Dungeon of Niflheim

Chapter 12: Magic

“I’ll make this quick then.” Frost moved to randomly add a bunch of traps to his purchase cart, arranging them to randomly fill the first two sections, leaving the last one bare since he believed that the basic templates didn’t really do the environment justice.

[section]

[Traps] [Cost] [1st] [2nd]

[Bear trap] [80] [0] [5]

[Frost mine] [100] [2] [1]

[Ice spike

pitfall] [120] [5] [0]

.....

‘1300 DP a little more than planned but considering the room size these traps will hardly make a dent.’ He didn’t care too much about how well these pre-set traps would perform since they should more than make up for their cost overtime due to resetting every 24 hours.

He was more interested in if they looked cool or not, especially the frost mine. Depending on how strong the frost attack was, it could be a great support for his monsters. If they could lead the adventurers to into them, fighting a target that’s frozen in place would make them an easy foe even for a goblin. Of course, the stronger they are the less they’ll be affected but still, it’s cooler than simply falling in a hole or getting your leg clamped.

Frost was just about to proceed in completing the summon, his hand floating centimetres from the confirm button but going no further. He turned rigidly towards Maya.

“You’re sure I won’t faint again?” He didn’t wish to pass out and feel useless.

“Yes, I’m sure, your body already acclimated to using divine power. Summoning a few traps shouldn’t even faze you, at worst you might feel dizzy.” Maya responded confidently. Unless Frost summoned something extreme, he shouldn’t end up in a similar situation in the future.

Frost looked directly into Maya’s eyes as she responded.

‘Oh well at least if I do faint, I might get another chance at a lap pillow.’ Frost smiled and firmly clicked the confirm button causing the core to once again glow and rotate.

‘I wonder if the core actually needs to do that or if it’s simply for aesthetic reasons.’ Frost watched the core gradually get brighter and spin faster as if it needed a build up before performing a task.

Suddenly Frost felt a wave of energy pass through his body. It was a warm and gentle feeling making him feel like his blood pressure dropped a little before quickly passing. The core stopped glowing, returning to its innate state once the feeling passed.

“That was weird.” Frost patted his chest, stomach, head, and legs to make sure everything was fine.

“That was divine power flowing between you and the core.”

“Divine power?” Maya had mentioned this a few times, but Frost only knew that it was related to his father and the Gods in some way.

“Yes, as far as I know it’s similar to mana but of a much greater quality in fact I believe that mana was originally derived from divine power. Remember the feeling of it flowing through your body, it should be useful for when we start training to use magic and chakra since the first stage is sensing the mana within yourself.” Maya explained what she knew about divine power albeit with a slight jealousy in her voice. Even at her strength she couldn’t gain the ability to harness divine power, yet Frost could from the day he was born, it’d be strange if she weren’t a bit envious.

‘Magic and chakra.’ Frost understood what magic referred to, but Chakra was new. At the mention of the word some ingrained knowledge came to this surface of his mind, it seemed that a lot of his given knowledge was compressed and needed a keyword to be expanded.

Chakra in simple terms was internal magic, magic such as spells required a magic crest to be created allowing the mana to take form e.g., turning into a fireball and then flying towards the target. Chakra however didn’t require a magic crest as the mana was internally kneaded into the desired form within the host’s body. Due to this it has some serious downsides. First of all, the individual using Chakra needs to have an innate mana element otherwise it can’t be used, Frost for example has the innate element ice so he should be able to use it.

Second since you need an innate element you can only knead chakra of that type meaning it’s less diverse than magic of which most people can use multiple elements.

Third, since chakra doesn’t utilise a magic crest, it can’t maintain its shape once it loses connection with the caster meaning it can only be used for close combat, a few feet away from the caster and it’ll dissipate turning back into natural mana.

So far it seems that there’s no point to chakra however it does have some advantages. First, chakra is generally a lot faster to activate than magic spells since a magic crest isn’t required to be drawn.

Second the use of chakra can also be a lot more mana efficient given that there’s less steps involved there’s less wastage. And finally, probably the greatest reason why some people prefer it over magic is that it’s more of an instinctual process and not one of logic.

To use spells people generally needed to be incredibly book smart as magic crests require a lot of knowledge whereas chakra is simply a feeling, manipulating the mana within in you like a muscle. Chakra allows simple warrior types to utilise magic when they normally wouldn’t have the mental capacity to do so.

All this information flooded his mind in less than a second, but it still caused him to stare into thin air for a while. Maya started waving her hand in front of his face to get his attention when he didn’t respond to her calling.

Frost regained his focus milliseconds before Maya decided to flick his forehead. Her hand was inches away from his head ready to strike, seeing this he instantly understood what happened.

‘I must have dazed off while processing the information but... why am I about to get forehead flicked.’ Frost slowly looked towards Maya’s face with irritation in his eyes. Maya quickly averted her eyes out of guilt, she didn’t expect to get caught so red handed. She looked away to avoid Frost’s intense stare, but her hand was still frozen in place primed to strike.

