Chapter 19: Spells and Arrows

  Samson had now spent another day and a half walking down this goblin gauntlet of a brick road. This was a day and a half spent walking without his favorite skill so that he could have the time to practice with the bow. Thanks to his bonuses to regeneration and the relatively low cost of immaterial arrows, he was able to shoot his bow quite a bit. His standard practice of walking with Inexorable Stride consuming as much mana as he regenerated at the same time was now converted to him shooting arrows in much the same way. Now he was fairly confident at hitting a stationary target forty meters away from him. While he wasn’t the most accurate, he was thankful for the fact that the two spells he planned on using against any enemies didn’t require him to hit his foes anywhere specific, they just had to make contact. At the moment he still hadn’t found an exact solution to the pain brought by Dark Drain, so he tended to start engagements with the goblins by firing two arrows in what counted for his version of rapid succession on one target; one with Dark Drain cast on it and one with Soothing Light in order to not make the goblin he decided to shoot suffer. Then he would engage the rest in melee while the goblin that he shot slowly lost combat effectiveness until it perished. In his most recent run in with the green creatures, he was actually able to inflict Dark Drain on two of the goblin frontliners before having to engage the group in melee.

  While practicing his archery, he would section off a portion of his mental focus to getting better control over his mana and qi. Practicing archery largely became a repetitive physical task akin to meditation for him. Much of the improvement he felt like was up to developing the appropriate muscle memory once he was able to find a comfortable anchor position on his face when shooting. So as he shot his bow he would spend time shaping qi and mana in front of him. He started out by trying to form different shapes with the energies; simple ones at first like squares or triangles but even that was plenty difficult to make precise. It was like the difficulty involved with trying to draw a perfect circle by hand but without the fingers or the stability of a table and paper behind it. He would think back to the sensation of having both energies move simultaneously when using his thermos or when activating Inexorable Stride. The difference in the sensation was when through those avenues it felt like at least one of the two energies was pulled out from him while he controlled the other. In his mind it must have been something akin to a spiritual muscle memory that the system helped with when there was a structured way to use the energies present. Still there was one time that he remembered using both at the same time without aid from the system and that was when he used Inexorable Stride for the first time before the system labeled it a skill. It was like drawing two different pictures with either hand, at the time he was only really able to do it because of the quite frankly insane amount of stubborn focus he had on getting to the mountains. His efforts were not without reward though, he could feel himself improving and was certain that he would soon enough be able to try his idea of getting his qi to work with the enchantment on his bow.

  While he walked, he tried something with the spell matrix of Ephemeral Arrow that he hadn’t before. In the process of forming the arrow he changed the imagery he had in mind of the kind of arrow he wanted to make and pushed the spell to produce a two pronged arrow. It was a bit sloppy at first, the prong looking more like a second malformed head attached to the side of the main arrow head. Still it was a nice proof of concept and now he knew it was possible. Once he was able to get a better handle on producing these kinds of arrows, he wanted to try casting Soothing Light on one head and Dark Drain on the other, hopefully alleviating his need to shoot two arrows into the same target just so he could stop it from hurting so much. Pushing the spell matrix in this way was like making water flow through elastic plumbing that allowed you to make new paths if you pushed the flow properly but still resisted the new direction until the path properly opened. By his hundredth try however he was able to consistently make the two pronged arrows and the spell matrix seemed to be accepting it as a standard option for Ephemeral Arrow. When he ran into his next group of goblins, this time it was a lone hobgoblin, he used the two pronged arrow with both spells cast on it as its first real test. To his satisfaction, it looked like it worked as intended. The immaterial arrow made its mark on the nape of the hobgoblin’s neck which was facing away from him. He could see the creature swat at its neck as though it were just stung by an insect and not do much else. Sam conjectured the prong was slightly offset and the Dark Drain spell took effect a brief moment earlier than soothing light did. He was actually happy with this outcome because he wasn’t sure if soothing light would have prevented the pain of Dark Drain had it taken effect before Dark Drain was active. Also now he would be able to observe the process of Dark Drain taking effect and how it changed the soul and the physical body of the things that he hit with it.

