As tempted as I was to fly off the next morning in order to go visit Kene, collect some fox spells, and explore the forest, I thought better of it. I still wanted to get Ikki’s opinion on the Improved Sleep and Quality Lifespan spells. Since they were also life spells, I flew out to Meadow’s hut on the outskirts of the city first, and we headed into Dusk’s realm before we summoned Ikki.

  He appeared, and his eyes flicked over Meadow, the spells I was holding, and then Dusk and Dawn, who were on either shoulder. He paused when he saw Dawn, and his eyebrows raised in surprise, then he looked at me, his lips pursed.

  “Well, you all have been busy, haven’t you?” he asked, sounding faintly amused.

  “I’ve had a lot going on,” I agreed with a nod. “Ikki, this is Dawn. Dawn, this is Ikki.”

  The tiny starsoul dragon unwound herself from my arm and reached out her snout to Ikki, sniffing him. A faint spark of golden light passed into Ikki’s simulacra, and something changed. I wasn’t sure what, but I could distinctly feel that something had changed. Ikki’s face remained impassive, but he and Meadow shared a meaningful look.

  “Did she do something bad?” I asked. “Or good? She definitely did something.”

  “She’s still young and weak,” Ikki said. “But there is the possibility that she might be able to do some very interesting things one day. For now…”

  He gestured to the table inside the house, and I nodded my agreement. All of us took a seat, and I spread the papers over the desk, starting with Improved Sleep. Meadow studied the paper, then nodded, and when Ikki did as well, I took out Quality Lifespan, which they also studied.

  “They are techniques of an acceptable quality,” Ikki said. “They may not be the kind of thing a corporation, college, or sect would guard fiercely, but they will serve you well. You should begin practicing with them.”

  “You’re going to run low on space in your time and life gates in the short run,” she said. “After all, you’ve already got the mass versions of Harvest and Enhance in life, as well as Starfish Regeneration. These two will also eat up a bit more room, so I think you should avoid taking any more life spells, at least until you break through to mid-third gate.”

  “I think that is an acceptable trade off,” Ikki said. “Combat spells can be learned at any time, and you do not desperately need to increase your raw combat potential. Both of these spells will work best the earlier you start using them regularly.”

  “That’s true,” Meadow conceded. “The sooner you begin practicing them, the sooner they can integrate and grow with your spirit, and the more they’ll be able to extend your lifespan.”

  “One of the most common mistakes that those who have life and time mana make when it comes to extending their lifespan is starting late,” Ikki said seriously. “It’s always harder to take away years that have already passed than to extend the life you already have.”

  I considered for a moment, then nodded. I agreed with their points, and while I still had a lot of work to do before I was ready to begin digging my steps out, I wasn’t in desperate need of more combat magic right now. If nothing else, the Beastgate had seen to that. Mantle Dragonfyre alone was a massive boost to my combat power and potential, and Starfish Regeneration was patching one of the biggest holes that I had in that regard.

  “I should still have some room in my time gate, even with these two and whichever of the blink fox spells I pick up,” I said, “Would you mind checking this one out?”

  I retrieved the napkin sketch of Tortoise Time, the slowing spell that the Temporal Tortoises that Edgar watched over had used to evade capture, and Ikki looked it over. Meadow studied it as well, though I didn’t think that she knew as much about it as Ikki would. The spell had aspects of telluric, tempest, mental, lunar, solar, and life, but it was still mostly rooted in temporal mana.

  “This is… Interesting,” Ikki said, then he held out a finger and sketched a new spell array into the air with light.

  In many ways, the spell he sketched out was remarkably similar to Tortoise Time, but there were some distinct differences. For one, it had been cleansed of most of the influence of other types of mana, streamlined to be the most efficient for temporal mana and only temporal mana, which had also shrunk the size of the spell. Its casting area was more rigidly defined into a cube that would be projected outward with mana manipulation, rather than simply blasting the area around the user in a general wave.

  But most curiously of all, it had an entire extra section, a strange sort of vortex that almost resembled a harvesting spell of sorts.

  “This is the modern, standard version of a time mage’s Slow spell,” Ikki said. “In some regards, I believe that it is superior to the tortoise’s spell. While you can make good use out of keeping many aspects in to slow them with more than just time, the casting area can be refined if you want, but I believe it is critical to integrate the harvesting aspect.”

  “Speaking of, how… does that exist?” I asked. “The entire reason we established a Temporal Basin was because time didn’t have any harvesting spells. Time flows too consistently.”

  Even as I said it, I felt dumb.

  “Oh. This is harvesting the potential energy, isn’t it? The differential that’s created by forcing time to slow down in the area.”

  “A design that was largely adapted from certain lightning harvesting spells,” Ikki said, nodding. “My version of Slow did not have it initially, and it is only through over a decade of work that I was able to integrate it retroactively.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Between Seven League Step and this, it was a stark reminder that despite all evolution did to grow abilities suited to a beast’s needs and environment, and for all that they could be incredibly potent, like Foxstep, human spells were still plenty powerful and unique in their own right. People could combine, create, and innovate spellcraft in ways they wanted, based on ideas they had, rather than just absorbing natural magic.

  “I think we can add it to the design of Tortoise Time,” Meadow said as she looked between the napkin and the light in the air. “Make it use a vast blend of aspects and enhance the slowing that way, but still harvest some of the temporal differential that’s being created. We can also alter the casting so it’s not simply blasting everything in range, if you wanted?”

  “Adding in the harvesting function sounds great, but I’d like to keep it as an omnidirectional slow spell focused on me,” I said. “What I really need is a way to let Kene and any other allies I might have bypass the effects of the slow.”

