EmmaLeia
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Chapter 22 - Freedom
🕑 Added 2021-10-14 22:25:47 +0000 UTCEnchanting was going to take a long time to practice to raise its synchronization. She was able to get a refund on half of the synchronization sacrifice if she put at least 2% into the enchant. If she put 3% she would only get 1% back. She made sure to start using even numbers when practicing. The refund on mana was even worse, she was only able to get a quarter of the mana investment she put into an enchant upon salvage. That was if she didn’t test the enchant. If it was tested, then there was no mana left to refund her.
The biggest problem with enchanting was how much mana it took. She could only do very simple enchants or it would cost more mana than she had. It took her twelve hours to regain all of her mana from zero. As she gained wisdom over the years, the time it took to regen her mana pool had never changed. She needed a willing or unwilling subject to practice Hypnotize or Fear so she was not able to make any progress with those aspects.
She was a little disappointed with Water Manipulation. If she was using mostly pure water, then she was able to move it around at will with only a slight amount of drain on her mana. As soon as she tried to move things with liquid in them, she hit her first roadblock.
Her runny porridge in the morning contained water but moving it took quite a bit more concentration and a lot more mana. Separating the water out of the porridge was relatively simple but moving impure water saw her mana dropping too quickly to do very much of it. Once she was able to raise the synchronization of this skill, she felt she could probably control the blood in someone’s body. It may be useful for self-defense if she was ever held against her will or needed to disable an attacker.
She decided to allow her rash to completely clear up a week after starting her quarantine. Leaving the room was not something she did very often during the day because she never knew when one of the doctors would show up to check on her. The only time she felt safe to leave was at night. As soon as she drained her mana for the night, she would begin exploring lower into the town they had found.
The below floors got larger the lower she descended into the pyramid. She was able to finally count the floors in this section. There were a total of ten floors that made up a total of one-eighth of the entire pyramid. The top floor was devoted to classrooms and smaller rooms attached to those rooms for living. The following five floors were all larger housing units with themed artwork on the walls outside of the dwellings.
The ninth through the sixth floor each shared themes of two aspects on every floor. The ninth-floor artwork was devoted to Decoy and Shadow Blade. Floor eight was for Disguise Self and Fear. When she made it down to the fifth floor, the entire floor was devoted to Contracts. She could not find any hidden doors leading to classrooms or secret research areas in any of the dwellings she inspected. Based on the artwork she saw, they valued contracts heavily in their society.
Once she made it to the fourth floor, she found several official-looking offices. There were ten sections on this floor. One for each aspect and the last area looked to be a place to gather for each aspect. There was a very large and ornate office in the back of this section that could have possibly have been where the head of Illusion was located. This is where she came across the first door she was unable to open.
Only Masters of Illusion may enter here.
She made a note to come back after she received the Contracts aspect. Though mastery could also mean overall synchronization. Regardless, she wanted to see what was so special behind that door.
Making her way down to the third floor, the entire area was devoted to training. There were fight circles and target dummies set up throughout the floor. A large track with lanes marked on them looped around the entire floor. There was even an area set up as a fake forest. This training area was set up to train skills as well as the illusion aspects.
On the second floor, there was a central area set up as a market. Stalls lined the central area that looked like a temporary merchant could rent to sell their wares. On the outer edges of the area, permanent storefronts were brightly painted advertising their wares. She giggled at one of the signs that said “Voted best service!” All she could think of was ‘voted by whom?’ She really missed shopping.
While the system seemed to work that the dominion was currently using, she had no doubts that many freedoms were given up to create this system where nobody goes hungry or homeless. It was very much a system of be productive or be punished and the punishments had never been explained to her satisfaction. It made sense that nobody wanted to explain the details of what punishment means to a child. It was bad enough that the adults did all they could to be productive.
The final floor was part of the underground network that she had found while she was in the barracks. It was interesting because it was only accessible through a secret door on the fourth floor near the Illusion Master’s office. That made her think that the main building was geared more towards the general public while the medium and smaller buildings outside were for authorized personnel only. There must be a more publicly accessible door somewhere on the tenth floor that nobody had located yet to get into the town area.
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It had been a week since she landed herself in the slammer… quarantine. Doctor Amelia had come by to give her a check-up the day before and had commented on the fact that the rash had almost cleared up. She had said if it cleared up completely, she would only need to stay in isolation for four days after that.
As much as Violet enjoyed all of the unsupervised time to go exploring at night, she missed human interaction quite a bit. She couldn’t wait to tell Sky about her new aspects and which magic she ended up with. He was still very firm on not wanting to have magic. The unknown was just too scary for him to think about.
She was a little upset that to practice enchanting, she had to lose synchronization with her other skills as well as the majority of her mana. It was her hope that like the other aspects, as she gained more synchronization she would be able to do things more economically.
Level 32
Age 7
Experience (49600/52800)
Health 250/250
Mana 740/740
Stat Points 155
Skill Points 6
Strength 18
Constitution 25
Dexterity 20
Intelligence 77
Wisdom 74
[Traits] [Skills] [Magic]
[Magic]
Type % Aspect
Illusion 55%
Illusion 92% Disguise Self
Illusion 95% Decoy
Illusion 95% Cloaking
Illusion 98% Shadow Blade
Illusion 86% Dazzle
Illusion 10% Fear
Illusion 1% Hypnotize
Illusion 10% Enchant
Water 1%
Water 8% Water Manipulation
One of the last things she wanted to accomplish before she got out of quarantine was adding herself to the water area. Her plan to gain access to the podiums near the central column was to enter the water area through the doorway by her secret room. It would be a lot of walking, but it was unlikely that anyone would be standing directly next to the water door at night and she could use Cloaking to make her way invisibly to the podium.
