6 Light and Discovery (1/2)

Along the narrow pathways and rocky entrances, a shadowy figure walked, just like a ghost in the land of death. This figure was Morgana, of course.

Five days had passed since her duel with the Bat King. Since then, she had searched endlessly for the exit of this dreaded place. Unfortunately, success evaded her, just like a healthy man would do with the flu. But this was no news. Since childhood, her luck had always been quite poor.

The little time she had to spare was committed to magic practice. Small tricks weren't difficult to grasp. When attempting to master lesser spells, frequently, all she had to do was to make minor adjustments in the original formula and everything would fall into place.

There were also some easy to spot differences in magical law, witch facilitated her work. Otherwise, her only alternative was trial and error. For instance, one of the key points to keep in mind was that, in this land, elemental particles seemed to be thicker and more unstable.

The result was that when deploying transmute rock in her previous battle, Morgana had to craft much more robust runes. Had she not done so, the whole formation would simply collapse and implode.

Food was also not an issue. With the ample supply of bats and the occasional mushroom, her nutritional needs were properly met. She was also capable of sustaining a bonfire now, which helped both with the taste of food and health in general since cooking killed many types of bacteria.

By this point, however, Morgana had reached a bottleneck on her cultivation process. After all there was only so much she could learn with practice alone. Academic studies played a major role in the power of a wizard. That's the reason why the most powerful arcane masters Morgana had ever known were men and women with great diligence and devotion to reading, reflecting and experimenting in seclusion.

A strong wizard was both someone who uncovered the mysteries of magic, as much as someone who tempered his or herself in the heat of battle.

One of the possibilities Morgana had considered was to settle a base of operations as soon as she arrived on the surface. Time was needed in order to do experiments and increase her own understanding through methodical observation in a controlled environment.

However, one might be enticed to consider - ”Why couldn't she do that inside the dungeon? Why lose time searching for a path to the surface that might not even exist?”

Well. Morgana had several reasons for the choice she made. For starters the resources underground seemed to be very poor. There were no magical ores besides the glowing rocks and biodiversity was extremely low. Without considering the infestation of bat-like creatures, even the types of fungus appeared to be very few.

This was a terrible work environment for Morgana. After all, even the most talented researcher required proper raw materials to make progress.

The other reason that pushed her towards this calculated gamble could be summarised in one word - ”books”.