition Rank: 1st, 500 Ranking points, 10,000 experience.

It took him a few moments to understand what it meant.

“My lord,” he whispered to himself when he registered what he meant. That was an extraordinary reward.