Chapter 239

“If I could have anything?” Zoey asked.

“Within reason,” Maddy said. “But yeah. There’s a lot to pick from inside this book.”

“Firepower,” Zoey answered. “Anything hard-hitting, even if it takes longer to cast.”

“You’d prefer that, over faster bolts? Weaker ones you could stream out in larger numbers?”

Zoey lost her conviction. She shrugged. “I dunno, you’re the expert, I just feel like I’m kinda useless, when it comes to fights? Or at least, that I don’t have anything big that influences the fight, personally speaking.”

Maddy raised an eyebrow. “And you think you need firepower to be ‘useful in a fight’, huh?”

Her point was obvious. Maddy herself had extremely little when it came to offensive power. She could, however, utterly disable opponents, up to and including bosses for short amounts of times. She provided enormous benefit to any given fight, probably influencing encounters more than if she did have a damage arsenal.

“Well,” Zoey said. “No, you’re right, of course. I have other uses through my other runes. I just ... want to be able to do a lot of damage?” She shrugged. “You asked what I wanted. But I’ll learn whatever you think would be best on me, or for the team.”

Maddy hid a smile. “I guess it does make sense you’d want something big and flashy.” She patted Zoey’s cock underneath her robes to emphasize her point. “But no, don’t get me wrong, a heavy-hitting lightning bolt isn’t a bad idea. Since it’s easier to land than most spells, you can beef up a lightning bolt a lot more without worrying about wasting the spell. Don’t have to worry about it shattering on a wall, like an ice spear.” She flipped through a few pages and tapped a finger on the book when she found what she wanted. “This is what I would start off with. It’s basically what you asked for. A big bolt of lightning that originates from you, with a lot of energy poured into it. There’s a smaller version you could learn once you have a handle on it, or vice-versa. Gives you versatility.”

Zoey inspected the diagram on the page. She’d grown used to dealing with the language of magic, but the looping designs were still interesting, and would probably never stop being so. There were a few sentences of description at the bottom of the page, discussing the spell and how it manifested. Some of the other pages had included paragraphs and paragraphs of description, though those had been the higher-circle spells, and were by nature more complex than a two-circle.

Zoey’s brief study was interrupted by a hand rubbing up and down her cock. Her eyes flicked to Maddy, but despite firmly massaging Zoey through her robe, and her thighs flexing to provide a satisfying pressure down near her base, Maddy kept her attention on the book with an innocent expression—though her cheeks were red, the easy-to-blush girl unable to stoically perform such a lewd action with a straight face.

Simply having the spell design, unfortunately, was only the first step. A major one, yes, that was barred to large swathes of the world, who had to scrounge together whatever designs they could find. But still only a first step. Actually learning to wield the spell was another matter altogether, one that would take significant practice, and increasingly so for more complex spells.

There was a reason Zoey only had a few key ice spells in her kit, rather than a whole book’s worth. The creation of spells was largely an academic pursuit, but using them, a practical one. Maybe not that dissimilar from composing music to playing what she saw on a sheet, though that analogy had its flaws, as most analogies did.

“There’s two others I think are good,” Maddy said. “One’s a second circle spell, a ball of lightning that sits there and zaps anything that gets close. Would work well for both single targets and multiple. Another is an arcing chain lightning effect. Those would be a good all-around starting point, and after you have a handle on them, you could pick up more creative ones you take an interest in.”

Zoey made a noise of agreement. Those did sound strong. To be fair, there weren’t many spells she wouldn’t want to learn. It was magic. She didn’t think it mattered how long she was in this world; she wouldn’t forget she was learning literal magic.

She studied the heavy-bolt spell for a few minutes longer, trying to hold the design in her head. Eventually, with Maddy’s encouragement, she stood and got to practicing.

It was harder to focus than usual, because Maddy stayed seated and, without a book and conversation to occupy her attention, had her focus diverted elsewhere: Zoey’s cock. Maddy stroked up and down with both hands, clenching and unclenching her thighs and rubbing her body along her length, the motion awkward inside her crammed robes, but very much pleasing.

Any attempts at staying concentrated were lost when, a few minutes into Zoey’s practice, Maddy discovered if she pulled the linking plate up just slightly, and bent forward the right way, she could lean forward and run her tongue along the tip of Zoey’s cock while keeping it concealed inside her robes.

Zoey managed a few shoddy invocations of the heavy lightning-bolt spell before the pleasure grew too much to ignore. She had been teased for long enough even before she’d started practicing.