Missing rune

"So? How is it going?" Shane asked Hera for the 5th time in 20 minutes.

"It's not. Maybe I can figure this out if I'm not interrupted every two minutes," Hera huffed.

"Oh, sorry, it's just…."

"Just that you are excited, and you want to get your legacy. Yeah, you told me that five times already. Look, just because I'm a conceptual mage doesn't mean I can just think about a spell, and it works. It takes time. I told you that I'm not even sure I can make this thing work, and even if I can, there is no guarantee that it will be the same element of that rune. Either way, unless you stop bothering me, we will never know. Try to sleep or something. You look like crap," Hera looked back at her tablet, which showed the translation of part of the journal.

Shane had spent most of the night looking for some sort of clue in the journal. In the end, she found something, but that cost her a night of sleep. Among the pages, there were some mentions of fights and trials that the owner of the journal, presumably, the naga hero, went through. During those challenges, the naga would, at times, say that they had to hide in plain sight. At first, Shane thought it to be just an expression, but in one of the later passages, the naga talked about how the group had to hold their breath to hide from a monster that got so close they could see the white in its eyes.

With that, Shane understood that all those mentions of hiding insight were, in fact, talking about something specific. She searched the journal one more time for more details of that ability and found several passages talking about it. For that spell to work, there were a number of conditions, and Shane wrote them all down so Hera could create the same spell.

First, they couldn't move. One of the nagas shifted when facing one monster, and that seemed to have broken the effect. Second, the better the hiding spot, the stronger the spell would be. It seemed like it took advantage of the environment to make the effect better. Third, smells and noises also affected it. That's why the naga would smear themselves with mud and stop breathing while a creature was close by. Lastly, the spell, at one point, became so strong that if a monster saw them but got distracted by any reason, it would forget that the nagas were there. Apparently, this last effect was what saved the group so many times, and it was also something the owner of the journal never expected to happen.

With all those details, Shane wrote down an explanation and asked Hera to figure out how to use it. The issue was, making a spell wasn't an easy task like Shane expected. Even if it was something, Hera was familiar with, like Bonnie's fire fists, replicating that effect was complicated. It wasn't just about understanding the spell's effect but understanding how the mana behaved to make the spell work.

To make this particular spell, Hera first tried to understand how each part of the effect would happen. Some bits seemed simple enough. If she could use her pulse as a base to take a picture of an area and then another pulse to function as a screen to show what's on the back, she could create a camouflage. However, after a few tries, she realized that this would end up as an illusion spell, which wouldn't help with the problem.

When they woke up, Bonnie and Helena had a brief discussion with Hera to understand what was going on. The two decided to help her, and with two people who had a good grasp on the theory behind using spells, things became somewhat easier. Or at least, it was easier to understand the details and how things were supposed to function.

The first thing the trio had to understand was how this spell would differ from a basic illusion. In less than half an hour, they came to the conclusion that the main part of the spell, the part that actually mattered for what they wanted to do, was to make someone forget they were there. Everything else would make the spell behave as something they already had tried to make the rune light up.

Despite helping a lot, having Bonnie and Helena chip in had its fair share of issues. They were very passionate about magic, and just a small push was enough to make them go on a tangent that wouldn't help at all. Thankfully, Hera was annoyed enough with Shane to forget her usual passive persona. Every time Bonnie or Helena started to change the subject too much, Hera would bring them back like a teacher trying to make the class focus.

A few hours went by, Shane was finally sleeping. Silah and Mylo were talking about crafting. The fighter wasn't much of a blacksmith, but he recently picked up tailoring, and ever since being exposed by the human society, Silah had developed an interest in the area as well. Blue and Alex tried to help with the spell, but it quickly became clear that they were making things slower, so they decided to look around the area and maybe gather some materials from the monsters they killed during the previous day.

During that time, Hera had a small breakthrough. They didn't have to replicate the exact effect, just something similar enough that they should use the same type of mana. Instead of trying to hide herself or a person, Hera focused on trying to hide a location. She made a small cylindrical rock on the side of the valley, away from the main path. To make it easier, she made that small object seem almost natural, even carving away some bits and pieces to give it a similar look to the valley walls. Her theory was that if she was trying to make someone forget something that already was natural, it would be easier to make the spell work.

The next step was to figure out how the mana would behave. She wanted to make people forget what they were looking at, but that also came with a major issue. It didn't matter how many ways Hera tried to come up with. In the end, she could only think that doing that would be like messing with someone's brain. Doing something like that was scary. If she created something too strong, she could seriously hurt people. For the first time, she understood why Ogryn was scared of his mana burn spell. If someone with bad intentions got a hold of a spell like that, there was no way to tell what they could do with it.

Seeing her hesitation, Helena got closer, "Sweetie? Are you ok?

"I don't know. What if this spell ends up being something bad?" Hera replied.

"There are no bad spells, sweetie. Well... at least not in that sense," Helena chuckled.

"But… What if I make something that can hurt someone forever? What if this spell can destroy someone's life?" Hera asked.

