Second World

One second? Jack looked again into the image in his mind. You must be sh*tting me! He cursed in his mind. His record of casting the Barrier spell which consisted of only one rune was just a tiny bit below one second, most of the time it still took him a full one second to complete. This spell formation here had five runes, and the symbols on the runes looked more complicated than the spells he had encountered thus far. There were more lines on it, which meant he would need more time to complete each individual rune.

"The image will stay in your mind, you just need to think of the Order of Magi to summon the image again. You can take your time to practice. Once you can reach the required casting time, you can come back here to process your admittance into our faction."

It seemed like there was no way for him to become this faction's member today, Jack sighed in his mind.

"What is the spell of this spell formation?"

"It isn't a spell," Janus replied. "It was just a special rune designed for the admission test."

"Oh, ok." Jack was disappointed, he thought he had just gotten a new spell for free.

"All right, I will take my leave then," Jack said as he turned away and walked to the door.

"Hope to see you again, mister Storm Wind," he heard Janus said.

He turned around in consternation. The guy was already back to focus on his tome. Jack stood there with uncertainty before turning back again and walked out the door.

After he was out of the hut and closed the door, he started cursing, "Bloody hell! So he knew all the time I am Storm Wind. Then why the hell did he make me go through all the trouble of pretending to be a formal mage? Does he have to act so enigmatic?"

"I can still hear you." He heard a voice from behind the door.

"Oh…" Apparently, despite existing in a separate dimension, the soundproofing was not that good.

With the order of the day completed. He had nothing else to do. It's a bit late to start going outside for monster grinding. He thought about going to Commander Quintus' house again for training skills' proficiency, but then decided to just go back to Amy's Bakery and tried learning this spell formation that Janus had given him.

He went by Ellie's restaurant first to collect the weekly profit. Today was coincidentally the day the profit could be collected. Once he departed on the expedition, he would not be able to collect them for some time. This time he got only 19 gold coins for the profit.

Ellie explained that it was less not because the business was decreasing, it was because she used some of the income to purchase more registered recipes. Such recipes were safer so if player cooks decided to leave, they would not take the knowledge of the recipes with them, as the recipes were tied to the restaurant.

She mentioned that she had gotten access to these registered recipes via a league faction called House of Culinary. She and Bill had become members of this faction. Jack told her she had full authority to make the purchase. He did not mind a decrease in income for improving the restaurant.

After making sure with Ellie and Bill that everything was fine, he could leave without worry. He told them that he would be unavailable for quite some time.

Afterward, he went back to his room and started casting Janus' spell formation. He spent almost three seconds forming the first rune. Considering it took him six seconds when he first formed the runic symbol for the Barrier spell, this could be considered as an improvement already? He shook his head. No, he could not allow himself to be satisfied by such petty excuse. Three seconds for the first rune, to make five runes he would have wasted fifteen seconds. He had a whole fourteen seconds to improve, this would require immense training.

In the end, he spent sixteen seconds completing the spell formation for the first time. It was even worse than he had predicted. The spell formation quivered before disintegrating into small particles of light.

There was no cooldown for this spell formation, so he started forming the runes again.

He slowly got accustomed to the symbols of the rune, it took him less time as he got more familiar. Yet, the time it took him to complete was still around ten to eleven seconds. It was still far from the required casting time.

"How about you tried that multiple runes forming method that I mentioned in the past?" Peniel suggested. She had been flying around the room, bored with nothing to do as Jack was focused on his training.

Jack remembered again after she brought it up. It was a method that formed multiple runes at the same time. Since he had never tried before. He tested with forming two runes at the same time first.

It was sluggish at first, as he had to concentrate on two things at a time. The runes even fizzled before breaking apart while they were still half-formed.

"You failed," Peniel said.

"Duh," Jack stated. The lines he formed on the runes were all over the place, no wonder the spell formation failed.

He did not get discouraged. It was common to not get the best result on the first try. He repeated the process again. He ceaselessly continued casting the spell formation, two runes at a time. He still failed another four times. He finally succeeded in completing two runes on his sixth tries, but it took him five seconds to complete.

"Crap! This takes even more time than if I form them one at a time," he complained. He roughly spent around two seconds when he was casting a singular rune from this spell formation.

"You are just unfamiliar with it. If you can get used to it, you should be able to get a better result than a single rune forming," Peniel said. "That is considering if you truly have that multi-task trait that you claimed you have."

"Hmph! Don't you underestimate me, little lady," he said as he felt fire up.

"Show it to me, big boy!" She shot back.

Damn it, if someone was outside the room hearing them, they might get the wrong idea, Jack thought

He continued practicing until the night before he was disturbed by a message from Jeanny. At the time, he had shortened his simultaneous two runes casting to less than three seconds.

Jeanny told him that Trinity Dawn was interested to join the expedition, together with her other friends that had just passed their advanced class trial. They were waiting at Raven's Den. She also informed him that The Man was also there, and he had two of his subordinates whom he mentioned yesterday that would be joining as well.

Jack stopped his training and headed to that tavern. A bit of fresh air would be good. He was not making such a big leap of improvement anyway. One second for all five runes, he wondered how long it would take for him to get there, if ever.

Jack met with them in the tavern. The two of The Man's subordinates were level 19 Knights. Trinity Dawn was already level 21 as well. The other friends of Jeanny were Bitter Rain who became another mage at level 19, Wondrouslife who had become a level 19 Archer, and Sweet Talk, a level 19 Fighter. Huh? A Fighter? Jack inspected her again to make sure he was not mistaken.

Jeanny saw her confusion and explained that she had still failed her trial, which was a pity. She was very eager to join as well. She even expressed if she could just join even if she was still a basic class. Jeanny talked her out of it. It would be a pity if he kept on leveling up but was unable to change her class due to having no access to the academy. He would have lost all those potential attribute points.

She expressed again how that she didn't want to spend her time alone in the city while all her friends were somewhere else. Jeanny advised her that it was only temporary and that her top priority at the moment was to focus on becoming an advanced class. They would come back again after the expedition was over.

Jack tried to console her as well by saying, "don't worry, you might not need to wait so long. The road is dangerous. Some of us will most likely die and they will be revived in this city. Then you can hang out together again."

The others gave him a weird stare.

"You have a really strange way to cheer people up," Viral Cora said.

Jack accompanied them for a while and bought them all a round of drinks before he excused himself. Before he left, he reminded them to not be late the next morning.

He went straight home and continued his rune-forming practice. It took him a while but he finally managed to complete the dual runes in almost two seconds.

He decided to try doing it with three runes at the same time. As expected, it failed. Doing three runes at the same time was way harder than two. He kept on failing even after ten tries. Even when he slowed it down, it was still extremely difficult to concentrate on three things at the same time.

"This is hard!" He exclaimed.

"Hey, don't stay up too late," Peniel told him.

He looked at the time and realized it was past midnight already. He quickly decided to stop the practice and went to bed. He had told the others not to be late, it would be unseemly if he was the one that was late.

Before his mind went to sleep, he wondered how fast it would be if he cast the Arcane Turbulence spell which had three runes using the multi-runes forming method. The runes of that spell were more simple than this spell formation from Janus, so in theory, he should be able to form them faster. He felt eager to test them out, but he calmed himself down. It would be bad if he caused damage to the room.