"A vow will be fine."

Alan was a little surprised by Lyonel's answer, but it would make things easier. He ran them through how to make an official vow, it mostly involved willing specific intent as you said the words. Once he had explained to the Corellians how to say it, the next thing to do was to go over what to say. That part was fairly simple as well, however, the beast people felt that a little bit of ceremony was called for, so they all stood before speaking together.

"We surrender to Alan Taylor and promise to follow his lead throughout the remainder of this tier."

Vow:

[Several people have made a vow to surrender to you. Would you like to Accept?]

Alan willed his acceptance and then waited a moment to see if he noticed a difference. Looking around he could tell that everyone else was waiting for something to happen as well. Since he had gotten a notification, he knew that the vow had been genuine, but he had still expected something a little more.

"I guess that's it, I don't feel any different though. Anyone else notice any changes?" Lyonel asked.

A series of headshakes were the only answers. Still, it must have been done. Alan wasn't exactly sure how the specifics of a vow to follow his lead would work, but Tamee had told him that the Network would impose consequences if they went against their promise. With that settled and food in their bellies, it was time to get down to business.

Alan laid out his plan. "Okay, so here's what I'm thinking for next steps. One, you guys should go into town and turn in your bounties. While you're there, see if there has been any word from Chrisly or his family. It's possible they'll stay out of the village after he got hurt, but I doubt it. I'm actually hoping for him and his party to come back. Also keep an ear out for the Bodarians. It's weird that we haven't heard anything from them yet."

"What do you want us to do if Chrisly is there?" Hector asked.

"If he's actually in town, then try to sneak back out and come here as fast as you can. Rather than killing the idiot, I'd like to embarass him. It should cause less of an issue with his parents, and at the same time should make us more popular with the villagers. I won't be able to plan out how to do it until I can watch how his team operates.

"The second thing I want you to do is make another run through the town dungeon. The more often we hit it, the more rewards we can get, and it will help the village upgrade faster too. I don't want to take over Elstree until we can eliminate either the Bodarians or Chrisly as an issue, but we are going to want the settlement to be as strong as possible whenever we do. Going through the dungeon should also give you a chance to try out the new weapons you'll get from the cavern dog nest bounty."

While giving the Corellians their space on the walk back, Alan had taken the opportunity to chat with Tamee. He learned the unfortunate news that since he wasn't in a party with the beast people, and it was Lyonel who landed the killing blow on the broodqueen, that he was not personally eligible for the reward. It wasn't terrible since he already had everything he could ask for in his spewn, but in his deepest of hearts he must have some greedy loot-goblin blood and the lost opportunity hurt.

After the party set out, Alan was once again on his own. This time he didn't have to worry about how long he had, or making sure no one caught him, he could use the time however he wanted. He had a brief dream of simply setting up a hammock and taking a nice nap after reading a book, but sadly those relaxing pastimes were probably not going to be an option for him going forward. At least not until this tutorial was over. He promised himself a nice long vacation if he managed to help his fellow Earthlings win the damn thing.

Instead he made sure that the meat cooler was still properly covered and the fire had died down, and then made his way to a small clearing he had found nearby in the forest. It was only around thirty meters across, but it was the most open space he could find nearby without going into the very flammable grasslands.

His spells were something he had been wanting to work on for quite some time. The new exploding missile spell was nice, but he also wanted to work on his walls and his fire bolt. Both were most likely going to cause a mess wherever he experimented and he hadn't wanted to do that in the camp. Now that discovery wasn't a concern, he was finally ready to get to it.

The next question was which spell to start with. Alan thought he was pretty good with all this magic stuff, and his time in the wizard tower seemed to confirm it, but he knew that what he was planning with both spells would take a lot of time. If he was lucky, he would be able to upgrade one of his spells before the Corellians came back, but it was possible it would take him a few such sessions to get what he wanted.

Outside of combat, Alan often found himself having a hard time deciding between things he wanted. It had led to the demise of more than one of his relationships. Luckily he had come up with a strategy to deal with his own decision lock. When deciding between two things, a pro/con list never steered someone wrong.

The first option to consider was improving his fire bolt. At the moment it was simply a streak of energy that he could pour mana into and make bigger, but other than briefly setting things on fire after hitting, there wasn't much more to it than that. He was hoping that with his improved aura reading and the natural boost to his mana senses that he got being an opal sorcerer, that he could add in some other types of mana, or aspects of fire, to make it more powerful.

The simplest things he thought he could manage were to make the fire bolt bigger, hotter, and add more of an explosive concept to get some area of effect damage thrown in. The current spell sometimes hit nearby enemies, but they had to be very close and it was usually a result of the flames splashing onto them. Alan was envisioning more of a traditional fireball spell.