  He watched from a distance with focused soul sight as the hobgoblin stood at its position none the wiser toward its impending demise. As Dark Drain ate its way through the soul structure, he could see Soothing Light forming a framework that took the place of the corrosion. In the moment of the delay between the corrosion of Dark Drain and the scaffolding of Soothing Light, he observed defects in the physical body of the hobgoblin. Its very existence seemed to waver at times, regaining stability whenever Soothing Light created a frame that held everything together. It wasn’t until Dark Drain was finished that the magic of Soothing Light lost its integrity and with it the hobgoblin dispersed into nothing. This time though, there was no form of enchanted equipment left behind. From his perspective, the mana cost of the two spells working together did not seem commensurate to their respective effects. The results were far too potent. Although to be fair, he didn’t have the most well-informed grasp on spellcasting and perhaps the efficiency was one of the many advantages of spell matrices.

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  Ideally, Sam wanted a single spell that combined the effects of Dark Drain and Soothing Light into a unified magic that did both things. Then again, he thought that if he could push against the very space between him and his destination until it manifested in his ability to cover vast distances that way, then nothing was really stopping him from trying to mold the things that were quite literally on the surface of his soul. It had to be easier to affect something that was a part of him rather than some arbitrary concept that existed in just the realm of the mind. He now had an idea in mind about what his next big goal would be, but he would spend more time trying to observe all of each spell’s individual effects before he started on another stubborn path that might end up killing him.

  Sam continued his path down the road, practicing spellcasting and archery alike. More and more he found himself being able to take out the foes before having progressively having to face the remainder in melee. With each encounter he was able to take more out with his magic and his bow before they could respond to his actions.

  Eventually he ran into what he decided would be his last encounter for the day before seeking the comfort of a tree’s secure embrace. It was the largest group of hobgoblins he had ever come across. There were three of them and the one in the middle looked taller and had a different coloration of skin. Its skin was very nearly a crimson red and was taller than even the two other hobgoblins that accompanied it; honestly it might have been taller than even Sam himself, it did still have the same kind of face and anatomy as the other hobgoblins though. It carried no weapons but adorning its head was a golden headband that reminded Sam of the tool used to control the monkey king of eastern legend. That thing has got to be magic and Sam, for one, could not wait to get his grubby little fingers on it. The hobgoblin to its right held a shield nearly as large as itself and the one to its left had a staff in hand that terminated in a glowing green orb. Preparing his favorite two pronged immaterial arrow, Sam cast his spells and let the arrow fly, aiming first for the one with a shield. These three hobgoblins were seemingly more skilled than usual as they all seemed to notice his attempts at a stealth attack. His target was able to intercept the arrow, luckily his intent for the spells he cast seemed to matter as the arrow went right through the shield, depositing its payload of spell effects into its intended target. For a moment Sam was afraid that the arrow would infect the soul of the shield instead of the soul of the hobgoblin but the additional effects of spell matrices seemed to have helped prevent that. Though his intuition told him that if his intended target was actually the shield that the corrosion would have affected it as normal. Surprise came to the creature’s face at the seeming lack of result from Sam’s actions. Before they could overcome the confusion Sam sent another spell laced arrow at the red one and another at the one with the staff. The arrow made contact with the leader but missed the staff wielder. By this point they were sprinting straight at him. Instead of engaging them in melee like he normally would, he instead played a game of cat and mouse with the trio. He used Inexorable Stride to great effect, essentially teleporting to the location where the trio initially stood whenever they were about to reach him for the first time. He continued on evading them as such until it reached a point where the three seemed to notice something wrong. What they noticed was their shield carrying companion dissolving into thin air. Sam could see that for whatever reason the effects of Dark Drain were taking longer than it did to finish off the one with the shield. When the two remaining creatures saw their companion essentially disappear, they stopped charging at Sam and instead the one with a staff seemed to frantically cast something with the staff that it held. He could see a green glow enveloping the red creature as the other finished casting its spell. He could see different magics trying and failing to take effect. The magic that was cast looked to be trying to fix something on a physiological level but Sam’s spell was not an affliction of the body but one of a malformed soul. Seeing the futility of the attempted cure, the duo resumed their chase of Sam, with Sam merely responding with his walking teleportation until such time as only the staff holder remained. At which point Sam teleported to it and pounded its face in while casting Soothing Light on the thing so that it didn’t have to suffer the pain of the beating before it too joined its companions. At the end of the entire thing, what remained was three pieces of equipment on the ground: a greatshield, a golden headband, and a staff. Before he could retrieve the spoils of his battle a flurry of messages from the system came.

  [The Tutorial Trial Goblin Road Gauntlet has been completed]

  [A tutorial mini-boss the Hobgoblin Berserker has been deafeted]

  [You have completed a trial meant for parties rather than individuals]