This Ascent to Divinity is Lewder Than Expected-7.37 – Ball Lightning

After handling Fe's arrival, Zoey returned to the training facility with Maddy to continue their magic practice.

She enjoyed these daily sessions as much for improvement's sake as because it gave her one-on-one time with Maddy. Zoey got to see Rosalie and Delta plenty throughout the day, and at night as well, with the three of them sharing a bed. But Zoey's daily magic training was the only consistent opportunity to visit with Maddy.

She had been wondering whether she should invite her to join them in Rosalie's room each night. Zoey liked Maddy, obviously, and she felt confident Maddy liked her back—she just wasn't sure to what degree, where exactly they stood in their growing relationship. And equally as importantly, how Maddy felt about sharing a bed with Rosalie and Delta. Maddy liked Delta, having been friends with her before even Zoey, and Maddy had never not gotten along with Rosalie, so she didn't think there were any problems. But their nightly activities could get pretty 'familiar', and Zoey wouldn't be surprised if Maddy wasn't ready for that. So she wasn't sure whether she should give the invite.

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The development of her lightning rune was coming along splendidly. Early on, she had focused on learning two simple spells so that she could make use of her new rune as quickly as possible. So she'd learned a lightweight, spammable lightning bolt and a heavier, artillery style one. Now that she had gotten those down—to a usable level, not mastery—she had been working on a more complex spell to add to her arsenal.

Her teammates weren't especially good at clearing crowds of enemies, with Rosalie's newest skill 'Titanslayer' explicitly gearing her toward taking down extremely powerful enemies and not hordes of weaker ones. Delta had become more capable of dealing with multiple targets thanks to her Shadow, but that wasn't to say she was good at dealing with true hordes. Astrid, finally, was a tank. She could tear into enemies in her own right, but again, she wasn't especially good at clearing groups of enemies. Maddy was somewhat capable of it, able to send confusion darts out en masse and turn hordes in on themselves, but she was, by nature of being an illusionist, more of a utility mage than a damage one.

Which meant it was Zoey's job. She'd been more of a support mage up to this point, not even a utility one like Maddy but a true support, but that seemed to be changing now that she had her feet under her. Even Astrid had given her a few impressed looks throughout last shard; her lightning rune was no joke. She might have the highest individually damaging ability on the team, now, besides Delta with an opportunistic attack or Rosalie opening with Lead the Charge.

But to the point: despite technically being the support, Zoey was developing into a full damage mage as well, and her runes meant she was best poised to deal with crowds. So that had been her focus these past few days: developing a spell with significant area damage.

Technology in this world wasn't on the same level of Earth's, not even with magic thrown into the mix, but if there was anything this society cared about enough to have made impressive advancements in, it was anything related to combat. As such, the world-class training facility that even the d'Celestins frequented was equipped with some impressive magically-infused technology. Inside the larger training rooms, there were adjustable, mobile training dummies with defensive ratings that went all the way up to seventh advancement. Interacting with the interface at the front of the room, she positioned several fourth-advancement dummies in a clump in the center of the room, the white metal mannequins sliding across the floor to take up their assigned spots. She set their 'types' to flesh and their 'resistances' to none—they really were impressively customizable, able to simulate a good variety of what might be found down in a shard.

"Let's see if I can get it this time," Zoey muttered to herself.

Holding her staff ahead of her, she furrowed her brow and started inscribing the spell into the air. The way her staff tracked around as if she were using it as an oversized writing utensil wasn't necessary, and was in fact a crutch, but even Maddy thought it was fine.

It took a lot of mana—or rather, Lust—to charge the spell, especially because she empowered it as well. It was designed to thin if not eradicate hordes, not a rapid-fire, cheap spell that could be thrown out on a whim like her lightning bolt, so when she finished drawing the design and filled it with mana, she sagged in place, leaning heavily on her staff as exhaustion washed over her.

But she'd gotten it, finally. The spell didn't fizzle. A vibrating ball of lightning burst into existence and flew forward. With a two foot diameter, the sphere crackled with unstable energy, surging rapidly across the training room until it reached the proximity of the frontmost dummy. The ball slowed, as if tethering to the cluster of enemies, and spun furiously as it discharged bolt after bolt of lightning. Arcs snapped around in jagged forks, lashing every target within its effective radius. The training dummies trembled under the assault, torsos scorching black, joints sparking and popping off, white metal charring under the fury of the spell.

The sphere advanced forward slowly, grinding through the clump of enemies like a drill, enveloping more and more targets as it worked deeper into the crowd. The bolts of energy ripping into the dummies didn't dim due to the quantity of targets; it was as potent against one as it was against dozens. There was probably an upper limit somewhere, but she didn't know where it was.

