Dealing with Frustration

30th of Kraal, year 991

Despite taking lessons in magic and instructing the martial arts trainees, Blink rushed out to the forest to fight the monster beast in the late afternoon. Using [[Earth Spike]] Blink was able to keep the poor creature within range of his [[Flame Shot]]. It was a trouble-free fight for Blink and pure hell for the monster.

In the evening, the monster beast tried to change tactics. After blowing fire towards Blink, it charged up to him trying to take a bite. All it managed was to threaten Blink the first time, then it was pretty much just taking damage all the way through as Blink utilized [[Magic Arrow]] alternately with [[Flame Shot]] while drilling the monster with a [[Barrage]] every two minutes. Time and again, Blink would cast [[Earth Spike]] to keep the beast flustered. This time the fight lasted for four hours.

Blink was deliberately prolonging the evening fights so that the monster would have less time to recover when he fought it again at dawn.

The next day Magra found Blink flipping over the pages of the book with an odd but happy expression on his face. He had reduced the monster beast to a pathetic state at dawn that it didn't even bother to chase after Blink after he walked out from its lair.

"You look like you've seen something weird, could it be that the wordings suddenly changed?" Magra asked.

Blink looked at her in surprise. "How do you know?" he retorted.

"I was trying to be smart."

"Well, I'm not."

"Wha—What?!"

"Look, I can suddenly understand the words!" Blink handed her the book.

Magra was too stunned to say anything for a long while. She checked the pages she had read the previous day, and it was just as her brother said. The wordings in the book changed into those that even her brother should be able to understand.

She scanned the pages further and an expression caught her eye. Her lips twitched into a horrid half-smile.

"It even used contemporary street language and clichés?" Magra shook her head in dismay.

"That's good. At least we won't have to crunch our brains trying to make sense of what the writer is saying."

No, it's not. This is a betrayal of their calling as authors!"

"Calling? What is that?"

"As the ultimate source of erudition, they should never stoop down to the level of boors by kowtowing to mediocrity."

"I don't really understand what you just said. But why do authors write? Don't they write to be understood?"

"No, they write to elevate the minds of society and bring about a collective change in the heart and spirit of a generation."

"I honestly don't know what you mean by that as well, but I believe that before a writer could change people, the people must understand his writing first."

Magra shifted into high-browed rhetoric mode and Blink resigned himself into letting her prevail.

"Sheesh! Listening to you talk like that is like speaking with somebody from another world," Blink complained before asking to get the book back. He flipped to the chapter on rune formation and read the text on [[Whirlwind]] and [[Wind Blades]]. However, there was no illustration of the spell structure for [[Wind Blades]] but there was one for [[Whirlwind]], which the book prescribed should be learned first.

While the two spells were Tier 0 spells, [[Wind Blades]] had six symbols in its rune formation. The fifth rune added a cutting effect while the sixth made the whirling wind move side to side to keep the target locked in.

The [[Wind Blade]] was one of those half-step Tier 1 spells that wizard acolytes needed to learn in preparation for advancement into apprentice wizard status. The book didn't provide further details regarding advancement to apprentice wizard. However, it did mention several elemental spells that could be mastered prior to advancing to Tier 1 spells.

Tier 1 spells required eight runes. Even for acolytes who had been training in the magical arts for a few years, keeping the highly reactive runic symbols in place during spell structure construction for a Tier 0 spell was difficult enough. Blink could only surmise that the difficulty level for Tier 1 spells must be more than double that of Tier 0 spells.

The author recommended for [[Whirlwind]] to be learned first because it served as the foundation to the [[Wind Blade]] spell. He explained that proficiency in the [[Whirlwind]] spell elevates the spellcaster's proficiency with the [[Wind Blade]] spell, which is essentially an upgrade to the [[Whirlwind]] spell. Thus, a high level of proficiency in the foundation spell meant a steady progression in the upgraded spells.

While Blink busied himself with studying the Tier 0 wind spell, Magra looked towards him with a complicated expression. She was much too bothered by something to keep still.

"Nimgun, you did not change the wordings of the book, did you?" she asked.

Blink gazed at her with a furrowed brow.

"Namgan, how could I have possibly done that? I am very sure revising the wording of a book is a lot more complicated than casting Tier 0 spells."

For once, Magra didn't know how to respond. However, she only took a moment before asking the crucial question: "Aren't you a bit curious what happened with the original wordings of the book?"

Blink just shrugged his shoulders. "I'm sure it means somebody very powerful is watching over me," he simply concluded.

"Aren't you worried?"

"Namgan, I'm worried, of course. But that does not change the fact that whoever could do this didn't need to bother being nice to me."

Magra nodded her head in recognition of Blink's logic. "I just wish whoever that powerful person is didn't dumb it too far down," she went back to her earlier gripe.

Blink proceeded to practice casting [[Whirlwind]] inside the wide common room that they used for martial arts practice with his three students. It was only after breakfast, so he had plenty of time before he had to teach the trainees at the village training center.

Something about the mechanics of the spell gave Blink a hard time. When successfully performed, [[Whirlwind]] was supposed to sweep along a path while continuously twisting from a tiny base then growing in width along its length. Blink was a very methodical person who would always start small then grew it towards bigger accomplishments in whatever skill he tried to dabble on. His little twister was only ten cm tall and around six cm wide at the top and was supposed to be very easy to control. However, he couldn't sustain the spinning motion, so the spell ended up as just a small breeze that blew along a tiny stretch of floor.

