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With it being his turn to attack, Quill copied her and sent his own [Mana Bolt]. The glowing missile slammed into Sally’s [Mana Barrier], causing the spell to flash opaquely as it struggled to stand against his attack’s power.
A flicker of shock came over Sally’s face, but she quickly mastered herself and snagged a talisman from her box. Suddenly, a bolt of ice careened toward him, only to be scattered against another standard [Mana Barrier].
Quill laughed. “My talismans are the best there are. It’s my whole thing after all. I might only do one thing, but I do it better than anyone else.”
His mana barrier fizzled out, having used up the remaining bits of its charge. Quill flicked through his talismans with exaggerated movements, even going so far as to pretend to lick his finger before pulling out a parchment.
Having made his selection, he tugged a [Wind Blade] out of the pile and fed it a drop of mana to trigger the effect.
It was actually kind of fun not to rely on his mana pool during a fight. He could charge all of the talismans he wanted beforehand and use only a single unit of mana to unleash skills worth thousands of times that.
Fighting with a talisman was all about preparation and using the resources you had at your disposal.
Even with this being an exhibition match, he still enjoyed the give and take between Sally and himself immensely. Not that he was getting serious yet. When you knew an attack was coming, [Wind Blade] was an easy option to identify, and the best way to block one was common knowledge.
His opponent countered with a weird [Earth Barrier] variant, one that he didn’t recognize. After a split second of confusion, understanding hit him. This was one of Sally’s special elemental [Mana Barriers], and he quickly saw the differences. Where the normal [Earth Barrier] would have summoned a dome of short-lived earth, Sally’s talisman summoned a dome of mana but converted the neutral mana to earth mana on the fly.
That was something he could have accomplished by inscribing and charging the parchment with earth aspected mana. Seeing her spell in action, he was sure that she wasn’t using that method. Whatever rune she was using, he wanted it for his own use. He could see a dozen ways to pair that with aspected mana for even greater results.
Still, her talisman blocked his [Wind Blade] with minimal strain, clearly benefiting from the elemental advantage.
Quickly understanding what he had done, Sally asked, “Are you seriously willing to throw away this much mana on an exhibition challenge?”
Under the mask, he smiled.
She had noticed how well her dome had stacked up. While it had survived without a hitch, she felt the barrier shudder under the impact. If she hadn’t had the complete elemental advantage, he might have blown through her dome with the last attack.
Quill shrugged and retorted, “Easy come, easy go. But that attack’s strength wasn’t from having more mana. Like I said before, there’s a trick I know. A damn good one. It’s a worthwhile trade. For you, that is.”
Sally grimaced and launched her own attack. A [Fireball] flared forth that Quill countered with yet another basic [Mana Barrier].
With his next attack, he responded with a [Fireball] of his own, and Sally countered with one of her unique water [Mana Barrier]s.
They exchanged another half-dozen blows before Sally tilted her head back, growing frustrated. “Damn. Why don’t we end this here? I can’t break your defenses, but you’ll eventually break mine when I guess wrong. At this point, I’m just burning through sellable goods for nothing. Plus, you’ve sold me already. Whatever this cheaty nonsense is, it’s worth trading for.”
With that, they were both teleported out of the orb, and Quill sighed at seeing that only two people were watching.
He had hoped for more but shrugged off any disappointment. The recordings of that little fight would be widely popular after The Masquerade.
Following Sally into her shop, he asked, “What do you know about enchanting with other types of mana? Like most crafters, you must have realized that some other crafters have much stronger enchantments. Mostly the big guilds and noble brats. I know their secret, and if you want to be an actual competitor in the coming crafting tournament, you need to know it.”
Sally perked up at that but held herself back. “Is this something that will get me locked up or killed?”
Quill dropped a box onto the table. “Not at all. But it’s kept quiet because it lets them keep the best prices on items. Eventually, you would have put it together yourself, or be forced to join them. It’s about the mana used. Not just the aspect but the sub-aspects of said mana. In that box, there are conversion stones for the basic elements of mana. Nothing unique about them, but their sub-aspects haven’t been scrubbed out, and that’s the difference.”
He scooped up a stone and handed it to her. “For example, this water mana has a sub-aspect of stillness that pairs exceptionally well with barriers. A water barrier with that particular mana as the base will be far more effective than a normal one.”
Quill explained the other three elemental types to Sally’s shock.
“How did you learn this?”
Quill shrugged. “It’s a part of my Talent that I don’t want to talk about. Suffice it to say, I can take advantage of mana types without having to carry around a spatially expanded building like most crafters.”
He was calling his growth ring his Talent. That was the cover they had decided would keep him out of the limelight for his mana. Rather than saying he could charge talismans an unlimited amount, he was just able to freely convert his mana to any type he had absorbed before.
With his ring, no one could find a single fault in his cover story.
Sally sent him an information packet with her unique talisman types to hold up her end of the bargain. He would delve into the details once he had some time to tweak his enchantment methods, but he was able to pick out a few facets of the nuances behind her tricks.
- Writer
