by Kyle Johnson
It’s fine. Have fine scouting around. I know you’ll be happier out there.
I don’t know if I’d call being in a Corrupted city, surrounded by undead being ‘happy’, but it’s better than that place. Do what you need to do; I’ll keep an eye out here for you.
Aranos checked in with Hector and let him know that he was going to be doing some training in one of the side rooms, but that he’d be checking in frequently with the others. The big Warrior grunted in acknowledgment, engrossed in the tome before him, and Aranos grinned. Apparently, his party liked Lore as much as he did from how seriously they were all studying. Of course, that could also be because they’re getting Advanced Classes out of it.
The training room resembled a much smaller version of the Expert-ranked training room in the House of Stars. It had two unaspected mana crystals set in the walls to the left and right of the door, and Aranos could feel the wards in place protecting the room from incidental magical damage. There was a stone table and chair against the wall opposite the entrance, and Aranos placed his stack of materials there before sitting down to read.
The information about his Enhanced mana aspects was interesting, but he could tell that it was incomplete. It was focused on individual aspects and heavily downplayed the interactions between Enhanced aspect types. One work labeled mixing different mana types as ‘dangerous and foolish’, even though Aranos knew that certain types of Enhanced mana would coexist quite happily together. From what he could tell by reading in between the lines, most Wizards could master only one of those Enhanced mana types, so it was rare for someone to be able to mix two or more Enhanced aspects, and that led to a large amount of bias against anyone attempting it.
At first, Aranos had wondered why being able to use multiple Enhanced aspects was rare – and, apparently, somewhat frowned upon – until he had learned what the requirements were for these aspects. The NPCs of Ka advanced far more slowly in their Classes, Skills, and Stats than players did, so the single Skill point that took him an hour of training to gain might take an elf Wizard a week to achieve, and advancement became exponentially more difficult as you achieved higher ranks. Before becoming his Follower, Geltheriel had been resigned to wait for a year to level up twice.
Assuming that was a standard progression, the average NPC could probably break 50 in one or maybe two Stats in ten years or so. Of course, that was only if they were Strong Stats, and the person trained daily with at least Hard difficulty exercises. At the same time, it would probably take them a year to move out of the Novice stage of a Skill, and a decade for them to become an Adept at the Skill. That meant that a spellcaster would have to train daily for ten years just to unlock one Enhanced aspect; he could see why most didn’t bother with a second one but focused on mastering their first, instead. If continuing mastery was increasingly difficult, a Wizard might have to choose between unlocking a second Enhanced aspect or becoming reasonably skilled in their first.
There was plenty of information about mind and spatial mana by themselves, though, and Aranos learned a fair bit about how each could be used. Mind mana seemed both incredibly simply and vastly complicated at the same time; it was simple in its most basic usages, such as projecting or reading surface thoughts, but it could become incredibly complex. Apparently, a skilled practitioner could manipulate thoughts, memories, and emotions as easily as a musician playing an instrument. While they couldn’t directly control another’s mind or body – that was Domination magic and apparently needed a different type of mana – they could subtly guide another into doing whatever they wanted. It seemed like a perfect aspect for a classic, ‘power-behind-the-throne’ villain, in fact – or for a Wizard who wanted to be Ka’s version of a psychotherapist.
Spatial mana was far more complex, as far as Aranos could tell. By itself, it apparently produced nothing but bursts of harmless energy. However, it readily mixed with most Primary mana types, and those combinations produced the fundamental forces of the world. Aranos had already seen that spatial and life mana made kinetic force, while spatial and void mana created gravitational effects – in fact, he was certain that two of the notifications waiting for him to look through were about those two aspects. While the texts told him that mixing spatial mana and Primary mana was possible, it didn’t give him any specific ideas of how to mix things or what sort of affects might happen if you did.