The pros were obvious. More damage, longer burning, better crowd control, and a general awesomeness from casting a freaking fireball. Some people may have considered Alan a badass because he was a Green Beret, or a brainiac because he was a doctor, but he also had a large streak of geek in him, and it was bouncing up and down at the idea of casting fireballs.

It took him longer to come up with a list of cons, he was having a hard time being objective about it. The spell would probably cost more mana, but he wasn't too concerned because the trade off with the increased effects should make up for that. The area of effect aspect would be nice, but it would mean he would have to be careful as well. Any D&D player can tell you stories about the crazy wizard who blew the whole party up by casting a fireball in too small a room. There was also the environment to consider. If he cast this as yet unrealized spell in the grasslands, the explosion would most likely start a wildfire that could take out the whole zone.

The other spell he considered wasn't so much an upgrade as it was a sidestep. His wall spell was great as it was now, he was able to create a large and solid barrier that restricted the enemies movements for a decent amount of mana and a small upkeep, however, the spell was mostly defensive in nature and he was hoping to change it from a simple earthen or stone wall into some of the other elements. Fire was an obvious choice, and the fact that it was his first thought made him consider whether or not he was a pyromaniac, but the point still stood.

There were other options as well, though. Without even considering what new types of mana or combinations he could make, he could easily see a purpose to a wall of water or darkness. Because he wasn't sure what was possible from his barriers yet, and wouldn't until he started experimenting, the list of pros was harder to make.

One pro that would be universal for whatever wall types he made, was that it would allow him to counter more variations of creatures. Some monsters would have little trouble climbing a stone wall, and there were probably a few that could pass through rock with little trouble. Being able to switch the make-up of the barrier would allow him to better contain a larger variety of opponents. Another pro is that he might be able to give the wall some offensive aspects. Getting pushed into a wall of fire would not be healthy for most opponents.

As far as cons went, there was pretty much only one, it wasn't fireball. That wasn't an especially helpful entry, but it was how he felt. Remaining unemotional about the decision was difficult, so he tried to consider how each would make his life better going forward. Outside of combat, fireball wouldn't have many applications. On the other hand, he already had some thoughts about how he could use his stone wall spell to improve the defenses of the village, but he already had that spell. This was a decision about modifying the spell to other elements and he didn't see how a wall of fire or water would have many non-combat applications, so he considered the two options equally useless outside of battle.

That left the effect they would have on his combat style. Fireball would provide a good ranged spell capable of dealing heavy damage. Meteor already did that, but it took a while to hit its target, which was a problem that a fireball hopefully wouldn't have. That would definitely be a worthwhile addition. If he was being honest though, ranged combat wasn't his specialty. Sure it was nice to have when fighting something like the hawk king, but Alan was a melee man at heart.

"Tamee, how would you rate me as a spell caster?"

Ostensibly she was always watching, but since he was the only recruit from his zone, she could really only focus on areas around him. That had led to her exploring Earth culture as a way to pass the time and the question caught her off guard, so she took a moment to answer. "Well, we have already spoken about how broken your aura reading and mana enhancement are. You also have a great talent for drawing circles and handling mana. I would say you are one of the best I have seen for your level."

"But how would you rate my use of spells in combat?"

There was another pause before she answered, this time because she was trying to give him an honest evaluation. "Well, I would say you use them when appropriate. You aren't a backline mage who uses large damage and mana heavy spells to take out opponents. You use your spells to back up your melee skills. Like a spellsword I guess, and a very good one."

That was pretty much how Alan saw himself as well. Being a mage was cool, but it wasn't something that was easy to do solo, and honestly, he had come into the tutorial with no knowledge of magic and plenty of training in killing with his own hands.

"How would you rate me as a fighter, without my spells."

This time she had an answer right away. "You are not the best I've ever seen, you even mentioned running up against someone who cut your head off, but compared to what I have researched about from recruits in past tutorials, you are pretty incredible."

Alan had been thinking he was pretty good, but he was surprised at how highly she was rating his skills. "How so?"

"If I was going to compare you to some of the people I have seen in my travels, then I would rate you as simply good. But realize that all of these people were raised in the Network. Most were born to adventurer, or at least guard, families and had martial training since they were young. They are better with their weapons than you are with yours, mostly because they were almost born with them in their hands. This is why I could only rate you as good compared to them.

