Fork This Life!

Chapter 40: It’s Time To D-D-D-Duel Some Fools

A halfling, an elf, a fairy, and a fork. We make for a strange bunch, to say the least, and none of us look physically imposing. I don’t want to sound cynical… But it was only a matter of time before someone tried to pick on us.

I wasn’t expecting it to happen when it did, as we were walking down one of the hallways towards the library, but it wasn’t too surprising - the hallway was empty, and they obviously thought it was the perfect opportunity.

The three of them, going in the opposite direction, deliberately barged into us as we were walking, immediately knocking Iueia to the ground, light as he is.

Immediately, the large boy leading the trio says menacingly, “Get out of our way, pipsqueaks, or someone’s gonna get hurt.”

In response, Lamar punches him straight in the face, breaking his nose. He looks ready to move onto the other ones, so I hurriedly pull on him with telekinesis.

“Lamar, stop!” I exclaim. “Injuring other students outside of the duelling grounds is grounds for fines or expulsion!”

Lamar pauses, and they guy he punched reels back, wiping blood from his nose. “Like I care, idiot. Nobody knows we’re here! Trash their asses!” He snarls. His two friends raise their fists.

“Nobody except the teacher that will round the corner behind us in ten seconds.” I reply.

The three of them pause for a moment, before one of the others says, “You’re lying. No way you could know that.”

“Well, you’ll only have to wait about three more seconds to find out.” I say.

The utter certainty in my voice actually makes them stop for a few seconds and look at the hallway intersection, some twenty meters behind us. Iueia takes the opportunity to get back up. A couple seconds later, a woman in the distinctive teacher’s robe steps around the corner.

“Got lucky this time, pipsqueak.” The leading boy spits, turning around and starting to walk back the other way. “Next time, you won’t be.”

“Then how about we settle this in a duel?” I call after them.

They stop. “A duel?” Their leader turns. “You’re on, fork boy.”

…That was a good pun, but the sad thing is, I don’t think he intended it to be what it was.

“Is there a problem here?” A voice comes from behind us.

Spark starts saying, “Yeah, they - Mmh!” Of course, if the teacher found out about Lamar breaking a student’s nose, whatever the situation, it wouldn’t be ideal, so I force his mouth shut with telekinesis.

“No problem, miss.” I say calmly. “We have decided to settle our dispute in an official duel.”

“Is this true?” She asks, looking at the other boy’s group.

“Yes, miss.” He says, without even a hint of the aggression his voice held before.

She narrows her eyes, looking between our two groups.

“If it reassures you, you could escort us to the duelling grounds.” I propose.

The teacher looks to her wrist: at a watch-like magical tool. Wish I had one. “I have a few minutes spare.” She nods. “But quickly now.”

The teacher hastens us towards the duelling grounds, and only leaves us once she’s found the teacher overseeing duels and brought us to them.

“Let me guess, a duel between the two of your groups?” The teacher asks.

“Yeah.” Says the leader of the other group.

“Actually, I was thinking more me versus their group.” I reply.

A barrage of rebuttals comes from behind me.

“Wait, what?” Iueia says, confused.

Lamar furrows his brows. “What are you doing, Gerald?”

“Are you insane?” Spark sputters.

“Insane? Not since I was about eight months old.” I reply. “Just trust me on this.”

“Something’s not right here. He’s too confident.” One of them whispers.

“It’s a one on three now, what more advantage do you want?” I say to them. “How about I keep one arm tied behind my back – oh, wait, I don’t have any.”

“Alright, no more arguing.” The teacher cuts in. “Is the duel happening or not?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s happening. If only to get that guy to shut up.” Their leader replies.

We register our names and races, and because I’m such a nice guy, I pay the duel fee – fifty Rho. I carry my card and library card most of the time, just in case. The fee covers use of the duelling room, teacher supervision and healing, if necessary. It’s also a deterrent for people using the duels to settle every single argument and crowd the rooms twenty-four seven.

