2.19 – Barrier

none I think

Until next time, huh? She was gonna get it, then. Fool her twice, shame on—shame on Anemone. Maple brooded as they walked to the Compendium. She considered making a stop at the restroom to take care of unfinished business—but, no, she would manage. Her body would process it in time.

Bailey remained silent and the air between them slowly grew awkward. Luckily, Thera chimed in mentally and distracted Maple from that.

"In the Sybrarium now? Someone's being a slut."

"Hehe, a little bit. But she didn't even get me off. Again!"

"Aw, poor Maple, too horny for her own good. Whatever will she do?"

Maple replied to the teasing with a mental eye-roll.

"It's not my fault she roped me into it. Also, she said she was a witch and 'knew' I'd be here today. So that's kind of weird. But it's fun, so I guess it's fine?"

And maybe Anemone was a bit brash, but Maple felt she could decline if she actually wanted to. The problem was that she kept running off afterward. Were they friends, or just—perverts?

"Mhm, sure. You're an innocent angel. Just be careful if she is a [Witch]. Hexes are nasty stuff."

"Yeah, I don't know. She's weird, but probably harmless. I had her call me mistress this time, and I think it'll be fine if I just train her well. Like make sure she obeys me and doesn't do anything too weird. Maybe make her wear a collar, and—god, what am I even saying anymore? Anyway, how's your stuff going?"

Hopefully Bailey didn't notice her face heating up. Thera chuckled in their shared mind.

"Like I said, too horny for your own good. And slower than I'd like, but that's how every trip goes. We only just now made it out of the city, and there are some nasty clouds in the distance."

Thera may have had a point about being too horny, but they were already at the Compendium. Maple sent a quick 'talk later, and good luck with the clouds', and focused on Bailey's words. He was in the middle of an explanation, which Maple nodded along to.

"—works a bit differently here. Catalogs have everything listed, and if you find something you want to study then you can request the book or scroll it's in."

"Ooh, neat. Give me, uh—[Fireball]! Or [Lightning Bolt], or uh—"

Another golem, running the counter, interrupted Maple in a monotone voice.

"[Fireball], [Lightning Bolt], and other destructive spells are restricted. Please present your identification and license."

"Oh. I wasn't talking to it. That sucks. [Fireball] would have been cool. Let's see, then—"

"[Fireball] is a restricted spell. Please present your identification and license."

Maple glared at the golem. It stared back with lifeless eyes.

The first catalog Maple grabbed happened to be light themed. It began with D-tier spells like [Light Orb], and ended with B-tier illusion magic. Bailey leaned over her shoulder to look through it too.

"You'd want to learn [Fireball] before anything else? In a library?"

"—[Light Strobe], [Emergency Flare], [Prismatic Mirage]—that sounds kinda neat. Um, no. Not literally, but still. I might need to defend myself one day, so I want something useful."

"Hrr. Why would you need to defend yourself? You're not much of a fighter, right?"

Maple closed the catalog and turned to face Bailey. The naive gnoll.

"Because the world is dangerous, and yeah, I'm not much of a fighter. That's why I'm learning magic."

Maple gave him a polite smile, but his face said that he still didn't understand. After a second of too-little thought, he spoke.

"Syber is pretty safe, though, and I would protect you. Or the other guards. And if you're not dedicated to training then magic is—"

"I am dedicated. Emma is vulnerable too, you know. And yeah, Syber is pretty safe. You won't always be around to protect me, and—and we all saw how the guards handled the sex zombies."

Maple kept her voice to a loud whisper, and Bailey winced. He didn't quite deserve all of that, but he was being obtuse. Other things she could have mentioned came to mind: the slime that had nearly drowned her when she'd first arrived in this world. That creep from before in Syber. The fact that someone had tried to buy Emma. The weird succubus conspiracy.

If he wanted to believe Syber was some safe haven—well, maybe that was true for a subset of people, like large muscular [Guardsmen]. But for everyone else? Maple opened a catalog labeled 'barriers'. Bailey sniffed and peeked his head over her shoulder to read with her.

"Hrr, right. Sorry. I just don't want you to get hurt—from a spell backfiring, or because you got into a fight. A barrier spell would be a good choice."

Him saying so almost made Maple open up a different catalog. She exhaled through her nose and flipped through the pages. There were more entries than she'd expected, and most of the first section consisted of components which would block only a single element: water, air, mana, light, milk. Likewise there were ones which blocked everything but that certain element.

Those were likely more useful within a larger spell individually, but another section listed more general purpose barriers. The simplest one, aptly named [Basic Barrier], was a D-tier spell and adequate for basic defense.

After flipping through a few of the other catalogs and requesting to look at a few of the actual spells, she stuck with that one and they rented a room. It was the size of a bedroom and had no furniture, only plain white tiles covering the floor, walls, and ceiling.

The bulk of the spell consisted of a single sigil which acted as a node and would be linked to adjacent nodes. A wall of energy would then form between as mana flowed through. That part was simple and good for practicing her mana control.

