Day 119, 7:30 PM

  My two weeks passed quickly. An hour a day, usually around meals, went on teaching the girls new spells. The rest of the time I spent on searching for secret compartments and wasting mana to improve my capacity.

  The most exciting discovery was the secret room beneath the library, a place where I plan to spend several redos, not counting the time I will take to study Hadriuse’s grimoires, which I don’t plan on revealing to Edna until I reach the point where I can utterly crush her in battle.

  Tonight is the night. It’s been more than two weeks since the battle with the inquisitors, there’s still time until Edna becomes an archmage, the perfect window for a redo. With that in mind, I step out into the downpour.

  The jungle has retreated in the two weeks since I’ve been out, giving way to a neatly trimmed lawn, shaped like a half-circle centered on the entrance porch. Eerily, there are no signs of stumps or uprooted trees, the ground is perfectly even. The area is much too small for the work of an archmage, or even a mage, if their focus was on clearing the mansion’s surroundings. Still, the clearing is around sixty yards in radius, a decent kill-zone in case of an attack.

  I move towards the dent in the jungle, where Edna is working on expanding the semicircle. She is sitting at the base of a tree, her eyes closed.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” she doesn’t bother opening her eyes. “I’m solving the problem of the Church of Holiness. I think we’ll be rid of them this time next year.”

  There’s an oddness about her voice, like she’s speaking from somewhere far away, like she is speaking in her sleep.

  I glance at the tree she’s dozing under, its bark shifts and changes, the acidic vines, which were killing it until moments ago fusing with the trunk. The tree shudders, and I understand what she’s doing.

  “You’re making treants?”

  “I’m making tree soldiers.” Edna’s voice remains flat and drowsy as she corrects me. “Most of the monstrous flora is a magical response to wormlords’ attacks centuries ago. Since the church is using the same monsters, I thought it was adequate to use the same counter, but there’s a difference. They can’t create more abominations while I can create infinite tree soldiers.”

  A silence descends. Edna’s not here, most of her mind is tied up with the tree, reshaping it. Mana is surging out of her like a river from a bottomless lake, and in my mana sense, she registers as mostly green now. The other color mana is still there, but the vast majority of it is the verdant of life.

  I say nothing, but I don’t leave either. If we’re staying here for a year, I will need to prepare, and the best way to do that is to become an archmage. Whenever I try something new or risky, it must happen while Redo is available, lest I die permanently.

  No time like the present. I invest all my attribute points into physique, and I get a notification I’ve acquired Increased Mana Capacity followed by a level up notification.

  [You have leveled up.

  Select a skill within sixty seconds or a random one will be assigned to you.

  Initial Increased Range - The range of your magic increases.

  Initial Increased Speed - The speed at which you cast spells increases.]

  Well, a no-brainer there, I increase my casting speed and check the next level up condition. Draw mana of all types into your body. I can do that in Hadriuse’s secret lab, the place has much stranger implements than mana reservoirs.

  I glance at Edna, she hasn’t noticed my increased mana capacity, which should be a good thing, I think.

  “Thank you for your time, Edna, I won’t disturb you anymore.”

  She doesn’t even acknowledge me, her mind merged with that of a tree, so I head back into the mansion, straight for the library.

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  Once inside, I bolt the door, a strange, yet practical addition to the secret room’s lock. Then I head up the stairs, turning the knobs of three railing poles.

  Four blocks of four black and white tiles twist, revealing a stairway leading down. Unlike the rest of the house, which is plated in warm wood, the secret chamber is entirely covered in a polished metal the color of bronze patina. The space is sterile, and the metal stairs, which should clang with every step I make, produce no sound at all.

  The door above me closes when I reach the base of the stairway and countless lights come to life. The chamber is as large as an airplane hangar, probably half as big as the mansion itself. I pass the endless rows of lifeforms suspended in vats of greenish-yellow liquid, and head for the more comfortable study. Along the way, I pick up nine glass cubes off of metal racks, their nine colors matching those of primary mana types, save for life. The cubes have three inch sides, conveniently blunted points and edges, and are impossibly light for something that looks like solid crystal.

