Bonded Summoner

Jake blocked Ophelia’s spear which was held in a two-handed grip with his shield, countering with a thrust of his own spear. But Ophelia’s body was both faster than his and filled with mana, allowing it to move fast enough to dodge his thrust. She harried him with speedy thrusts of her own, which he did his best to deflect while countering. They would often practice with one using the spear two-handed and the other with a shield, as both of them having a shield made for quite the boring fight with little to be learned.

Jake tried to circulate the mana within him similarly to how he saw her with [Arcane Eye], but had extreme difficulty replicating it. Jake had been trying to reach [Advanced Melee Specialization], but was having a hard time moving his mana like her to achieve positive results. Eventually, he was punished for his distraction by Ophelia soaring over his shield with [Charge], and the butt of her spear smacking him in the side of the helmet.

He got knocked to the side, and she got within his guard and had the spear at his throat. “You got a little too distracted. We’ll take a break.”

Ophelia’s spear disappeared into her storage bracelet, and she took out two water bottles and threw one to Jake. He quickly stored his spear and shield and caught it. Jake sighed, “It really looks like the Framework won’t assist me with this, I would have to learn this mana empowerment of my muscles on my own. I’m not sure how long it would take, but I think we are talking months rather than weeks.”

Ophelia cozied up to Jake’s side and wrapped her wing around him, like she often did and Jake put his arm around her waist as they sat down on a bench in their training area. Ever since the duel was declared and a little before it, they had many moments like this. Ophelia was strictly business during training, but any downtime was spent similarly.

She said, “Mana does help make my movements and my attacks stronger, but it is in fact marginal. Plus, it costs mana, a limited resource. With your specialty being spellcasting and support, perhaps it’s not a requirement. I’d like you to have the ability in case you need it, but with the magic focus in your spear, I’m not sure it’s necessary. I think we’ll go crazy if we are stuck being here and just in the dungeon for much longer.”

Jake had to agree. They were dying to go out and explore the multiverse. The dungeons had become trivial for them with their new equipment and skills, and while they still got slightly better with training, without the Framework’s assistance it made it a struggle to get better.

They were now back to how regular people trained, where some habits could make them take steps back for each step forward. Jake could tell it was entirely possible for them to still increase their skills, but it would take them an enormous amount of time and effort, as the Framework would not assist them in order to do so.

At the very least, they each had their tradeskills to advance. Ophelia had taken to Smithing, just like Fhesiah had Alchemy, and Jake Enchanting. Each was advancing, but it appeared it was a challenge, not having access to higher Tier resources to advance. Jake was lucky for his enchanting, that runic enchantment didn’t appear to require this.

Jake pulled out one of his new spell rods from his storage bracelet. “At least we get to test this out today, it should be interesting.”

Ophelia looked at the rod with interest. It was nothing more than a steel cylinder with a magic focus at the tip. But it had twelve runes going up the side. Unlike his staff which had two functions, this was a single function, all devoted into casting an empowered version of an offensive spell.

Fhesiah chimed in, “I thought I told you Jake: I like your other rod plenty. You have no reason to compensate, you know.”

Jake hoped that this spell would work. He thought it would, as he had already found that his functions allowed him to cheat and make larger spells than his twelve runeword limit. But this would push the limit of his cheating, being his first twenty-four runeword spell. It had taken a lot of research for him to come up with the spell at all, and while he had some options he could play with on the fly if it didn’t work, he was afraid to cast them here in the [Refuge] and wanted to use it against a viable target.

Jake spent some more time with Ophelia during their break. Their relationship had moved towards what Jake would call ‘horny teenagers.’ When they weren’t training, Ophelia was often by his side, holding his hand or cozying up to him. She would often wrap her soft wing around him in a side hug, and Jake loved the feel of it. Sometimes, they would even kiss and make out a bit, if their moods called for it. The demoness would make herself scarce when this happened, and Jake was surprised at how she set them up or otherwise facilitated them to have time alone together.

On the other hand, Fhesiah was completely content with all affection to be in the bedroom, outside of the valkyrie’s vision. Perhaps, she had an inkling that it was not something Ophelia wanted to see, but Jake couldn’t be sure.

[That thought is only partially right, Jake. Once you get my ‘motor’ going, I just don’t want to stop is all. If we went to the bedroom each time you kissed or hugged me and sent those wonderful feelings over our bond, we’d hardly have much time for anything else.]

