"What the hell? This place again?" It's been an enjoyable day and a half for Mari, especially with all the fights she was having because of the near-constant stream of monsters. It was a comfortable pattern for her; she would wander around the manor, kill every monster she could find in the area, rest up for a bit before repeating the cycle. Mari even encountered a group of students! Sadly, they ran away screaming before she could offer any of the food she was eating. When that happened, she just shrugged, figuring they must have been a group that easily startled and that they should be more careful lest they attract more monsters with all their screaming, before she continued eating her stuffed corpse.
However, it didn't take long before Mari started getting bored fighting such weak monsters. It even got to the point where she would leave behind piles of monsters' corpses due to how tedious it got harvesting them, with her only bothering with the rarer ones. During her time exploring the mansion, she realized three things about it. First, the mansion does not play by the rules of normal reality. Hallways stretched for miles, large rooms found inside smaller ones, stairs in the attic that lead you straight up to the basement, and countless others.
Second, unlike in the graveyard, monster corpses disappear quickly after they die. Mari figured this one out when she noticed how some of the bodies she left behind would rapidly start to rot and turn into dust if left untouched long enough. Luckily, this rapid decay doesn't happen to harvested materials or corpses actively being interacted with. Mari even sometimes uses this fact to tell if a monster has actually died or is just faking it. It's tough to be ambushed by a monster pretending to be a corpse when it's the only body in a pile that hasn't rotted away.
Lastly, the mansion would occasionally shift its walls. Dead ends would appear where there were none, while others would disappear to create winding hallways. New doors appear while old ones wither away. New hallways would appear in rooms, dividing them into two, while others disappear, merging several rooms into one large one. Some of the rooms would even shift if you were in them, resulting in you finding yourself in a completely different area of the mansion than you were before.
The only rooms seemingly immune to the mansion's shifting nature were a handful of key rooms. Due to their unchanging natures, these rooms have quickly become landmarks for the people traversing the mansion. This includes Mari, who likes to use these areas as resting spots so she doesn't have to deal with the room moving with her in it. The fixed rooms that Mari was able to find were the kitchen, dining room, two bathrooms, the main stairway to the basement, the main ladder to the attic, the master bedroom, the back door leading to the garden, the parlour room, the library, and, recently, the room Mari found herself in once more.
It was a large room with grey stone brick walls covered in moss. The room was mostly empty, besides several chains along the walls and a ritualistic-looking circle that covered the entire floor. "This is like the fourth time this day I stumbled into here, and from the looks of it, it hasn't changed since the last time. Hmm, does this mean this is a fixed point like the other rooms?" Mari placed her bag down on the ground and started looking around the room. "But why? I kinda get why the others would be fixed points, but why this one? What makes this room so special?" Mari took a closer look at the circle carved into the stone floor. "Maybe this has to do with it? It does look important enough to mean something." She squinted her eyes. "Wait, it kinda looks familiar, but where would I have seen something like this?"
Mari racked her brain for any possible information she could remember that might help her solve this mystery. Just as she was about to give up and walk away, a memory of one of the magic lessons she had with Alex hit her.
"Ugh! Why isn't the fucking spell working!"
"It's because you're trying to rush the spell and cut corners." Alex handed her a Mana potion, which she happily took from him and downed in a few gulps.
"Thanks." Mari handed the empty bottle back to Alex. "How can Sera and you cast spells so fast while I can't? At this rate, I'll never be able to use magic in a fight."
"For one, both of us had years of practice, while you only had a few weeks. It's a bit unrealistic for you to think you'll be able to cast spells like us with only a handful of lessons. Second, before you can even think about increasing your casting speed, you first need to be able to cast the spell."
"Well, why do I keep messing up? Don't you have, what did you two call it, Arcane Sight? So you should be able to see what I'm doing wrong." Alex nodded.
"Yeah, and I already told you what you're doing wrong. You're not finishing your spells because you're trying to rush and cut corners. This results in the spell not fully forming and fizzling out before it can be cast. Just try again, but this time take it slow and try to visualize every part of the spell fully."
