Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Before heading to her room, Emily visits the information hub to collect a free spell just in case Jenny checks which spell she chose. Finding Tom and Hester have already left, she quickly gets a duplicate copy of Burning Hands and goes back to her room. Settling back down at her desk, Emily looks at her Spellbook.

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[Spellbook]

First Circle:

-Burning Hands

-Air Blast

-Stunning Touch

-Grease

-Earthen Detection

-Flash Freeze

-Iron Blade

-Light

-Touch of Decay

-Switch

_____

She looks at her extended Spellbook with a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment.

It’s great that I collected all these spells, but half of them seem kind of useless or redundant because of other spells. Like Iron Blade, all it does is summon a small knife, why waste mana and casting time when I can just carry a knife? And I don’t think I need Burning Hands if I can cast Stunning Touch, surely electrocuting someone will take them out of a fight faster than just burning their skin.

“Urgh, did I waste my time? At this point, I should have just created my own spells!” Emily’s growing anger fizzles out as her throwaway words spark a new idea.

“Why don’t I? I have a lot of reference material now after all,” with a grin and new motivation, she opens her notebook to the first page.

Learn spells (classes?)

-Create spells

Wait, that was a goal for a reason.

Remembering her original purpose, Emily checks her progression requirements.

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[Progression]

[Circle/Stage:] First

Requirements:

-Intelligence 23/35 (Not Complete)

-Create 5/5 unique F rank machines (Complete)

-Create 0/1 E rank machine (Not Complete)

-Learn 5/5 first circle spells (Complete)

-Learn 1/3 basic magic knowledges (Not Complete)

_____

Happy at the completion of one of her requirements, she flips to the next blank page and begins drawing magic circles. Squeezing four magic circles onto each page, Emily fits all eight spells she can cast onto a single double-page spread. Looking at the circles together, she begins to spot a few small similarities.

These two runes are repeated across these spells, maybe the runes to designate touch? And this one is used in both ice and water spells, maybe an elemental crossover? This one has more connecting lines…

Scribbling notes down and analysing the spells before her in fine detail, Emily falls into a focused trance, ignoring the passage of time.

At 7:59 pm, Emily looks up from the messy notes before her. She leans back in her chair and stretches, before standing up and walking to the door. Placing her palm against the smooth panel, she injects a small amount of mana as usual and grins as the door vanishes to reveal Juliana standing with a look of surprise on her face and her arm raised about to knock.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Emily says casually, tilting her head to the side with a look of concern.

“Ah, nothing,” Juliana quickly brushes off her surprise before switching to a grumpy pout. “If you were able to predict when I would open the door, why did you ignore me earlier? I know you only had one lesson this morning, so you were totally in!”

“Haha, nothing gets past you, does it?” Emily giggles, still not tired of having this same conversation with Juliana.

“I was doing some testing with the new spell I learned earlier, can you ever forgive me?” she asks with a silly grin while presenting her arm.

“Hmph.” Juliana hangs off her arm while responding with a stronger pout. ”Don’t ignore me again and let me pick dinner, then maybe I’ll consider it.”

“Haha, sure. Whatever you want,” Emily happily concedes as they leave.

***

“EIGHT ELEMENTS?!” Juliana’s scream would have drawn the attention of the entire cafeteria if it weren’t for the sound-isolating barrier around the tables.

Emily nods and smiles silently, revelling in Juliana’s stunned silence. After a few moments of staring at her shocked face, Emily can’t take it anymore and bursts out in laughter.

“You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

“Nope.” Wiping tears from her eyes, Emily raises her hand and starts summoning the elements.

Thanks to her practice, forming simple mental images of the elements has become increasingly easy for her, so she quickly displays fire, lightning, metal, water and ice.

“I can also do earth, wind, and light, but they require a little more concentration.”

“You’re really amazing.” Juliana’s honest praise brings a blush to Emily’s face. “Next you’re going to tell me you can cast spells already.”

“Ah, actually I– “ Emily pauses as Tom and Hester step into their sound barrier.