As it is, there are several rooms available. We get guided to one of them, a small one, since as first year students we don’t really need large amounts of space. We enter, along with the duel referee, and take up our positions at opposite ends of the room. On the surface, these rooms look exactly like the practice rooms, but functionally they’re anything but.

“Do you want this duel to be private or open?” The referee asks.

“Open.” I answer. “My friends outside will want to watch.”

The referee looks to the other group, who collectively shrug. The referee pushes a button on the controller in his hands. There’s no visible change, but I know that the walls are now like a one-way mirror – we can’t see out, but they can see and hear what’s going on in here. Naturally, there is magic in place to block out light and sound beyond a certain intensity and volume.

“Activating dampener.” The referee says, and I drop to the ground.

“Are you okay?” He asks, concerned.

“Don’t worry, I knew this would happen.” I reassure him. “My flight is based on a psychic ability.”

The rooms also negate non-magical abilities: ki, psi, and so on. This is to ensure that the duels are based purely on magical skill and power. Having read through the rule book long ago, I was well aware of this.

Knowledge is power. I know all about my opponents: students in their third term, they took identical classes to ensure they stayed together. They are magically gifted, but not academically so, and have had difficulty in their learning, which led to them doing only three classes in their current and previous term. They specialise in fire elemental destruction magic, and also know some earth magic. They’re vocal casters, and as far as I can tell, they’re at pretty low levels. I know practically everyone in this school, except for people who stay in cloaked areas most of the time, like teachers, librarians, alchemists, artificers and so on.

On the other hand, they know absolutely nothing about me, besides the obvious.

“Very well. Then, if both parties are ready…” The referee prompts.

The others nod. I say, “Ready.”

The referee nods. “Then let the duel begin in 3, 2, 1, go!”

My opponents act as soon as they hear the word go, their lips moving to cast a spell, but I move quicker, beginning to act the very moment he finishes enunciating the word ‘go’. The very first thing I do is form a magic circle in front of me using my mana, completing it almost instantly. A blinding light emanates from it, causing them to curse and cover their eyes.

As the one closest to it, I naturally am the one who gets the most light in my eye, but it does nothing but cause my ‘eye’ to become blind for a few moments, while I can still see perfectly through mana sight.

I send out three balls of mana, not dense enough to be visible to normal sight, towards the three of them. They aren’t travelling particularly fast, so before they manage to reach, the three of them have recovered and started casting. From the sound of it, they’re casting fireballs. I can probably take them without taking much damage, but it’d be stupid to risk that for no reason.

Drawing out some more mana, I create another formation in front of myself, creating a small wall of earth that blocks the fireballs. Since they have no actual mass or force, even something like this can stop them. Normally, even the excess heat from blocking this would be enough to burn, but I don’t burn.

Seeing my wall, two of them split off to the sides to attack from an unblocked angle.

Remembering that assignment I had for earth magic a while ago, I form another formation, creating walls all around me. At this point, my mana has reached each of them, so I begin shaping them into formations beneath their very feet, unbeknownst to them. I start with the one to my left for no particular reason.

The formation this time is a simple fire spell, but I turn up the heat. Almost immediately, the bottom of his robes catch alight, and he starts to scream in pain as his legs burn. I wince internally.

“Samuel eliminated!” The referee calls out.

Hearing that, I stop the spell, and he is carried away to the referee, who extinguishes the fire with ease and starts to heal him.

I start forming the second formation under their leader’s feet but abandon it in mere seconds as he casts some sort of fire or heat resistance spell – another weakness of vocal magic is that it can give your opponent an idea of what magic you’re casting. I mean, assuming the opponent can see your formation, they can theoretically do the same thing, but it’s much more difficult.

Since the leader was a no-go, I instead opt for the third, who apparently either isn’t able to cast the same spell or didn’t realise that it’s a good idea, and instead hurls another useless fireball at me. Soon after, he is eliminated as well.

Only the leader remains, and fire magic isn’t an option. My offensive options with earth magic are limited. Unlike fire, earth has relatively large weight, so making it a projectile is currently outside of my realm of abilities. Light magic is a delaying tactic at best. But does that mean I’m out of offensive options?

