“The first thing you have to do if you want to rise from the ashes of mediocrity and become proficient with dimensional magic is to forget everything you know about distance. Distance doesn’t matter. Why would anyone bother with dimensional magic in the first place if it did? So forget all about distance and think only about connection.”

  I was trying, but Grand Mage Wrickle’s book was fighting against years of my learning. I even thought that introduction might conflict with some of the things she’d said in Portal Theory. Or maybe that was just my poor understanding. This book was a very different style, regardless.

  I might have done better with direct instruction, but I supposed that would be a bit much to ask. It might draw too much attention for me to be spending time around the Mage’s Tower anyway, or for her to spend time away.

  It was already appreciated that she was helping. The others had directed me towards Mided, which might be useful, but they weren’t actually enabling me to do something.

  I’d probably have to read more than a few pages of Dimensional Magic: From Storage to Spatial Rift to know how much it would actually help, though.

  “Curious students must ask ‘where is Storage’. Why, it’s quite simple. Right next to you, isn’t it?”

  Obviously. It was accessible everywhere.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  I nearly threw the book across the room. Nearly, because I stopped myself. Even if we had created scans of it already, I really didn’t want the original to be destroyed. There might be something special in it that the scanners couldn’t pick up, and it would be rude regardless.

  “Are you actively moving a spatial phenomenon with you with every step you take? Without any active magic? Certainly not. How, then, does Storage work? Simply, it makes use of the space most connected to you… outside of ‘normal’ space, of course. This is how such relatively powerful magic exists as a low tier spell. There are some truly astounding implications of this that I will leave to the imagination, except to say that it was great luck that I was born as a goblin.”

  I frowned. It couldn’t be the green skin, right? Nothing I had read indicated anything like that would matter. Were goblins more… connected? Unfortunately, the answer wasn’t there. But unlike the normal failures to share information, I didn’t mind too much. It gave me something to think about, and it might be better to figure it out on my own.

  “As any mage should, I must instruct you wisely to never forget the basics. They are the foundation of any greater proficiency in magic. Especially those dealing in dimensional magic should find themselves particularly concerned in this area.”

  Was it Storage, specifically? I supposed there were also implications of unlocking full potential from extradimensional travel. I wondered if I had read other tomes in the past that had similar implications that I didn’t understand at the time. I didn’t recall any, but retroactively applying importance to things didn’t miraculously help me recall anything. Enhance Mind might help with recall, though I could mess around with that later.

  It might not even have that meaning. But I couldn’t help but hope someone wanted people to learn things. Why not a goblin mage that people were clearly underestimating? Unless she was part of the conspiracy and all that. Either way, she did fun things with Storage and teleporting about right in front of me, so I could let that slide.

  “How do you think she did the tea thing?” I asked Midnight, who was reading nearby. He was using a digital copy projected in front of his eyes, which was probably much more comfortable than trying to turn pages meant for human hands.

  “Like this,” Midnight gestured grandly with his paw, creating an unstable pile of tuna cans and water bottles.

  “Some of those are upside down,” I commented. Others were rolling off the table. It was pretty close, though. He’d still had to drop things out from around his paw, though. “Have you been thinking about that one?”

  Midnight took a moment to respond. “I wondered if she created a stasis for the tea pot or brought one that was overly hot to begin with. I don’t know how that would work, though.”

  “Same,” I admitted. “Things usually end up sort of a neutral temperature when coming out of Storage. Do you think they interact with each other? Where else could the heat go?”

  “Sounds like we have a long day of filling our storage with Ice Cubes and heat packs.”

  “Well, we’d need something at a neutral temperature. Otherwise when things end up in the middle it won’t be a surprise.” I pondered. “Do you… arrange things inside storage?”

  “They’re just there,” Midnight said. “I don’t think of specific cans of tuna or anything.”

  “You think that’s dimensional magic mastery, or something else?”

  “No idea,” Midnight admitted.

  We did begin a test. Technically, we were working. This was part of ‘training’.

  I got a text from Calculator telling me not to learn Spatial Rift. I told him he wasn’t my mom and that I didn’t have the points. But I also asked why.

  Apparently, he didn’t like the things Wrickle had said about it. I wondered if he skipped to the end of the book, but apparently he just read it all. And here I was, reading at the speed of a sane person. Maybe a little lazily. I did wonder if he’d had to focus his full attention to read it in less than an hour. It was decently lengthy. Then again, his power was all about mental processing so it wasn’t that crazy.

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  “Material or creature conjuration spells are often associated with dimensional magic. The vast majority of the time, these associations are wrong.”

  I had precisely one thing in that category- Grease. And considering that it was a temporary magical phenomenon, I certainly wouldn’t associate it with dimensional magic. But some things theoretically came from the planes of fire or water, for example. Was that not the case?

  Fortunately, it was confirmed to not be too far from my understanding. If it created anything that lingered beyond the duration of the spell, it was probably actual dimensional magic drawing on the elemental planes. I hadn’t used those because… I didn’t need Extra wondering where all the walls of stone were coming from. Also because I wasn’t sure they would work on Earth. Maybe that was something I should test. I needed some lower level dimensional magic anyway… though Wall of Stone wasn’t the correct option there.

