EdgeCases

Just Add Mana 21 — Ghosts in the Dark, Pt 4

Cale generally prided himself on his ability to keep his temper.

This was why, on the few occasions he did allow himself to lose his temper, he didn't keep to his own name. Cale Cadwell Cobbs was a man who was largely playful and rarely took things seriously; even on the rare occasion he discarded the more humor-driven aspects of his persona, he was still fundamentally Cale.

But there were times he couldn't allow himself to be Cale, and this was one of them. It hadn't tak...

Just Add Mana 20 — Ghosts in the Dark, Pt 3

Sneaks-In-Darkness had finally managed to make it through the stupid door.

She didn't know how long she'd spent working at the damn thing. It had taken her almost fifteen minutes just to find it, hidden in the stone as it was, and another five minutes just to pry it open. Spending this long doing anything was just embarrassing. She was a part of the Red Hunters! Being stumped by a door was... it was...

Bah. It didn't matter. She was through the door now, though she could swear tha...

Just Add Mana 19 — Ghosts in the Dark, Pt 2

Author's Note: There was a bonus chapter yesterday, so make sure to read it if you haven't already!

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Manifested necromancy spells, Cale felt, were the best kinds of spells to fight.

He sort of relished the opportunity, really. Most spells manifested in ways that couldn't be fought in any direct fashion—you either had to run away from them or figure out thei...

Just Add Mana 18 — Ghosts in the Dark, Pt 1

Author's Notes: Bonus chapter to keep things aligned with RR, since I'm doing a bonus chapter there to celebrate hitting RS!

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The truth of the matter was that Cale hadn't expected this to happen with the voidcyte.

It shouldn't have been able to happen, really. Most cases of voidcyte indigestion didn't lead to a full-blown auric collapse like this; even when they consumed forms of mana that didn't quite agree with them, it took quite a lot to push ...

Just Add Mana 17 — The Best Laid Plans

Cale Cadwell Cobbs had been looking forward to a relatively normal first week of magical education.

Of course, his idea of normal tended to be a little skewed. Before the whole thing with the bloodrot, everything he'd seen so far in the academy was well within his range of normal. In fact, he had room for about another five degrees of absurdity before he began to enter "things are a little weird, maybe" territory.

Bloodrot changed things, albeit not as much as it might ha...

Just Add Mana 16 — Alina the Lunchlady, Archdemon of Shelves

It wasn't all that often that Cale encountered things that interested him, even when he found himself in a new world. Utelia, on the other hand? He could comfortably rank it among the top three of the most interesting realms he'd been to, based solely on how often it managed to surprise him.

In this case, the surprise came in the form of a towering, eight foot tall archdemon wielding a ladle threateningly. She was flaming hot, both literally and figuratively; not only was there fire lic...

Just Add Mana 15 — Introduction to the Standard Array, Pt 5

Nala Whiteleaf walked away from that duel with a black eye and a conflicting mess of emotions, chief amongst them being a begrudging respect for a human named Cale Cadwell Cobbs.

And, to her surprise, for the golem named Syphus.

She hadn't expected it. She'd been expecting Cale to call on the golem's assistance, but her initial assumption was that Cale would lose; she hadn't expected every single one of her Brightgrove-modified Standard Array spells to just bounce off his...

Just Add Mana 14 — Introduction to the Standard Array, Pt 4

Perhaps the most convenient thing about this whole duel thing was that it was done under the supervision of an expert mage and arbitrated by the Gift itself; had the situation been different, Cale might have been far more reticent about experimenting with magic, even if it was a spell that was largely defensive. Who knew what [Lesser Reflection] would turn into?

If this was what he thought it was, though, then an evolved [Lesser Reflection] wou...

Just Add Mana 13 — Introduction to the Standard Array, Pt 3

Nala Whiteleaf had no idea how Cale had beaten her, but he wasn't going to do it again.

He'd cheated. Somehow. She didn't know how, but he had to have! The Mage Killer had helped him, or... or something. There was no way a mere human could have beaten a Brightgrove royal otherwise—the Gift favored them. It let them learn spells faster than anyone else, gave them passives no one else could acquire. There was no way she could lose to someone from the Astral Wing.

Just Add Mana 12 — Introduction to the Standard Array, Pt 2

Cale would be hard-pressed to explain the sequence of events that followed. This was in large part due to the fact that Professor Graystalk didn't seem quite inclined to detach from him just yet, which meant he had to deal with the chaos that followed while an enormous elf clung to him like he was some sort of miracle.

The golem had been standing in the doorway for a while, apparently, and it seemed... confused? Cale was surprised he could read its expressions at all, but whoever create...

Just Add Mana 11 — Introduction to the Standard Array, Pt 1

Even with the help of his schedule scroll, Cale was almost late for his second class. Almost. He managed to find it eventually, tucked away in a rather nondescript corner of a different building entirely—according to the scroll, this part of the academy was known as the Forest Wing.

It didn't look very much like a forest. In fact, it was pretty much the same as the Astral Wing, architecturally speaking. The main difference was the frankly disturbing number of paintin...

Just Add Mana Audio 1 (??)

One of my friends asked me to record a chapter for them because they prefer audiobooking. I have no idea if this is a thing people want. But uh, since I did it anyway, I figured I would post it. In... case other people want to hear it?

Disclaimer 1: This is not particularly heavily edited since I pretty much just did it for fun, and also none of my pronunciations are canon. (I panicked and changed Akkau's name pronunciation because "I am named Akkau" sounds like "I am named a cow" when ...

Just Add Mana 10 — Ancient Artifacts, Pt 5

Just outside the exit to the chamber was a marble pedestal, with what looked like some sort of bronze grail sitting on top of it. Cale gave it a cursory inspection. Just because dungeons typically rewarded artifacts after challenge rooms didn't mean those rewards were never trapped.

This one, as far as he could tell, was only minimally magical and unlikely to be cursed. It probably had some sort of minor water-purifying effect or the like—artifacts with base utility like that weren't ...

Just Add Mana 9 — Ancient Artifacts, Pt 4

Author's Note: Link to the first chapter if you need it!

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Cale hadn't quite managed to calm down by the time they encountered the first shadeling.

About twenty paces into the corridor past the door, the shadows in the corridors began to lengthen unnaturally. Without Cale's light source, it probably wouldn't have been noticeable—the natural lighting in the l...

Just Add Mana 8 — Ancient Artifacts, Pt 3

"Do we have to go through this door?" Damien asked quietly, raising a hand. "Maybe we missed a pathway or something."

"We didn't," Leo said, to Cale's surprise. "This is a unicursal labyrinth. It doesn't have any branching paths."

Cale blinked. "Is that a thing? I thought all labyrinths were just mazes," he said. "Wait, how do you know that?"

Leo hesitated, then mumbled something under his breath. Cale blinked, unsure if he'd heard that correctly. "Did you just say you have ...

Just Add Mana 7 — Ancient Artifacts, Pt 2

If nothing else, Cale had never actually explored an Ancient Karmian labyrinth before, especially not anything that emerged from the Labyrinth Plague. This was something new for him, and new meant interesting.

On the other hand, he was saddled with three other panicking students.

Well, two panicking students. Leo just seemed depressed.

"I wonder what kind of labyrinth this is," Cale said, walking over to one of the walls and running his hand along the stone. It ...