The next two months of Dan’s life quickly fell into a routine. He would sleep for about five hours, then wake up and run the obstacle course until he met whatever arbitrary time Daeson thought was appropriate.
Occasionally, the elf would change the course, lengthening the jumps, increasing the speed of the poles or forcing him to climb walls were common additions. Then, after the physical warmup, Dan would practice spellcasting with Daeson until he ran out of mana, at which point he would do cardio until his mana recovered.
After about ten hours, Daeson and him would share another meal, then he would practice for another five hours before going to bed. At first, shifting from a forty-hour day back to a twenty-hour “day” was a bit disorienting, but in those months, Dan never left the mansion, and the mana lighting synced to the new schedule.
At first, he worried about Nora, and what the woman was doing back in Morganville, whether she would keep combing the desolate landscape of Twilight for him, or if he had simply been left for dead, but Daeson’s practice schedule didn’t leave much time for introspection. If Dan wasn’t exercising physically or recovering from one of his brutal workouts, the elf would force him to study spellcraft.
Spellcasting practice took two different forms. Most days, Daeson would sit with Dan and explain the theory behind spellcasting for a period before observing him casting his spells. Dan knew he shouldn’t be surprised at the sophistication of the Tellask Empire’s magical theory and education. After all the Empire had been starfaring before Earth even invented agriculture, but it was still jarring each time someone who had never even seen indoor plumbing, let alone an airplane, rapped him across the knuckles for being ignorant. After he got over his shock, Dan quickly realized Daeson was right. It was partially how the System worked, but to date, all of his spells were instinctive. He would imagine an effect and hope that his experience would make things work out.
Daeson taught him how to cast spells more efficiently by having him slow down and shape mana in a much more mindful and purposeful fashion. Each time he would force Dan to isolate and focus on a specific aspect of the spell. At first, it was the amperage of Lightning Stroke and Shocking Fist. Then, Daeson made him analyze the specific electrical pulses that made up those spells to see if he could speed or slow the rate at which the spell operated.
Later, he made him focus on the specific makeup of the flammable gases generated in Flame Jet. Ultimately, Daeson made Dan realize that, although the spell was flashy and fun, it would never amount to much more. The speed that the gases needed to move at as they passed through the ignition flame to avoid burning the caster was simply too fast to expose a target for any real period of time. It was hot and bright, but the heat ended too quickly to do much against anything but eyes or other sensitive targets. The speed of the blast even made it difficult to start moderately flammable targets on fire.
Luckily, Daeson had a solution. Almost all high-level magic involved the fusion of multiple types of mana with certain utility fields, such as force and space. Daeson was overjoyed that Dan had a force affinity, as the elf specialized in force magic and immediately made him start working on the affinity. Even though Daeson couldn’t use fire magic himself, the elf was able to explain how force magic could be used to contain a ball of burning gas and plasma.
This led to a new spell, Fireball, which allowed Dan to launch a grapefruit-sized ball, which would explode at a specific range, toward a target. As an added effect, Fireball allowed him to keep the flammable gases under extreme pressure, giving the explosion a concussive effect that tended to knock Daeson’s target mannequin off of its feet. For some reason, despite Dan’s best efforts to name the spell ‘Firebolt’ the System kept returning an error, stating “Director’s Override: spell meets definition of spell ‘Fireball’. <USER> must name spell ‘Fireball’.’’ It didn’t really make much sense to Dan, but it seemed like a very Henry Ibis thing to do, so he just let the old man pick the spell’s name from afar.
In order to learn Fireball, Dan also learned his first force spell, which quickly became very useful. He dubbed it “Force Bubble” and it consisted of a melon-sized ball of energy that deflected most attacks. It was nowhere near as good as a full spell shield, but being able to quickly make a small shield was much better than nothing. Already, he was able to use it to soften the blows of the wooden poles on the obstacle course.
At first, Dan was afraid that Daeson would get angry at him for cheating, but the elf just grunted and pointed out that his magic was a part of him. So long as Dan didn’t damage the course, he was free to use whatever spells he wanted. After that epiphany, the combination of Force Bubble and Gravitational Easing made running the course much easier, which only led to Daeson immediately increasing the difficulty once more.
In fact, Daeson actively mocked him for not using his spells earlier. According to the elf, simply being able to cast a spell was only half of the struggle. The real challenge was being able to incorporate magic into combat or stressful situations.
Unfortunately, that only led to Daeson upping the difficulty of Dan’s daily routine by drinking wine and blasting him with low-level spells while he tried to improve his times on the obstacle course.