Clicking her tongue in slight annoyance, Emily looks over at the twins.

“Hey Emily, can we join you?” Hester asks before once again freezing as she sees Juliana’s crest.

Emily silently looks to Juliana, expecting her positive response.

“Sure! I don’t mind.”

Emily returns to eating, ignoring the repeating conversation until she’s pulled back in by Tom.

“Oh, by the way, why did Miss Forsythia want to talk to you?”

“Nothing much, she just wanted to warn me about Jeremy and Kyle’s clear animosity, and let me know I should go to her if I ever needed any help,” Emily casually brushes off his question.

“I see. Did you go collect a spell afterwards?”

“Yep, I can already cast it too.”

All three of her friends nod with little response, causing Emily to frown.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“You just told me you manifested eight elements on your first attempt, learning a spell in a day seems pretty mundane compared to that,” Juliana says with a cheeky grin. “You’ll still show me though, right?”

Emily rolls her eyes and raises her hands in front of her.

I’ll just have to show you something more shocking then, won’t I?

With practised grace, she weaves together a set of hand signs and in four and a half seconds, a fiercely burning flame coats her palms. As she had hoped, Juliana is sufficiently surprised by her display.

“That was so fast! How did you learn chantless casting already? And why’s your fire so pretty?”

“My fire’s an odd colour because my mental image was metal-eating flames. And using the chant made the spell too weak, so I worked out how to draw the circle with hand signs, freeing up my mind for a solid mental image,” Emily gives her standard response while distractedly drawing patterns in the air.

“Amazing, chantless casting of any form is considered a huge advantage and a difficult skill. Can you teach me?”

Emily exaggeratedly considers for a while with her hand rubbing her chin, enjoying Juliana’s puppy dog eyes.

“Sure, I could never say no to that face,”

Juliana grins triumphantly as Tom cuts in.

“Can you teach us too? That looked so cool!”

“Tsk, maybe if you learn a spell by next lesson.”

“Aww man, that’s way too hard,” Tom complains, grumpily slouching in his seat with his arms crossed.

The others laugh at his display and return to their meal.

***

Later that evening in Emily’s room, Emily and Juliana are sitting together on her bed with Juliana’s notebook open between them showing a familiar Air Blast spell. After an hour of Emily guiding Juliana through the hand signs she’s already memorised, Juliana sits back with a groan.

“Urgh, how do you do this so easily? My fingers keep getting tangled.”

“Haha, giving up already?”

“No! I just want a little break,” Juliana grumbles sulkily.

Emily smiles and sits back as well, happy to stop staring at spell formulae for a bit. Juliana breaks the silence a few minutes later with a question.

“Hey, Emily?”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you seem so annoyed at Tom and Hester joining us earlier?”

“Ah, you noticed?” Emily reacts sheepishly, scratching her cheek slightly embarrassed to be seen through so easily a second time.

“It’s written all over your face if you’re looking close enough!” Juliana grins smugly.

“Oh?” Emily raises a brow and leans forward with a smirk. “You’re watching me that closely, are you?”

Juliana’s eyes go wide like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar and her entire face flushes bright red.

“Haha, to answer your question,” Emily starts, saving Juliana from her embarrassment, “I just don’t really like being bothered when I’m eating. Bit of a habit from when I was young.”

“Really? Why are you okay eating with me then?”

“That’s different, I agreed to eat with you beforehand. They just walked over when we were already settled.”

“Aww, and here I thought I was special,” Juliana teases.

“Of course you are! You think I’d agree to teach any random mage my craft secrets?” Emily says with mock solemnity.

They both start to giggle. Once they’ve calmed down, Juliana asks another question.

“Hey, what do you mean a habit from when you were young?”

“Ah,” Emily pauses awkwardly, considering if she should say anything. Remembering Juliana’s genuine response to Tom asking why she hangs out with commoners, she decides to be honest.

