Chapter 35

The Stupenstone hit the scarecrow with a POP! The straw-stuffed dummy jerked back from the blow, one arm sagging like it had momentarily forgotten its job.

Fabrisse didn’t celebrate. He was already lining up the next shot.

Oval in shape, walled in with reinforced ward-bricks and segmented by invocation-safe channels, the training ground was one of the quieter yards on the northern fringe of campus. One actually had to book in advance, and Greg did so for Fabrisse after he’d asked.

He’d been here nearly two hours now. Just him, a satchel full of stones, and a growing callus between thumb and index finger from repeated short-channel charge techniques. Charging the stone. Flinging the stone. He hadn’t been able to call the stone back yet, which meant after each round of shooting, he had to come over and pick it up by hand.

[Mastery Training: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)—Progress to Rank III: 7%]

“Seven percent? That sucks,” he murmured to himself as he took three steps back and flung another stone at the scarecrow. This one was inaccurate. He hadn’t been able to hit the target at a distance longer than a meter yet. At least the arc was getting cleaner and sharper for a while. Then, it got worse again.

At least, he’d figured out there was another way to upgrade his spells without using Mastery Points, and that was to actually train like a normal person.

His extra hour with Lorvan had been marginally more fruitful than the last two, bringing his progress with Synaptic Thread Recognition to a total of 23%. He felt as though he had started to internalize the movement and timing, though there was much more work to be done. Lorvan had promised he’d spare a Saturday for him if he could train the first arc by himself at home and present his best stance to his mentor at the beginning of their next session. He had agreed to the condition.

He crouched, breathed, and held the stone again. 

Train, he told himself, I must train.

Two hours in, and guesswork wasn’t cutting it anymore. He needed real data—something that could break down exactly where his spellcasting was falling short.

Maybe I can handle the data overload now.

He pulled up the system interface and navigated the subsections.

Diagnostics > Settings > Display > Aetheric Metrics

It was now set to Lite Mode, the choice he’d made when he was getting used to floating words in front of his vision.

He tapped the toggle at the bottom corner.

Toggle: Detailed Equations.

interface reshaped itself into a dense overlay of numbers, tags, and fluctuating sigils. He swatted them away for now and went into the [Skills] section to check if there had been any changes in the description of Stupenstone Fling.

There had.

Skill: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)
Type: Directed Aetheric Projectile (Force/Emotion-Harmonic)
Status: Partially Stabilized | Accuracy Variance: ±11.2%
Cooldown: 2.6s between charges | Max Sustain: 2.1s

Core Equation:
40% Stupenstone Core Alignment (Stable) +
40% Thread Synchronization (Timing Delta: 0.42s) +
20% Kinetic Channeling Efficiency (Flow Rate: 66%)
→ Stupenstone Fling (Force, Blunt)

[ACCESS EFFECT DETAILS]

Okay . . . I’m getting used to the numbers now. But wait—my cooldown’s longer than my fling duration? That’s just sad.

He noticed there was another option below for even more details. How difficult to understand can it be? He thought as he opened the new glyph.

Effect Details:

• Auto-Tracking:
  Improves with INT and target’s emotional visibility (if they’re emotionally active or unstable).
  
  

• Velocity Scaling:
  Increases with charge duration, Aetheric Control (ARC) and Kinetic Channeling Efficiency (STR)
  – Base velocity: 5.5 m/s
  – Max charged: 7.4 m/s
  
  

• Aether Feedback Pulse:
  Echoed resonance scales with clarity (affected by SYN and INT)
  
  

• Impact Force (Mixed):
  – Physical: 30% from throw force (STR + technique)
  – Aetheric: 70% from resonance intensity (SYN + charge time)
  
  

• Range Limit:
  Base range: 1.2m
  Increases with ARC and SYN
  
  

System Note:
No current range extension detected.
To increase effective distance (>1m), improve:
→ Aetheric Resonance Control (ARC ≥ 12 recommended)
→ Thread Synchronization Stability (SYN Drift < 0.25s)

Warning: Repeated manual throws may cause channel stress blistering. Recommend upgrading to retrieval or auto-recursion variant before Rank IV.