"Fine, but can we at least take a break? I feel like my brain is going to fry."
"Sure, I could go for a break." The duo sat on the ground of the training field, discussing whatever came to mind.
"So what were you reading about?"
"Hmm?" Mari pointed at the thick textbook next to Alex.
"While I was practicing, I noticed you were deeply immersed in reading something. What was it?"
"Oh, that's what you mean." Alex grabbed his textbook, opened it and pulled out what looked like a leather-bound journal, which he was using as a bookmark. Before Mari could ask what the journal was, Alex stored it away in his Storage pouch and showed the book's contents.
"Physical Magics, Enchanting and Rituals? I thought you already knew how to enchant?"
"I do, what I'm curious about is rituals," Alex placed the textbook down on his lap.
"What about physical magics? What even is that anyway?"
"It's just a term used for magic that has a physical form in some way. For example, most artifacts would be considered physical magics."
"Ah, that makes sense," She nodded. "So what about rituals? This is the first time I've heard of them. Are they also a type of physical magic?"
"Correct, as they need a physical medium to work. As for what they are, well, I guess you can think of it as a method people use to cast spells above their abilities via some form of sacrifice." Mari's eyes lit up.
"What kind of spells? And sacrifice? That sounds wicked!"
"The kind of spell depends on the type of ritual you're doing. Also, usually it's not the kind of sacrifice you're probably thinking of. It's typically something plain like more Mana than what you would usually use for the spell." Mari deflated at his answer.
"Aw, then what's the point?"
"Well, as I said earlier, it's a method people use to cast spells that they typically couldn't. There are also other upsides to using rituals, like allowing multiple people to help, chaining them to increase the range of the spell, maintaining a temporary effect for a longer period of time and depending on the ritual, doing things people normally can't do."
"Oooo, what kind of things?" She asked, her curiosity thoroughly piqued. Alex flipped through the textbook to a specific page before showing it to Mari. "Common Familiars and Their Respective Summoning Rituals." She read out loud. "Familiars? Is that similar to how you bond with a golem?"
"Kind of, you see, a Familiar is a bonded monster that some Spell slingers, typically more fragile ones, use as bodyguards, for physical labour, or as someone a supportive spell caster can buff in a battle. Before you ask, no, not all monsters can become Familiars." Alex added before Mari could get her hopes up. "For a monster to be able to become a Familiar, it needs to have three requirements. One, the monster can't be stronger than the spell caster trying to bond with it. Two, the monster can't be too aggressive and has to be intelligent enough to follow orders. Lastly, it has to be a monster that can be bribed."
"Bribed?" He nodded.
"Yup, bribed. Any other kinds of incentives, like harming or threatening the monster, do not work. Doing anything like that will result in the bond between the spell caster and the monster breaking."
"I see, then what kinds of bribes are we talking about?"
"Pretty much anything the monster might want. Let's use elementals, the most common type of Familiar, as an example. They, more so than most types of monsters, require Mana to sustain themselves. So a spell caster can easily bribe an elemental they bonded with by offering them a steady supply of their own Mana." Mari nodded along.
"That makes sense," Mari slightly frowned as a thought popped into her mind. "Having a Familiar sounds awesome and super useful. Why don't I see more people, especially Spell slingers like you and Crystal, having them?"
"Well, it could be any number of reasons, including the person being unable to form a bond, lack of needed resources for the bribe, and most commonly, lack of innate compatibility with the available monsters to bond with."
"That's a thing? People have compatibility with certain monsters?" Alex did a so-so gesture with his hand.
"Eh, it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist of it."
"How about you? Why don't you have a familiar?"
"Hmm," Alex hummed while tapping his fingers on the textbook. "Well, at a base level, people typically can only have one Familiar at a time. I have already done something similar enough that I don't think I'll be able to bond with another monster. There is a chance that I am wrong, but setting up the nesseray ritual is costly and time-consuming, so I don't really want to risk it."