Jake rolled his eyes at this. Just what strange things did she do to her body?

[Fun stuff, but they’re only for you. Only you or your other wives will be able to get my motor going, I promise.]

They wrapped up their training for the day and headed into the dungeon, where they had cleared most of the way to the boss.

They fought through some respawns of angry bears in a cave, until they reached the den of the giant bear boss. This would be an excellent place for him to test his new spell-rod. It was covered in runes meant to empower a spell, all runewords that Jake didn’t use in his now-standard elemental spear spells. He should be able to push what had become his standard twelve-rune runic spear of fire spell through it, and it should be empowered.

Jake would only be able to try twice before he ran out of mana if his standard didn’t work. Even if the runes fizzled out failing to form it cost him all his mana he used to form them. Still, Fhesiah or Ophelia should be able to solo the boss without issue, so this was why he wanted to try it here. The two girls flanked him, and watched in interest as he pointed it at the boss in the back of the room. The boss noticed them, and roared its challenge, shaking the cavern. This creature was one of the biggest they’d seen, being even larger than the elephant-sized Ant Queen that they fought.

Jake empowered the runes trying to cast his spear of fire spell, and it fizzled. He looked at the rod, and thought furiously about why it might not have worked. Perhaps, there was some kind of conflict with the empowerment and one of the words used in his spear of fire spell. Jake decided he would try a slightly simpler runeword in place of the spear word, which usually resulted in a ball of fire, instead. He filled the runes as the giant bear began to charge, their lumbering figure moving across the large cavern rapidly.

Jake once again tried casting his spell with the changes, and found the runes congealed and coalesced into a spell. A ball of fire was released from the end of the rod, and the power of it was shocking. A ball of flames much larger than a beach ball raged towards the giant bear, and Jake could feel that it was powerful. The heat it gave off was immense, and it completely lit up the cavern as it moved towards the bear, which was now halfway across the large cavern. Jake couldn’t help but feel like it was shooting a massive roman candle on the fourth of July.

The bear roared as they were struck by the spell in the chest, but the explosion completely blasted the bear away. Limbs flew away as they were ripped from their body, and they were engulfed in flames that were released in a wave. It knocked the bear off of its feet, and Jake was surprised to see a large chunk of its chest just completely missing. The bear died, and he received a dungeon completion notification.

Ophelia just had her mouth agape, and Fhesiah was panting now. “We need to get back home,” she said.

Jake was a little confused, but not quite. He had seen that look on her face plenty of times. It was just, why was she so excited?

“You’re wondering why I’m so excited? What you made was so amazing, it actually surpassed my own flames in some ways. I am pretty sure that is a Tier 1 spell you just made, so it only proves your capability: that my mother was right. You had shown me that you were brimming with potential, but it wasn’t quite like this. So now, let’s get home quickly. I need you to show me your rod again.” Jake looked down at the spell-rod in his hands, “The other rod,” she said.

Both Jake and Ophelia were blushing, and Jake was practically dragged out of the cavern as Ophelia looted the boss with a sigh. Jake could feel a small flash of jealousy, but only a small one. Of course, she was well aware of their evening activities. They had been slowly working up to such a thing on their own, but it had been kept above the clothes, so far. She simply wasn’t ready for making love, and Jake was happy to allow the emotion and feelings they had for each other to build, instead. It did however have this unfortunate side effect, where both girls were at different places in their relationship with him.

Jake expressed his feelings of care and worry for Ophelia over their bond, and he could feel she was appreciative for it. He wanted her to know that her feelings were important to him, too. Still, he had an amorous dragon demoness to handle for the evening.

A few more days passed with Jake working on more spell-rods, and he managed to complete two more. One was like a super-buff, that he was calling Einherjar. While researching this, he had even managed to finish creating what was a twelve-rune version of the strength buff that he had been using, that he called Empowerment. Empowerment lasted a whole minute, and while it had varying effectiveness across each party member, Jake would consider it to be around a thirty to fifty percent increase in effectiveness. It was much closer to fifty percent or more for Jake, and Fhesiah’s increase was closer to thirty, with Ophelia somewhere in between. Jake guessed it had to do with how strong or powerful they were already.