One dummy’s head liquefied with a particularly powerful bolt, molten droplets hissing against the ground, and another’s torso split down the middle and went clattering to either side. By the time the spell sputtered out, the training room was a field of ruined figures. Twelve dummies were fully destroyed, collapsed in piles of smoldering debris. The remaining six bore deep gouges and burn marks in their armor. Trails of smoke rose from every target. Even the dummies that had gotten lucky and survived only had one-third health left, as shown by the indicators on their chests. The room vibrated with leftover electricity; Maddy's hair was standing slightly up, and so was Zoey's.

Not bad, she thought, when each of those targets represented an average fourth advancement monster. It had cost nearly half her mana to cast, true, but while it took some, ah, involvement to recharge that resource, she wasn't limited in the same way as a normal mage. She could technically send that spell off against every horde of enemies they ran into, as long as her teammates were willing to keep her topped off. (And, amazing as her girlfriends were, they probably would be.)

Maddy let out a low whistle as she surveyed the destruction the ball-lightning spell had wreaked. She walked over to the interface and tapped a button. The training dummies slowly started knitting themselves back together.

"That's a nice spell to have in your arsenal," Maddy said, amused by the understatement. "And that was with a pretty lackluster execution. Imagine when you've actually gotten it down." A second later, she twitched as she realized what she'd said. "N-Not that it was lackluster! I just, um, meant—"

Zoey was already laughing, and Maddy seemed relieved that she hadn't been offended by the blunt phrasing.

"Really," Maddy insisted. "It's impressive you've already manifested a spell of that strength, we've only been working on it a few days. And the first time you cast a spell will always be a little sloppy, that's how improvement works."

Maddy's earnestness had always been endearing, and Zoey knew there would never be any judgment in her words, much less maliciousness, so she hadn't needed to hastily clarify herself; Zoey had known what she'd meant.

Though, Zoey didn't want to necessarily tell her to stop doing it either, because it was way too cute.

"I didn't take it the wrong way, don't worry. I'm surprised I got it off, too. Was worried near the end."

"How's the mana?"

"Wiped out. Definitely not the kinda spell I can be throwing out whenever I want." Lust was easier to recharge than mana, but she could still exhaust herself—or run out in the middle of a fight, which would be dangerous.

"That's our swarm weakness fixed, in any case." Maddy eyed the mass of training dummies which were slowly reforming. "Might be good even if there's only a few enemies. That had some serious firepower to it."

Zoey nodded in agreement.

Since casting a spell that costly had winded her—though not actually winded, not physically, she'd just strained that invisible muscle responsible for casting—she staggered over to the bench built into the wall and took a seat. Maddy followed and sat next to her. They had to wait for the training dummies to repair themselves, anyway, so it was a good time to take a breather.

"I feel like I'm picking new spells up faster," Zoey said. "Easier ones took longer than that to learn when I was starting out, didn't they?"

"You are higher advancement."

"That matters?"

Maddy blinked. "Of course it does. Warriors can swing a sword around all day and get pretty good at it, but there's no substitute for a ridiculous strength and speed stat, right? Same deal with mages. Study and practice matters, but higher advancement makes everything easier. Including learning."

"I … guess that makes sense."

"And your stats are really high for your advancement," Maddy said. "Since you're sharing with three of us." She hummed. "Kinda makes me wonder what would happen if you put a team of only mages together. We'd all be power houses, right?"

"Would that have worked? Functionally speaking?"

"… maybe? There are frontline mages focused on defensive magics. And spellswords who use spells as much as physical weapons. If you could somehow pick the class of everyone on your team, maybe you could've put an insane composition together where stat sharing was maximized. Buuuut that's not how the real world works. And besides, a standard composition might be better anyway. Some monsters are super resistant to magic. Putting all your eggs in one basket could be a horrible idea, no matter how strong the eggs are." She giggled. "Pardon the butchered metaphor."

Zoey mulled that over. It would have been pretty interesting to put together such a team, since sharing her key stats with Maddy had already put her a decent amount ahead of where she should be. And all of her teammates would've been equally empowered. With that level of synergy, would the risk of hyper specialization even matter? Magic-resistant or not, that level of fire power might have blown through such monsters regardless.

It was all just an interesting hypothetical though. Her team was already decided on, obviously.

"Speaking of sharing stats," Zoey said. "Rosalie and Delta took up my offer to use Solidify Bond. You probably felt the boost. Have you decided whether you want to, too?"