"However, you have something that only the best do, something beyond talent with your weapon. You have an ability to read your opponent, modify your style, and attack in an instant to better adapt to your opponent. Look at the Angel you fought. After realizing your weapons weren't going to get the job done, you incorporated some of the martial arts your planet teaches, which is something that Angels excel in, which should have meant you were at a disadvantage. Instead, you managed to turn the table and find the weakness in the Angel's own fighting style and exploit it. If we were at the same level and I met you in the street, I wouldn't want to fight you in close combat."

It was nice to hear Tamee saying all good things about him for once. No digs at his intelligence or making fun of him for dropping his weapons all the time. He wasn't sure he agreed with her assessment of how good he was, plenty of guys he knew could do the same thing. Although, a lot of the guys he hung around with were elite military operators, so maybe his metric was a little skewed.

Fireball would be great, but it would make something he did okay at, be a little better. Having stronger walls could add a lot more to the type of fighting he was best at. One of the issues of being a close combat warrior was that not everyone else was. If you were a better fighter than the other guy and you managed to keep the battle close, then you should win almost every time. The problem was, that only worked if the other guy wanted to stay in close-quarters as well. If you were up against a mage or an archer, they would do everything they could to stay out of your reach.

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In such a situation, having a good ranged option would help, but he was unlikely to have a better distance attack than a dedicated range expert. Trading blows from afar would give the advantage to his enemy. A better option would be to prevent the opponent from running away. He could use the walls to restrict their movement, allowing him to keep the fight close where he would dominate. That was the deciding factor. One day he would have a fireball, but it would be better for him now if he could use a variety of barriers to lock his foes down.

For just a moment he allowed himself to pretend what it would be like to shoot fireballs. He held up his hand and envisioned giant balls of flame erupting from his hands and blasting the trees, and any enemies they might be hiding, to pieces. "Pew pew!"

"Did you just say pew pew?" Tamee asked.

"No, that must have been you." Alan responded defensively.

"Riiight." Tamee once again questioned whether aligning herself with this man was a good idea. He really was a talented spellcaster and a gifted frontliner, but sometimes he said or did stuff that made her remember all of the idiotic things he had done before. She knew he was looking to upgrade his fire bolt spell and was sure that he was imagining casting it, but what kind of idiot would say 'pew pew' while doing so?

Despite his obsession with fire, Alan's first attempts to modify the wall used water mana. It was a type of wall he wanted, it would be useful against something like the salamanders, and it should be safer to experiment with than fire. Once he figured out how to modify the spell the first time, it should make it both safer and faster for the second.

To start things off, Alan cast his stone wall spell twice. Each time he really studied the spell form. For his initial attempt at modifying it, he was simply going to swap out the type of mana he used for water. Even with his admittedly limited experience, he was fairly certain that wasn't going to work, but it should give him a baseline of how wrong it was.

Pulling several strands of water mana from his pool, he started to create the magical sigil above his hand. So far everything was going okay, so he brought in some more. He had managed to complete about twenty-five percent of the spell when it all went wrong. It wasn't an explosion, not a proper one anyway, but a ball of water about two meters in diameter formed around his hand, which coincidentally also meant it engulfed his whole body. Before he had to deal with potentially drowning, the whole thing collapsed to the ground, leaving him simply drenched.

This could be counted as a partial success, he had found a new way of summoning water, but the backlash from the failed spell sent reverberations through his aura, and he decided to take a break before he tried it again. Like he had suspected, the different types of mana would require definite changes in the spell form. Earth mana and water mana just did not behave the same way.

After resting for about twenty minutes, he had refilled his mana pool and his pathways felt recovered enough for him to try again. This time he adapted the basic form as he went, which he had heavily modified from the spell stone spear. It was as he was making the initial changes that he came to the conclusion that he was going to have a serious issue. It was so obvious to him now that he wasn't sure how he hadn't realized the problem earlier.

Stone is solid, it holds its shape. It's one of the defining characteristics of rock. Without that rigidity, it would be a liquid, like water. He was trying to create a wall of something that wanted to flow to the lowest point. The stone, once shaped, would simply stay put, becoming a wall. Water, once shaped, would then collapse and drain itself, leaving a wet floor and little else. The same issue would occur no matter what other type of basic mana he chose. None of them were solid like earth.

Stubborn wasn't a mindset, though, it was a way of life and one he embraced. Alan was sure there was a way to get what he wanted, but he understood that it was going to take a lot of research on his part, most of which he wasn't capable of doing at the moment. He put a pin in the idea of a brightly flaming wall of fire until he had a lot more understanding of mana and spells. He wasn't just going to give up on new walls though, none of the other basic types of mana would be useful, but he had access to so many more mana concepts now.