Of course, as he thought about it, he supposed that made a certain amount of sense. After all, whatever Wizard or Sorcerer wrote these books probably spent a decade just unlocking spatial mana and then another decade mastering it and crafting Spells with it. They might feel a bit proprietary about their discoveries and not want to just give away what they’d worked so hard to unmask. The information here was enough for Aranos to move forward, and that was really all that mattered.
Before he moved on to his next task, Aranos delved into the treatises on life-based spirits. He’d assumed that, because of its rarity, Meridian’s life sprite was fairly powerful, but he supposed he probably should have known better. Shaman wasn’t exactly a Common Class, but it wasn’t particularly rare, either, and if Meridian had been able to call the life sprite at level one, it couldn’t have been that powerful.
Fortunately, there were several more potent incarnations that a life sprite could Evolve into, and probably would given enough time. If the sprite was like most familiars, it grew more powerful as Meridian did, so it was possible that her taking an Advanced Class would trigger an Evolution in it all by itself. However, if Aranos could make the thing Evolve before she took the Class, then maybe it would Evolve again once she leveled up. Some of the creatures that were higher up the evolutionary tree for the sprite were pretty powerful, and being bound to one of them would make Meridian more powerful, as well.
After checking with everyone outside – Hector had gotten a response from Martina, but the woman’s reply had been a simple ‘Got it’ and nothing more – Aranos returned to the training room and sank down into his mindscape. For what he wanted to do, the construct was perfectly sufficient, and it still made him feel more comfortable to be in it. He examined the flow of the pillar of mana roaring into the sky – the patterns of Primary mana buried within the column had been disrupted slightly by the transition, but it only took him a few moments to smooth everything back into a semblance of order. That order was vastly different than it had been, since he no longer needed to keep the hourglasses perfectly formed to keep his aspects separated, but the new pattern still had to be maintained or his spellcasting would suffer.
He sank down into his uber-comfortable chair and closed his eyes. He had a few Spells he wanted to work on, and while he didn’t think that he’d necessarily finish any of them right away, he wanted to get the groundwork laid down. Before he could do that, though, he had some experimenting to do with his mana. As far as he could tell, there were at least five more Enhanced mana types – the places where the rivers of power in his mana column merged and melded – plus, if spatial and soul mana were any indicator, they probably also interacted with life and void mana, at the very least.
He started with the mana which with he was most comfortable, soul mana. Judging from his pillar, soul mana would interact with spirit and spatial mana; he decided that spirit mana was probably going to be the simpler of the two, since he’d worked with it before. He knew how to meld spirit mana with any other aspect; it required building a lattice of that mana type and allowing spirit energy to flow through it, using the matrix of power to contain the chaotic spirit energy.
It wasn’t that easy, of course. He could create a lattice of soul mana simply enough, and when he allowed spirit energy to flow into it, the chaotic mana raced through, swirling and shifting, almost dancing among the nodes of stable soul mana. However, the two didn’t bind or meld as he’d hoped; at best, he figured he could create a more powerful version of faymetal this way. That’s certainly something to consider – later on, when I’m not busy doing this, that is.
He
tried changing the matrix of soul mana, adding more spirit mana, even allowing the spirit mana to race freely through the soul mana and escape. That was an epic failure, of course, but really, nothing he was doing was having an effect. I know soul mana will bind with other mana types, he thought frustratedly. I’ve used it to make restorative and necrotic mana, already. Granted, those were a lot more complicated than what I’m doing here, but…
Aranos stopped at that thought. It was true; the weave he used to make restorative mana was vastly more complex than the relatively simple pattern of soul mana he was trying to use, here. Maybe that was the problem; if he wanted a powerful melding of magics, he needed to put more than the most basic effort into it. So far, the game had rewarded him for moving beyond the obvious solutions and pushing the boundaries of what should have been possible; why would this be any different?
Aranos took a deep breath and abolished his existing soul construct. He started back at the beginning, considering what, exactly, he wanted to do. I’m looking to create a web of soul mana that will force spirit mana to bind to it, he reasoned silently. But spirit mana isn’t going to want to do that. It’s going to want to be chaotic, to break free from any confines I put on it. That means that if I want to it do something – I’m going to have to force it to do that. I can’t give it any option except to meld with the soul mana.