Not in the slightest. As he creates an earthen spike and starts to stride towards me with a smile that says he’s already won – as if he could actually damage me with that – it is the re-emergence of an old skill, seldom used in actual combat.

Say hello to my old friend: magic missile.

A dozen needles of mana form in the air above me. His eyes widen; the mana is condensed sufficiently to be visible to the human eye. I send them speeding towards him. With a cry of “Earth wall”, he creates just that, obviously thinking that would block them. He is gravely mistaken.

While I may not be able to control a dozen needles individually, it’s well within my abilities to have them split to either side around the wall and back at him. I should also mention that the mana that was originally going to go into the formation beneath where he was standing didn’t just dissipate; I wasn’t going to waste mana like that. I held it in the cloud-like shape it was in until now, when I form into another half-dozen needles coming at him from the rear.

He’s not wearing armour. His clothing isn’t even that thick. None of the needles are particularly powerful, but each of them is enough to penetrate about a centimetre deep. Nothing life-threatening, particularly as I avoided all of his internal organs and arteries, but more than enough to stop him from continuing the fight. With every limb and his torso peppered with puncture wounds, he’d have to have fighting spirit to be able to put up a fight now – and he really isn’t the type to have fighting spirit.

Not to mention he’s out of mana.

“Maurice eliminated! Gerald wins!” The referee announces, quickly pressing a button on his controller. I feel the restriction on my psi lifting, and I lift myself back into the air, letting all my spells and magic missiles dissipate.

I hadn’t moved from my starting position. I still have over half my mana. I doubt they’ll bother us again.

The door opens back up, and I head out. The others are just outside, of course, and they stare at me, slack jawed. “So, we were heading to the library?” I say.

It’s almost the end of term and similarly, nearly the end of the year. I’m in Dreyer’s house at the other world, practicing a bit of Terran. I probably won’t practice it much more, I think I’ve got it pretty much down for the most part. Maybe I’ll start learning Ignitae.

“Gerald?” Dreyer says, coming through the portal. “Are you busy?”

“Not really, what’s up?” I reply.

“Well, I’ve been back at the academy for nearly half a year now,” Dreyer starts, sitting down at the table, “and I’ve been thinking that it’s about time I’m off again.”

“As in, you’re going world jumping?” I ask, just to confirm.

“Yeah. I wanted to give you some notice in advance, since you pretty much live here.” Dreyer replies. “I’m planning to go after this term ends.”

“Guess I’ll need to pay for a bunk in the dorm.” I muse. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Out of curiosity, is there a particular reason you travel to different worlds?”

Dreyer nods. “Almost every world I go to has a particular focus. A particular ability or skill, or idea that the whole world focuses on. The elemental worlds are the most obvious examples, so obvious that they’re outside of the norm. But even Arbadak – magic. Here, it’s all forest, not that I’ve explored much. I’ve seen worlds where almost every warrior uses the same weapon, societies where seamsters are considered nobles. I want to find out why that is.”

“That is odd.” I reply. “Something like that can’t be a natural occurrence, not if it’s almost every world and with varied focuses. Something or someone would have to cause it.”

“That’s what I thought.” Dreyer agrees. “My best guess so far is that it’s the gods. But anything related to the gods is difficult to dig into.”

“I can imagine.” I reply. “So, when do you think you’ll be back?”

Dreyer shrugs. “Hard to say. Whenever I feel it’s time. Probably over a year.”

“I suppose I won’t see you for a while, then.” I say. “Well, thank you for bringing me here, and best of luck on your journeys.”

“And to you in your studies.” He replies.

The dorm isn’t expensive, but it is one more expense than I had before and they’re slowly adding up. Not a problem right now, but at some point I’ll have to find a source of income. At the same time as organising that, I update my information with the academy to include my new residence.

I don’t have many possessions, so it doesn’t take long to move them from the house to the dorm. I just have some ink, paper, a few pencils and my cards.