  I enter Hadriuse’s real study, which is much more in tone with the building above, and take a seat in a massive leather chair, placing the cubes on a large wooden desk. I have until morning for my experiments, then I shall redo.

  I close my eyes and focus on my spiritual sense, in which the cubes blaze like tiny suns. I focus and start drawing mana into my body.

  The level up notification appears, offering a familiar choice between Advanced Overpower Resistance and Initial Magical Resistance. I choose the former, and find the next level up condition ridiculously simple.

  Alarm is already active, and a moment later, I cast scanner and hyper-stimulator, for a total of three actively maintained spells which BSD requires for my next level, and I get another notification. This time, the choice is more difficult, Ignore Song and Ignore Movement. One negates the vocal component of magic, while the other allows me to cast magic without moving.

  One works underwater or when I’m suffocating, the other when I’m immobilized, both are useful. I’m torn, but I choose Ignore Song. It will improve my odds when ambushing my enemies.

  My heart sinks when I check the next condition. Achieve perfect mastery over at least one spell. I guess that’s the end of my race through levels, but nothing several redos can’t fix. The only question is which spell to focus on?

  The three I have active are the ones I have worked the most on, making them the likeliest candidates. Alarm drifts two seconds every four hours. I didn’t care about the imperfection, since I knew about it, and it’s negligible, my guess is I can correct it easily. Scanner bleeds mana, and I can catch hints of my own mana when scanning an area for longer periods of time.

  And, finally, hyper-stimulator is riddled with issues I’m aware of, but unwilling to deal with, and it might have others I’m unaware of. It’s not even worth the bother, since it handles immaterial, difficult to observe phenomena. Localized flow of time, brain-matter, and cognitive processes are things I have no desire to tamper with.

  All things considered, I’ll start with alarm. If I can’t figure it out, I’ll shift to scanner, and if that fails, I’ll dumb it down further.

  I dismiss my spells, recast alarm, and set up an hourglass to trickle away for four hours. I pick up the first grimoire I’m working on, and increase my intellect by three to study faster. No need to hoard points with redo looming over me.

  Alarm sounds in my head, and I glance at the hourglass. On the count of two, the final grains fall atop the lower half’s mound of sand. I recast the spell, this time using blue and violet mana rather than my old reserve of green.

  [You have leveled up.

  Select a skill within sixty seconds or a random one will be assigned to you.

  Initial Mana Overflow - You may empower your spells with excess mana.

  Advanced Mnemonics - All aspects of your memory greatly improve.]

  I blink at the screen hovering before me. Why did I get a level? The question is stupid, and I immediately know the answer. How did I cast the spell perfectly? Is it because I used green mana before, and I couldn’t cast the spell properly because of that?

  The hypothesis is certainly plausible, can’t make something perfect without correct ingredients. I’ll test it out in the next loop. As for the skills…

  I don’t need better memory, and I need the ability to supercharge my spells, so despite having two options, there’s hardly a choice to be made.

  Cast a spell which exhausts more than half your mana? There are still some hours until morning, and a supercharged firewave seems like the right choice.

  Blazing through the mage class can’t be that easy, right? It took me a mere handful of hours to reach level four. I consider the level up conditions so far, and while none of them are extremely difficult, only the first two seem like something every mage would do at some point in their career.

  Even having three spells active at the same time may or may not happen. Someone hurling fireballs or enchanting buildings wouldn’t waste the mana and mental resources to do their work while juggling three additional mana flows on permanent spells.

  And those juggling numerous active spells would hardly spend half their mana on single spells. Not to mention, mage’s mana pool is large, there aren’t that many spells which consume half your mana. I guess it’s time to test this one as well.

  With that thought, I head for Hadriuse’s blast chamber.

  I can’t believe Edna thought Hadriuse wouldn’t have a research lab inside his mansion while calling him a healer and a professor of magic.