He began weaving a new, smaller lattice. The matrix of this soul construct was complex; at its heart, it was a three-dimensional spiral, almost like a spherical whirlpool. Every path led deeper into the construct, and no paths led back out of it. Aranos had to admit that he was cheating a bit; the pattern he was creating was really just a vector diagram of the relativistic equations for a black hole. His construct was the magical equivalent of an event horizon. Power could flow in, but the only way for it to escape would be to destroy the entire construct – which was a very real possibility, Aranos had to admit.
When the matrix was complete, Aranos cautiously trickled a tiny bit of spirit mana into it. The chaotic energy swirled into the depths of the construct almost instantly. Aranos waited for a few seconds, but the mana didn’t reappear or escape – and, best of all, nothing exploded. Well, we’re just getting started, Aranos thought ruefully.
He continued to trickle spirit energy into the construct, watching it carefully. The power swirled into the depths of the soul lattice, vanishing into the center. When Aranos felt he had enough mana in the construct – about the same amount of soul mana he’d used to build it – he cut off the flow. He hesitated a moment; this was either going to be awesome or really, really bad, depending on how careful and lucky he’d been. Mentally preparing himself for the explosion, Aranos twisted the central linkage of the structure, causing the soul mana to instantly collapse down the paths he’d made…directly into the ball of spirit mana at the center.
Aranos blinked as the soul mana raced down into the spirit mana, swirling, compressing, and spiraling down into a tiny point. He expected the rush of energy to rebound explosively, and he resigned himself to his apparent failure, but to his surprise, the stream of mana swirled down into that point – and kept going. It dug into the fabric of space, the spirit mana drilling out a channel, the soul mana guiding it as it did so.
The stream of mana dropped out of reality, and Aranos felt a tugging deep within as if the tiny ball of mana was trying to pull him along with it. For a moment, he was too stunned to react, and in that instant, he felt a part of him slide out of reality. He caught a quick mental glimpse of an endless, silver void that was at once totally empty and teeming with matter and energy; a place that was both incredibly vast and nearly infinitesimal in scope. His mind reeled before he grasped hold of his self and yanked back, severing his connection to his mana. What the heck was that? Was that some weird sort of dreamscape? It didn’t feel like it – but it did feel like my mind was trying to leave my body. I don’t know if I want to play with that!
He put the thought of his new mana aside; a notification had popped up in his vision, so he was fairly certain that he’d figure out what had just happened soon enough. Instead, he rebuilt his soul mana construct, creating a pattern that wound and twisted into its own depths. This time, though, he sent a trickle of spatial mana into it, instead of spirit. The spatial energy wasn’t quite as chaotic as spirit was, but it was unpredictable and tended to suddenly shift or jump in odd ways. The heavy, dark gray mist of spatial magic wound more slowly down into the heart of the soul mana, compressing into a tight core at the very center.
Suddenly, the construct began to shift; with a start, Aranos realized that somehow, the spatial mana at the core had initiated the collapse of the structure itself. The soul mana swirled down in a complex, spherical funnel, seeming to be almost sucked into the spatial core, sending that compressed mass spinning in a much tighter spiral. The ball of mana thinned and widened into a disc, propelled ever faster by the inrushing soul mana. Aranos glanced at the disc; through it, he could see the other side of his mindscape with perfect clarity, but none of the space in between. A moment later, the energy fizzled out, and the disc collapsed, leaving Aranos staring at one of the trees nearest him.