"Wait, you have something similar to a Familiar? Can I see it?" Alex shook his head.
"Sadly, probably not."
"Aw, but you would show me if you could?" He hesitantly nodded. "Awesome!"
"How about you?" Alex asked, trying to change the subject. "Would you like to get a Familiar ?"
"Eh, not really. Unlike with a golem, getting a Familiar sounds too much like getting a pet, and I don't have the patience for that."
"Fair enough, it's not for everyone."
"Then what about the summoning rituals? The fact that they are in the same chapter in your textbook means they must be connected, right?" He nodded.
"Correct. Before you can even start the bonding ritual, you first need to acquire the monster you can attempt to bond with. You can go about this in one of three ways. You can set up the necessary rituals inside a Rift, capture the desired monster before attempting to bond with it. You can look for and capture a monster that lives outside of a Rift before doing the ritual. Or you can use a Summoning Ritual to summon a specific variant of monsters and hope you get the one you want."
"Summoning Rituals? That sounds interesting. How do they work?"
"Summoning Rituals are interesting, especially with the fact that they are one of the only spells that don't have a non-ritual version. As for how they work, well, you can think of them as temporally artificial Rifts people use to pull monsters into this reality."
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
"You mention how you can summon a specific variant of monsters. How does that work, and is it possible to guarantee getting the one you want?"
"There is a different ritual for each variant of monsters. There is a ritual to summon elemental monsters, one for undead, one for spectres, one for incestiod, and so on and so on. Also, there is no man-made ritual that can summon a specific monster, only ways to raise your chance of summoning the one you want. Some examples include sacrificing the core of the desired monster, sacrificing body parts or other items associated with the monster, and conducting the ritual in a Rift that naturally has them." Alex paused to think. "Well, if you did the last one, you might be better off finding and capturing the monster instead of wasting time with the summoning ritual." Mari nodded in agreement before thinking over something Alex had said.
"No man-made ritual? Isn't all ritual man-made?"
"Technically, yes, but no." Mari furrowed her brow and frowned.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"To put it simply, some Rifts can contain rituals. Either because a monster, usually a Boss monster, had made it, it was naturally created as part of the environment, or because the ritual plays an important role in the Rift."
"Ah! I see that makes sense!" Mari quickly glanced down at the textbook before turning to face Alex again. "I understand the first two, but what does playing an important role in the Rift mean?"
"It depends on the Rift. For example, a Boss monster might be immortal until a ritual in their arena is activated, or maybe it's required to activate a ritual even to have access to the Boss. Either way, it should be obvious when a ritual is required, so you don't have to worry about that." Mari nodded along at his explanation.
"Can you fail to bond with a monster? You make it sound like that's a possibility earlier."
"Yeah, failing to bond with the monster is quite common, and most people need several attempts before they succeed once. If you are planning to get a Familiar, keep in mind that failing the bonding ritual too many times will result in the monster becoming impossible to bond with."
"How many attempts can you have before that happens?"
"Depends on the monster. As you might have guessed, monsters don't like to be confined or restrained, meaning the longer you take, the more agitated they tend to be, and you can't bond with a hostile monster."
"Ah, that makes sense." The duo spent another few minutes resting before Alex got up and asked if Mari wanted to continue training. Seeing Mari agree, Alex went ahead and started making his way to the other side of the field. Getting up, Mari took one last glance at the textbook Alex had left behind, which was opened to the page on Familaris and Summoning Rituals, before running ahead to catch up with Alex.