Thinking back to an old collectable card game he played, he remembered many different types of walls. There were of course the walls of fire and water, but also walls of bone, swords, and thorns. A wall of bones sounded both too difficult to find the appropriate mana, if there even was one, but also too similar to a stone wall. The wall of swords sounded promising, at least for its potential to damage an enemy, but he didn't have access to sword mana. It actually was a real type of mana, one of the hundred symbols he had needed to memorize, but he had never been able to see even a hint of it in his own mana.

The wall of thorns, on the other hand, had real possibilities. Not only would such a thing be able to damage someone who brushed up against the thorns, if only slightly, but it would be more of a living thing. Perhaps it would be able to bridge the gap from a purely passive barrier to one with a more active aspect. Alan remembered the time a nature mage had trapped his foot in roots.

Now that he had a better idea of what he wanted, he had to think about what it would take. He had experienced roots trapping a target, but they normally grew underground and also didn't usually have thorns. What he needed wasn't a root but a whole plant that could achieve his desired effect. As he considered his options, he realized he had been mistaken when he remembered a wall of thorns, the card had been a wall of brambles.

There were a multitude of vines and shrubs that grew small thorns on them. Now that he was getting his herbology involved he realized he really was an idiot. One of the things he was carrying around in his ring, which was back on his finger finally, was the definition of a bramble. Blackberries, from the genus Rubus, had a prickly vine and could grow quite high with the proper support. Raspberries were another plant from the Rubus genus, all of which were what was actually meant when someone with knowledge said bramble.

This gave Alan a wonderful idea, what if he used a blackberry for the literal seed of his spell. He had already learned about how using a pebble instead of creating his own could save a ton of mana, that should hold true in this case as well. Even his stone wall spell only worked with as little mana as it did because it brought the rock up from the earth, rather than making it all with pure mana. It was also why the wall could linger after withdrawing the mana upkeep.

If the blackberry was the seed, then he just needed mana to make it grow. This seemed like it should be simple if he just used basic plant mana. It was a part of nature mana, but he had already experimented with isolating it. He did it again now and then realized he wasn't sure what to do with it. At a loss for any better ideas, he simply fed the mana into the blackberry on the ground. He was rewarded from his efforts with a slightly plumper looking fruit.

This was clearly going to take more than just giving it mana, he would need to direct its purpose. The first thing he wanted it to do was grow, which was probably a component of plant mana. He spent the next hour studying the dark green mana before he could start to see some of its pieces. Sure enough there was growth, absorption, spread, and photosynthesis. That last one was a surprise for him, it seemed too scientific to be magical.

Seeing both growth and spread was confusing, they seemed like the same concepts. However, after studying them some more, he noticed subtle differences. Growth was more about the increase in a singular plant, while spread was about creating new versions of the plant. Both would probably be useful for Alan's purposes.

Sending in growth mana should be more effective than the generic plant type, but it would also most likely not accomplish his goal. The changes needed to be directed. This is where he went back to the original wall spell. Yes, this was going to be a living wall and not one of stone, but it was still going to be a wall in structure. Another hour was spent identifying the most important parts of the spell form that gave the stone the appropriate shape, and then a third hour saw him finally converting the magical sigil into one appropriate for growth mana.

Every attempt had ended in failure so far, but nothing as bad as his first try with a water wall. The reduced strain on his aura meant that he hadn't needed to wait so long after each mistake before trying again. The last two castings had caused his sacrificial blackberries to begin to grow, but then they quickly withered. It was then he realized that he was going to need to incorporate absorption mana as well. The poor fruit was consuming its own energy to grow and was quickly running out and then dying. He needed to add in the ability to absorb a tremendous amount of resources very quickly. This would include mana, water, and nutrients.

As he had learned before, adding another type of mana to a spell was difficult work, but his sorcerer talent, mana lacing, made it much easier. In no time at all he had added in the necessary framework for the additional mana type. The modifications were made easier since he had practice with several magical circles that had a similar absorption effect. His next casting was much more effective.

The blackberry quickly expanded and grew, both sending roots into the ground and vines into the air. The plant actually did a decent job of holding itself up without collapsing under its own weight. It twined several vines together to get the necessary structure to support everything. There were many problems with this first attempt, but the biggest one was that it was a single plant, and it made a wall that was less than a meter wide and half that thick.

This is where he needed the concept of spread. One plant would never be able to expand that much, at least not with the power Alan currently possessed. He was going to need the wall to propagate more plants to cover the necessary distance, and to increase the density. Five hours into the whole ordeal, he finally had a spell form that incorporated all three types of mana. Now, when he cast it on his dwindling stock of berries, he could form a wall that was about ten meters long and about a meter thick.

