Magic is Programming-Chapter 32B2 : Hunting

Trinlen stalked quietly through the tall grass, crouching low to stay hidden beneath the surface of the grass. Carlos kept pace with him on his right, and Amber was barely visible through the grass on the other side of Carlos. They all took another step forward, closing the distance toward their prey.

[No, no, you're disturbing the grass far too much. Here, I'll show you again.] Sconter, the veteran adventurer scout, almost seemed to materialize from thin air right in front of them as he used their telepathic communication to silently scold them all. [You need to seek thinner and shorter sections of grass, and gently push them: slowly: just enough to the side to let you pass. Like this.]

The large man, easily twice Trinlen's width, somehow ghosted through the thick field of grass ahead of them, making not even the slightest ripple as he vanished from sight impossibly quickly. Trinlen stared at the disconcertingly motionless grass in Sconter's non-existent wake, then slowly shook his head in frustration. That's it, time to cheat. He mentally invoked a weak Telekinesis spell and focused it on holding the tips of the nearest stalks of grass steady. He examined his handiwork for a moment, then tweaked it with a tether to the motion of grass beside his path instead. It wouldn't do for my trick to be spoiled by having the grass not sway in a passing gust of wind.

He was about to step forward when he felt curiosity and amusement from Carlos, quickly followed by a telepathic question. [Weren't you the one who insisted on trying this without using spells for everything? You said something about the structured essence and expended mana being impossible to fully conceal, as I recall.]

Trinlen rolled his eyes and stepped between the pieces of grass his spell was holding. [Yes, and then reality reminded me that I'm not in the academy anymore. How many fields of 4-foot-tall grass do you think there are inside an inner city building?]

Amber's mental voice chimed with laughter. [There are 3 of them, according to the descriptions I've read of the academy. I'm sure you weren't even allowed to enter the headmaster's private preserve, but did you really never visit the gardens while you were there? And regardless, how is that relevant to the risk of spellcasting spoiling our stealth?]

Trinlen blinked a few times. [Did– Did you memorize the academy's recruitment pamphlets, or something? Nevermind. The point is that we're not in the midst of a horde of people with specialized skills and abilities specifically oriented toward interacting with incanted spells. Academy mages would spot an out-of-place spell in an instant, but are unlikely to even notice, much less care about, a disturbance in some grass. Most creatures in the Wilds are the opposite.]

Carlos nodded. [Right, they mostly deal with each other, and none of them have the education to use even the simplest of incantations. Some of them might sense mana, but they'd be tuned for things more like Esmorana's wind weaving.] He stepped forward, grass to either side of him held in place with a spell just like Trinlen's.

Trinlen cocked his head. [I didn't teach you that variant of the spell yet. How…?]

[Hmm? Oh, I just analyzed what you cast. The structure of the spell is fairly simple and straightforward, the size and density are normal for our level, and none of it is hidden or obfuscated. The only tricky part is the number of different manually-controlled inputs, and we have a soul structure for that, just like you do.]

Trinlen looked past Carlos and sensed Amber also following his example. He felt muted embarrassment and pride radiating from her for a moment, until she noticed his attention and pointedly refocused on the lesson at hand.

He gave the two of them a hard look for a moment, then turned back to facing forward through the grass. [Right, I'll just file that under "House Carlos bullsh– I mean secrets." Anyway, we're hunting. Being stealthy is only one step. We also need to choose our quarry. There are several potential targets ahead of us. What can you sense about them, which would you choose to hunt, and why?]

Trinlen's two students' eyes grew distant as they focused on their more esoteric senses. Carlos responded first. [I sense several mobile globs of essence. Those are the creatures you're talking about, right? They seem much more irregular and with less clear boundaries than a person.]

Amber added some commentary. [Yes, those are the monsters we're looking for. They're more like clumps of mana that have solidified and taken on a fake semblance of life than actual animals. Some scholars theorize that their behavior patterns are actually created by people's expectations for how we think they should behave.]

Trinlen rolled his eyes again. [Yes, you remember the theory correctly. We're here for a more practical lesson, though. You can't make a monster roll over and die by thinking about how much you expect it to do that. What concrete observations can you make about them?]

Carlos focused intently forward. [Their locations are the most obvious thing. Aside from that… I'm getting faint impressions of concepts from them that I think indicate what kinds of capabilities they have? Maybe some behaviors, too? Oh, 2 of them spooked when I looked more closely just now; they must have some kind of mana sense.]

[Yes, mana sense is fairly common among monsters, especially for prey sensing when a predator is sizing them up. You'll have to be more subtle if you want to avoid alerting them.] Trinlen smirked. [Or be blatant as hell, but with a form of magic they can't understand.] He cast a spell, and mana poured from his mana pool into rigidly structured channels of essence that quickly scanned over a series of concentric rings around him. As the spell's distance away from him grew, it restricted itself to merely arcs of a certain length.

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Trinlen's spell registered the presence of Carlos and Amber immediately, then reported an assortment of a dozen monsters in the field ahead of them and the forest beyond it. Four of the monsters reacted, but with confusion rather than alarm, as the mechanical operation of the spell lacked the hints of intent they knew how to interpret. Trinlen frowned and pumped more mana into another 2 castings of the spell, covering both sides of the first. Where is he? Did that sneak circle around and get behind us?

As if to mock his efforts, a familiar beacon of mana and essence lit up just 20 feet ahead of him, almost dead center in the first spell's arc. [Sconter, you sneaky bastard! How did you get your stealth to work even against spells?]