"Well. for starters. I doubt that a spell you just came up with would be that strong. Second, if it gets to that point, just don't use it on other people," Helena replied.

"But the idea is for it to be an area of effect, not a targeted thing. Anyone could be affected by it. Not to mention that if someone sees the spell, they can try to duplicate it."

"Even more reason not to worry then. I seriously doubt an AoE spell you just came up with would be strong enough to hurt people like that. And you are seeing how much work is to make the spell even when we have a decent description. If someone sees you using that, it will take a lot more to duplicate it," Helena continued.

"Besides, do you really think that you, someone who's not even level 20, would be able to make something that high-level healers couldn't fix? C'mon Hera, you are awesome, but not that awesome. Besides, why are you worrying about something that you are not even sure it's going to work?" Bonnie chuckled.

"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence," Hera rolled her eyes.

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to. We can just tell Shane that it didn't work," Helena said.

"No… I still want to try, and like you said, Bonnie, high-level healers should be able to fix anything that I do, right?" Hera turned to the researcher with a creepy smile.

"You know… now that you say it like that, I'm not liking this idea," Bonnie took a step back, playing along.

Hera went back to the plan she created and focused her mana. Hera already considered ailments to be her specialty. Maybe she could make a poison or something that would target a specific part of a memory. She knew enough about biology to know that the brain tended to fill gaps in it. Naturally, that's why people could understand words with missing letters or see full pictures even if parts of them were hidden. As long as the spell focused only on removing the parts that weren't supposed to be seen from someone's mind, this could work.

Hera started weaving her mana around the small cylinder, which was even smaller than a soda can. The first step was to make the mana infectious to anyone who looked. Using her poison and spore field as a base, Hera made the mana, trying to reach out to anyone who stared at it. At first, this was tricky because she would always be looking at the mana, and it would keep trying to reach her. Second, because the mana wasn't obeying and staying in place. To change that, Hera had to pump a lot of mana into the spell and make several tiny tendrils around the rock, splitting the spell into two parts. The first would just surround the object, and the second would try to attack anyone looking at it.

The next part was to tell the tendrils what to attack. Hera never once tried to toy with messing with someone's brain, and she didn't know enough of biology to know where the memory would be stored or if she would have to even touch the target's neurons. Unsure of what to do, she just went for a hail mary and told the mana to remove its memory from the target. She suddenly felt her mana being drained. A whooping 3 000 points of mana were pulled from her, but the spell worked.

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Spell acquired

Selective Memory Filter

You can use your mana to create an area. Everything inside that area will be forgotten by anyone who is not looking directly at it.

Base area: 10 centimeters²

Base range of effect: 2 meter²

Base mana cost: 4500 mana

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Hera almost fell to the ground. This was the first time she made a spell that cost so much mana. The feeling was much similar to when she used her relic for an impossible question.

"Are you ok?" Helena rushed over to her.

"Yeah, just dead tired. But at least it worked, I think. We just need to see if that will work with the rune," Hera replied. She could still see the cylinder without a problem, but Bonnie and Helena forgot about the object after a couple of tests if they tried to look at it when close. Not just that, but even if they had seen the tube from a distance, the moment they got close and looked away, the memory of its existence would vanish.

They talked some more, then took a break to eat. After a couple more hours, Shane woke up, and the first thing she asked about was the spell. Hera told her that she thought she got it, but Shane had to eat before they could test. After all, if they were going to face whatever comes next, everyone should be in the best shape possible.

Another half an hour went by, with Shane almost inhaling her food, but finally, it was time to try again.

"Just a head's up. This uses almost all my mana. I can't use any spells after this for a while," Hera let everyone know. She would still be able to fight, but without mana, her options would be seriously limited.

The group gathered around the naga statue, and one by one, the runes were lit up using the corresponding mana. Fire, ice, nature, poison, strength, illusion, gold, earth, and finally Hera's spell, which they were still unsure what element it would be. When she used the spell, the light in the magic circle vanished.

For a moment, everyone thought they had failed one more time.

Then, the statue shifted. It rose its body from the ground and both arms towards the sky in an arc. The ground began to rumble, causing everyone to back away from the statue. With a smooth motion, four plaques of rock shifted beneath the group's feet, pushing them away from the statue and towards the corners of the rooms. From beneath the stone nada, a tower began to rise. Then a white stone dome with green details. More towers and domes appeared, and it only stopped when the 50-meter wide valley was almost completely filled with a massive cathedral. In front of it, in the same direction that the naga's head was facing, there was a large entrance surrounded by two statues of the same naga with a smile and one arm extended forward, as if it was welcoming the visitors.

"We got it!" Shane started jumping and rushed over to Hera to give her a big hug, "I'm so happy that I could kiss you!"

"You could what?" Silah asked in shock.

"It's an expression. She doesn't mean it literally," Hera explained while pushing Shane away.

"Oh yeah. Sorry, you guys are different. Anyway, let's head inside. My legacy awaits!" Shane proudly announced before going towards the entrance of the temple.