Fabrisse had never closed a glyph that quickly. Okay . . . maybe I don’t need that much detail.

He vowed to never open detailed effects again.

He opened the glyph again—but only the top layer this time. Just the Core Equation.

40% Stupenstone Core Alignment (Stable)
40% Thread Synchronization (Timing Delta: 0.42s)
20% Kinetic Channeling Efficiency (Flow Rate: 66%)

That last one caught his eye.

Kinetic Channeling Efficiency.

He frowned. “That’s . . . physical, right? Kinetic, as in force.”

He rolled the stone in his palm, suddenly more aware of the slight weight of it, the tension he felt every time he coiled his arm to throw. Until now, he’d just assumed the ‘channeling’ was entirely aetheric—threadwork and sync timing. But this—

“Does this spell actually like it when I swing my hand harder?” he muttered.

That broke a rule he’d had in his head since day one.

Strength was irrelevant for a spellcaster.

But if even 20% of this spell’s performance was tied to how well he channeled physical force through the cast . . . then maybe it wasn’t just about finesse or clarity. 

He coiled his arm again, this time consciously bracing his legs, tightening his shoulder, and adding real swing behind the throw.

He hit the scarecrow’s head (it would’ve been difficult not to, as he was not even a meter away), but it’d dipped just before impact and hit the chin instead of the forehead like he’d hoped. The arc of the stone had held straighter, though.

“Huh.”

Not a breakthrough. But better.

He frowned, rubbing at the seam between his shoulder and collarbone. His body didn’t love that movement, but the stone had flown truer. That had to mean something.

Then he flexed his fingers into the Self-Directed Query Invocation posture and used the skill. 

The air coalesced into a translucent, slow-replaying afterimage of his last throw: a twist of faint light tracing where the spell had moved through him and outward.

It was like watching his own aetheric skeleton cast the spell in reverse. He squinted. Near the shoulder and wrist—faint glow, good continuity. That tracked with the physical force he’d added. Kinetic channeling looked like it was landing, at least partially.

But just beneath the wrist, where his threads usually bound the intent into shape—a dull smudge.

“Faded resonance,” he muttered. His intent had dropped mid-cast, or he’d resonated with aether later than he should’ve.

Near the upper chest and neck, where the spell should have fully synchronized with his threadwork and timing—a haze. Fatigue marks.

The system’s overlay labeled them.

⚠ Thread Weakening (Light)
⚠ Partial Drift (0.4–0.6s mismatch)
⚠ Emotional Undercurrent: Stable, but Thin

“SYN’s still off,” he muttered, tapping the side of the projection. “That’s where my timing’s dropping. I’m overcompensating for the release instead of syncing clean.”

He followed the glowing thread upward, toward the head of the scarecrow. The thread disappeared near the end, as if there was no longer any aetheric connection.

His ARC wasn’t strong enough to finish the job.

His weak stats had betrayed him.

Suddenly, another notification popped up.

[WARNING: Focus dropped below 25%.]

Focus (FP): 7/30

[RECOMMENDATION: Take a short rest and rehydrate. Drink 2 liters of water a day.]

Oh, yeah. What is Focus, by the way?

He pulled up the description from the script.

Focus Points (FP) represent a caster’s mental stamina, cognitive sharpness, and aetheric discipline. Every spell, gesture, calculation, or channeling of aether draws from this finite pool, not because it burns fuel, but because it taxes the mind. If your FP drops to below 50%, you get a penalty of 20% for every stats. If your FP drops below 25%, you get a 50% penalty. If you have no FP, you cannot cast a spell.

Which made sense. Aether was in everything, and it wasn’t something you could store. What could run out wasn’t aether—it was you.

He was overcorrecting the arc, burning too many focus points just trying to make the flight look clean. He needed to take a break.

As he walked over to a corner and took a sip of water, he caught sight of a figure past the ward-post glimmer and the rune-stamped boundary line.

Veliane Veist.