‘This damn woman!’ Internally shouted Frost as he viciously grabbed onto her hand and pulled her towards him knocking her off balance.

“Wwhahh!” Maya wasn’t expecting to be suddenly pulled, she didn’t even realise her hand kept hovering in front of his face. The sudden jerking motion caused her fall forward. She was unable to brace with her arms due to Frost still grabbing one and the other waving about trying to regain balance.

“Bang!” Maya fell straight into Frost, their heads loudly banging against one another.

“Ow ow ow ow!”

“Owwww!” Both Frost and Maya shouted in pain quickly rubbing their heads on reflex.

“What the hell was that about!” Maya angrily shouted still rubbing her head that now had a large red bump developing.

“Owww I didn’t think you’d fall headfirst right into me, I just wanted to get your hand out of my face.” Frost had a matching red bump quickly growing on his head. His thought process was that Maya would simply stumble a little before quickly regaining her balance.

‘Wasn’t she supposed be super strong?’ He didn’t expect to be able pull her with such force completely unguarded. Now not only does his head hurt, but it was also much more painful than if he had simply let her flick it.

‘Ah god it hurts so much, how hard is that head of hers anyway?’ The pain steadily got worse and worse as the pressure from the swelling increased.

‘Owww I knew idiots had hard heads but damn.’ Maya wasn’t much better to her Frost was the one with the hard head.

The two of them fiercely glared at one another trying to hold back the involuntary build-up of tears forming. The red bumps on their heads continued to swell to fairly large proportions and after minute or so they were so big it looked like a giant red egg was being pushed out of their skulls.

“Pfttt”

“Hahahahaha” Their anger quickly subsided the larger the bumps got. The larger they grew the more comical their faces became. Eventually they couldn’t hold back their laughter anymore. Frost and Maya pointed and laughed at one another without remorse, dishing out insults and jokes at each other’s expense.

After good list of insults, they both calmed down.

“Sorry” Frost apologised first since he felt he went a bit too far when Maya technically hadn’t done anything yet.

“Apology accepted” Maya smiled while accepting his apology before pointing towards herself and saying.

“[Heal]” a magic crest appeared beneath her, releasing a warm green light. Frost watched in awe as the large red bump quickly receded until it was completely gone, as if she never got hurt in the first place. Other than seeing Dark use divine power this was the first time he had witnessed a magic spell being used. While he was staring, Maya smirked with pride before pointing towards him.

“[Heal]” the same magic crest now appeared beneath Frost healing his injuries almost instantly. The healing magic entered into his body and spread around like the divine power from earlier, with the majority congregating at his forehead.

‘It certainly feels similar.’ He patted his now flat forehead, no pain or even discomfort. The healing spell removed all damage in a matter of seconds, he even felt more energised.

“Well, what’d you think?” Maya curiously asked. She wanted to know how it felt compared to divine power.

“Awesome, I can’t believe my head’s back to normal.” Frost replied honestly, surprised by such an application of magic.

“What I used is healing magic, a support type of magic with its own separate category in the elements. Healing magic although primarily linked to light-based magic is actually classed as either non-elemental or life magic.” Although there are light elemental healing spells the one Maya used was of the life element. A type of magic that anyone able to utilise mana can learn albeit with different results. Maya being fairly accomplished with her magic could easily restore minor damage such a head bump within a second or two whereas for an unskilled user that may be the limit of their abilities and take much longer to complete.

‘Life magic, non-elemental.’ Frost focused on those words. He remembered that earlier when discussing his status, Maya said that he may have difficulty with learning magics of elements other than ice.

“Since it’s separate from elemental magic would I be able to learn it?” If the answer was a no, then he would try and create an ice-based healing magic, but he didn’t even know if that was possible.

Maya smiled in response.

‘Smart he remembered.’

“Yes, you shouldn’t have any problems learning it however whether you have a talent for it is another thing entirely.” Unlike with learning something like fire magic, Frost wouldn’t encounter any obvious obstacles however if he wasn’t talented, he might be stuck at only healing basic cuts and scrapes no matter how strong his mana became.

“Sweet,” Frost didn’t hear the part about him needing talent, only hearing yes you can. Turns out he’s quite a greedy person, just one look at the healing magic and he already wanted it. If he wasn’t talented then he’d just need to work twice no five times as hard.

The very idea of magic sounded fun to him, whether it was the end result of casting or the idea of reading and gaining the knowledge required to create magic crests it all sounded interesting.

The fires of passion burned in his eyes as he stared at Maya. He hoped she’d show and teach him more about magic, completely forgetting about their earlier spat.

‘So, he’s the super enthusiastic type... how cute.’ Thought Maya, Frost looked like an overexcited child to her.

“Since you’ve purchased traps, you’ve effectively finished outfitting the dungeon so, I guess we could do some magic lessons next.”

“Really?” Frost latched on to her words with gusto, instantly closing the distance between them, clenching his fists, and smiling, his excitement overflowing.

‘Magic magic magic!’ His mind was filled with pictures of him casting super powerful and complicated spells.