Chapter 26: Rowan PoV (End of Tutorial)

  The tutorial had been quite the ordeal for Rowan.

  In the beginning after having to deal with the goblins she stumbled upon a trial dungeon. From the trial within she learned the secrets of the Arcane Star system of progression for mages. This was a method developed by the Sage of Arcanic Lore, a sage who was the leader of one of the most well established organizations within system controlled space. They functioned essentially as somewhat of a mage guild/union that helped guarantee the proper treatment of any member under the employ of non-members by leveraging the power of the organization. Although their primary focus was on researching magic and continuing to push forward any field of study related to the use of mana for spell casting. The organization itself was called the Arcane Futures United group, normally called by denizens of the system as AFU. If you wanted to hire a reliable mage or need something researched in the field of magic AFU was the go to.

  Even still, the founder and leader of AFU, the Sage of Arcane Lore, had surprisingly few disciples and even fewer practiced the sage’s signature brand of spell casting; that being the Arcane Star system that converted regular mana into stellar mana before beginning the process of spellcasting. Evidently, while the method itself wasn’t particularly restrictive when it came to talent, few mages ended up wanting to adopt the system because of two things. The first reason was the slow conversion rate of stellar mana making it so that the increased mana regeneration of mages was no longer an advantage. Sure the spell potency was greatly enhanced by the converted mana but the process of increasing the proficiency of the conversion rate took far too long for most people’s tastes. The second reason that few mages took on the path of cultivating Arcane Stars was its similarities to the cultivation based method of power progression. Leveling simply provided too many benefits upfront for many young and spirited denizens to choose a path that was slower by design. Both reasons had much to do with the pace imposed by cultivating an Arcane star. Technically most adopters of Arcane star cultivation were still levellers at the core, but the method itself siphoned off significant portions of experience from the user’s kills in order to grow the star, leading to a lower leveling rate on average.

  All of this was information that Rowan found written down in tomes within the trial dungeon. As it turned out, the Sage of Arcane Lore themselves has paid a price to the system to seed their methods into different tutorial instances in the hopes that more would come to adopt and pioneer the path of progression that they worked so hard on. Regardless of that wish though, the Sage seemed to be someone who cared greatly about people being able to make an informed decision otherwise Rowan saw no reason for the Sage to explain the intricacies of why so few took after their footsteps. From her perspective, properly explaining the primary reasons for the low adoption rate of the method only worked to lessen the number of denizens willing to try it. In that case, Rowan could only conclude that the purpose of the Sage giving that information was so that whomever encountered their trial dungeons would be able to make an informed decision for themselves. Of course the Sage also explained all the benefits of taking after their method. Upfront it was said that spells cast with stellar mana have much higher potency than their equivalent counterparts that used regular ambient mana. At first Rowan didn’t really understand what that increased potency meant. Sure if the spell in question was a damaging spell it was safe to assume that the spell cast by an Arcane star practitioner would be more destructive but what she did not understand was the kind of effect it would have when casting spells with more nebulous and static effects. Also, while she could understand that offensive spells would be more effective she wasn’t certain at first whether the increase in potency was worth the decreased regeneration rates for the mana of the user and the slowed growth by the experience siphoning from the Arcane star. Unfortunately for Rowan, these questions could not be answered by the material in the trial dungeon, in part because of the very nature of the stellar infused magic. That is to say that these increases in potency was determined by the user’s talent or rather skill in applying stellar mana, the purity of the Arcane stars that the user cultivates, and whatever forms they incorporate in order to create an aspected star. The sage outlined possible solutions to some of the drawbacks of the method but they did not come without a price. One such solution was for the practitioner to cultivate multiple Arcane stars in their soul space from the very beginning. The increased number of usable stars meant that the regeneration issue was relatively resolved, depending on how many stars a user can cultivate simultaneously at each stage in their progression. However, the issue with this method lay in two facts; firstly this created an even bigger experience siphon from leveling depending on the number of concurrent stars handled and secondly this solution required an increasingly robust soul so that the soul space could handle the presence of multiple Arcane stars.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Ultimately Rowan chose to learn and apply the methods of the sage. She had seen enough of the carnage that had happened when the goblin horde was released that she never wanted to feel without power again. If all this alternative method took was more effort killing things to keep up in leveling speed, then that was what she would do. It may take more work but at least she’d have a stronger, more dependable weapon throughout the process.