"Ah! That's why it looks so familiar! It's a Summoning Ritual!" Mari squinted her eyes. "Or at least some form of one. But why would there be a room dedicated to a Summoning Ritual here? And why would it be a fixed point?" Racking her mind, an idea popped into her mind. "Of course! It's to summon a Boss! Wait, why would that be the case if killing a Boss isn't required to leave this Rift?" She mulled over the question some more. "Maybe it isn't for any normal Boss, but a mega ultra secret Boss! Yes! That has to be it!" Mari looked down at the ritual circle on the ground with manic eyes and a wide, toothy grin. "I don't know if the ritual size correlates with what appears, but one this size has to summon a mega powerful Boss! And from the looks of it, all this ritual needs is the sacrifice before I can activate it!" Mari's drooped, and her body lost a bit of its energy.
"The question is, what do I use as the sacrifice? Given that it is a naturally occurring one, I doubt the ritual will accept any old offerings. But what can I possibly offer it? Hmm," Mari rubbed her chin while humming as she thought hard on what to place in the ritual circle. "I got it! What would a ritual to summon a potentially mega Boss want? The bodies of lesser Bosses to prove to it that I'm strong enough to fight it!" Mari slowly got more and more pumped up as the thought of feeding the ritual the corpses of other Bosses and potentially getting to fight a mega ultra Boss rooted in her mind. "Hahahahaha! I'm a genius! Ooo, I can't wait to see what appears once I finally activate the ritual!" However, remembering her teacher's warnings, Mari took the time to take a calming deep breath before she could blindly rocket forward and potentially mess something up. "Phew. But before I can fight my mega ultra Boss, I first need to find and kill lesser ones so I can sacrifice them to the ritual. Hmm, that shouldn't be that hard. With how big this place is and how many monsters there are, I'm sure I'm bound to encounter a Boss sooner or later."
With a plan in mind and a goal to strive for, Mari left the ritual room with a skip in her step. Only to come back a few minutes later when she realized she had forgotten her bag in the room.
-Living Islands-
"Raven, how long do we have left!?" Jack asked as he continued cutting up logs and tying them together with the rest. The moment the task was given, the twelve students immediately sprang into action. Two teams went back into the jungle to collect as many logs as they could. One team gathered materials such as plant fibres, tree bark, and thick vines, anything that could be used to tie the logs together. While the last team, Jack and Raven, started working on building a raft big enough to fit everyone and strong enough to withstand the large water elemental stalking the ocean shores.
"Do you really fucking have to ask that right now!?" Raven shouted back without slowing his work. "Just turn around, and you'll see the giant cloud of man-eating insects flying straight towards us!"
"It's because the swarm is so large that it's hard to tell how close they are!"
"Ugh, just answer the fuck question, man!" Another student working on the raft groaned. " I can't focus with all this yelling!"
"Fuck! Fine!" Raven quickly glanced back at the swarm, turned back to continue his work while doing some quick mental calculations. "At minimum, we have just over an hour until the swarm reaches the edge of the jungle!"
"Thirty minutes?!" Shouted another student who was reinforcing the raft. "Where the hell are the others?! Because at this rate, we might have to leave without them!"
"Don't worry about that now! Just continue working, and we'll deal with that problem when we get there!" With the time they have left slowly ticking down, the four students redoubled their efforts.
Estimated time left before the swarm arrives: T minus 60 minutes
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"It's not my fault! You're the one who was holding it at a weird angle!"
"Both of you shut up and focus!"
T minus 58 minutes
"Shit, it shattered!"
"Jack! Less strength! This wood isn't as sturdy as the others!"
"I'm sorry! I'll cut this part off and redo it."
"Don't bother, the log is beyond saving, toss it away and start working on the next one."
T minus 55 minutes
"Ugh!"
"Jack, what happened?! Are you ok?!"
"Yeah, but I think we might want to pick up the pace." Raven quickly glanced towards Jack's direction.
"Fuck," He softly muttered under his breath when he saw the cut in half corpse of what he assumed to be a Ruby Eye Wasp scout.
T minus 50 minutes
"Are you sure you three don't need my help?" Jack asked while slicing the head off a Ruby Eye Wasp that was scurrying away before piercing the thorax of another, pinning it to the ground. "Because I feel I can do more than hunt down any nearby monsters." He sliced its head clean off as well.