Blink tried again only to fail anew. He tried harder, failed but didn't give up. He had been at it for almost thirty minutes before deciding to give it a break.

He went over the chapter on elemental affinity. There was a brief explanation provided about the difficulty of performing a spell a magician didn't have a strong affinity with. It stated that it should even be impossible for most spellcasters.

As for possessing a weak affinity, Master Renly noted that some wizards were still able to cast Tier 0 spells. He himself had only a weak affinity for wind but could still successfully cast a [[Wind Blade]]. However, there was no record of any wizard being able to cast a Tier 1 spell with an elemental force to which their affinity was deemed weak. Moreover, it was not unusual for a wizard to fail to cast magic spells for an elemental to which they had a weak affinity.

The succeeding paragraphs contained an even more worrisome discussion. Together with the elemental to which one had an innate affinity, a magician could possess, at most, a strong affinity with one more elemental and a weak affinity with two more. A strong affinity allowed a magic caster to perform a spell with ease while maximizing its power. Gaining proficiency with a spell also depended largely on the spellcaster's affinity.

There were of course the exceptionally gifted magicians. The ones referred to as geniuses. Geniuses had a secondary affinity that was almost as strong as their innate affinity. For the truly exceptional ones, they could even possess a strong affinity for two elementals.

Since Blink had an innate affinity for fire, his progress in learning and gaining proficiency with fire spells would be two times faster than those who only possessed a strong fire elemental affinity. A genius with fire as a secondary affinity would progress somewhere between 125 to 150 percent faster than one with a strong affinity.

As for those with a weak affinity, they could attain in about two years what another with a strong affinity could attain in a year. This was provided both put in the same amount of effort in practicing the same spell. The author didn't have to state, but it was more likely that not many spellcasters would put in the needed effort to advance their spells for elementals to which their affinity was weak.

Blink sighed in resignation. Tilting his head slightly, he said, "Well, let's just hope it's just a case of me having a weak affinity for wind."

"There are other elemental energies aside from wind," Magra pointed out. "I'm sure they're also quite useful."

"Wind magic will be very handy against an enemy with an innate water affinity," Blink replied. "Fire spells don't work that well against water spells. Wind spells are theoretically very disruptive and would be very useful when confronted with magicians who rely on the power of water and cold."

Magra thought for a while then nodded her head while still keeping a pensive expression.

"In addition you can also stir up dust as distraction in order to escape or to cast an unseen spell," she said thoughtfully.

Blink was surprised by his sister's keen insight. He smiled while scratching his head.

"You sure could have been a truly competent wizard, Namgan," he said in earnest.

"Why, thank you, Nimgun. Competence is all I'm about."

Blink didn't doubt her words a bit. Before he left for the academy, the family owned a small house and the one-hectare farm of the old man. During his stay at the academy, she and Jogr had acquired several fruit orchards as well as the adjacent farms to theirs. The orchards were acquired under disadvantageous conditions, too, as even though they were bought cheap, it was well known that the fruit trees were no longer bearing as much fruits as they used to. However, the couple planted coffee on the first four orchards that they bought, bananas on the next two, and mango on the last one. They became the sole supplier of coffee beans in Calandra and Shramez, two large towns with a population well exceeding 50,000 each.

Despite her petite frame, Magra was a formidable woman. This was a fact Blink was most certain of. She knew what she wanted and got them most of the time.

Blink stepped out into the yard where he placed a pile of bricks he had prepared a few days before.

He wanted to test something with a palm strike he had been practicing for almost a month. He called it [Collapsing Mountain]. It was a downward strike that put every ounce of power from his upper body behind his palm. Since it required the target to be underneath the attacker, [Collapsing Mountain] was really more of a technique to enhance the impact of Blink's palm strikes than it was an actual fighting technique.

Presently, Blink could break a stack of six five-cm thick bricks.

However, what he wanted to do was to try breaking the five bricks underneath without breaking the one on top. For this, instead of spreading his fingers like he used to do, he kept them close together. When his palm came down, the brick at the top shattered followed by the next two. The last three had cracks in them, but did not break. This was so because he controlled the force he exerted.

The next attempt failed.

The third attempt also failed. And the fourth, and the fifth… The next twenty attempts all failed as well.

On the 25th attempt, he still failed. However, this time the inner bricks shattered outwards while the topmost brick merely broke in place.

Blink stopped to analyze what he did that time. He tried to replicate his motions anew for the next five sets of bricks but failed each time.

Then, he remembered that his thumb was sticking close instead of sticking out that one time he almost succeeded. However, when he tried it, Blink noticed that his palm tended to curve when he pressed his thumb to the base of his index finger.

Yet, when he struck the bricks with it, the second to the fourth brick from the top shattered outward while the rest of the bricks remained in place while getting broken apart.

It wasn't the result Blink initially hoped for. But a little progress was still better than none at all.

He did ten more sets with about the same results as he ran out of bricks. He gave himself a reminder to pick some large stones from the river for his training with [Collapsing Mountain] and the [Seismic Blast], the name he thought of at the moment for this new technique.

Blink cleaned up the yard. It was time to teach the trainees.

"I'm going to kill that monster tonight," he said silently to himself.