The other form of spellcasting practice wasn’t nearly as useful. On the days when Daeson imbibed too much wine, the elf would simply tell him to “practice his affinities,” then make some comment about how “proper affinities are the foundation of a mage” before retiring to his corner to nurse a hangover and mutter about how his colleagues had wronged him. Having attended public school, Dan was very familiar with unscheduled movie days when a teacher or professor would show up to class ten minutes late with a five o’clock shadow and smelling like a distillery. He simply didn’t comment and engaged in his quiet self-study time without bothering the elf.
After about sixty-five of Twilight’s longer days, Daeson approached Dan smelling like the bottom of a brandy bottle. The elf’s eyes were lidded and his gait had more than a couple stumbles interspersed in it. Dan had been halfway through a normal force affinity self study session, and he glanced up nervously at the elf. Daeson swayed slightly before bringing an amphora of red liquid to his mouth and taking another pull.
“Daniel,” he slurred, his sharp teeth stained red with an expensive vintage. “There’s something queer about you.”
Dan yelped in pain as he lost control of the mana flow to his force attunement stone, causing a wave of force to expand uncontrollably and knock him on his back. Brushing himself off, he sat up and glanced back at the elf.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Daeson.” He shrugged and stammered nervously. “I’m just trying to do what you tell me.”
“That’s the thing.” Daeson leaned up against a nearby wall. “Some of what I’m teaching you, you learn too fast. Your insights into that fire spell you’ve made were genius-level work. Other things, you’re so far behind. You don’t have a class, which is good, but you don’t have any sort of runescript on your body. No matter how good you are at casting spells, it’s not going to matter when you are that weak and slow.”
“Runescript?” Dan asked, cocking his head. “Like the stuff that’s on magic weapons and armor?”
Daeson threw up his hands, sloshing some of the wine onto the shoulder of his tunic. “There you go again! Everyone should know what runescript does, even if they don’t have the power to activate it. It’s like a class tattoo that you can run mana into to give yourself physical boosts. It’s an awful hassle to find someone who can inscribe the stuff, as it has to be custom made for the recipient. But without it, the sapient races are just too slow and weak to fight half of the galaxy’s denizens. Except the Orakh. They can fight just fine with their bastardized half-magic.”
“None of the humans I’ve talked to used runescript.” Dan frowned.
“Of course not,” Daeson shook his head, his tone as if he were chiding a child. “It takes years to learn how to inscribe runescript, and it takes years to properly attune it to someone else’s body. If you don’t do it right, you increase the strength or speed of one specific part of the person, which often leads to messy results. Arms swinging swords so fast they go flying off, hearts pumping so much blood that it results in massive hemorrhaging, skin so thick that the person can’t move their limbs, that sort of thing.”
“Sometimes, Daniel,” Daeson stopped and took another pull. “Sometimes I wonder where a genius like you came from. You have more potential than any noble scion I’ve ever met, but every time I talk to you, its like you were raised under a rock.”
Dan grew very still as Daeson strayed onto a dangerous line of questioning.
The drunken elf shrugged messily. “Still, it’s probably not something I actually want to know the answer to. You’re probably from some rival house’s private laboratory, broken free and trying to make something of himself. If I ask too many questions, I’ll probably find out that you aren’t a baseline human, and it would invalidate this experiment, and we can’t have that.”
The elf drunkenly chuckled as he gave Dan an overexaggerated wink. Dan exhaled in a whoosh of relief.
“Good news though, Daniel.” Daeson reached clumsily into a pouch he kept on his hip and fished around for a good two minutes before he pulled out a slightly-glowing needle. “You’re in the presence of a runecrafter of some notoriety. We can fix you up and get rid of all of those human imperfections. I’ll make you strong enough, fast enough, and tough enough to fight an Orakh. Then, once we prove to those idiots at the Academy that I’m right, we’ll put you out to stud. Even if you aren’t a standard human, we just need to get your genes out there, and we can make use of them.”
“What do you mean by notoriety?” Dan eyed the needle warily. “Usually people say that they’re famous rather than notorious when they’re bragging. Also, by way of clarification, what do you mean by putting me out to stud? I thought the point was to train me for combat?”
“Notorious.” Daeson rolled his eyes as he took a halting step towards Dan. “It’s just like being famous, except you melted a couple younglings. It was their fault, really; they kept squirming when I tried to craft the runes into them. If they sat still, it never would have been an issue, but no. They had to go and tarnish my reputation like that. Damn selfish wretches.”
“And what about this ‘stud’ thing?” Dan’s eyes were now locked on the needle.
The elf gave him a leering smile. “Well, Daniel, you’re simply too exceptional to waste on the front lines. We need your genes to breed the next level of human warriors. Once I prove my point to the Chancellor, we’ll find a nice place for you to retire, and I’ll get you a steady stream of human women. Soon, you’ll have thousands of sons and daughters for us to train for the war effort. With a couple potions of virility, you’ll have contributed more to the war effort than any human ever. You’ll be a positive hero of the Empire.”
