“Yeah. Just the thought that she said we can pretty much guarantee making it to Mage if we work together...” Big John, who had once failed to advance his second Element, shook his head slowly. “When I failed to advance my Fire, I thought that was the end...”

“A hundred grand for a Nebula Vein, and no guarantees,” Driver Sam shook his head. “And every day you delay, your chances go down...”

“Enough with that,” the Mick said. “We hit a lucky break, just like those arseholes born with a Talent. Our job is to be worth what she’s going to be spending and showing us. Since we’re going to be spending a lot more time on our cultivation and using magic, we need to start recruiting our own people to do the stuff we used to do, and doing it full time.”

“Potential recruits. She has to vet all of them,” Red corrected mildly. “Still, given the benefits and the income, that should be fairly easy.”

“Hey, hey, what about recruiting non-mages?” Big John piped up, and they all turned to look at him. “You know, people with that one Star with no Elements...”

“People who can become wizards...” Burt pointed out with a nod. “Oh my God, do you know how many people will ditch everything and line up to work for her for the chance at being able to wield real magic?”

The Mick held up his hands to calm everyone down. “Yes,” he said formally. “We all realize it. But first we have to get to the minimum level she needs us at, and able to take care of the things she needs to get done. Then we’ll start worrying about recruiting more people.

“Although that don’t mean you can’t start making up lists to get ready for things,” he added with a grin. “The real work starts when she actually chooses a base of operations, but we aren’t strong enough to support her when that happens, yet.”

They all nodded, clenching their fists. They had so much more to do now... but they had tools that they had never dreamed of now, and more were coming!

Nothing was going to be allowed to stop them without a fight!

--------------

So cheaty. Just sit down, draw in Mana, stuff it in your Stars, and you get more powerful. Why work at all? Wielding the magic wasn’t actually required at all to get better at the magic, to get stronger and more powerful.

Well, whatever. I was sure the lads were going to consider just going out and fighting stuff to get stronger and Leveling up without having to be totally bored Meditating or expanding your Stars or anything was totally cheaty, too.

Maybe it was. Karma was fickle like that.

Fabricate completely shortcut all the time needed to pound out the proper Starmap for the Laser spell. Each Casting was the equivalent of getting exactly eight hours of work done, compressed down to one minute of steady Casting.

It used all the appropriate modifiers for a Crafting check, so you had to have the right tools and equipment handy, but they were like props, and didn’t need to be active, only ready to be used. Helpers only helped you get stuff done faster, so they didn’t change anything.

My Whitesmithing modifier was +33, sufficient to work with anything below Eternal in quality, and while this all needed to be precise, it wasn’t really all that difficult to put together.

I was fully aware of how making this was going to change the world. Light mages of Novice level, who could do little more than illuminate and purify/sterilize an area with Light would suddenly all have an attack spell, and a very effective one, at that.

Suddenly Fire and Lightning wouldn’t be the bullying Elements that they were now... and Light mages were twenty times more common than Lightning mages!

It would follow with Earth and Water, the three of them forming the most common Elements, and views of the Elements and people’s places in the world would flipflop quickly.

I didn’t much care. The tradeoff in versatility was worth it, and Lightning and Fire were going to get their own spells, so it was all good.

Eight hours to charge this sucker up with enough magic to do what needed to be done, and then, I was going to Exemplar Surge.

For the first Adept-class Light Laser Spell, via a temporary Extra Spell Known Feat.

It would be significantly different than the default Adept Light spell. Further developments would be clearly different from the default Light spells up through Archmage, and so it would be something people would definitely want to have.

I could definitely charge a lot more money for it, too...

The Adept version was a true needle beam, capable of being swept across an area if you were strong enough to cut through everything you wanted. Mostly, it was very long range with excellent Armor Penetration. Precisely aimed, it could definitely be lethal.

It was very different from the defensive Walls of solid Light a Light-wielder could throw up as an Adept now.

Changing the world, one spell at a time...

I began to apply my Soul Jewels to my Stars. The boys would probably not be surprised to find out I had forty-two Jewels made up for myself. They had multiple Elements to worry about, and consolidating forty Soul Gems to make a Jewel was basically an entire Starfield at Tier-6 they might be giving up for one Jewel.

Not something I had to worry about. I had another three hundred of them ready for Mage-Class, courtesy of many, many dead Shades agglomerated in the Beast Realm. Getting the extra two thousand for Archmage was going to be a bit tougher...

A good problem to have, I supposed.

The boys had a lot of Soul Crystals themselves after all that fighting. The thousands of Warriors, even if they were only a tithe of the hundreds of thousands of Servants, meant they could be consolidated to Soul Jewels, and all of them would at the very least now be able to bring their first Seven Stars to Tier-6, once an unimaginable extravagance for them.

I was still making Soul Eggs for them. Forty-nine Stars in each of two Elements was going to become 343 Stars in each of three Elements. Twelve hundred Eggs each was a lot of Soul Crystals to go through, burning through over 350k Soul Cores.

But that was why they were there, to be burned through!

--------

“I’m going to be talking about why so many people never get past Novice Magic... and never break the higher limits.” The KIA men stirred slightly at my words. “It comes down to a basic grounding in the respective abilities of the Casters and their interactions with their Elements.