She decided she was a little too free with privileges for the illusion area. At the time it was only a small group of people she initially gave access to. In hindsight, she should have added each person individually instead of making it a free for all for everyone in existence to gain access.
For the water area, she only gave herself and Sky access to opening the doors in that section. It was reckless to keep trusting Sky so much but he had ample opportunity to tell on her and had still kept her secret. She decided not to trust Jade at all with this section. The girl had been acting strangely not too long before Violet had quarantined herself. It just was not worth the risk to her.
Doctor Amelia was true to her word, Violet was set free from isolation on the fourth day after her rash had disappeared. She also commented on how lucky Violet was to not have any sores open up and start oozing or bleeding. Violet made sure to lay it on thick on how she was very careful not to scratch and that the cream helped her a lot.
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When she arrived back in the area with Sky and Jade, she sensed something was wrong. Sky was frowning and Jade had a look of guilt on her face. When Violet opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, Sky shook his head and said “not now.” Looking at their three sets of parents gave her the answer she was dreading. They all had a look on their face that communicated to her that she would be answering some questions when they were alone. It was at least good news that they didn’t want to talk in front of other people.
They were not given any breaks or allowed out of an adult’s line of sight at any time while they were working. The entire time Violet was working, she was getting more anxious. Did they find out about her magic? Was it just Jade who told on her or did she get Sky to talk as well? It was going to be bad no matter which one told on her but she hoped Sky kept her magic a secret.
When it came time for dinner, the adults were all acting normal and talking about work-related discoveries. To an outsider, nothing was wrong and everyone was going on with their lives like normal. The pointed looks the adults were giving her told her otherwise.
She was expecting to be able to come out of quarantine and play up how lonely it was and how boring it was to be locked in a room alone with nothing to do. It occurred to her that she never actually asked for anything to keep her mind occupied. She wondered where they planned to have their interrogation. The last she had known, they shared their sleeping area with quite a few other people.
After everyone in their group had finished eating, they all followed Corrin in a different direction than where their sleeping arrangements were. Sky whispered to her as they walked, “after you got sick, they moved everybody.”
They ended up in a section that Violet had not had the chance to explore yet. The room they all piled into was still a classroom, but it was smaller than the classrooms she had been used to seeing. This room was large enough to house two beds with a two-foot walkway between them. As soon as the door closed, the adults all turned to Violet. It was her father who finally said something. “You have some explaining to do young lady.”
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AN: And finally some consequences for oversharing with children are going to come out. I'll try to get the next chapter out tomorrow, it just depends on how busy I am at work.
Comments
EmmaLeia
There is a lot in there I can't change, I am new to writing and am learning as I go. We are seeing the magic world through the lens of the MC who doesn't know anything about even the existence of an outside "normal" world. After this arc things are going to shake up and a much bigger world will be revealed. There is life outside of the dominion, there are magical creatures. Right now I need her to hit a few more milestones before I can send her out to the wide world. How normal people deal with magic will come out soonish, probably when she picks up spatial magic.
thkiw
as far as I can see it the magic system is pretty lazy. you get a skill and an aspect from birth. where it came from who knows? then you cannot learn new magic. there are no mentions of magical creatures, because it is so structured and lazy I doubt there would be much left for the imagination. every creature is bound to an aspect. probably. enchanting is simply lazy as it is right now. since it relies on the very much set magical system and that means you have to use illusion first. even if you add a couple aspects there's no way to do something more complicated. what are magical properties anyways? allowing mc to simply use her imagination would be that much better. people would be allowed to research things, society would make sense. maybe if the author changes it or adds something to it, but right now it is pretty lazy. you cannot make complex enhanctments. simply impossible for a normal person. even the usage, i.e. how it should be activated is set in stone. there is absolutely no room left for imagination, both in the magic system and in their society. so boring. so lazy. they're not really chained, it's just so constrained such that even a child could effectively rule their society. they even have the colours to help them out. if there are man-child emperors I would not be surprised. nobles do sound like man-children though. the people she was around sounded more emotionally and mentally developed than anyone else that sounded like nobles. they probably needed the pretty colors to dumb it down for them. they're not chained. they're just ruled by idiots. it more or less works. granted, these are magic idiots. but still idiots. a somewhat functioning aspect of this would only have a tag or a broche with the colour. having them practically painted with their occupation? hahaha. the only reason I can think of is that it makes it easier to tell. they really do need the pretty colors. in the end it's like someone just didn't want to bother with them so they just made a set of rules and made it work. somehow. then there's how she got those magic skills. there's no new "discovery" about mana or the system. she simply got those because she's the "chosen one". even lazier. couldn't you have come up with something better? honestly. how does combat work? I assume people would rely on skills and muscle for that, no adventuring for us. but not being able to use or learn magic is pretty restrictive. I guess that nobles are powerful, but because they didn't really need to do anything they became progressively more stupid. if the kid from the beginning wasn't murdered, that wouldn't make sense. they probably managed with a few uprisings before doing that. i.e. killing the child. they had to learn by trial and error, too stupid to do it another way. it would also be nice if we learn that magic can in fact be taught just that they aren't teaching it. and that some people are still born with inherent magic skills, which is why they are getting killed/brainwashed. it would make any other country she visits more interesting. could you also do away with the protagonist "chosen one" syndrom and just make mc explore the world or something? anyways, sorry for complaining so much. just hope that this could do so much better.
Jachin Nelson
Thank you for the chapter