The buff increased their strength, speed, defense, and Jake even saw improvements to certain spells like mana-blade when he used it. The spell Einherjar cast from the spell rod more than doubled these effects, but the spell only lasted thirty seconds, instead. Still, with Einherjar, even Jake could best Fhesiah or Ophelia in a one on one in melee, which greatly excited both girls. Jake felt that his naming of the spell was very fitting, being named after the immortal warriors. He hoped Odin didn’t mind.

The last spell-rod held a spell that Jake was calling Sanctuary. It was based off of his runic shields, and it created a large dome. But instead of a simple barrier, it allowed attacks from his allies to exit at their enemies. This was unlike their sacrificial barriers, which did not allow attacks of their own to pass through. The dome lasted a whole 30 seconds, and Jake knew it would be quite strong.

The spell-rods could not be used often and could also be seen as consumables as they would only get a couple of uses before the runes would need to be recharged with runic ink, perhaps due to being ‘overcharged’ during the usage of the spell. Jake thought the passing of twelve runes through the rod and focus and adding them together put extra strain on the item. The small spell-rods themselves could only barely contain the runes themselves in the first place, so they would deteriorate with each casting. They also took a large percentage of Jake’s available mana, over half. This made it a challenge for the valkyrie to cast anything meaningful with one, as she had less mana than Jake, and had not yet reached level 5 in Runic Magic to really utilize them properly or practice using them.

Still, Jake was very happy that he had the option, as he saw them like the [Scroll of Thornwood Field], spells meant to turn the tide of what would otherwise be a losing battle. Of course, it was bad to be in a fight where such a skill or spell would be used, but sometimes you were simply unable to identify a major threat before a fight began.

Thanks to the effectiveness of runic magic, it started the demoness wanting to join Jake in his learning of it. She was having a hard time making it work, though, as forcing heavenly energy to abide by a set of strict rules did not have good results. She had no problems copying the Nordic runes themselves, especially in runic sentences that Jake laid out for her when making what would be a spell, but they simply would not activate with her using Heavenly Energy.

They thought they were getting close to a solution though: demonic runes. These runes echoed the Dao, or heavenly truths, and the demoness had successfully gotten a few of them to activate. It took Jake some effort, but he too was able to get one to activate as well, with his mana. It appeared that demonic runes required some level of understanding in order to utilize them even with mana: it was not as simple as forming a shape with mana and forming a word, Jake had to have a level of understanding of the rune and the word in order to successfully use it.

Jake thought this effect was interesting. With mana, it was like his understanding could have a more scientific approach to it. For example, fire. Jake’s understanding was that combustion was a combination of oxygen in the air and a fuel being consumed, causing thermal energy to be released. As things are heated up from this thermal energy, the atoms in the material speed up as well.

Overall, the effect from the mana-infused demonic runes appeared to be less than Nordic runes for Jake. Perhaps because the only-scientific knowledge of the runes was the bare minimum to activate, and Nordic runes were powered by those of the Nordic faiths and the Nordic Gods themselves.

Understanding many of the working parts allowed him to enchant the demonic rune of fire using mana. A foreign concept to Jake such as space or time where even human or scientific understanding was dubious, he had no chance of using in a spell or enchanting those runes, for now.

Fhesiah responded to Jake’s thoughts, “That’s not all there is to fire, Jake. A fire can consume fuel and destroy, but it can even create. You can cook a meal for us with fire, and that same fire can keep a family warm in a winter, protecting them from death by the cold. You can cauterize a bleeding wound, allowing fire to heal. A star burns brightly in the sky for millions of years, granting the possibility of life across the cosmos. My dragon flames carry the spark of creation, destroying or creating life as I see fit.”

Conversely, Fhesiah’s understanding of fire would be more rooted in the essence of it. She would then incorporate what she believed to be the essence of fire into her being, her Path, and when she activated the rune using Qi even if it was Jake that enchanted it: that is what the demonic rune would manifest into the world.

Jake found that he could even combine the two approaches to himself somewhat, though the effect on the mana-infused demonic runes appeared to be marginal. He would need to spend a lot more time studying Fhesiah’s Path, and knew that this was important. Her Path was important to her, and thus Jake would make it important to him.

