Chronicles of the True Wizard

Felix continued to walk along the sheet of ice making it a half kilometer out before he heard a rumbling sound moving rapidly, coming from below the ice. Felix readied a jump spell as oversized as he dared, which was just over 3 times the effect. The rumbling vanished and everything was still and quiet, with just the slight whistling of the winter wind grazing Felix's ears.

Just as Felix started to turn around and doubt his sanity walking out on to the ice, a loud boom sounded from a hundred meters or so to his left. He flinched and jumped away on instinct launching himself much faster than he had hoped for causing him to scramble in the air to right and catch himself with Feather Fall.

Rolling himself over he looked back and saw a gigantic bony water creature that slightly resembled a whale. It was covered in large white scales with two sets of fins on either side that were long enough to be wings. Crowning its horrifically bony head, covered in teeth and spikes, was a long horn with a wide base. Instead of looking like a horn attached to an animal, like a unicorn might, this horn was simply part of it's skull that stuck out of the front of it's head. Similar to the horn, the Macerodos had bone spikes protruding all the way down it's back, angled backwards. Overall it was about 25 meters from the tip of it's horn to the end of it's tail so essentially a gargantuan dinosaur whale.

It had jumped through the ice, leaving a gaping hole behind it and splashing water all over. Currently it was traveling in a beautiful arc high into the air with a slight spin. It landed over a hundred meters away, horn straight down, and crashed right through the ice back into the sea below. There were now two craters of ice surrounding large holes with a slippery, wet sheet surrounding them.

[E - Uncommon] Macerodos (Lvl 75)

It's worse than I expected. I need to find a flying spell or broom or something, ASAP.

Felix ran away from the two craters and heard the rumbling from below rushing towards him, then passing right by him as it moved many times faster than he was. The rumbling vanished for a few moments, almost half a minute, before the ice shattered a hundred meters ahead of Felix. The Macerodos soared high into the air, spraying Felix with water, straight over his head, landing directly behind him and crashing back through the ice.

Felix began running back across the ice as far away from the four openings as he could get. Once again, the rumbling rushed towards him, passed below, then raced ahead before it disappeared. Felix ran to the side making sure to stay away from the holes that already existed. The Macerodos crashed through the ice, about where Felix expected it to, and soared through the air along the same line as the rumbling sound that preceded it.

Huh…

This time, Felix ran about a hundred meters away from one of the holes in the ice and planted himself, paying attention to his surroundings, and waiting. This time, the rumbling passed right below Felix towards the hole he was closest to. Felix made sure he had grip with his feet, which was completely unnecessary as he just now noticed, his boots gave him perfect grip on the slippery surface of the ice. He remembered that they nullified all status conditions, or rather, he didn't realize this would count. Certain he wouldn't slip, he prepared an oversized Jump, instant Gust and a variant of it with force that was spread out a little bit, he called Push.

Time to figure out what it does when I'm near a hole, instead of running away from it. If I just keep running, it's gonna keep doing the same thing over and over and I'm not sure what to do to stop it.

The Macerodos jumped through the hole Felix was watching this time, instead of making a new one. This time, it soared through the air, much higher this time and straight towards Felix. Judging from it's trajectory, it was trying to land directly on top of him. Felix cast his jump to the side and both of his other spells, one to propel him further, and one to survive the landing. The Macerodos punched a hole right through the ice where Felix had leapt from and disappeared into the depths once again.

Well, time to try something.

Felix ran almost a hundred meters away from the nearest hole in the ice and began casting. First, he cast a channeled cold spell directly into the ice. Next, he tried something he had theorized but wasn't quite sure about, he cast a slightly modified durability enchantment directly on the ice. He noticed that enchantments and spell forms were very similar in structure, where spell forms were mostly temporary while enchantments were simply more permanent. He hoped that modifying an enchantment to be able to cast it as a spell would have a similar effect to the original enchantment.

Unfortunately, his current knowledge of spell forms limited his effect to a big circle. He would have much rather expanded outwards with tendrils of durability so that the enchanted ice didn't simply separate from the ice around it.

Finally, he cast a disc of solid mana on the ground above the ice, he hoped it would last long enough when he dove out of range to accomplish his goal.

Felix heard the familiar rumbling once again pass right below him before vanishing for a few moments. As soon as the rumbling stopped, Felix stopped channeling his cold spell and durability enchantment and hoped their effects would last long enough. He cast a Jump spell, prepared a Gust spell to catch himself and prepared a massive Force variant of Gust.

The Feather Fall spell only targeted the caster and Felix wasn't quite sure how to target a different creature yet so he fell back on the spell he had created before he learned Feather Fall, with some improvements. His original spell used to use a Gust spell without the channeling and with the area of effect reduced but overpowered to deliver a big blast of soft and cushy wind. This time, Felix swapped out the wind node with a force node and made the area of effect much bigger. He suspected the force node would make the spell much rougher and potentially minimally harmful, but he wasn't planning on using it on himself.

The Macerodos jumped through the hole nearest Felix's position and soared through the air, directly towards Felix, exactly as he expected. Felix waited for the creature to pass the apex of it's jump, until it was about on top of him. He cast his force Feather Fall on the creature and jumped to the side, catching himself with his modified and prepared Gust spell.

Felix looked back and watched the creature's fall expectedly. Firstly, he noticed that the Macerodos' fall didn't appear to be affected at all from his spell. It crashed down into the disc of Mana Felix had cast and kept channeled. The spell form for the disc remained close to Felix, but there was a tendril of mana connecting it to the physical construct which allowed it to be much further than Felix's spell range. He didn't know that was how it would work, but he was glad it did work that way.

