A fair distance from the house, I found what I was looking for. It was a decently sized clearing, perfect for what I had in mind. I turned to Spider Boss and Shuri, my chaperones for the day.
“I’ve got some stuff to do here, so you might be waiting for a little while. Sorry.”
They looked confused, which wasn’t entirely unexpected. Interspecies communication wasn’t easy the majority of the time. With dubious gestures, I eventually succeeded in getting them to move a safe distance away. After confirming that both of the larger insects and their many children were well outside of the clearing, I turned back around, rolling my shoulders.
“All right, let’s give it a go.”
Today’s agenda was to test out all kinds of magic. As of now, my main (well, only) form of defense was the Barrier spell I’d hastily thrown together when first exploring the cave. It hadn’t failed yet, but I wasn’t sure how long it would last. I still didn’t know anything about magic apart from my own questionable theories. It would be one thing if the Barriers failed while I was awake, when I could immediately put them up again. If they failed while I was asleep, though... If I woke up to find myself sharing my bed with a curse, I’d be very upset—and extremely terrified.
Yesterday, though, I’d realized that my anxiety regarding the Barriers—and a large portion of my anxiety in general—was the result of my poor understanding of magic. I’d briefly been annoyed with myself for not realizing it sooner, but really, starting a new life in a parallel world hadn’t left me with much of a surplus of mental energy for any deep self-reflection. In fact, I was kind of surprised that I had realized it at all.
And so, I’d set out today with the goal of testing out what else I could do with magic.
I mean, I can probably give myself some credit. I can make water and light after all—those are pretty handy. I can make the water warm too...
“Well, I may as well start with what I know.”
I’d conjured water a lot of times before, so I didn’t need to visualize anything when casting the spell. I’d figured out that much, at least. Once I’d “assigned” a mental image to a word or a phrase, I could cast the spell whenever I wanted—no visualization necessary. However, if I said the same word while picturing a different outcome, the spell would be overwritten, so to speak, and I had to then revisualize the original image to reset the spell back to how it had been at first.
I struggled with this aspect of magic a lot of the time.
For example, there was my Water spell. Most of the time, I used it for maintaining my daily water intake, so I’d set the spell to produce a cupful of water each time I cast it. When it came to bathing, though, I reset the spell to produce enough water to fill the tub. Once my bath was finished, I’d cast the spell again and return it to the original amount, so that I didn’t accidentally conjure a bathtub’s worth of water in the middle of the kitchen when trying to fill a cup. I didn’t need to imagine how disastrous that scene would look—because I’d already experienced it twice. The One Eyes had helped clean up the mess on each occasion, but I had a strange feeling that they’d been annoyed the second time it had occurred. If it happened a third time, they’d probably get genuinely angry—and given that, I needed to figure out a way to avoid making the mistake again. Of course, I could always cast a quick Clean on myself to avoid the problem entirely, but I never really felt clean from just the spell. To Japanese people, baths were an indispensable part of life—giving them up would be like giving up air.
Okay, lemme start with...
“Water.”
Splassssssh.
Crap. Forgot to change it back again. Good thing I came outside, or I really would be in trouble. Well, my water spell still works fine, at least. Next is—
“Light.”
Pop. An orb of pure light appeared in front of me. It was pretty bright (though it didn’t seem so now, given that I was outside in the middle of the day) and came in handy whenever the cave’s glowing walls weren’t enough.
This one’s still working fine too. Okay, next... I should probably come up with something apart from Barrier to protect myself, just in case. Protection... Defense... Walls? I could make a wall out of dirt or mud... Wait, mud walls are just a normal part of Japanese architecture, though. They’re not very strong... Well, I can just make a thicker one. If it’s solid enough, it should be able to withstand an attack. I’ll give it a go.
All right, so it’s a wall made of dirt... Hmm. Where does the dirt come from? The ground, I guess... I’ll picture it kinda amassing itself from the surrounding dirt. Make it nice and tall... Okay, now it’s just a big pile of dirt. That’s not gonna do much. I have to make it solid! Um, how does dirt become solid again? Clay’s pretty solid. Or is that more sticky? It wants to be more like concrete... Okay, I’ll imagine the dirt turning to clay and then hardening like concrete... Cool. Lemme put it to the test.
“Earth Wall!”
The ground shook beneath me.
Ah. Guess using the dirt around it wasn’t the best idea... The ground around the wall is a lot lower than the rest of it now. It should probably be a little taller too. Even if it wasn’t a little sunken, it’s still only about three meters tall. Most of the animals here would be able to jump over it.
“Oh, how about the hardening? I wonder if it worked...”
The best way to see if it would withstand an attack was going to be an attack, so I picked up a nearby pebble and flung it at the wall with all my might.
“Gah!”
The pebble bounced off the wall with a barely audible plink.
Well, that was depressing. I mean, seriously—no matter who or what attacks me, it’s definitely not gonna be as pathetic as that. Also, my shoulder hurts... I really gotta start exercising more.
I sighed.
Okay, I gotta try something more powerful... Oh, I could shoot a pebble at it with magic—that’d be a bit closer to an actual attack.
I picked up another pebble and held it tightly, imagining it shooting from my hand with enough power to piece through a sheet of iron.
For some reason, my mental sheet of iron is really thin... Make it thicker. No, thicker— Why is this so hard to imagine?! Calm down, me. I’ll make it simpler to picture... Yep. A meter-thick sheet of iron; that’ll do. And the pebble shooting through like a bullet... Got it!
“Shoot!”
Crack.
It’s no good. The wall’s not solid enough—the pebble went right through. I gotta make it stronger. Hardened clay won’t hold up against a real attack if it won’t even stop a magical pebble-bullet— Oh yeah, magic. I can probably just reinforce it with magic. Duh. Okay, let’s see... A Barrier’s probably the best way of doing it. It’s made of dirt, so I’ll set the Barrier to repel water. There’s probably fire-breathing monsters around here somewhere, so the Barrier should absorb fire—it’d be bad for the forest if I repelled it. What other kinda magical attacks are there? Lightning? Probably. Lightning...can be repelled as well. Anything else? Hmm... Nothing’s coming to mind. Well, I’ll add this to the wall for now and see how I go.
“Enhance the wall.”
I felt like I saw the wall shrink slightly, like it had been squeezed by an invisible hand.
Something definitely happened—I just hope it worked.
I grabbed another pebble from the ground. “Shoot!”
The stone hit the wall with a thunk before shattering into countless pieces that fell to the earth below.
Cool, that’s the first box checked. Gotta see how it holds up against magic now. Attack magic, huh... A fireball’s the first thing coming to mind. A fireball that destroys everything in its path and leaves a trail of hellfire in its wake... Yep, that’ll do.
“Fireball Attack.”
Crap, I only meant to say Fireball.
Fwoosh.
Oh... Damn.
Half the wall had been entirely reduced to ashes, and what remained was barely standing. It still wasn’t strong enough.
“Argh! Oh, it’s only you, Spider Boss.”
When did you creep up behind me? You scared the crap outta me!
Spider Boss was staring at the wall.
Is there something wrong with it?
I inspected the wall too, but I couldn’t see what had attracted the giant spider’s interest, so I looked around the rest of the clearing, only to find Shuri and all of the baby insects staring at the wall too. Every eye in the clearing—and there were a lot of them—was fixed on the wall.
“Uh, Spider Boss?” Spider Boss jumped at the sound of my voice. “Are you okay?”