Checking his mana pool he saw that the spell cost a little less than his stone wall, and it was using less mana to maintain as well. Testing out the wall, he found it was surprisingly durable. Testing it first by placing his hand against it, he found it to have a slight give, but then the surface firmed up, preventing him from pushing any farther. Several tests later he was running full speed into it. What he found was both good and bad.

The good news, it easily prevented him from passing through it. Just like when he had pushed on it, there was some initial give, but then he found himself unable to move any farther. It was kind of spongy, which he saw as a plus. The bad news was, it wasn't uniformly dense. The wall was about three meters in height, and he found that the higher up he went, the more give the plant had. He wasn't tall enough to properly apply pressure on the top, but a few vertical jumps showed him that the whole top half would bend if he pushed high enough up. It wasn't such a significant problem that he would count the wall as a failure, though, it should hold out against anything up to his size, but larger creatures would most likely be able to break through.

Another negative was that blackberry thorns were not that big of a deal. The barbs on the thicker vines were of a decent size, but they were only an issue on bare skin, and probably not a problem if you had a thicker hide. Alan's thin skin, bolstered by his constitution and strength, barely felt the things. Also, the ends of the plant, where the berries normally grew, didn't have thorns worth mentioning at all.

The only time the spikes had really bothered Alan was when he did his full sprint into the wall, and it had only left small scratches on his exposed flesh. Still not willing to give up on something he had already invested so much time and effort into, he tried his spell on a raspberry instead. It had required a little tweaking to adjust for the slightly different fruit, but he soon had a nice wall of raspberry plants.

The thorns on these would be much more concerning to an enemy. They were both sharper and more numerous, but they still weren't anything that was going to penetrate even basic leather clothing, let alone dedicated armor. Another problem was that the raspberry wall was just under two meters high and not quite as dense.

It took another two hours, and a lunch break during which he snacked on a large amount of his future berry wall stock, for Alan to finally come up with a solution. Tweaking his growth mana application, he managed to encourage the thorns on the blackberry bush to grow larger. It had the added benefit of increasing the thickness of the vines, but the new thorns were now much firmer and sharper. It still wasn't going to penetrate real armor, but it was at least poking him through his padded shirt, and his exposed flesh was truly cut up, and that was just from pressing against it.

He was expecting the Correlians to be back any time now, and he once again was thankful that he didn't have to hide anything anymore, He could keep working all the way until they arrived. It was another two hours before they finally showed up back at camp. Apparently they had stopped for lunch and some shopping before hitting the town dungeon, and even went back to get their reward after completing it.

Alan let his most recent casting go, and as the mana to upkeep it stopped flowing, the entire wall shriveled and then turned into a brown dust before even that dissipated. It was definitely not as durable as the stone wall once the supporting energy was removed. All traces of it would almost instantly disappear. He was very pleased with what he accomplished, though.

The plant making the wall no longer sprouted blackberries, which was a little sad for him, but the structure was much more impressive. Each of the central vines was as thick as his thumb and the thorns were three centimeters long and hard as oak. Not only that, but he had gotten them to react to their surroundings, at least a little. They couldn't sense anything near them, but if something brushed up against the vines, they would stretch out and try to grasp it.

He had found a small colony of tier one rabbits and after catching a couple he had turned them against his wall. The first one brushed up against it as it tried to run away from Alan and the thorns managed to briefly grasp it as several tendrils grew off the vines to try and entangle it. In its pain-fueled panic it was able to break away, and after losing contact with the rabbit, the wall gave up.

The second bunny he chose to toss into the wall. It hit about waist high and without contact with the ground, it was unable to immediately break away. Instead, two vines became four which became many, and it was held fast. An added benefit was that the absorption mana seemed to have caused the vines to become slightly vampiric. The section of the wall that caught the rabbit actually sucked the blood out of it, which caused the area around the desiccated bunny to grow even denser. This was a great addition, and not one he had anticipated. He proudly looked over his spell description.

Spell: Bramble Wall (Rare). Create a wall of brambles up to ten meters long, three meters high and a meter thick. The vines will attempt to ensnare anything that brushes up against them and can drain the target of blood if the thorns penetrate the skin. Durability and vampiric effect scales with intelligence. Mana cost: 90 mana

This could be a game changer against more nimble targets who tried to avoid closing with Alan, but he had to put those considerations aside, because something more important had come up. While the group was turning in the dungeon completion, Lyonel had gotten word from the mayor. Chrisly and his goons were back in town. It was time to start Operation Shame and Mortify.

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