The Dao of Magic: Book IV

by Andries Louws

  Once again, nearly out of my control, my braincore changes into my castle. Instead of materialising the object like previously, I feel my flesh strengthen, my skin hardened, and my bones gaining structural strength. The waves of fire, ice, wind, water, and more washing over me fail to do any severe damage as the ice melts from under me. I keep my eyes open, blinking at the wild storm of mana, qi, and natural forces that buffer the fortress that is my body. I don’t even feel like I should close my eyes, not even when chunks of ice shatter against my lashes and fire licks my eyeballs.

  This is insane. I’m sure I could have withstood this with some clever manoeuvring back when I still had my heartcore, sure. But I know for a fact that I could not have just stood there, unmoving in the face of a couple of hundred dragons blasting me with their elemental breaths. I have not moved a single micrometre, unmoving like a fortress.

  I’m literally unmoving like a fortress…

  My entire braincore is filled with my brutish castle. I try searching for another item, wondering what else I can do with my brand new and improved cultivation system. I’m still looking around Trees’ little dimension when I notice a break in the assaults hammering my body. As I look at the devastation caused by the continuous dragon attack runs, I find a simple coil spring lying in a random heap of parts, somewhere in the mass production part of my core.

  The rigid solidity of stone fades from my body as the spiral of tempered steel takes front and centre in my head. Then things go very fast. The first wave of dragons has turned around and is about to attack me again when my braincore snaps into its new shape. I think of meeting the rushing front of scaled beings, and the next thing I know, I’m soaring through the air. Like a spring under tension that just snapped, my speed goes from zero to Mach one in an instant.

  The next thing I see is a rather sizable dull blue dragon head. I kick it in reflex, and feel my leg snapping against the large visage, flinging the entire dragon downwards with a foot-shaped dent between its eyes. I’m tempted to start spooling qi through my brainpan, but the promise I made with Rhea still holds. As long as I don’t break that promise, nothing truly bad can happen to her, right?

  Shaking away useless thoughts, I think of another aspect that would be great to have right now. I’m soaring up into the sky, my foot stinging from the slapping kick I just landed on that water dragon’s face. To my relief, the lethality analysis and prevention process – which is still running after all this time – informs me that that particular winged lizard will have a mighty headache at worst. My upwards momentum reverses at the same time as I notice the change in tactics. Instead of strafing me with a continuous barrage of fire, the controller of this draconic horde commands them to just float there, aiming their open maws upwards.

  Leaving the single spring behind, I continue scouring Tree for interesting items. I come across all kinds of exciting things, from decaying plants to half-finished construction prefabs and stacks of metal plates. I skim across the mass production lines and the wilderness outside the decaying walls surrounding Tree, only halting my focus as I come across my experimental rooms. Far below my castle and its production halls is a well-protected vault. This armoured room hangs below Tree, dangling from the disc of earth and water with but a few thin roots. All the items I deemed not useful, too experimental, too dangerous to leave lying about, or too volatile are gathered in that single super strong lockbox.

  One of the items that ended up in that place is the uselessly strong anvil I forged my sword on. Most of the large masses of experimental mana crystals are there, as are most of the other potentially explosive and experimental items that I came across when cleaning up the labs scattered across Database’s white surface. My arms spread wide, I fall towards the icy flats below, my skin gaining a dull black sheen as I feel my mass increase and my flesh turn rigid. Their open maws start spewing rough elemental attacks the moment I come into range, but not a single stream of mana and qi manages even to scratch my darkened skin.

  Seconds before impact, I realize that a dragon that’s barely a cultivator probably won’t survive a solid block of metal the size of a human falling into – and probably through – its mouth. I copy one of Lola’s tricks and kick the air. I swing my arms around, barely grazing the dragon I’d likely have fallen straight through with a finger. The force I transferred to the dragon I kicked allows me to get a proper feel for the force needed to knock a Flight member out, so I apply that power and a little bit more.

  I kick the air again, sending myself on an arcing trajectory that will bring me close to the most dragon foreheads I can reach. Each floating lizard receives a gentle tap containing the force of a freight train, the sheer mass and rigidity I feel residing inside my flesh, joints, and body making it both easy and a chore.

  Then the big brown one is blocking my way. The biggest one I’ve seen so far has just arrived, and his open maw will both swallow me and tear up a few of its smaller brethren if it continues its current trajectory. I drop the anvil from my mind, and immediately feel my body lighten. Shamelessly stealing this idea from Angeta, I let a single blade of grass take residence inside my braincore. I swerve around the massive gaping maw coming my way with willowy ease, gently and smoothly wrapping my bending limbs around the gigantic teeth of the largest dragon I have seen so far.

  I think I remember Rhea talking about that one. She referred to him as a recently awakened ancestor, if I recall.

  That gives me an idea. I sway and swoon my way to his head, clambering across his ridged neck like a leaf in the wind. Once there, I imagine myself as Rhea. I don’t have her inside Tree, but I’ve got a pretty vivid picture of her in my imagination. My body shimmers a bit, and I watch with curiosity as my skin smoothens out as my nails elongate. Then I reject the physical part of the wondrous woman and focus on her current state. I then command the massive earth dragon below me to flap its fucking wings.