“It’s also going to involve a system I’m sure you’re going to find is quite alien in applying to yourself... until you start acting like it applies, and you quickly realize that things start working much more smoothly once you do.

“The first is the rendering of your magical abilities into two advance schemas, not one. Yes, two. I can see that surprises most of you. You all thought advancing in Magery was a straight path on its own? No, not at all.” I held up two fingers. “You advance your Magery through the auspices of the Human Racial Class, and the Human Mage Class. Yes, just like a video game, Swampy, be quiet and listen.” The brawniest of the KIA men clamped his jaw shut and stopped waving his big hand.

“Here’s the Human Racial Class you’re advancing on.” I flipped up the listing of Class Levels through Twenty, the pre-reqs, and the benefits. They all got peculiar looks indeed as they studied it. Having grown up on video games, they weren’t unfamiliar with the idea, but to see it applied to themselves was a new feeling.

“Here is the Human Mage Class.” The Class was only seven Levels long, raising their eyebrows. I threw a thumb at it. “This is the biggest reason people don’t break out of Novice.”

They looked back and forth between the two, the differences. “Is there a separate table for Magery Casting?” the Mick had to ask.

I flicked it up on Holo. They all stared at it, then nodded, as it basically matched everything they knew about how spellcasting improved, except for...

“Caster Level?” Big John piped up before anyone else. “What is that?”

“It’s an invisible mechanic, save for the fact that you land spells easier with it. You’re all well familiar with how Magical Beasts and the like resist a lot of magic, and it takes some really potent magic or a whole lot of it to affect them.” The ‘Caster Level’ indicator glowed everywhere it was important. “This is basically your Resistance-piercing effect. Because Magery doesn’t actually advance the spells, the only thing you see is that it is easier for a powerful mage to land a Novice spell on something then it is for an actual Novice. Their Caster Level is higher, so it can chew through the Resistance, and looks like it’s slightly more powerful because a higher percentage of the damage goes through.

“In actuality, it’s the exact same amount of damage, but more is getting through, that’s all.

“Caster Level is very, very important in Wizardry, because it does not work the same way as in Magery.”

I definitely had their interest. “Questions before I continue?”

Red raised his hand. “Health, Soak?” he pointed out.

“You are aware that mages can take tremendous amounts more physical punishment than non-mages. They can endure injuries and pain that would utterly incapacitate normal Humans, at the higher levels having flesh that is basically as hard to cut as wood and bones like steel, can keep their blood moving by force of will, stop blood loss, and so forth.

“You are all examples of that. If you were to get into a brawl with common soldiers, you could toss them around physically without too much problem. The difference becomes more obvious and acute at higher levels, when powerful mages can be slammed through stone, throw a car over on its side, leap ten feet in the air without a problem, and so forth and so on.

“Health represents the magical energy being invested in your body making it harder and harder for you to be killed. It doesn’t mean you can’t be crit, one-shotted, or the like, it merely makes it much harder to do so easily. An attack that chops a normal man in two might only break your shoulder, for instance.”

They all nodded. They were all much tougher than they had once been, and didn’t question it.

“Soak is that tingle you get that says ‘duck’. The one that saves your life when the blow that was going to crush you to a bloody smear, you leap away from just in time, turning injury or death into what you thought was a lucky dodge, but was instead your magic keeping you alive.” SOAK glowed brightly. “At higher levels, you call it ‘foresight’. Some people have a constant aura of magic about them soaking in any surprise attacks passively, making it wildly obvious when they get slammed into a solid wall, and drop down, leaving an indent in the stone, completely unharmed.

“Two different kinds of life, both important, as the more you have, the harder you are to kill. Soak is much faster to get back without magic. Health is pure physical damage, and if you are ripped apart, you have to be put back together. Soak just needs to be replenished by resting.”

“What’s the Wizardry progression?” Burt spoke up eagerly, but I waved him down.

“In a minute.” INTELLECT, WISDOM, and CHARISMA popped up next, and formed the top of three lists. Underneath Intellect, Light and Ice both popped out. Under Wisdom, the Elements of Earth, Water, and Air were listed. Under Charisma, naturally Fire and Lightning filled in.

“Your mage Levels in an Element are determined by the related Stat. In essence, you have a separate Magery Class and Level for every Element you have.

“The problem, of course, is that people don’t have great Stats in everything, while their Elements are often attuned to the ‘wrong’ Stat.”

And I flipped up their mental and Con Stats for them all to see in the Assay.

The Mick: 13 Int, 14 Wis, 15 Cha, 14 Con: Lightning (Cha) and Earth (Wis)

Red: 15 Int, 10 Wis, 11 Cha, 16 Con: Light (Int) and Fire (Cha)

Tox: 13 Int, 14 Wis, 10 Cha, 14 Con: Wind (Wis) and Plant (Wis)

Driver Sam: 14 Int, 13 Wis, 12 Cha, 15 Con: Earth (Wis) and Ice (Int)

Glenn: 14 Int, 12 Wis, 10 Cha, 13 Con: Light (Int) and Air (Wis)

Swampy: 13 Int, 14 Wis, 12 Cha, 14 Con: Earth (Wis) and Water (Wis)

Big John: 13 Int, 13 Wis, 11 Cha, 15 Con: Earth (Wis) and Fire (Cha)

Burt: 15 Int, 12 Wis, 9 Cha, 13 Con: Air (Wis) and Ice (Int)