A New World, an immersive game experience

With the runes primed, Eldrian next focused on the effect he wanted. Wanting the fire to move over the dwarven line and land before them into the midst of the spider horde. To then burst apart and spread havoc through them while moving away from the dwarves.

"Go!" Eldrian shouted and the runes he had drawn in the air blazed brightly in the dim light of the cavern.

Everyone's attention moved briefly to the ray of flames flying from the wall into the Reavers. Upon which it then splashed like water on ground, spreading everywhere. But strangely not towards the dwarves.

Unfortunately, the damage was a bit lacking. The initial burst did around two hundred which was decent but the flames burned for only around twenty damage and quickly started weaking. Instead of turning the spiders into ash, it was more like they were slowly being cooked alive.

Compared to Incinerate, the damage was certainly lacking, especially the damage of the lingering flames. Yet the difference it made in the fight was still massive.

Being cooked was still painful and made the spiders jump back from the flames. With the flames covering a quarter of the cavern it gave a portion of the line a much-needed respite while also giving the dwarves on the wall a clear shot at the reavers with no fear of friendly fire.

Eldrian was also not done, while reflecting on the cast and how it had worked, he started drawing a few new runes.

'The area was too small, let's add a second fire rune. Two amplification runes to bind the fire runes and also a condense rune to increase damage.' Eldrian mumbled, pumping 400 MP into the fire runes and 350 into the amplification and condense runes for a total of 750 MP, almost emptying his mana pool.

This -was in fact- an insane amount of mana to pump into one spell. More than what most Tier 5 mages would have.

This time, Eldrian didn't want to use the shockwave rune, he wanted to use something similar to the Anemos spells. Hoping that fierce wind would allow the flames to burn brighter, stronger, and spread further.

Unfortunately, he didn't know a normal wind-type rune, so he had to rely on the shockwave rune and superimpose his vision over it.

When he released the spell, the flames covered his entire range of vision as it flew over the wall and the line of dwarves. Forming a tornado of flames that crashed into the spider horde and spread flames through them again. Just as the previous flames were about to die out.

This burst did a lot more damage, the double down on the fire runes together with the condense rune did just what Eldrian had hoped it would do. It reduced the spread compared to what it might have been but doubled the damage, nearly one-shotting the spiders it touched while still covering a larger area than before.

Certainly, his casting method was still very immature and crude, using amplification runes as glue-- connecting all the runes and allowing his vision to be superimposed on them as a single spell, instead of five different runes. Regardless, it worked.

The following burn damage didn't do much more but now with a second hit most of the reavers couldn't survive. While none turned to ash, Eldrian was happy that it had worked out so well.

A solid proof of concept and a good showcase that this was indeed a far more stable, modular, and easy-to-use casting system.

Smiling at the success, he watched as the dwarves started to clean up the rest of the spiders.

'This is really much easier than either other casting methods.' Eldrian commented as he looked at the XP he had gained, a nice bonus but not anything to write home about.

A total of 57M XP from just a little under 200 kills. It would more just help with maintaining his daily XP upkeep for his interface and specifically his map. Nowhere near enough to help him reach his next level.

'Leveling going forward is going to be a real pain.' Eldrian mumbled as he looked at the highest reward he had gotten from a single enemy. A Tier 6 reaver level 39 Reaver, only giving a total of 5.3M XP.

Considering he needed over a billion, it was going to be a true grind. Granted, he was level 41 which was truly a high level. He was higher level than most natives, with only people over Tier 7 being around his level.

Moving past the XP and level story and back to the runic casting, Eldrian continued, 'This must be part of the change, there is no way such a powerful magic system has never been discovered. And considering I think Itireae used something similar, it must have had some really big hurdles to overcome. Else it would have spread throughout the entire world.'

Reflecting on how it had felt, it was truly so much easier. Sure, he had to correctly draw the runes while pushing mana into them. That was a bit difficult but compared to even just Tier 4 spell modules. It was far easier.

Instead of having to perfectly envision over 50 nodes and all the pathways connecting the spell module, he could focus on one rune and finish it before moving on to the next one.

There was sure to be a limit to the number of runes he could connect to work together, Eldrian suspected that it would rely on a person's abilities.

And compared to dynamic casting (at the level where Eldrian is), where he had to perfectly envision what he wanted to happen, then control his mana to give results. This only required an outline of what he wanted.

Eldrian knew that true dynamic casting also just required an outline, yet he had no idea how to reach that level. He had managed to cast spells in such a manner a few times. But he couldn't replicate those times, it normally happened as a fluke or in times of desperation.

In this regard, this runic casting method was actually more similar to Tierless spells than dynamic casting, but he didn't need to control the mana constantly nor did he have the burden of the emotions filling his mind.

The runes kept the mana stable and as long as he didn't let them slip from his mind -aka became distracted- they would stay stable.

One disadvantage was that after releasing the spell he lost control. Eldrian suspected he would be able to fight back some control or maybe even keep control over the mana. But considering the amount of mana he used, he knew he wouldn't be able to keep control of it all.

This certainly meant that there was a bit of a risk but it also gave Eldrian another idea.

'Do you think we can make delayed spells?'

'Considering the runes wills stay active as long as we keep them in mind, it should be possible. However, we haven't yet tested how long a rune can stay as is. Considering the amount of mana we've pumped into them, I'd assume they are under high pressure.'

'True, which makes the fact that we do not need to hyper-focus to keep them stable strange, extremely so.'

'It does... However, runes are designed to focus mana to great effect. We can only assume that they are designed in a manner that allows them to be stable.'

Eldrian nodded, 'Indeed, and unlike spells that are extremely hard to experiment with and fine-tune variations. Runes are something that all runesmiths can experiment on. There isn't the danger of needing the enter the magic abyss.

'Sure it might explode in your face, but compared to it exploding in your mind space. It is still considerably safer.'

Smiling at the image, the two knew they had a lot of testing and experimenting laying in their not-so-distant future.

AN: Thank you, everyone, for continuing to read and support the story on Web.