  The thin white tendril of meaning protruding from the back of its head snaps and a web of branches surrounding everything becomes visible for a split second. Each dragon has a white line attached to their skull, I note. My core, now a shining beacon of the rigid and forceful greater good that I sensed Rhea enacting when I left her a month ago, has substituted the connection to the big boy’s brain with one of its own. I command it once again as I try to keep my chest from physically changing, ordering it to turn around while avoiding the densely packed dragons all around.

  My death prevention process has been going apeshit since the moment I saw the ancestor appear, and I use the thick qi in the air in combination with the air affinity I got from Rhea to prevent the worst. I’m forced to shove a couple of dragons out of our flight path, using up a bit of my Will as I forcefully clear the path my ride is barrelling. It takes a rather large effort, but the worst injuries suffered by the draconic masses are a few snapped wings and broken ribs.

  Then I’m soaring through the air, standing atop the biggest dragon here, mind controlling it through means I have not even looked into yet. The fact that I’m having a super creepy copy of Rhea inside my head isn’t great for my mental health, so I fight the wind as I clamber forwards. The scales I’m gripping nearly pop free from its leathery hide, and only a reduction of air friction prevents me from pulling the rigid brown plates free.

  The moment I stand atop the big fellow’s forehead, I drop the illusion of Rhea from my core and bring down my fist, enhanced by a braincore induced materialisation of the biggest block of steel I can find. I can’t help but grin fiercely as I drop the solid mass of hard steel on top of its head. The massive cube turns to fading particles the moment I let go. I just discovered I can imitate the properties of an item in my physical form while holding a copy of said form. I make sure that the big guy isn’t dead once again. I feel slightly guilty as the large brown sapient crashes onto the ice, barely conscious after my brain shaking attack.

  Looking around at the large piles of useless stuff inside my core, I find a pile of discarded weapons. A good p
ortion of these came from dungeons, while others are the work of students. I find a thin rapier that is still in perfect condition and grab hold. For my body, I imagine the swiftness and fleetness of that weapon. Then I imagine myself cutting through the wind, slicing it apart while letting both halves join again behind me without so much as a single disturbance.

  Seconds later, I’ve left the big dragon to recover from a severe concussion, and I’m speeding towards Rhea. The ice and snow below me start to gain black spots here and there, a sure sign that I’m rapidly approaching the central area where all the junk keeps landing. I’m briefly baffled by the scope and scale of the super dense item pollution that is apparent. The amount of dumped mass must rival the planet at this point, right? The briefest of calculations tells me that that is most likely nonsense, but I can’t help but feel like I’m underestimating the entire problem somewhat.

  The patterns and structures all seemed extremely alien to me, except for a rare few. Here and there, I could almost recognize some of the more esoteric and ancient runes and formation elements that I’ve come across. Certain parts looked like they could entice laws, other areas seemed tailor-made for gathering and containing different complex energies. I both fear and anticipate that the ice caps flying by below me are equally covered in mysterious items that I can study.

  First, I need to get past this particular wall of dragons. It seems that I gave Rhea too much time. I wanted to get a feel for the strength of the dragons back there, thus my rather relaxed way of handling the ring of attackers. It seems that I messed up by spending too much time there, though.

  From the ice plate below to the edge of the atmosphere high above, the way forward is blocked. Dragons of similar size to the ancestor are all slowly moving, their massive bodies ponderously getting into position. It seems like she woke some more of her forefathers – such a diligent girl. I’ll punish her later.

  Because first? First, I’ve got dragon ass to kick.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Bonds 1

  Life is infinitely complex. A lot can be said about how infinity is merely a lack of understanding. But, Re-Haan contemplates, the people that tend to say those types of things are always rather far removed from the drudgeries of everyday life. Braincores can hanker on about theoretical limits and paradoxical super-states, but Re-Haan hasn’t been able to muster up the effort to show interest in things that far removed from reality. And she suspects that she may never do so, now.

  Yet, despite not understanding or comprehending the concept of infinity on any level except the most superficial, she does miss it something fierce. Life used to be this mystery. The past was behind her, known and fading fast. The present is the dividing line between the unknown and the all too familiar regrets of before. And the future that used to be filled with possibilities and potential is now but a simple model to Re-Haan.

  Dragons do not die. It is simply unheard of. Never in all her long and largely asleep life has Re-Haan heard even a whisper of a death in the Flight. Dragons just don’t die. It’s as easy as that. Or it was as easy as that; she barely manages to think. No matter how much she now regrets her overreaction, she is currently utterly incapable of escaping from the predicament she has found herself in.

  Seeing one of the few people she loved all her life dead on the rubble-strewn ice forced her mind into all kinds of unpleasant places. She has gone over the sequence of events a million times by now, replaying every single second of those horrible minutes preceding the hell she has found herself in.