“Well, when I was really young, like before I turned nine, I used to live alone in the slums.” A look of horror dawns on Juliana’s face as Emily continues. “Getting food was quite difficult, sometimes I stole, other times I got lucky and found discarded food in the trash. But whenever I did have food, I’d hide while I ate. If any of the other kids, and even some of the adults, found me eating, I’d either have to fight, run, or give up my food.”

Juliana moves forward, pushing the notebook between them aside and pulling Emily into a hug. At first, Emily freezes. But after a few moments, she wraps her arms around Juliana and rests her head on her shoulder, relaxing as she keeps going.

“After Dad had taken me in, I ate my fill, but I guess the habit kind of stuck with me.”

“That’s so horrible,” Juliana says tearfully. “No child should have to fight for food.”

“Yeah, well, I lived, didn’t I? Besides, I was one of the lucky ones. At least I got out.” Emily goes silent, enjoying the warmth and contact for a short while before they separate.

As Juliana pulls back, Emily reaches up and wipes the tears from her face while chuckling.

“Jeez, I thought you were meant to be comforting me.”

Juliana blushes and starts to apologise, but Emily waves her off with a smile and changes the subject.

“Right, wanna get back to learning gesture casting?”

With a nod from Juliana, they pull the notebook back and continue their lesson.

***

The following morning, Emily wakes up and checks her class list to find she has an etiquette class at 9 am. After a quick morning shower, she heads over and waits in front of Juliana’s room to go breakfast together.

Walking into the cafeteria, with Juliana once again hanging off her, Emily spots Tom and Hester sitting together at a nearby table without any food, waving them over.

“Want to eat with them?”

“Sure!” Juliana cheerily agrees, dragging Emily towards them before she can change her mind.

They sit down together, briefly exchanging greetings with the twins before ordering food.

“Really? Eggs on toast?” Tom questions his sister disapprovingly.

“It’s a good meal!”

“We can have whatever we want though! Live a little.”

Emily tunes out the two bickering and turns to Juliana.

“Do you have any classes today?”

“Yeah, I have a wind specialist class today at two. What about you?”

“Etiquette at nine,” Emily says, receiving groans from all three of her friends.

“What?” she says, turning to look at the twins rejoining civilised conversation.

“We have etiquette too,” Hester says with a look of resignation.

“That bad?”

“Yes, our last etiquette lesson was so boring I almost fell asleep!” Tom exclaims dramatically.

“Correction, you did fall asleep. I had to wake you up three times,” Hester comments dryly.

Sensing the start of another sibling squabble, Emily looks to Juliana to be the voice of reason.

“I agree with Tom on this one, I fell asleep during my etiquette tutoring at home.”

“I don’t know what I expected,” Emily sighs, rolling her eyes at Tom and Juliana.

Soon their food arrives, with a large platter of toast in the centre of the table and an assortment of toppings on each of their plates. Eating and making small talk, with Emily mostly focusing on her food, the time passes quickly and soon they are all getting up to head out.

“Good luck with your lesson, you’ll need it!” Juliana says happily, giving each of them a hug before they separate at the entrance to the transportation rooms.

“Thanks, see you at lunch,” Emily says before walking into a transportation room with the twins.

One spatial shift later, and the trio make their way towards a lecture hall. The room they enter looks identical to the one in which they had their elemental selection lesson. Emily would have believed it was the same room if it weren’t for the extra thirty seconds of walking it took to reach it.

“Where do we want to sit?” Emily asks the two class veterans.

“The back,” they both answer in unison, eliciting a chuckle from Emily as she heeds their advice and walks to the back row.

Settling down in their seats, the twins continue an argument they were having about the correct number of pillows to sleep with as Emily silently watches the door. Over the course of the next five minutes, before the class starts, the only other student who enters is Nico, the gloomy-looking boy Emily saw but never talked to in her first lesson.

At 9 am on the dot, the door opens again and a short, rotund man with slicked-back grey hair and a thick handlebar moustache walks in with purpose and a straight back. Stepping up to the dais, he turns to the class and announces proudly:

“My name is Edward Penniset, second circle mage, and I’m here to teach you scum the most important lesson you will learn in magic society, etiquette!”

Fuck.