The limitations would force Fhesiah primarily to runes related to fire, and creating sort of functions like Jake had would be a real challenge for her, as when she used heavenly energy, she found that her requirements for understanding in order to use a rune was even greater than Jake’s. She likely would never be able to use a rune not related to the dao incorporated into her being, her essence, but that didn’t mean she was giving up. Perhaps this restriction would be lowered as she mastered [Runic Magic], or her mastery of the Dao reached a higher level, allowing her to use demonic runes not directly related to her dragon fire.

For now, Fhesiah found that when she made a ball of fire with her demonic runes, the power was higher and cost in heavenly energy was lower, allowing for greater efficiency than if she had just otherwise created it on her own. It was just a small benefit, but it was well worth the effort. This also got around the problems of Nordic Runes that Hestia alluded to for Jake, and he had plans for creating spell-rods and an alternate set of equipment that included these demonic runes once he had a high enough understanding of them to accomplish similar goals.

Jake finished his enchanting work for the day, and he headed over to Ophelia’s smithy. She had been doing what she could to raise her skill, as he tried to raise his Enchanting. They found that her tradeskill was a lot more time-consuming, requiring much more practice. Similar to how Purifying Flames had difficulty raising to level 5 due to not having access to higher tier materials, she was similarly limited. Not having access to Tier 1 metals was making it very challenging to raise the skill.

Tier 0 metals simply didn’t have mana in them. She tried infusing mana into them, but the Framework simply wouldn’t assist her in this. Just like mana usage in Advanced Melee Specialization for Jake, the Framework would not assist her in utilizing this in her crafting. If they had spent a year, perhaps she could have learned it on their own, as if they were living in a non-Framework world. Jake assumed after they passed the Trial and became Tier 1, the skill would advance much easier with supernatural metals and materials, and then she could enhance even steel in amazing ways.

When Jake entered the smithy, Ophelia was polishing a gauntlet. It had wicked claws, and Jake thought it looked like a replacement for Fhesiah. Unfortunately, he knew how she felt about this.

Ophelia gave a sad frown, “I know she won’t wear it, but I thought I should try making all sorts of items, hoping that would help the skill advance. I’ve tried runic fire, pushing tons of mana into the items, and if anything it makes them weaker as a result. It’s tough.” She frowned, “I knew my dad used magic in smithing, but he didn’t really explain how to me. I had tried, but I wasn’t ready to learn magic at that age, my soul was too small and weak to really utilize or store mana at the time.”

Jake knew this to be true, from his enchanting. Finding the right amount of mana to infuse the item with to improve the integrity of it was likely a skill of the next tier. Of course, doing this while forging should be different than doing it after the item was already completed like with his Enchanting, so the two skills would be different, but he thought the challenges were likely similar. He was interested to learn a small tidbit about how children wouldn’t be able to learn magic until they were much older.

Jake came around her workbench and hugged her from the side which she returned with a hug of her wing, as he inspected the item. It looked very well made, and looking, he saw her skill to be at level 4. Most likely, she had already surpassed nearly every smith on Earth, and in only a few weeks time. She could craft certain items in minutes, and her smithy was full of cabinets with different tools used to make her items.

“I’m sure he’d be very proud of how far you’ve come. Both as a smith, and as a warrior. You’re an amazing woman.”

Ophelia blushed, and she looked at him in question. “You seem to be in a good mood, what is it?”

Jake smiled at her. “I wanted to ask my beautiful battle angel on a date for tomorrow. I want to spend the whole day together. We’ll still train in the morning, but rather than the dungeon, we’ll go on a date instead. How about it?”

“Oh! That sounds wonderful. I’ve always wanted to go on a date…Wait, can we really go on one?”

“I’ve always wanted to go on one too. It’ll be my first as well, technically. As far as if we can go on one, I think I have come up with something exciting enough, even if we can’t leave our Refuge. How about it?”

Ophelia used the clean spellform on her face, which was covered in soot before kissing him. “It’s a date! Oh, I can’t wait!”

“Great, me neither. I’m going to set things up, so just keep away from the Menu unless you want to spoil it.”

She nodded, but she showed a happy smile. She looked at the gauntlet she had previously been working on, and to Jake it felt like she could hardly think about what she was doing before he entered. Her wings flapped in anticipation, and Jake smiled at this. Of course, Jake was excited too. He left the smithy. He had a lot to prepare for their date.