"Positive! You're the fastest one here, so just focus on killing any scouts that wander over here! The last thing we need is one of them getting away and attracting the swarm towards us."
"Aren't they already heading over here?"
"They still need to gather food, especially for the queen, who is most likely at the center of the swarm, slowing them down. However, that all changes if a scout manages to escape and notify the rest of the swarm that a group of humans is nearby! That is also why killing the other nearby monsters is so important. It also makes it less likely that other scouts or stronger variants of Ruby Eye Wasp get attracted by the scent of food to our location. So focus on making sure that doesn't happen and leave the building of the raft to us!"
"Roger, Captain!" Raven furrowed his brow and paused for a brief moment before continuing his work.
"Captain? What the hell is that about?"
"Ah, well," Jack rubbed the back of his neck while crushing the head of a Ruby Eye Wasp he caught. "You see, another friend of mine likes to call someone that, so I kinda figured it would be funny to give it a try."
"-Sigh- It's really not the right time for that kind of thing, right now."
"Hahaha," Jack awakdaly laughed. "My bad."
T minus
"We're back with the wood!" Three students burst through the tree lines carrying several logs with them.
"About fucking time! We were just about out. Bring them over here and help us build this thing! We don't have time for you to get more, so we'll have to make do with this for now."
T minus 47 minutes
"What can we use to make the sails?"
"Hmm, I think I have some spare clothes I can sew into sails." Answered one student.
"I also saw some palm trees down the shore; we could probably make a sail with them." Replied another.
"You sure you're fine ruining your clothes for this?"
"Yeah, aren't they quite expensive? Because the ones I bought definitely are."
"Not really, I only brought cheap ones that I wouldn't care about destroying. I figured this test would be a lot like going camping, so I packed items as if that were the case."
"Damn, why didn't I think of that? The only spare clothes I brought along were my training outfit."
"Sorry, I can't pitch in." He waved his friend's concern away. "Maybe we can ask the others if they have any spare clothes or anything similar."
"Looks like we have two solid plans. How about this, while the two of us," he gestured to himself and the second student. "Go down and gather some palm leaves. You can start working on the cloth sail. Along the way, we can also ask the other students if they have anything that can be used for the cloth sail. Once we have our two sails, we can test to see how well they hold up. If both are good enough, we can use them as our sails. If not, we can always create a new sail out of the material that held up the best. If neither of them works, well, all we can do is hope it doesn't come to that."
"That works for me."
"Same." The two students immediately headed down the shore, leaving their friend to take out his spare clothes, cut them into sheets and start on his work of sewing them into a usable sail.
T minus 44 minutes
"We're back!" Another group of three arrived at the shore, this time carrying various materials including bundles of plant fibres, tree bark, sap, sturdy monster hair, slime, muscus and thick vines.
T minus 40 minutes
"Do we have any extra rope left?!"
"No, just the ones that are meant for the plan, but we have some leftover vines!"
"-Sigh- It will have to do, pass it over!"
"Catch!"
"Ah! What the hell?!"
"I said to catch it!"
"Why you!"
"Focus! You two can tear at each other later!"
"Sorry./ Sorry."
T minus 35 minutes
"Ugh, you sure we have to use this stuff?"
"Positive. This slime is very hydrophobic, which will help reduce drag and hopefully allow us to get enough speed to outpace the water elemental. The mucus will help keep the wood together while plugging up any future leakage."
"Ugh, fine, I'll start coating the raft with these things."
"Great! Now, while you do that, I'll head over and see what other tasks still need to be done."
"Hey! Get back here! If I have to handle this stuff, then you're helping me!"
T minus 30 minutes
"We're back!" The last group of students entered the shore, carrying with them the last of the logs.
"What took you three so long! I thought we would have to leave without you guys!"
"Hey, it's not our fault. The monsters in the jungle are in a frenzy because of the approaching swarm. We had to fight our way through waves of monsters to get the logs and make it back on time. We didn't even have the chance to harvest the monster we killed." One of the students in the group argued.