This room houses six people, with each having a bed, a desk, a chair and a couple of drawers underneath the bed. The bed itself I won’t be using, obviously, and the chair I don’t have a need for either. Just the desk itself and the drawers, for storage.

The end of term rolls around again. I pass, of course. The basic classes are easy enough, so long as you put some effort in.

Shortly after, the time comes for Dreyer to leave. He’s the only person I know who knows about space magic, so before he goes, I ask what kind of magic I would have to learn before learning space magic.

I didn’t expect it to be easy, but the list he gives me is quite extensive: The six elemental magics and their languages at a minimum of advanced level, basic sympathetic magic, some type of summoning magic at basic level, scrying or divination magic, expert formation development, basic alchemy and chemical magic, basic artificing, the Arcane language and finally the Spacitus language.

Excluding classes for the languages, as I would rather self-teach those, that makes at least seventeen classes. Pretty much three terms if I do six a term, and some of those don’t sound simple in and of themselves. Not to mention, there are other classes I want to do. I want to learn at least two types of barrier magic, some basic restoration magic, some good illusion magic – part of why I’m learning light magic, actually – at least advanced artificing, force magic, expert mana control… The list just grows, making for around twenty-five classes, over a full year of classes even in ideal conditions.

It seems that I won’t be returning to Odwia for a while yet.

At the library, I try and figure out what to do with my break. I have seven languages to learn, so that’s certainly going to be part of it. Ignitae first, probably. Fact of the matter is that I don’t want to learn languages in a class – they would go too slow. I also don’t want to learn from a tutor, I’m not really comfortable meeting with people one on one, especially people I don’t know. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t need to learn how to speak the languages. I’m not a vocal caster, and who in the world would use magical languages to converse? Heck, probably some people, but I have a translation skill for that. I know for a fact that Dreyer doesn’t use vocal magic either, so I probably only need to learn the written languages.

And that, I can do on my own. It’s how I learnt most of the Terran language – it was how I learnt most of the English language, for that matter. The school system doesn’t really account for kids who like to read in their free time, so I ended up learning most words from context while reading every work of fiction I could get my little hands on.

Perhaps I could also read some more general, but still educational, books?

How about this one… ‘Materials and You’, on various metals and materials involved in magic.

Liquid conductors of mana… Common ink, not very conductive, but easy to get, boring – I’m paraphrasing this, obviously… Water, similarly bad, apparently… Magic water, here we go. General name of the fluid mixed from water and powdered mana crystals, conductivity depends on the grade of the crystals crushed, can be quite good but also quite expensive… Monster blood, depends on how magical the monster was and a number of other factors, can be difficult to obtain, but when obtained is often obtained in bulk… There are various specific fluids that are good with specific types of magic… water from a stream, a swamp, floating islands – wait, seriously? Cool. – ancient battlefields, so on and so forth… Dragon’s blood. Forking dragon’s blood. Extremely mana conductive, but obviously near impossible to obtain.

Solid conductors of mana… Dirt, chalk, stone and all that’s pretty bad… Iron and most other metals are barely any better… Electrum, natural alloy of gold and silver, not bad… Mana crystals, can have good conductivity depending on their grade, but their shape is very difficult to change, very good mana storage… Mithril, fairly rare and expensive, hardness improves according to the held mana, and has quite good mana capacity and conductivity… Adamantium, very rare and expensive. Extremely tough, but a worse conductor than even dirt, adamantium naturally rejects mana, and it is often used to create magic resistant items… Orichalcum, extremely rare, extremely tough, among the best known materials in terms of mana capacity and conductivity… Woah, catch this: Indestructite. Literally indestructible. Only a few small samples have ever been found or heard of. Every attempt to damage or alter the form of a sample has failed, even with the method known as ‘spatial severance’, courtesy of the esteemed Theodore Glynphael. Every attempt to conduct mana through indestructite has failed. Now that is something I want to absorb.

There isn’t a section on gasses, but it does note that mana can’t move through a vacuum. Important to note.

Well, that’s half an hour gone. What now?