The page did have several warnings, however, and funnily enough. One cautioned against forming an airtight bubble around oneself, which was apparently less of an issue with more advanced spells, while another warned of the power of the wind when acting on large flat surfaces.

The latter was important because barriers were not immovable objects. Mental control over mana provided a small amount of physical force, and was fine for spells which didn't interact with the world directly, but for anything greater, various sigils were used to bind the construct to something else. Often that would be a physical object, and as the book cautioned, it wasn't always wise to use your body as that anchor point.

Maple read this explanation, more warnings, and other tips, then stared at the actual sigil. It was written in a magically conductive ink, with actual meaning emanating from it. From what she understood of magic, it was this meaning itself that was the important part, rather than the shape of the sigil. Ideally, she'd associate the two with each other in a recallable way.

After a minute of staring at it, she offered the book to Bailey and tried forming one of the nodes.

"Do you do any magic?"

Bailey glanced at the page and shook his head.

"No, not me. Mine's too...floppy."

"Floppy? What?"

Maple laughed, unsure if he was making some kind of joke. He quickly waved a paw in the air and explained.

"My mana, I mean. It's too difficult to control, see?"

He made a lumpy ball of mana to demonstrate. The outer edges of it was already leaking into the ambient mana in the air. Maple formed an eye on her forehead to get a better look.

"That is pretty, uh, floppy. You've just gotta exert your will on it more, make it do what you want it to do!"

Maple put a little more enthusiasm into her voice than usual to emphasize her point, but looked up when Bailey didn't reply. He stared at her forehead.

"Since when do you do that?"

Maple closed her third eye, and felt her cheeks heat up. She forgot she'd only mentioned the class reset thus far.

"Um, yeah, it's new! It can see magic better, and other things too probably. And it's kind of a secret, but I'm not one hundred percent human anymore...But do you want to see the coolest part?"

She rushed through the spilling of her secrets, and smirked while waiting for his prompt to continue. She read his face as cautious bewilderment—which, really, was the best setup for what she was about to do.

"I—yes?"

Maple smirked and put her palms next to her face. She opened an eye on each of them, and then wiggled her fingers. She even went as far as to stick her tongue out and roll her eyes up.

"Nyeeehh~"

She did it until Bailey cleared his voice and it became embarrassing.

"Huh? That's very—interesting? What do you mean not one hundred percent human?"

"Aw, you didn't think it was funny?"

He forced a chuckle, then. The repeated joke was for her own amusement more than anything, but it'd still fallen flat with Bailey and any effort on his part to pretend otherwise only cemented that fact.

"I mean, it was very uh...silly? What part of you isn't human? Or I mean—"

Maple turned back to the spell she was carefully constructing in the air. Two nodes were done, and the third was coming along.

"Don't worry about it. I've got some cool eyes now, that's all. Look, I think I got the..."

Maple trailed off and concentrated on connecting the three nodes. A semitransparent triangle appeared in the space between them.

"I did it! Oh, interesting, it does have air resistance."

Maple grabbed it and waved it through the air. It weighed nothing, had a faintly green hue, and moved through the air like a flat piece of cardboard. She fanned herself with it, and then Bailey.

"Hrr, good job. That was pretty quick."

"Yeah. This was the easy part. I'd need to anchor it to something, and if I had to do that in the moment...Oh, the edge isn't sharp at all. I wonder..."

Her finger sank into the edges, making being cut by it unlikely, but the air resistance made Maple's thoughts immediately turn toward flight. A massless airfoil? That would be good, wouldn't it? Or, or—a hot air balloon, with another spell creating the heat? A blimp? She was about to have wings anyway, but—could she build a zeppelin for free using only her innate magical and sexual energy?

Surely someone would have done it before, if it were that easy?

"Hey Thera, do many flying machines exist in this world?"

"What? Can't talk right now—pouring rain!"

Maple had to focus harder than normal to parse Thera's reply, for some reason. Was there a range on telepathy? She got enough of a glimpse to understand they were really going through it, and picked two simple concepts to send back: 'oh no, rain', and 'range issue?'

In return she got a clear 'probably'. With it, leaked through her rainy frustration. Maple mumbled to herself.

"Jeez, sucks for them."

Bailey grunted his confusion, and Maple refocused her eyes. He still didn't know about Earth, but if she worded it carefully...

"Nothing. I think it's raining—uh, how common would you say flying is? Like through magic, or contraptions, or..."

Bailey cocked his head at the totally sane question. In fairness, he seemed more taken aback by the jumping around of topics than the question itself.

"Well, not too uncommon, but still rare? Like you know, the gnomes have their balloon...contraptions. I've heard of lots of [Mages] being able to fly, but they're usually pretty high level. Flying's dangerous for most species."

His look said he hoped she wasn't thinking of trying to fly herself—if only he knew. He would see her wings with everyone else once they finish growing. She mentally dared him to say anything else against the idea, and realized how grumpy she was feeling. Acting, even.

Out of frustration, no doubt. Maple pushed the feeling down and focused on learning.

"Okay, now the anchor, and...try hitting it."