Cheeky smugness permeated Sconter's reply. [By ignoring that "intent" and "structure" nonsense and erasing all signs of my presence, so that there's nothing to detect regardless of how you look, of course.]

[There's always something still detectable!] Trinlen retorted, but then reined himself in. [Later. I'll figure out how to detect you later.] He turned his attention back to his students. [Back to the matter of our quarry: what's your assessment of how tough and dangerous they are?]

[Well, they're all near the level of this area's aether, which is several levels above us. So, probably pretty tough, but I'm not sure how much.] Carlos paused to consider for a moment. [This group all seem like prey, though, so not very dangerous, I think? Amber, what do you think?]

[It is well known that, when all other factors are equal, a difference of 10 levels is overwhelming. These creatures average Level 29, compared to our Level 23, which would ordinarily make for a very difficult disadvantage.] Amber continued, almost seeming like she was teaching a class in school. [However, spells are noted for having potency on par with strongly-specialized soul structures, an advantage equivalent to approximately 10 levels over the far more general-purpose soul structures that most monster capabilities are equivalent to. That works out to effectively an advantage of 4 levels in our favor, so a well-chosen spell should take these monsters down easily.]

Trinlen nodded. [Well-reasoned.] He smiled mischievously. [Let's see you demonstrate it.] Without further warning, he unleashed a spell he'd been holding prepared. It was an illusion, perceivable only to the 2 monsters he targeted with it, of a terrifying dangerous predator: on the far side of the monsters, so that their panicked retreat would amount to charging straight at Carlos and Amber.

He blinked in surprise as Carlos's and Amber's essence and mana stirred into action when he'd barely even finished his own spell. A few narrow bars of force appeared low in front of the one on Carlos's side, and the monster tripped and stumbled over them, crashing to the ground with a loud crash. For the monster on Amber's side, a circle of small blades made of essence ringed its neck and tried to behead it. The monster bellowed in pain and shook its head, trying to dislodge the phantom knives to no effect.

The beast's deliberate efforts may have been useless, but its essence passively wore away at the foreign magic that was intruding into it, rapidly degrading the spell to the point that its general toughness resisted any further cutting. Before Trinlen could say anything, Amber unleashed another spell. Two sharp steel arrowheads flew forward, zeroing in on the monster's eyes, and buried themselves in its head with minimal resistance. Amber shook her head with a wry smile. [Wow, I knew Distant Cut was a weak spell, but I didn't think it was that feeble!]

Trinlen held back a laugh. [Yeah, Distant Cut doesn't handle essence resistance at all well. To cut an opponent rather than a tree branch, you need something that puts more separation between your spell and the target's essence. Well done on responding quickly to its failure, though.] He checked on the other monster and found it also lifeless, with its neck bent back on itself much farther than its fall alone could account for. [Good job to you too, Carlos. That was impressively quick.]

[Thank you.] Carlos paused. [Uh, I'm sensing a monster a bit further out, and I think it's a predator. It feels… harder, I guess? It reacted when the herd scattered, but it's not fleeing like they did. It's: shit!]

Several things happened in rapid succession: Trinlen sensed a trio of hardened spikes of essence flying straight at them faster than he could react and a raging ball of territorial hunger chasing right behind; Sconter appeared in front of them, already raising his axe and bracing to swing it; A familiar force bubble popped into existence, surrounding the whole group; The incoming attacks hit the force bubble and broke; The attacking monster bounced off and landed, snarling furiously; And Sconter stepped through the force bubble and cut the flailing mass of way too many claws in half.

Trinlen recoiled instinctively, then relaxed as the realization of safety set in. "Thanks, Lorvan."

"That wasn't me." The royal guard stood behind them, poised and ready but not taking action.

"What? But–" Trinlen paused and looked again at the force bubble. It had blocked the attacks successfully, but it was not the nigh-invincible wall that Lorvan's enchanted gear would produce. He quickly found the spell's link to its caster and exclaimed in shock. "Carlos? How did you block a Reaper-class monster that was 8 levels above you? Those things are the biggest reason that power-leveling is dangerous, it should have torn through your spell with ease!"

"I don't know, I just tried what I could and–"

Lorvan cut in. "Nobles are humanity's equivalent of the Reaper class, especially at the higher tiers. Just as a Reaper has condensed power beyond its Level, so too does a noble have power beyond his Level. Each tier of the noble's soul plan gives power equivalent to an additional Level. There are other factors as well, such as the thresholds of platinum rank and adamantium rank."

Trinlen cocked his head, then shrugged. "Huh. Okay then. That must come in handy for fighting wellspring guardians. Alright, let's see what other excitement we can find around here."

Jamar Tostral sat in the privacy of her soundproofed luxury tent and fumed. "'Hunt Carlos down', huh, Dad? You damn well knew he was already farther into the Wilds than I can go yet, didn't you? I'm not stupid, I can recognize when I'm being put out of the way!" She ground her teeth, then forced herself to relax.

She glared at the tent wall and huffed. "Well, fine then. So I'm out of the way. So what? I'm 'out of the way' in the mana-rich Deep Wilds, and I'm free to ignore that annoying rule about pacing my advancement to avoid suspicion. I've already gained 1 Level today, and I'll gain another before I sleep. I'll catch up to Carlos, beat him, take his wellspring for myself, and then we'll see just who needs to be out of the way of who!"