"Also, unlike the other group, we don't have a Spellcaster or swordsman who can easily cut the logs we need." Another added. "I had to uproot the trees before snapping off the top and bottom of them."
"Ok, ok, you made your point. I'm sorry. Wait, what's that on the threes?" The three students turned to look at what they were pointing at, their bodies twisting in the process, revealing several Ruby-Eyed Wasps attached to the logs.
"Ah! Get it off of me! Get it off of me!" At the sudden motions, the wasps leaped off the logs and started fleeing deeper into the jungle, towards the rest of the swarm.
"Hurry, kill it before it gets away!" The students all simultaneously sprang into action to kill the wasps, inadvertently getting in each other's way. However, they were able to quickly get out of each other's way and chase after the fleeing wasps.
"Phew, I think that's all of them."
T minus
It came out of nowhere. At one moment, Raven was busy reinforcing the raft while keeping an eye on the swarm's movements. Then, before Raven knew it, he noticed a sudden shift within the swarm before the cloud of insectoid monsters started rushing straight towards their location. "Everyone! Get over here, it's time to leave! We need to get this raft in the water ASAP!"
"What?! I thought we had at least ten minutes left?!"
"Something attracted the swarms' attention! They are heading straight towards us while ignoring the other monsters on the way!"
"Fuck! Ok, everyone, let's get this show on the road!" Abandoning the leftover logs and other materials, eight students, along with Jack and Raven, started pushing the raft into the ocean. While the last two ran towards the jungle.
"Where are those two going?"
"Don't worry about it! They are just executing Plan Firewall!" The two students took out several bottles, mixed them, and poured the foul-smelling pink liquid on the sand on the edge of the jungle. Pouring everything they had, one student ran back towards the raft while the other weaved a simple flame spell. Taking a stick, the student lit a branch on fire, took a few steps back and threw the burning piece of wood onto the liquid before rushing to catch up with his friend.
"Plan what?"
-Boom!-
A colossal wall of flames ignited, creating a burning barrier that separated the jungle and the coast. "Ah, I see."
"Enough gawking and focus on getting this hunk of wood into the water!" With everyone working together, pushing the raft, it entered the water with a large splash. A few of them hopped on the raft, while those who didn't continued pushing it deeper into the water before jumping on. With everyone, the only two Spell slingers of the group conjured a steady flow of wind into the sails, quickly pushing the raft deeper into the ocean.
While staying vigilant, the students allowed themselves a brief moment to look back at the island they had just left. Just in time to see the wall of fire die down before the black cloud of angry, monstrous wasps descended onto the shore. "Phew," Jack let out a sigh of relief. "Looks like we managed to escape on time."
"Don't celebrate too early." Raven's gaze locked onto something in the ocean. "The elemental is heading our way."
REALMS Printable Premade Character Sheets
Character #15
Crystal Waterbloom -
Realm of Origin: Aetheria --- Current Realm: _______
Player Name: ___________
Party Members:
Current Chapter [ ]
Health:[ ] --- Stamina:[ ] --- Mana:[ ] --- Trait Limit: [ / ]
Traits: Arcane Sense: Sight[3], Ice Magic Prodigy[10], Magic Prodigy[10]. Specialist [Magic].
2
Additional Information:
Player Name: ___________ | Age:___ | Height:___ | Weight:___ | Eyes:___ | Skin:___ | Hair:___ |
]
- Born into a long line of Water mages.
- Is self-conscious about her lack of skill in water magic.
- Average memory but great at studying.
- Loves magic, especially ice magic.
- Chose to go to Starage Academy to improve her magical skills.
- [If the GM allows, you can swap Ice Magic Prodigy for a Magical Prodigy Trait of equal or lesser value.]
3
Spellcaster___ | Sub Classess: Mage__________________________________
Known Spells/Techniques:
Starts with the following spells: Freeze, Boost, Icicle Spear, and Ice Armour.