Infinite Loop

Jerod left the class in a hurry to get back to his room for experimentation with dimensional magic. Now that he knew the process he wanted to see if he could successfully make a dimensional path. Before he could make it to the dormitory however he was stopped by Travis and his other friends from his floor on their way to lunch.

"Jerod! Come join us for lunch today! We haven't gotten to hang out in forever!" Travis called out in his normal boisterous ways. Without even giving Jerod a chance he swung his arm around his shoulder and started dragging him towards the cafeteria.

"So how has your visit back home? Did you tell your family about how well you did with the field assignment? I bet they were shocked to know you could handle taking down so many beasts. I told my family about you when I got back and they didn't even believe me. It wasn't until Riker chimed in that it was true that they started to be less skeptical. That was until I told them that you were a commoner just like us and it was back to complete disbelief again."

Jerod listened as he was half pulled along to the cafeteria and just shyly scratched his cheek at the nonstop barrage of talking continued to come at him. It reminded him of a certain small blonde lass back home that would rattle on exactly the same.

Everyone else in the group just rolled their eyes and continued on the way to the cafeteria as well just waiting for Riker to get interject allowing for Jerod to finally answer any of the questions thrown at him.

As they all sat down and started to order their food Jerod was finally able to greet everyone and tell them about his two weeks away.

"It was great to get back home to see my family. I didn't really give them details about the field assignment but told them I did very well. I spent some time to make life a little more comfortable on the farm by setting up some simple enchantments. I set up a shower with hot water and even made the rooms air conditioned.

I helped on the farm and spent a lot of quality time with the family."

Hearing the unfamiliar term Sarah asked "What is 'air conditioned'?"

"Oh! That is where you can control the temperature in the room like make it hotter or colder. We have something like that in the dorms and in the school building."

Hearing this explanation Sarah had a light of understanding and also a look of confusion in her eyes. "Did you say make it hotter and colder? That isn't how the dormitory or the school building works. I asked questions about it in the enchanting and magical item creation classes recently. The instructors told me that the school is able to maintain the same temperature year round because the school is a magical item itself. It isolates itself from the outside environment allowing it to stay the same temperature year round. I have heard of people using enchantments to keep warm in the winter time but how do you get it to be colder?"

Jerod hadn't thought of how the school maintained temperature just assuming that it was done in a similar if not more sophisticated way to what he had done at home. Then it hit him that no one had ever used ice magic before he introduced it and shared with his fellow classmate.

"Oh that is pretty simple. Remember how I talked about ice magic before being something I contributed when I joined to the school. I have been working on creating ice magic runes since I was in the enchanting class at the beginning of school. I hadn't finished it by the time we were allowed to switch specializations and only really thought about installing it for my family. I will submit the runes to Journeyman Kiek when I get the chance."

Sarah just nodded emphatically while the rest of the group just shrugged in their developing numbness when it came to Jerod's accomplishments. To think someone their age not only developed a subschool of magic but also made headway on developing the rune system for the school as well.

Everyone continued to chat and finally the lunch came to an end. Jerod with his continued excitement made his way to his room and at last got to start his experiments with dimensional magic.

Jerod weaved the magicles in the same pattern he did in class and continued as he was instructed. After developing the matrix he used dark magicles to build out a path a few feet away and tried to make the same gate. Unfortunately the task took on a whole new level of difficulty once he was dealing with magicles so far away. Just as he was about to finish the water magicles everything fell apart and the magicles dispersed.

'This is very exhausting! I ran out of mana before I could finish building the second portal. I wonder how people without magical attunement like me can even create something like this.'

'It is a wonder how someone even came up with dimensional magic but I think I have a solution to help make a successful path. You forget that everything should start small. Here you have created an entrance that is big enough to fit your body through travel a few feet and come out of an exit the same size as the entrance. After you recover mana why don't we try to crawl before we sprint a marathon.'

Jerod facepalmed and thanked his ever so trustworthy best friend for her continued pointing out of how dumb he can be at times. Once he was fully rested and his mana had returned he started back at it again.

With that after reducing the size to a pebble and reducing the path to a few inches he was able to successfully make an entrance and exit matrix at roughly the same size.

'Next we just have to test it. Here goes nothing.'

Jerod took a small stone out of his inventory and tossed it through the entrance. The rock moved through the air and just as it came in contact with the entrance matrix it disappeared and reappeared at the exit.

'I did it!'

Excited Jerod lost concentration and the path fell apart and the magicles dissipated.

After calming down he and Lindsay decided to put a few experiments together and start again.

'This time lets test mana use for each time something passes through.'

Just as Jerod was building the pathway he though of something that might make the test interesting. He made the entrance matrix horizontal, parallel with the ground, and built the path out of the top and built it in the shape of a C making the exit of the portal come from underneath.

'This can allow us to test using the exit as an entrance and if it works right should give us an easy way to test mana consumption.'

Jerod threw the pebble into the exit of the path and just as hoped it went through and came out of the entrance. Gravity pulled on the stone and it continued to fall from the entrance down through the exit where the pebble returned through the entrance again.

Excited to see the infinite loop work as he planned Jerod watched until the whole thing collapsed as his mana ran out.