Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army

Chapter 16: meeting the demons (1)

On monday morning Yunan dragged his roommate Leol for jogging and stretches and some basic body enhancing exercises, it may not affect the level their combat prowess much, but it would certainly help keep them healthier as well as build a good foundation for them to grow their stats much easier in the future, although they started pretty late, about an hour before sunrise due to Leol, they still got some good workout before breakfast. again thanks to Leol they had a very late breakfast and had to rush to their classes afterwords.

In the inn; leader, Bai and the others held a morning meeting as per habit, to decide on what to do today, the meeting ended pretty quickly since no urgent matters were at hand. on one hand, Bai, leader and Fae would go to teach Yunan this morning, while Dustan and Lucian would go shopping and prepare for the moon feast, while Balin would go to the guild and sort out the quest and related things, then he would need to start working on repairing the damaged items the party has used on the quest, although they had better items in storage, it was always good to keep low leveled items for the occasional travel to keep away from trouble, as for the good items, they are either left for the dungeon or when some official business is at hand.

When Yunan made his way to the library as per usual he found Bai and Leader and an elf waiting for him, must be a member he thought, once he was beside them he said his greetings respectfully and looked at Bai for introduction, but it was Leader who spoke "Yunan, this beside me is Fae, she is the only other girl in our party. as we three are the best magic users in the party, we will be teaching you about magic" the she motioned everyone to follow her into the library, where they once again went into the back and once again started by borrowing the book "magic for dummies".

When they were all sitting around the table Fae started talking " Bai told us you learned how to translate magical formulae into magical constructs as well as basic geometry, i would like you to start the exercises by telling us which geometrical shapes can be found in a formula and how many of them there are, then you can start drawing the construct based on the formula, only if you are correct" Yunan nodded his head and was about to start working on the first formula written in the book when he asked Leader " did all of you learn this in the academy? my friend's teacher does not teach them like this".

"I think only royalty with special teachers learn about these things so early" answered Leader " the rest of us usually learn this inside the dungeon by ourselves, the guild only promises to teach the bear necessities, not much else, so consider yourself lucky", then Yunan put his head back into his work, every time he made a mistake one of the three corrects him, Bai was in charge of geometry and Fae for the magical construct, while Leader would choose which formulae he had to work on from all over the library.

Some of which come from some tomes old enough to be considered obsolete or faulty theoremes. leader went to explain her thought process "The translation from formula to construct was based on a book dropped by the dungeon and so no matter how old the tome is, all formulae can be translated into constructs even if the resulting spell is faulty or unstable, or in some cases a trap that kills the caster, since formulae must be mathematically correct, otherwise the book would never be publish by the guild, and there are no other books that have not been approved by the guild in this library".

Yunan almost had an epiphany, something like using a subject to learn and practice another was quite a strange thought, even though Bai told him the would be integrating multiple subjects into one period, he thought he had to learn two subjects simultaneously, but he liked this style much better, he could advance two subjects at the same time. Then his mind wandered into a different direction "does the dungeon drop trap magic books or faulty skills?" Yunan asked.

To that Fae chuckles and answers "that is not possible, the dungeon, does not drop bad books, even self destruction magic and skills are explained when you pick up the book, if that was the case then there is a very high risk in learning any skill book from the dungeon even if one could identify traps, it would be too late to know after you learn it, even if you did not execute said faulty skill or spell, the danger is already inside of your mind and can be triggered at any point, since there are spells and skills that can be cast through a trigger instead of a chant, something like, if you meet a goblin it will cast a charm spell that will stop them from attacking, however they will retaliate if you attack."

"The dungeon is honest and fair, every skill and spell has a cost, a flaw and maybe even a drawback depending on its strength, there is no such a thing as an unstoppable, or undefeatable, there is only a perfect set of skills, that complement and enhance each other, but never a single overpowered skill or spell with no fault or draw back" Leader explained how the dungeon system works when balancing the powers it grants to explorers.

"On the other hand if you want your skills and spells to be perfect and unstoppable you have to do two things, first fully understand what you have, second fully know how to utilise it, for example the magelight spell, if used correctly can be an extremely useful spell, let's say you are in the woods at night, and use the magelight, you can see very well and scare away monsters, but also be seen from very far away, thus if you fear ambush, send half of the party ahead with magelight to draw in the attention while you sneak behind them to protect from ambushes, also it can work as a distraction, if you throw the spell at some guards or in their range if sight, they will investigate or sound the alarm, either making it easier for you to sneak around them by leaving their posts, or create enough mayhem for you to slip in unnoticed, there are many examples like this, there is no such thing as a single use spell or skill, it must have other uses, you just have not found them yet" Bai added his own insight into the discussion.

And so continued the morning lesson, by the end of it Yunan had a greater understanding of both magic and geometry and how they link to each other, while the afternoon promised more excitement since all the party members will show up. after they left the library Yunan had a strange thought 'how come Bai never yawned today?!' he then shook his head and went to the cantina to meet his roommate for lunch.