  The book went on to explain that most creature conjuration spells created little more than a representation of a creature. At least, if it was something native to the material plane. Any sort of animal or the like. Even elementals and other outsiders like fiends or celestials would rarely be a real creature. The exception was when there was a contract of some sort in place.

  “With certain methods, a spellcaster can call upon real creatures without prior contact, but they are usually of lesser power as their natural resistance must be overcome. Furthermore, they are quite resistant to remaining under the caster’s control and thus it is not advised.”

  She didn’t even say what methods those were. Was it related to a focus, or some sort of alteration of the spell? Normally spells were ‘supposed’ to work ‘one way’, but I’d seen clearly that was not the case.

  “A young dimensional mage might find themself fortunate to come into contact with an appropriate individual. Or a particularly indulgent master may provide such contact. Either way, such experience can prove valuable for eventual mastery.”

  Could I provide my own contact? I’d never been to the elemental planes, but it shouldn’t be harder to get to than any of the others. Then again, the angels had been sealing off their own plane. Maybe others were doing the same. It might even have worked, since I hadn’t seen anything I would have considered as being from my old world come through in Doomsday’s last rampage.

  One area in which various ‘rules’ agreed with my reality was that creature conjuration spells came at a wide range of powers- just as the creatures themselves. For my circumstances, they came as separate spells. Or at least, that was how the system arranged things. Even if they were truly different, once I knew one I should be able to intuit how to use the others, in theory.

  And if they contributed to my mastery, I could probably fuse everything into one ability. Maybe. Where was my copy of “Spell Mastery: Now You Have Access to Natural Upgrades and Combined Spells” when I needed it?

  Oh, nowhere. Because I hadn’t written it yet. And it was probably illegal or whatever, so nobody else had either. Well, I guess I could compile some of my notes into part of that book.

  “Do you think we should try to conjure some elementals or something?” I asked Midnight. He should have read at least as much as me. “For dimensional magic mastery purposes. We could meet something with a Gate spell and then summon it a bunch. If it was something weak, it should be cheap to learn and cast.”

  “That’s… not a route I would have gone down. But we have been troubled with any sort of dimensional magic mastery. We might need simpler spells like that. Assuming it’s actually simple.”

  “It’s 11 points to find out,” I said. “Summon Minor Elemental is tier 6.” I frowned. “Hey, do you think a summoned creature counts as fighting for Aspect of the Barbarian?”

  “I couldn’t possibly have more knowledge than you,” Midnight pointed out.

  “Nor much less. Since everything I know I learned.” I thought for a few moments. “I’d be entirely responsible for the reason something was fighting. But magically, I would have only brought it to an area. I don’t know if I get experience from someone else fighting after I teleport them somewhere. Just that I get a little bit when people are augmented by magic.”

  Not nearly as much as fighting myself, and it somewhat depended on the particular augmentations. But something. When people broke Force Armor cast on others, for example, it was still at least slightly valuable to me. Though it was kind of pointless to bother with unless I had a handful of people who were constantly facing new foes, and I could realistically also just find someone new to battle myself for less hassle.

  “The best way is to try it,” Midnight said. “If you want to.”

  “It serves two goals. Mastery would be one of them. I think it’s worth the attempt, and some of our allied casters might be interested as well.”

  -----

  Not being one for hesitation, the following day I was at Extra’s teleportation hall. It would have been the same day, but I did want to read more of Dimensional Magic in case it mentioned other good routes to early mastery. But it seemed to be going from early to advanced options, and by the time it was providing tricks about Dimension Door that I would doubtless try later, I figured we were beyond Basic mastery.

  Midnight and I gathered mana as I prepared to open a Gate to the plane of air- with the understanding that would be the least disastrous plane if anything went wrong. We wouldn’t end up underground or on fire, nor would we flood the building. Worst case, some things toppled over.

  Or in this case, nothing happened.

  I’d probably been lucky with most of my dimensional magic. To be fair, my early attempts at Gate had involved reopening a portal that had existed not long before. Other times I was returning to the world I was born in, or the one I’d live in for a long time. Or using people with me as connections to wherever I was going, at least until I got familiar.

  In short, I’d generally sought out the ‘connection’ requirements that made dimensional magic more viable, before I’d become strong enough to make up for some amount of lacking details in that area.

  And now I was trying to go to a plane I’d only read about. That might have been fine, since I wasn’t trying to get to a specific part of this plane of air, but… I could tell there was a barrier. Sealed, like the heavens. And to some extent, the material plane. Maybe this was why people hadn’t been allowed to unlock their full abilities. Except I wasn’t the reason the heavens cut off access. They had seemed quite fine with Sir Kalman and I bringing his subordinates there. It was probably Doctor Doomsday. Maybe his associates. Or it could even be some other reasons I wasn’t privy to, but blaming him for everything was standard.

  “Yeah, this isn’t going to work,” I said to Midnight. Even if we could force a Gate to open, which I wasn’t certain of, that might be a problem. “You think they have a list of alternate realities that might have some elementals?”

  Midnight just looked at me like I said something crazy. Even though my world was far from the first Type-F world connected to Earth #1.