[The Begginer Magic circuit (lower grade) evolved to Magic circuit (middle grade)]
[Begginer Mana control (lower grade) involved to Mana control (middle grade)]
"Finally!"
Locke got up and stretched, all his bones cracked with his movements, he had meditated for twelve hours uninterrupted to finally manage to improve his own magic circuit. He raised his left hand and the black mana ran through his fingers, Locke felt that his mana was more powerful and easier to control.
He left the cave and looked at the valley lit by the 'sun' light, he took a cereal bar from his inventory and bit a piece.
"This thing tastes like pencil shavings!" Tia complained.
Locke took out a chocolate bar and gave to her, the fairy screamed with happyness and fly back to the cave, it had been their 'home' for the past few days, she lay down on the pile of blankets and pillows that Locke had made into a improvised bed and ate the chocolate slowly, in pleasure.
Locke went down the mountain and entered a thermal source that he had found while exploring and training, he washed himself and relaxed for a few minutes. "I think I'm going to set up a cabin here..."
After a while Locke returned to the cave entrance.
"Very well... it's time!" Locke's face changed to a worried expression, he took a deep breath and opened the system screen, he took some small leaps and waved his arms, his heart pounding with anticipation.
The screen floated in front of him and Locke couldn't take his eyes off those scary words.
[You have twelve grimoire pages to redeem, would you like to start the random draw?]
Locke was standing there, he had accumulated some pages through daily missions and as a reward for the growing of his mana control and now contemplated redeem those pages.
An ordinary person would certainly not understand Locke's feelings, Locke simply hated anything that had the words 'random draw'. Due to the curse that haunted him from childhood to adulthood, Locke had never had see, even once, the smile of madam luck.
Locke had never won a draw, a concurse, lotery, scratch card, nothing... Not even a church bingo.
Every time he invested money, even if it was a safe investment, Locke ended up with less than he had invested.
Every time Locke wrote a program, he had to spend overtime cleaning up bugs that occurred for no apparent reason.
In mobile games, when he played at the gacha, even those who had 100 percent to take out at least one Legendary character Locke still managed to take out just normal characters.
Of course, with the end of his curse and the evolution of his status, Locke no longer had cause for concern, but he was still a conditioned reflex, created by years of suffering.
Finally Locke took a deep breath and accepted the drawings.
[Starting random redemption of grimoire pages... redemption complete!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Abjuration – Dispell curse!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Abjuration – Unidirectional shield!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Arcanism – Pyromancy!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Conjuration – Call Lesser spirit!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Divination – Detect Presence!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Divination – Hunting mark!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Hexcraft – Blindness!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Hexcraft – Spirit Drain!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Mentalism – Detect lies!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Mentalism – Extract language!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Runology – Concealment!
· Congratulations! You have unlocked the spell: Witchcraft – Silverligth!
Locke jaw was dropped with unbelief, he watched the lists of new spells with disbelief, for a moment he even doubted that the draw was even random, most of the spells he had retrieved would be more than useful for his current plans.
The truth is that Locke's luck has changed from water to wine. Even though his luck was still his lowest stat, it was still many times greater than the luck of an ordinary person.
Locke began to analyze each of his new spells, his mind working in thousands of ways in which he could apply them during a combat.
The unidirectional shield seemed very useful, when Locke performed the magic a black hexagon formed in the air, the shape looked like a matte black steel plate and Locke was able to control his position with his mind, he brought the shield to his front and touched the surface, it was slightly cold and it was smooth to the touch, it reminded Locke of the sensation of touching marble, he took up position and punched the shield with all the strength he had.
BOOM
The plaque cracked slightly with the blow and blood dripped from Locke's fist. "It is more resistant than the shadow shield... I didn't even much mana..."
Dispell curse did not seem useful to Locke at the moment, but it was the magic he was most pleased with, one of the greatest fears Locke had was to find himself in a position similar to that of his father, having to see someone who he loves to die slowly consumed by a curse, he knew, of course, that this magic was not omnipotent, as the description reported, different curses had different mana expenditures, but that magic already gave him a little peace of mind.
Detect presence was quite simple, a pulse of magic escaped Locke's body and traveled for about a mile, soon after Locke felt as if he were watching a star sea, small lights shone everywhere, marking the presence of small animals as little points of light, while other creatures looked like great torches of light. Locke noticed a small light very close to him, he saw a lizard that camouflaged itself perfectly among the rocks, so that he could never have noticed before.
He took the opportunity to test the next magic on the lizard, the hunting mark was launched and a pattern of a black crosshair appeared on the lizard's back, Locke scared the lizard that ran out, entering a small hole between the rocks. Locke could feel where the lizard was, even inside the mountain.
Locke was very excited about the pyromancy, the idea of facing an army of enemies with fireballs and a storm of flames was, in some moment, every boy's dream, he activated the magic with anticipation, a hot energy flowed through his body and a black colored flame appeared in the center of his rigth hand, the flame was small, but easy to control, Locke increased the mana flow and the flame grew, he aimed at a rock in the distance and threw a black fireball, the rock exploded and the pieces are melting with the heat of the flames.
"Dude, that was f*cking cool!" Tia praised.
"F*cking cool indeed! But... why is it black?" Locke questioned the unnatural color of the flames.
"It is not obvious? Because of your mana! Did you never realize that every time you use mana this is the color?"
