You would think just casting should be easy, right? Acolytes should be able to grow very fast using this method, and would only be concerned with truly applying themselves when they reach rank 50 in a discipline or skill, but you would be wrong.
Think of a man working out; he lifts heavy weights to gain muscle, but if he does not rest and recover, he will never gain any new muscle mass.
This sort of growth is similar for a mage, but slightly different. After I cast spells and used my skills, obviously, there was growth, but what you did not see were the hidden strain on my channels and my Anima Depth.
Okay, let’s take a step back, and I will explain how magic works inside my body.
Think of my Anima Depth like a reservoir filled with fuel, or a more likely example would be a tank filled with a gaseous substance that can become the base for anything.
This is magic, folks, not chemistry.
Now, my channels are the place where the real magic happens. As an Acolyte, we have seven channels inside our bodies; this increases to fourteen when we become an Adept, and as we grow into the next stage, the channels also double.
There were special geniuses who had eight or even nine channels in their bodies as Acolytes, but this did not give them more power. Your Anima Depth is the core, but it gives them options for special branches of magic that are not available to the average mage.
Spells or Disciplines are created when I pull Anima from my core and move it through my channels in specific patterns.
My channels merge and cross with each other, and if I want to produce Arc Lightning, apart from intent, I also have to move my Anima through the right channels, and as this gas of possibility flows through the channels in the specific pattern, it transforms.
If I close my eyes, I can feel my channels, but they would vanish as soon as I die, making it hard for one to visually observe a channel; however, there were always magus criminals who were experimented on, and their painful sacrifice is one of the reasons we have many different spells and disciplines today.
Technically, it was possible to create new spells by experimenting with moving your Anima using various channels, but again, that was a good way to die in ways that defied imagination.
There are some examples in my head, but I don’t want to recall them at the moment.
Okay, sidetracked a little bit, where was I going with all this? Yes, the issue of growth.
When an Acolyte like me casts spells, my channels are obviously strained, and after the sort of violent spell casting I did with one of the most powerful elemental forces in the world, I should be resting for months and taking healing tinctures for my channels to recover, but death, it seems like, is the best medicine.
My channels had been growing and expanding like crazy, and it translated to quicker skill and discipline growth, since I did not have to spend years in recovery.
We were always advised to cast spells safely and not push our boundaries because doing so would ensure our channels grow and adapt without much injury, which would have lengthened the time of adaptation; however, the loop was cutting out the time my body needed to adapt.
I had seven channels in my body. Spark had used just one of my channels, Threadwork uses four, and Arc Lightning uses three; however, Surge uses all seven channels at once because it was the simplest of disciplines with the greatest impact, and it was one of the reasons it was the best spells for Anima Growth.
Obviously, using spells that touch all your channels quickens Anima Growth, and I pushed Threadwork aside for the moment due to this, but it was still growing fast as my channels and my Anima Depth were making the spell easier to cast.
Of course, this is all the physical aspect of casting magic; there is also a mental aspect, but that is a story for another time. I have spent too much time admiring my growth already.
I glanced over to my staff that was leaning against the tent pole on the other side of the cot, where I had left it the night before this all began.
I reached for it with Staff Resonance, the way I had learned to reach for it across the chained discharges of the previous loop, and the bond answered.
The staff lifted from the pole and crossed the four feet of canvas-floored space between us, drifting through the air the way iron drifts toward a magnet that has just been brought close, and my palm closed around the shaft before my eyes had finished tracking it.
I felt the warmth of the wood in my palm and sat with it across my lap, and the staff began to change in my hand.
The grain settled into a slow spiral as the claw at the head brightened, as the part of the blue Focus Crystal it held melted into my staff, enhancing the channels that were being carved into it.
A Focus Crystal was one of the most important aspects of a mage’s staff, and if I wanted to upgrade my staff in the future, then I would need more of these crystals.
As the attunement of a mage increases, this Focus Crystal acts like a base for the staff to pull upon for its upgrade.
The Academy had given me a Tier 1 Focus Crystal, which should have lasted me for years, but with the way my Staff Resonance was growing, I don’t know how many more loops would remain before I had to find more Focus Crystals to keep up with my growth.
I watched the pale blue veins emerge from the base of the crystal and travel into the wood, branching as they descended, threading the body of the staff the way veins thread the body of a hand.
I did not hurry this process because my staff needed to become more attuned with me, so it would not burn out as it did in my previous loop.
When my staff was burning, it had slightly reduced my spell efficiency, and I lost a bit of power, so I was determined to solve this problem before the fight began.