  Rowan spent a significant portion of her tutorial inside that trial dungeon, learning to cultivate her first arcane star. Before leaving however, she decided to make the push and grow two more stars in her soul space, allowing the conversion rate of her stellar mana to match her natural mana’s regeneration. The titles that she’d received while undergoing her training were tantamount in letting her survive the stress of cultivating so many stars so early. Regardless, this did let her effectively bulldoze her way through the remnants of the tutorial once she left that cave. Even being late to the start, she ended up being the spearhead that took care of more than half the mini-bosses in her tutorial that was required to unlock the fight with the final boss. The other participants in her instance, were quick to be drawn to her, attracted by the safety that her power represented. She did not do everything alone though. While her destructive potential was great, this came at the cost of her toolkit lacking diversity. She had honed one, very powerful, yet still singular blade. While this was a problem for now, it was also one that would solve itself over time as she experienced more things and was given the breathing room needed to grow without the pressures of surviving the tutorial and preparing for a fundamentally changed Earth. A good group of people formed around her, one that allowed her to become the lance which pierced through any obstacle before them.

  In the few days before the end of the tutorial, after Rowan and her group had finally slain the final boss, she began the preparations for a ritual that would allow her and her friends to stay in contact when they got back to Earth, regardless of where they were. The ritual she was preparing to use was one that the Sage of Arcane Lore gifted to her as a reward for beating the tutorial boss. They didn’t know what they would be coming home to so it was their hope that the ritual would allow them to regroup more easily once they got their bearings. She would have preferred to be able to contact Fiona as well using the ritual but its ability was more limited when the magic being performed was one-sided. Rowan’s team would be able to find each other and communicate because she could prepare talismans beforehand for them to take with them that would help focus the energies of the ritual. Sadly her best friend Fiona was not in her tutorial instance. Luckily she had a hair tie in her pocket that belonged to Fiona that she could use as a focus in the ritual. While this wouldn’t let her communicate with Fiona it would give her a general direction to move in so that she could find her best friend when she got back planetside. Rowan didn’t even entertain the idea that her friend may not have made it through the tutorial. Until she had full confirmation on the subject, she would just continue to assume that all was well…relatively speaking, given the circumstances.

  When the sage had first contacted her after beating the final boss, Rowan didn’t know what to think. The sage may have explained many things through writing within the confines of the trials but even more remained unsaid. After all, the only things the sage wrote about were ideas and information directly related to the development of the Arcane star method. As such, Rowan remained blissfully unaware of the implications of power that came with the title of Sage. Of course she had some guesses considering what she knew of the sage as being the founder of both the path to power she now pursued and of a well-established and renowned organization in the context of system-touched universes. Still, her imagination could only go so far when everything was so new. Hell she was just a regular lawyer a month or two ago and now she probably had the same stopping power as heavy artillery. In these last few moments before the tutorial's end, she thought of her brother. Quite obviously her plans to find and cultivate a relationship with him– were he willing of course– had been thrown out the window the moment she got pulled into the tutorial but she held some hope that if she made it through that something in their shared blood meant that her brother had what it takes to survive as well. Finding him in the midst of a new Earth was a different matter altogether however so for now when they were brought back home, she would focus on regrouping with her party and finding Fiona. Then maybe she could work on creating some form of stability, a commune or something, and only after that could she possibly have the psychological bandwidth of trying to find her brother again.

  [Congratulations! Your time in the tutorial is coming to an end. A whole new world awaits you when you return. A basic information packet will be made available to you through the system once you are back home. May you prosper and keep growing.]

  [Leaving tutorial in 5…]

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