The thing is, there are so many different things that can be done in magic, so many different things to learn, that after the basic class – which is practically an introduction to the magic – the more advanced classes are more specialised. So you don’t just have ‘advanced fire magic’, you have ‘advanced fire illusion magic’, ‘advanced fire destruction magic’ and so on.

Now, here’s the problem. Sometimes, it’s not so easy to classify magic. For example, the magic I used a while ago to create earthen walls, most people would say that’s creation magic. But what if I created that in mid-air and dropped it on someone’s head? Destruction magic. If that doesn’t convince you, consider the classic stone spike that you chuck at your enemy. Only difference between that and the wall is shape. The fundamental components of the formation are identical.

It’s not just creation and destruction that have overlap, either. What would you say if I said that the academy has healers that specialise in destruction magic? It’s true. Most healing is alteration magic, actually, increasing the body’s ability to heal itself or resistance to diseases. True restoration healing is very difficult and very powerful, I hear. It’s the only type of magic that can heal missing limbs and the like.

My point here is that anything you learn in any field here has possible applications outside of its normal context.

I suppose I should clarify the formal definitions of the different schools, albeit concisely.

Creation, magic that creates something purely from magic. Even things like fireballs technically fall under this.

Alteration, magic that changes the properties of something that already exists. That could be shape, hardness or any number of other things. Among other things, elemental manipulation, like the sort that mole beastwoman did at the athletics carnival, falls under this.

Restoration, magic that returns something to a former state. Some healing magic and other, more peculiar magic, like divining the past fall into this category.

Destruction, magic that harms and damages something. You get the picture.

Summoning, magic that calls something (often someone) to your location, usually through a medium or catalyst. What the mole beastwoman did with those earth elementals was summoning magic, and so is what Dreyer did to me, although his method is more of an outlier than the norm.

Illusion, magic that affects the senses or perception. A good example of this one would be my ‘eye’ magic tool.

It seems a bit easier learning Ignitae than it was learning Terran. Maybe it’s because I’m not bothering with speaking the language, or maybe it’s because I now have some experience learning a language.

I’ve been reading a lot of miscellaneous books: books on monsters, on ki, on psi, on the system, and so on. So much interesting information. Apparently, as you level up, the system allows you more access to commands, which is probably why it took me so long to find the games – I didn’t have access. There’s also a title you can get at fifty skills that allows you to rearrange your skills. I’m quite looking forward to that, I’m only eight skills out from it and my status is already quite messy.

There are also some skills and titles relating to the party system, ones that do things like increasing the party limit, allow the leader to see stats like health and mana, and some other useful things. I… Really don’t see myself ever getting or using those sorts of skills.

A new year comes around and with it, a new term. I pick out my new classes. Unfortunately, due to some timetable clashes, I’m not able to do all the classes I was planning on doing, but that’s alright. The order isn’t critical, not right now.

What I end up with is: advanced fire destruction magic, advanced earth summoning magic, advanced light creation magic, basic darkness magic, basic water magic and advanced formation development.

I have a lot of things I want to learn, and the problem is that I don’t know exactly how to learn them. What I want to do with light magic, I’m not sure whether it would be categorised under creation or illusion magic. I think creation is more likely, so that’s what I picked, but if it ends up being illusion magic, I’m just going to look through the library to teach myself what I need.

My hope for earth summoning magic is to get a helper that can do the heavy lifting for me. Right now, my single greatest weakness is, well, I’m physically weak. Since my body can’t actually get stronger, and I don’t know how to make telekinesis that much stronger, this seems like the simplest way.

Fire magic, uh, it’s pretty obvious why I’m doing that one.

“And remember, instead of the usual assignment half-way through term, we’ll be having an outing to exterminate monsters as a more practical test of your progress.” The teacher of my fire magic class says, finishing up the lesson.

“Must be nice, learning everything so easily.” Joyce mutters from the desk next to me as she packs up her things. I never really paid much attention to her. Doesn’t matter to me if she has a bone to pick with me, so long as she doesn’t throw it.

“Must be nice, sleeping.” I remark as I leave.

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