Locke reflected, he had never stopped to think before, but whenever he used magic the black color was predominant, but looking at the black flame that rose from the semi-melted pieces of stone he smiled. The black flame made this twice as cool.
Time to try the Call Lesser spirit. Locke didn't know what to expect from this one, a ghost maybe? The best way to find out was to put it into action. Locke concentrated and activated the magic, his mana flowed and formed a magic circle in the air, a small spherical creature made of blue flames without heat, with big bright eyes crossed the circle.
"What is this?"
"It's a Wisp, a lesser spirit" Tia replied.
The creature began to fly in circles around Locke. "What does it want?"
"You call it, you paid the price, it wants to know what you want it to do"
"Wait a minute, can you communicate with that?"
"Yes I can ... I am a fairy, have you forgotten?"
"... Right" Locke turned to the Wisp. "Well, thank you for come, I was just testing the magic, you can go back"
The spirit stopped in the air, but did not leave.
"It wants a contract with you"
"A contract?"
"Yes, if you make a contract you can summon it directly, it is said that your mana is special, delicious, the little you offered to call it was enough to strengthen it a lot."
"What do you think, Tia?"
"It might be a good idea, wisps are some of the most basic spirits out there, it would be interesting to see how your mana would affect the growth of one of them."
"How do I make a contract?"
"Offer a little more mana"
Locke's mana began to flow, a small thread of mana left his body and touched his spirit, his appearance went complete black.
"It's complete"
Locke can fill a connection with the little spirit, he said goodbye and the spirit disappeared. He went back to testing the new spells.
He was thinking about how he would test the extract language when he remembered the little harpy in the distance.
Locke had already noticed a few days ago that there was always at least one harpy watching him, far in the sky, sometimes hidden in the montain cliffs, Locke always ignored them completely and that made the harpies feel a little more relaxed in their task, the today's lookout was one that Locke had taken particular note of, a small harpy who no longer even bothered to even try to hide her presence, she just went down and lay high on the rocks where she could see Locke's cave, and often she even dozed off during the vigil. Tia had dubbed her 'Lazywings'.
The noise of the explosion had awakened Lazywings, and she was watching Locke in the distance with fear.
Locke went back to the cave, when he supposed she couldn't see him anymore he activated the camouflage, he left the cave and saw that Lazywings had gone down the rock again, he climbed the cliffs with agility and soon found himself close to the harpy.
Lazywings were the size of a preteen, her chest was flat and covered with a leather band, his two arms had a strange shape, they looked like a mixture of human arms and wings, her hair was the same dark brown color as her feathers, with shells and small trinkets stuck in her curls, from the waist down her body was completely that of a bird, covered in feathers and a tail, she slept snoring without worries, Locke noticed a small bag made of animal leather next to the harpy, some strange fruits were inside.
Locke crouched over the figure, for the magic to activate he needed to touch it and that made him hesitate, strange as the creature was, Locke felt bad for scare a child. Locke stood there for a few seconds, watching the harpy, he undid the camouflage. His sudden appearance startled the harpy.
"&&&&&&& #%!!!!!" the harpy started screaming incomprehensible words, she tried to fly away, but her body trembled so much that her wings did not obey her, causing her instead of moving away to fly directly to the rock that she used to hide before, hitting her head hard on the stone.
"% $! & !!!... $ #%! @@@!!!..."The harpy started to hold her head with her wings, her eyes filled with tears, Locke approached her, the harpy cried softly as she held her head and trembled.
Locke bent down and put his hand on the harpy's head, which flinched at the contact, she began to murmur under her breath as she shivered and cried.
"I feel like a villain..." Locke sighed.
"You look like a villain..." Tia replied.
Locke took a deep breath and activated the magic, trying to get it over as quickly as possible, as if a switch were activated the harpy was silent, eyes unfocused, Locke was glad to see that she was in no pain. After a while a lot of information entered Locke's mind, and he felt slightly disoriented, then he heard Harpy moaning again.
"Please, don't eat me! Please! Please! I don't taste good!" she was still crying with her eyes closed.
"I will not eat you!" Locke replied.
Locke's scream made the harpy open his eyes in disbelief. "How... how do you know the tribe's language?"
"I learned from you!" Locke smiled.
The harpy's expression froze with surprise, Locke realized that the harpy's mind was racing, looking like smoke would start to rise through her head.
Locke took the opportunity to test another spell, he activated lie detection. "Why are you watching me?"
The harpy came back to reality, she still showed fear but seeing Locke speaking in her language made her more rational. "You strong! killed mountain king! Are you going to kill the winged tribe?"
Locke thought for a second. "Do you intend to attack me?"
The harpy shook its head quickly in negative.
"So there's no need to be afraid" Locke stood and turned. "Where is your tribe?"
"Far away! Far far away!" the fairy responded quickly.
Lie
Locke smiled. "It's okay if you can't tell, I don't care about you watching, either!" Locke prepared to go down the cliff.
"Wait!" the harpy screamed, Locke turned. "I'm Gaeta! Fast Wing Gaeta!" the harpy looked expectant.
"Locke" Locke replied and jumped down the cliff.
The harpy watched him until he entered the cave, she then flew into the sky and started off towards a nearby mountain.
"Their tribe is a lot closer than we thought." Tia commented. "It must have been scary, out of nowhere a strong being appears near your home, killing the strongest mountain monsters, they must have been on the verge of despair."
"I don't intend to do them any harm... I will continue to test my new spells"