Well, that had been… a lot easier than he had expected, honestly. By the time he had finished practising two new messages had appeared in Oberon’s mind; the first was an upgraded version of his magical analysis skill, which meant he was going to have to take a look at his spells again later and see if he could find out anything useful. The description for the skill also suggested that the ability could be used to analyse things other than spells, such as creatures or materials if they were magically inclined; this was something he already could have guessed from the way it had analysed Mourningstar last night, but it was something he was going to have to remember so that he could experiment with it later.

What was interesting was that the skill had increased in level despite the fact that he wasn’t using it to observe anything new. Maybe it had been passively active the entire time he was working on his new skill, which would have accounted for its fast growth and might have had something to do with the fast development of the new spell. This also suggested that actually thinking about what you were analysing was better for the skill’s growth than just looking at things and seeing what the skill told you.

The second message was a new skill, Mana Shot, which sounded an awful lot like the magic missile he had seen Wisps firing off and exactly like what he was looking for. He now had a basic offensive spell and something he could use as a jumping off point for much more experimentation later. In fact, there was something he wanted to try right now.

Oberon was broken out of his musings as Mourningstar spoke again, this time to suggest that they head towards a large bonfire where a lot of creatures gathered in order to hunt. Putting aside the fact that killing and eating creature that might resemble one of their group members made him extraordinarily queasy, there was something else about this plan that bothered him. [color=f49ac2]“Shouldn’t we pick something a little more isolated to attack? We’re looking for breakfast, not trying to start a war. We can check out the bonfire later, it sounds interesting and we might find others like us, but we shouldn’t push our luck trying to attack a whole gathering like that.”[/color]

Turning back to his experimentation, Oberon raised his hands again and held them slightly apart. [color=f49ac2]“Anyway, let’s see what the others think.”[/color]

He was interested to see if he could cast a Shield on a Mana Shot before firing it and if the magical enhancement would do anything to strengthen the spell. He formed another Mana Shot between his hands, the act being a lot easier now that he had the skill to draw on, and just before the moment he felt it would leap from his fingers he tried to quickly cast a Shield spell on the ball of magic.