  While it might be more useful to be able to just lock down a cube if I was a part of a larger group of guild members, or if I was fighting as a part of the military, or was in a locked castle or catacomb, I didn’t really fight in many or any of those situations. What I did worry about was people escaping the cube in order to catch me off guard from another angle. Like the assassin, who had the incredible mobility of both life and tempest mana working together.

  “That part is simple,” Ikki said. He flicked his fingers and drew out a second spell in the air. It wasn’t large, but it also wasn’t terribly small either, and it was clearly designed to interact with a Captured Moment, just like an echo spell or Lesser Image Recall.

  “This is Regulate Time,” Ikki said. “Anyone who you place a Captured Moment in, then target with this spell, will be subject to the regular flow of time while in your other time manipulation spells.”

  “That’s perfect!” I said, quickly shaping the spell and running a bit of power through it in order to build the bio-array within me.

  It took us a while to finish combining together the harvesting aspect of the standard Slow spell with Tortoise Time, and if Meadow hadn’t been there, Ikki and I would have hit a wall much earlier, but Meadow seemed to intuit combining different types of magic without getting them to conflict, allowing us to reroute a lot of the power from the other aspects and integrate the vortex.

  “How are you so skilled at this?” I asked. “Did you get a degree in spell engineering or something?”

  “No, but I am an alchemist with a considerable level of skill,” Meadow said with a smile. “Though I’m not sure if this will be the route you ever take, there is something to be said for combining together different plants on the fly to create potions and potion-like effects as you need them. That’s how I teleport – I use a variety of plants to mimic a powerful Forest Step from forest dragons.”

  “Huh,” I said, then went back to working on the spell.

  When we eventually did finish, we were left with a rather bulky spell, even larger than the one that we’d started with. That made sense, given we were adding to it, and were unwilling to cut out the other aspects, but I still found myself somehow surprised at just how bulky it was. It was also incredibly strange looking, a weird blend of naturalistic and artificial design that reminded me of the people who grew trees into unusual shapes for modern art.

  “Nothing left but to try it,” Meadow said. “And name it, unless you want to keep Tortoise Time.”

  I began sketching the spell, thinking about the name. The moment I completed the spell, it was like my third gate temporal mana had sprung a leak. Mana rushed through the spell, and in a bubble around me, I felt the world change. The air seemed chilly, and my mana senses could pick up on the slight thickening of the air, the sapping sting of the slowing spell, even as Meadow and Ikki’s movements slowed.

  Outside of my bubble, everything was normal. I could clearly see the birds winging overhead were moving just fine, Dusk and Dawn, who were a ways away, were also moving normally, having turned to watch us. It was only my mentors and everything else around me that was caught.

  It wasn't that Ikki or Meadow was frozen – they were very clearly moving – but their motions were much slower than they’d been before. I walked around them in a circle, just walking, and Ikki’s head and eyes could follow me, but his body couldn’t quite move fast enough to keep up.

  Then the spell ran out of mana. Just like that. It was an absolute mana hog, but it was still quite powerful. If I’d activated that in a fight, it could buy me precious seconds. With my force pin, Briarthreads, and another armor spell or two, it had incredible potential.

  “I’m going to call it Tortoise Speed,” I decided.

  “That makes it sound like a Haste spell,” Meadow observed. “Or… A self-slowing spell?”

  “Ah, but don’t you see? I am moving at a tortoise speed. It’s just that the rest of the world is moving even slower.”

  I grinned at them both, and a faint smile touched Ikki’s mouth, while Meadow chuckled.

  “While you two are both here, I wanted to talk about Haste,” I continued. “I know that there’s not really a single general haste, since a lot of mana types have a way to make you move faster, but time and life are both especially good at it, right?”

  “They are,” Ikki confirmed. “Time is usually considered to be both the best haste, and the worst haste.”

  “How’s that?” I asked, knitting my eyebrows together.

  “It speeds everything,” Ikki said. “That includes the things you want to increase, like your body and your mind, but also things you don’t. Aging. Mana drain. Poison running through the body. You speed up, but you’re no stronger or tougher, only moving faster, which can make it easy to overexert yourself.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Life is somewhat better, and somewhat worse,” Meadow said. “The most version that is used by battlemages floods the body with minor regeneration, then overclocks as many biological functions as possible. It focuses on speed and flexibility, but it helps everything – strength, vitality, endurance. But while it can help the mind a little, life can only convert into knowledge and mental energy so fast. You have to learn to adapt to the speed and strength. And straining the body too far, too regularly can cause issues, even with your full gate mitigating some of that."

  “Ones that combine the two tend to be extremely powerful, offering the best of both worlds,” Ikki continued. “The life aspect handles regeneration, strength, flexibility, and other, lesser parts, while the time covers the speed and mental stimulation. But those are also extremely costly to maintain.

  “If I was running Tortoise Speed, Haste, and Foxarmor…”

  “There is a reason the tortoises evolved to store power in their shells. Your temporal mana would run dry in an instant,” Ikki said. “It is a viable strategy, but a risky one. Many time mages run haste and slow together, burning through all of their mana at once to unleash devastating power. ”

  “But if they don’t win in the first moments, they’re essentially out of the fight,” I concluded.

  “Precisely,” Ikki said. “Temporal Basin and your bones could potentially be used to mitigate this problem, but it would be a problem.”

  I scrunched up my nose in thought, then shook my head.

  “I’ll pass on a temporal haste. A life haste, or life-based beast version of haste is something I’ll think about when I dig out my steps, but I burn through time mana fast enough as is.”

  “I think that is wise,” Ikki agreed. “With Foxarmor and Tortoise Speed, you should have more than enough time to react. They will serve as an excellent base to pair with either more defense, or more speed. Now…”

  He dropped into a fighting stance.

  “You’ve enhanced your body massively since our last sparring match, and clearly haven’t gotten used to your new strength or speed. Let’s fix that.”

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