A New World, An Immersive Game Experience

Eldrian ended up talking with Constantin throughout the day. At first, mostly asking questions on how the game testers enter and played the game, most of the conversation kept vague as Constantin did not want to explain this. Quickly they moved to how each of them perceived the world, both in real life and in the game, and how magic could connect to things. Constantin could not show Eldrian any spell modules, though he drew a few of each Tier and explained his own understanding to Eldrian.

Naturally Eldrian shared if he felt he understood something different, but this was only really possible at Tier 0 and 1. Constantin was especially surprised when Eldrian mentioned that even the simplest Tier 0 spell had a core.

Similar to natives, Constantin had always considered nodes and pathways as simply the form of the spell module. Having quickly passed past them and rushed to Tier 4 where he had then been stuck on till now. Listening to Eldrian trying to convince him that they were the true basics of everything impressed him quite a bit, and reminded him of coding in a way.

I wonder if this is something the mages just did not wish to tell us. I mean our identities are high, but also strange in the game. They dare not anger us, but they are wary of us too. If not for us having helped them develop some good ruling systems, they probably would just want to keep us at arm's length. Constantin thought, believing that the emperor must certainly have thought of spell modules in this way too. At least at some point, then again it might be completely wrong. But why would Eldrian have succeeded if it is wrong? He quickly countered his own doubt.

No matter what, by the end of the day, both of them felt great. Having received a large amount of information from the other.

Sun going down, Eldrian did not have much of a choice but to go back to his room and enter the game. If he did not then he would miss the valuable time, though now that he could play without a limit it had become less valuable. Still daytime in the game was more precious than daytime in the real world to him.

In-game Eldrian started his morning with his routine spear practice, then a few matches with Vivian. Both sweating heavily headed to the command tent to clean themselves and get dressed. For the most part, Eldrian normally did not feel awkward staying with Old Sword and Vivian. However, thanks to Constantin's blunder, or rather his insightful comment, Eldrian could not help but start looking at her as a girl again.

For a time he had grown to see her as a friend, a partner, a fighter. While he had still seen her beauty, it had been overshadowed. Now it fought back ferociously and caused him to blush often when he looked at her. Naturally, this led to him barely managing to actually keep up during their matches, which Vivian was very smug about.

Eldrian started to feel like he needed to set up his own tent. Especially when he knew she was just past the divider changing into clean clothes. He did this first thing after dressing, causing Vivian to be quite confused. Not willing to explain, Eldrian rather said that he would be awake far more often, and that he did not wish to wake them when he trained at night.

This was partly true, as he did indeed to plan work far harder from now on. Once he had set up his tent he started, though the first part of his training was to read. Reading through the book Myropsis had given him, Eldrian only focused on the notes first.

He quickly read through them all, and then again. And again while this time also looking at the spell modules accompanying the notes. Quickly finding that while the notes were interesting, they did not make much sense to him. The methods they mentioned differed too much from how Eldrian approached things. Still it was not a waste of time, especially the notes on hybrid spells.

While the notes only lightly touched on them, Eldrian managed to quickly connect it to what he already knew. Once this was all done, he started to memorize the spell modules of the spells he felt were the most useful.

Due to all Tier 1 offensive spells having no effect area larger than a twenty-centimeter, he quickly discarded anything that was in fact that large. Focusing rather on spells that were small and hard to see, or spells that could be used along with a weapon. He did not even look at spells that required his hands, something he had thought did not even exist.

Naturally this quick look-through was only for now. He would definitely try and learn all the spells if he could. For now, he picked three: A poison spell, Prastio, that created a thick sludge one can cover a blade in. A fireball spell, Mifotia, basically just the upgrade of Floga, focused on exploding on impact. The reason he chose it was because unlike the other fire spells, this one stayed small. just a few centimeters on impact.

The last spell was a wind spell, Aeraki, that simply caused a breeze to form, unable to be used in combat but nice to have for the day-to-day and an exception to his decision making. He had decided on learning it upon his second read-through, as the sun rose and his tent warmed enough for him to start sweating while seated.

Eldrian had quickly found that most of the Tier 1 spells were not of much use. Hybrid spells such as Frost Needle seemed to be quite rare and considered as the hardest and most valuable Tier 1 spells. The others were all too weak to be of much use in combat.

Wind spells would generally only cause a breeze, or at best a weak impactor or small cut. It could be useful if aimed at the eye or neck, but that was about it. Maybe also the groin.

Earth magic at this stage is mostly to form rock, dirt, sand, and so forth into predetermined shapes according to the spell. Fire spells were mostly just used to start fires as their impact and heat were too low to do much more, water was the same. Again if aimed at weak spots they would do something, but that was about it.

Nature spells focused mostly on healing and were by far the most useful even at Tier 1. The poison spell was actually a hybrid spell and its spell module was quite confusing to Eldrian. It had 12 nodes and 19 pathways, far more than any other spell he has learned this far. The combination of mana from nature and water was also not explained all that well.

Naturally Eldrian was far more comfortable with magic now, therefore he did not suspect much difficulty in learning the spells. He was mostly upset at how little use those that were supposed to be offensive had. In this regard he could understand why skills were more common between the NPCs, it brought much larger effects much sooner.

A spell that could increase one's strength at Tier 1 would only do so by 5, while a similar skill would give an increase of 20. The advantage of the spell naturally that you could cast it on allies, though if they knew the skill or even one a Tier lower, then it would be useless as you would effectively debuff your ally.

This was what Eldrian took from the notes, and why he wanted to mostly focus on the poison and quality of life spell. The only reason he chose the fire spell for the start too, was because he was really comfortable with Floga and he was curious about how good its power would be.

The poison spell was seemingly not all that great, it took a long time to take effect and only tired the enemy. Not outrightly killing them. Frost Needle was by far still the strongest spell Eldrian had come across.

He wondered if Myropsis had only given him a bunch of crapy spells, something he believed really likely. Well, I did say I only wanted to learn from them, not actually use them. Eldrian mumbled after some thought, a bit disappointed that he had allowed her an easy escape if he brought this up.

Let's just focus on figuring out how all these spells work. Poison first, seeing as it is slightly useful.

Eldrian did just this for, for the next week in fact. During the day in real life, he would visit Constantin or some other game testers, who Constantin had introduced him to. He also headed out on Wednesday to meet and hang out with Erik, since it had been a long time. Both of them sharing their experiences and trying to learn from the other. Eldrian was really curious about potion brewing, but he was currently too busy studying the spell modules to take the time to learn from Erik.