The tip of the Macerodos' horn pierced through the disc of mana instantly, causing it to implode inwards at the point of impact. At the same moment, Felix doubled over in pain as he felt almost half of his mana ripped out of his body all at once. He felt a sharp, throbbing pain all over his brain, throughout his body all originating from his soul. He had experienced soul pain before, so he could become aware of it, but that was in a controlled environment. This was uncontrolled and intense.

Felix tried to forced himself into a meditation, focusing solely on his mind, body and soul and trying to eliminate the distraction that was the pain he felt. He found himself in the empty void that was his meditation space and felt the pain dampen. As quickly as he could manage, Felix started to assess the damage. Starting with his mind, it appeared like nothing in particular was wrong, it was simply a migraine that he hoped would disappear with time. His body on the other hand felt like it was bruised all over. He was sore everywhere, he could feel it in his skin and muscles all the way down through his bones. Unfortunately, the best he could do was activate his ring and empty the entirety of it's healing effect into himself.

Finally, he examined his soul as best he could with his limited awareness. It seemed like parts of his soul, the outer layers, were essentially pulled with the mana out of his body then they snapped back to him like an elastic when they couldn't stretch further. There didn't appear to be any permanent damage as far as he could tell, at least nothing drastic but he didn't have a ton of time to spend scrutinizing it right now.

Before leaving his meditation space, Felix checked how much mana he had left. Opening his status screen, Felix's heart dropped. His mana was still dropping rapidly, though the rate was steadily slowing down. He focused his attention inwards to his mana to try and follow the mana to figure out either which spells he was still maintaining, or why it was dropping. He quickly noticed the problem.

Normally, Felix's mana pool floated around inside of him roughly in the shape of his body with more mana concentrated towards the center of his torso and the rest thinning out from there. Now, Felix's mana was lopsided towards his left side and appeared to be actively leaking out of his body.

Felix quickly grabbed hold of it all as best he could and shoved it back to where it should be. He didn't have time to do it carefully right now as he felt the rumbling below his feet through his meditation space because, in his desperation, he only made it part way into a meditation. Felix also grabbed as much of the mana around his left side as he could and held it inside of him so it would stop leaking out. He felt like he was holding a big sheet of metal over a hole in the side of a boat.

Felix left his meditation space and instantly prepared a Jump spell and modified Gust spell to catch himself. He watched the Macerodos jump back through the hole it had just made and he jumped as far away as he could. As he leapt, Felix tried to cast a force spell to propel himself further in the air, but found he couldn't quite manage to cast another spell while holding his mana inside of him and keeping it from leaking so he waited till he was airborne and tried again. Now with the jump spell gone, he sequentially cast spells that propelled him further then caught himself with a burst of cushy air, landing on the ice in a dead sprint.

The ring had helped a lot as the pain had dulled to simple soreness now and not the incessant throbbing that had penetrated his everything. He was still only sitting at around 15% health as the ring really didn't heal that much, but it helped a lot with the pain.

Ok, new plan. Also I need to experiment more with Mana Shield and variants of it because I clearly do not understand it well enough right now. Actually, just mana in general and the body, I need more books. Maybe I can buy some for the university when I get back, until then that spell, and anything like it is grounded.

Felix slowed to a jog and waited for the rumbling to catch up to him, which didn't take long. He felt the rumbling pass by a dozen or so meters to his right before the creature broke through the ice in front of Felix, soaring through the air along the same line the rumbling traced just a moment ago. It crashed through the ice about 25 meters behind Felix.

I could just shoot it but I really don't want this stupid thing to just run, or swim, away. I think I had the right idea before, just the wrong execution.

As before, Felix stood near one of the holes the creature had just punched through the ice and prepared two identical spells. He waited as the rumbling passed directly below him towards the hole then vanished for a moment followed by the Macerodos jumping directly through it.

Felix once again waited for it to reach the apex of it's jump, casting his spell as soon as it got there. He cast an overpowered Push spell, even though the Macerodos was about 30 meters away from Felix, mostly above him, the spell seemed to have some of the effect Felix was hoping for.

Felix cast Jump to get out of the way, then modified Gust once the Jump spell form dissipated to catch himself. He kept his eyes over his shoulder, watching the creature as it fell at an angle this time. He waited until he thought the timing was right and cast the other Push he had prepared, further rotating the creature. He had slightly overpowered the spells, trying to compensate for the distance and mass of the creature. He was hoping for the creature to land on it's side, instead it seemed like it might land angled backwards a little bit, slightly on it's tail.

Felix watched as the Macerodos smacked the solid ice below landing on it's tail before the rest of it's body came swinging down. The powdery snow below it got thrown everywhere making visibility difficult.

Felix prepared two thrice overpowered Fire Bolts and waited for the snow in the air to settle. He got impatient and fired one of them in it's direction, immediately replacing it.

The snow settled somewhat, but not entirely as the Macerodos made a ruckus, using it's massive wing shaped fins to shuffle towards the nearest hole in the ice. Felix chased after it casting Fire Bolts as fast as he could. It was essentially impossible to miss as he was relatively close to it and it was massive. It took Felix only 4 Fire Bolt's to receive a kill notification.

Ding You have slain an [E - Uncommon] Macerodos (Lvl 75)

Ding You have gained 5 levels in [E - Common] Caster

Oh thank System. I definitely don't have the mana to throw it off balance again. Stupid mana leak, how the hell am I gonna fix this. All free points into intelligence.

Felix didn't bother scrambling to store the corpse as he figured it was much too big anyways. . . . . .