His eyes widened as he realized what he’d discovered. This was teleportation mana, the way that the House of Stars and Library of Antas both let people enter and move through their halls. The construct he’d created had been elaborate, and he had to repeat it several more times before he felt comfortable trying to replicate it on a larger scale. When he did, though, a window opened in front of him for just a moment, one that led elsewhere. Aranos wasn’t sure exactly where it led, but from the sight of the jangshie that appeared in his vision, it was somewhere in the city. Also, judging by how the undead spun to face him in the brief instant before the window collapsed in on itself, the creature could see him as well as he could see it, despite his being in his mindscape. That’s kind of creepy.
He ran a hand through his ruby-colored hair as the vision collapsed, cutting off his sight of the jangshie. He still had lots to do, and he couldn’t spend all his time playing with his Enhanced mana, but if he was going to have a chance to pull off what he hoped to, he would need every possible tool. At the same time, those last two attempts had been a bit dangerous; he didn’t know what would have happened if he’d allowed himself to be pulled along with the first construct, and he shuddered to imagine if he’d opened a portal next to Zoridos. Is it really a great idea to play with Enhanced mana like this? Sure, this was how he’d discovered the various composite forms of Primary mana, but Enhanced mana was much more powerful. It also appeared that it was much more dangerous.
He shook his head; he’d figure out the other three ways that Enhanced mana could meld with itself, then he’d move on. If each Enhanced type also had a link to both life and void mana, he had at least six more types to unlock on top of that, and he simply didn’t have that kind of time. As far as the danger, maybe he needed to proceed a bit differently. Each type of Enhanced mana represents some vital part of my existence, he reasoned. It makes sense that a combination of them would kind of be the place where those parts of existence meet.
He wasn’t sure what the blending of soul and spirit mana had created, but it felt like it was taking him into another world, which he supposed stood to reason. Spirit mana was his link to other worlds, and soul mana was his immortal, fundamental existence. Mixing them could have created a way for his soul to travel to other worlds. In a similar vein, spatial mana dealt with the basic forces of the world; he assumed that included space and possibly time. Apparently, combining soul mana with that fundamental force twisted space and allowed him to create something like a wormhole, a passage that linked two places in space without crossing the distance between them.
If he was going to keep experimenting, maybe he needed to think more carefully about what, exactly, he might be creating, so he could take precautions. At the very least, maybe then he wouldn’t be caught off-guard when the magic tried to suck his soul out of his bod
y.
Decided, he figured he might as well follow the order visible on his mana pillar, which meant moving on to spatial and mind mana. Before he began weaving mana, though, he paused, considering what he might be creating. Mind mana was one of the easiest aspects to understand; it represented his thoughts, his intellect, and really his perception of the world. It wasn’t the essence of him – that was soul mana – but it was how he perceived himself and the rest of reality. Since spatial mana was the basic forces of nature, blending the two should be combining his thoughts and the essence of reality. So, what might that make?
Mind and force together – that could be telekinesis, Aranos mused. Or maybe psychokinesis; I don’t really know what the difference between the two is. Either way, it could be moving stuff with your mind.
Shrugging, Aranos decided it was worth testing. He conjured a small rock into his mindscape and imagined building a lattice of mind mana that extended out from him and enclosed the rock. Once the lattice was completely sealed, he trickled spatial mana into it, allowing it to flow through the lattice and fill it completely. His first attempt was a failure; as with the melding of soul and spirit mana, the matrix he’d constructed simply wasn’t complex enough to force the spatial mana to merge with it. He had to craft the lattice more tightly, creating extremely thin passages for the spatial mana to flow along before the whole construct seemed to collapse on itself.
Instantly, he could feel the presence of the rock in his mind, just as if he’d been holding it in his hand. He concentrated on the rock, imagining it lifting into the air. He felt the tiniest pressure on his mind, and the rock began to rise smoothly off the ground. Aranos could move it freely, shifting it from side to side, spinning it around, even tossing it into the air and catching it again – although it took him a couple tries to get the hang of releasing it when he threw it. It was as if a third arm extended from his mind and gripped the rock in an invisible hand. He released the mana construct with a grin; that could be useful, depending on how much force he could apply with his mind and what kind of distance he could reach.
