Sleeping the night in some burrow was actually one of the best nights Ethan had in the entire tutorial, his need to sleep was decreasing with each level up but he still required rest to feel refreshed and alert, lately that came in the form of unconsciousness and shouldn't be something he wanted to introduce as a permanent solution.

Ethan chuckled about his own little joke and stretched his sore muscles, when he took his hat he noticed that Nora was already gone. Like she promised she was already scouting the surrounding jungle. When trying to connect with her he couldn't find her. He grinned, it should be plenty of time before she was back so he could try out a new idea he had last night. Something he thought was a big oversight on his part, especially now that he was capable of ritual magic.

With a wave of his hand the ice wall blocking the entrance vanished, turning into snow that quickly melted away, it became easier to work with snow even if it was only adjacent to his focus on ice magic. Stepping outside he took a deep breath of the warm air, it was fragrant, the smell of decaying leaves, flowers and various plant life mixed with the earthy smell of the wet soil under his feet. The whole jungle was warm and humid, for the first time this felt like a place that was truly alive, not like that dead forest, putrid swamp or dry desert. This jungle was in more than one sense the antithesis to Ethan's winter related being.

This jungle was life and he was death, the absence of it all in the harsh reality of winter were only the stubborn and hard survive. He welcomed this feeling, as it showed how everything balanced itself out, nature worked in balance and so did magic, it was part of the structure that made up the universe. Neither the deadly jungle nor the cold winter were responsible for the damage they were able to cause, but simply the forces of nature at work.

Smiling he nodded to himself, everything felt right for the first time in a long time. Getting shot at by angry elves was in the past, now he was ready for some future exploits in magical experimentation, if he was a mad wizard he would cackle and eat dubious looking mushrooms. While grinning he held his staff in front of him, his eyes wandering over the black polished wood, he turned it sideways holding it horizontally while the light played with the grain of the wood.

The feeling he got from the staff was a connection albeit a weak one, He had been using it for so long that the staff merged with him in a way that was similar to his connection to Nora but on a much weaker level. The staff was his in any sense of the word, satisfied he nodded, rammed it in the ground and carefully he started to draw a ritual circle around it.

Using just his finger he drew lines of frost on the ground, first a small circle right around the staff, two bigger circles followed afterwards, one around a foot length away from the staff, the second one an arm's length. The three circles got connected with runes, ten lines that started in the middle and slowly filled the space between each circle. Most of them were runes to empower and expand, followed by runes for stability and control. Lastly he inscribed runes for deactivation on each of the ten lines, he didn't want to blow his staff up after all.

With the ritual finished he looked it over again and again until he was satisfied with his work. Ethan suspected that a true ritualist would mock his work, but he didn't have a fancy workshop with marble slabs on which to engrave his works. At least, he thought that was what ritualists did. In his opinion, they were stuck up pricks. Robbing people off their money when a piece of wood would work the same, at least for the simple rituals you could make use of in a household.

Shaking his head he focused back on the work in front of him, gently putting his hands down on the ritual he started to introduce his mana, slowly the lines started to glow with a mix of white and pale blue. The lines of frost raised themselves up, becoming solid ice the moment magic flooded them. Ethan watched as each little rune lit up, the glow approached the middle and the last circle started to glow softly.

His magic illuminated the staff and then it started to spin inside the ground, slowly at first but the pace quickly increased and it rose into the air, hovering a hand's breadth above the ground where it rotated even faster. Ethan nodded, his mouth moving but no words escaping from his lips while his mind raced, the next step was crucial and he could feel the strain he put on his mana channels and his knowledge of rituals. This could either help him or cripple him, still he thought it would be worth a shot if he could make it work.

Gently he stood up, his hands hovering over the circle of magic, with him the magic rose too, the dozens of runes lifted from the ground in perfect lines that now floated around the staff, lazily spinning with it. Then came the hardest part, Ethan needed to compress the runes so that they merged with the staff, not too fast or the staff might break.

He was sure that man-made weapons had a way of preventing this, but with a system weapon the situation was quite different. Ethan noticed long ago that the system provided the first step but climbing the steps to the top was your responsibility and he wasn't keen on spending his time at the first step forever.

