Congratulations, Daisy! You have increased the Rank of your non-Class Skill, Manual Targeting to Rank 2.
At Rank 2, your chance to hit your desired target with Manual Targeting is 25%. Practice your new Skill to improve its accuracy.
Daisy whooped happily at her progress before continuing her practice with renewed determination. Over the next hour, the little Elementalist fell into a practice routine. First, she’d send an Ice Storm moving right to left over the brick wall. As soon as she released the spell and the storm started moving, she would run a few feet to her right before stopping to cast a curving Blast! at her target. After that, Daisy ran past her starting point to the left and sent another curving Blast! to smash against the brick wall. Another system prompt gave Daisy the excuse she needed to sit down for a break.
Congratulations, Daisy! You have increased the Rank of your non-Class Skill, Manual Targeting to Rank 3.
At Rank 3, your chance to hit your desired target with Manual Targeting is 30%. Practice your new Skill to improve its accuracy.
Her Mana recovered as she sat with her back to the brick wall, catching her breath. Then, Daisy had an idea. The alternating casting of Ice Storm and Blast! had been a strange sensation, Mana cooling to frigid temperatures and then heating to an inferno over and over again as it snaked down her arms. On an impulse, still seated with her back to the wall, Daisy began to funnel Mana into casting Blast! but instead of allowing the Mana to heat up on its way down her arms as it usually did, she tried to force it to cool drastically the way it did when she cast Ice Storm. Her eyes went wide when, instead of the normal fireball, a blue orb of flame adorned with fractals of spinning ice appeared between her hands. She released her cast straight upward, sending the unexpected result of her experiment into the sky until it fizzled into nothing 30 meters up. Yet another system prompt appeared.
Congratulations, Daisy! You have unlocked Rank 1 of the non-Class Skill, Spell Design.
At Rank 1, you may create a new spell (maximum:1) by combining two currently available Skills. Practice your new Skill to increase the maximum number of new spells you can make, and decrease the casting costs of created spells.
Would you like to create the spell Frostfire Bolt?
Yes or No
Daisy giddily chose yes.
Congratulations, Daisy! You have created the spell Frostfire Bolt.
Frostfire Bolt
Active
Cost: 300 Mana (.375x Base Mana)
30 Meter Range
1.65 second cast
25 second cooldown
Effect: Send a bolt of burning ice at your target, dealing 98 (Fire/Ice) damage (.85x Wisdom Attribute).
Reduces target’s movement speed by 10%.
50% chance to grant target a burning stats, dealing an additional 17 (fire) damage (.15x Wisdom Attribute)over the following 5 seconds
Daisy couldn’t help noticing the similarities between Blast! and this new Skill. The descriptive tables were nearly identical, with only a few key differences. She didn’t like the Mana cost, 120 more than a Blast! would cost her. Daisy shrugged. She’d ask Athios what she thought when the Dimensionalist returned from her day trip to the Ice Caves with Garath. After sitting for a few more minutes, Daisy’s Mana was full, and she felt completely rested. It was time to get back to practicing.
She got into a rhythm, continuing the routine she’d been doing before. Time and again, she’d send an Ice Storm to move slowly over the brick wall before shooting Frostfire Bolts on curving trajectories from nearby locations. Her control was noticeably improving as she repeated the routine. When her Mana bottomed out a few minutes later, the dizzy Elementalist fell to her knees feeling as though she might throw up. Another system prompt appeared, and Daisy’s unfocused eyes struggled to decipher the blurry letters.
Congratulations, Daisy! You have increased the Rank of your non-Class Skill, Manual Targeting to Rank 4.
At Rank 4, your chance to hit your desired target with Manual Targeting is 35%. Practice your new Skill to improve its accuracy.
Daisy dismissed the prompt happily, then retrieved the blue decanter labeled ‘Potion of Endless Mana’ from her Items panel. She hadn’t used the item before but she’d heard others talking about the Potions and she’d gathered that the blue one would help her refill her nearly empty Mana bar. Her face scrunched up at the cloying sweetness of the blue liquid, but she forced it down and her lightheadedness immediately began to lessen. While she waited for her Mana to completely recover, Daisy thought about what she’d learned so far.
It was as clear as day that the knowledge of how to pool Mana into the casting of a spell was instilled in her when her first Skills were unlocked. Her experience with manual targeting had made it just as clear that, with concentration and practice, she could make alterations to the process of pooling Mana into a spell. That made her wonder if she could use her Mana in a similar way, but without using the system-provided structure to force it into a predesigned Skill.
Daisy shrugged. It was worth a try.
At first, she simply pushed the Mana that she always felt within her core up and into her chest, planning to then direct it to move through her arms and into her hands. Unfortunately, she pushed too hard and felt the Mana blow past her chest, upward into her head.
The resulting headache was agonizing, like hundreds of knives stabbing the soft tissue behind her eyes. She squinted in the early morning light, then forced the bit of Mana within her head back down to join the pool in her core. The relief was instant. Daisy frowned, but she wasn’t discouraged.
She tried again, this time pushing as softly as she could. A phrase that her Gran had frequently used came to mind, and she repeated it silently like a mantra.
Two hairs and some air. Two hairs and some air.
Slowly, Daisy felt small