Spreading his hands as far as possible to both sides, he watched the runes follow his movements spreading outward around him, nodding one last time to reassure himself before he slowly brought his hands together, the magic mimicked him and the first rune touched the staff, there was resistance but nothing he couldn't overcome.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Then the second and third rune merged and Ethan knew it was possible to infuse everything, the feeling he got was one of acceptance and so he continued. On rune after the other merged with the staff until only the outer circle remained. At this point each new rune was a struggle, Ethan was drenched in sweat and blood dripped from his nose but he continued, despite his shaking hands and the terrible headache. When only one rune was left he took a deep breath and forced it into the staff, a thunderous crack followed by a shockwave radiated from the staff and threw Ethan away, luckily he landed on some shrubs and not face first into a tree.

Because, yes, he spun around from the explosion and did an involuntary backflip, landing on his belly, all the air getting pushed from his lungs.

"Magic is pain, pain is progress Ethan." he said to himself while wheezing, slowly he managed to push himself to his feet. He wiped dirt and leaves from his robe while approaching the floating staff. The pale blue gem on top shone brighter, the shaft of the staff was covered in runes now, pale blue near the gem and white at the bottom, with a mix of both in the middle.

Ethan grabbed the staff and while there wasn't power flooding him, there was a different feeling, it was…pure potential. The concept he wanted to infuse wasn't one of raw strength but of versatility, he tried to become a wizard focused on control and this was the first step. Letting go off the staff it continued to float.

He worked his magic on some shrubs, chains erupted from the ground and whipped around like snakes, looking for something to entrap. Next he fired an ice spike at one of the trees, it managed to penetrate around halfway into the trunk before being stopped.

Next some plague magic, using his aura first he willed it to corrupt the world around him, with no resistance he was standing in a circle of dead plants in mere seconds. While he could use plague rain it would be a bit too much right now for just some experiments.

Then he grabbed the staff and instead of using his hands he used the staff to cast his magic. Doing the same as before, ice chains erupted from the ground, this time they were thicker, spikes covered each link of the chains and the meat hooks on the ends were jagged, the inside looking more like a saw than a hook. The most surprising thing was that they showed some form of instinct, they knew what to attack.

His connection felt so much stronger then before and while he wouldn't be able to control them completely, he felt that guiding them would be a lot more manageable now. Then came the ice spike test and Ethan was both shocked and surprised.

Casting his magic through the staff he saw the ice spike emerge, floating in front of him but when he shot it towards the tree he…lost sight. He heard the swish of something moving at high speed and then he saw the tree trunk explode into a shower of bark and wood. A second impact and a third shortly after before silence fell over the jungle again.

The draw on his mana was at least double the amount but he didn't know that empower and expand runes could have such an impact on free form magic, which was after all becoming his go to magic.

He held his hand out, using the staff as a catalyst he sent ice needles into the next tree, like before they vanished instantly, leaving pin sized holes in the tree. Ethan looked at his staff, this might be a challenge for himself.

After a bit more testing, which involved the murdering of some more trees he managed to get the power under control, which was fairly simple in the end. With the amount of mana he usually needed he just used it, his [Perfect Ice Manipulation] making it, well, perfect. But with the staff he added a new component and because it wasn't amplifying it but the staff he needed to control the mana going inside the staff.

Mana always had intent, you wanted it to do something specific and the power followed the pattern you introduced. Want a fireball? Sure the mana follows your intent and forms a fireball if you have the aptitude and knowledge or in the system, the skill for it.

But Ethan's staff didn't use the system, Ethan gave it the intent and the goal, the staff just took it, cranked it up to eleven and sent it off on his command. So Ethan had to flood the staff with his magic to get the skill to recognize the staff as an extension of himself. In gaming this would probably count as an exploit, using basically no effort to achieve a goal.

Did Ethan care? Fuck no, he had a cool staff that used a lot more mana but put out some serious damage so he was happy. He made it work and that was important, in the future he could sit in a hut deep in the woods and think about the questions of why it worked, right now he was just glad it worked.

He smiled and twirled the staff in his hand. Everything worked out perf-

ETHAN! What are you doing here?! The whole forest is fleeing from here and those elves are approaching fast!

Nora screamed into his mind, he knew she was still far away, just barely inside their telepathic range.

"O-oh…oh...shit!"

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