  She stopped beating herself up for making less than optimal decisions a while ago. Looking back at the past, she can see in perfect clarity. Every single better choice she could have made, even with the limited thinking power she has available at the moment.

  She methodically goes through the sequence of events once more, her mind desperately searching for something new to occupy itself with. She recalls tearing through time and space, and once again recalls how difficult it felt. Instead of the seamless popping feeling and sound that usually occurs when travelling through Tree’s weird portal, this time she felt like pushing through thick water.

  The smells, emotions, and sights she saw upon appearing above the icy battlefield are rather muted as she recalls events. All the tiny errors in judgement she made pass the review once more. She could have saved that dragon by shooting a projectile over there, could have shot that ice projectile from the sky by aiming over there, and more. Each preventable death is another stab in her heart, another horrible prelude for the terrible events she knows will bubble up in her memories once more.

  Then the weave ripples. The prison she has found herself stuck in, a horrible construct of meaning, power, and self-sustaining qi formations, wavers with new information and messages.

  The small fragment of her crawling mind still under her own control blurrily wakes from the stupor she has found herself stuck in for subjective years. Realisations shoot through her mind, and she does not want any of them. As she was reliving the past, she had been working on figuring out what happened, and why the bloodbath she had witnessed had come to pass.

  Stray thoughts and comments she had been picking up here and there led her to believe that the relatively large access to Database that Drew and herself had given to the Flight was part of the equation. Re-Haan is sure someone stumbled across the data concerning the south pole and the high amount of qi and enemies that had been present. Their naturally arrogant dispositions then must have led them to form a piss-poor plan. Just rush in, and all will be alright since they are the Flight and thus they will naturally win.

  Her uncle, probably one of the few voices of reason in the chaos, either got silenced, got someone angry, or just got unlucky. The rings given out by Teach do indeed have ownership circuits embedded in them, but the cheaper ones are up for grabs upon their owners’ death. The fact that the All-Dragon stuffed her uncle in his newly gained ring is a sign that the pompous asshat wasn’t totally stupid. The fact that he probably got caught off-guard while tossing out all the books her uncle had stored, thus leading to his demise, counteracts that conclusion a fair bit.

  They are both dead and frozen now, though, very little she can do about that. She knows that resurrection is a thing but hasn’t allowed herself to spend any of her limited thinking capacity on that subject. Instead, she has been rooting out the moon’s influence. Drew calls the enigmatic antagonist up in the sky Nexus, and Re-Haan has to admit that it’s a pretty fitting name. It’s a spider in a web ensnaring a solar system, after all.

  She has started getting a feel for what it has been up to but has long since learned to not allow herself to think those thoughts out in the open like this. She managed to put the rotating woven formation into place above her, just to the side, but adjusting it all the time takes too much effort. So now, she only thinks true thoughts in the small timeframe that the moon is hidden by the spinning gauze circle. All the other times, she flees to the past in order to avoid her current predicament.

  Skipping right past the nasty thoughts she started having when she discovered her uncle dead, she recalls the visage of Drew as he came to her. The horrible system she had started was already picking up too much momentum by that time to stop. He did try though. She watched his skin rip apart time and time again. The sheer power running through her mind at that point was dense enough to control hundreds of massively powerful dragons, but he tried again and again. The sheer pressure of meaning and existence that was forming the tree-shaped cycle around her nearly killed him a few times, but all he did was look at her with a pained expression on his face before retreating. She barely managed to hear his last words.

  “I’m not following you in this one, love.”

  There had been no accusation, fear, anger, or any other negative emotion on his face. Just sheer and desperate loneliness. It tears her heart apart each time she recalls these memories. She knows that ordinary mortals rewrite memories each time they think of them, inevitably mutating and ch
anging them every time. She knows that her braincore prevents any of this. Just the strengthened connection to her soul that comes with her cultivation level allows her crisp and clear recollections whenever she wants them. Also, when she doesn’t want them.

  Another ripple runs through the prison of light around her, and this time Re-Haan manages to keep her small consciousness aimed at the present. A third ripple, the strongest yet, is accompanied by a feeling of power radiating from far away. The data streaming through her mind shifts from logistical analysis and long-term planning calculations to images sourced from draconic eyes.

  At the edge of the area she is controlling – a sphere five thousand kilometres in diameter – she sees a single figure putting out immense amounts of pressure. The lack of a rabbit on his shoulder somehow the first thing she notices, she sees Drew. And he looks mighty pissed. A shudder of emotion that Re-Haan is only recently familiar with shakes up the massive rigid tree sprouting upwards from her still form. The minuscule conscious part of her mind starts fidgeting excitedly with a hint of nervous anticipation.

  She both dreads and anticipates the data that follows. She can’t direct anything herself, as the directives she put in place are still going strong. They aren’t allowing her a single micrometre of breathing room, neither on the physical nor on the mental level. Her body is doing fine without food, air, water, or movement, so she gets none of that. Her mind is not so sturdy, however. A small corner of her brain is all she gets, barely enough to string a coherent thought together, yet observing the world at but a fraction of normal speed.

  So she watches. She catches a glimpse of an odd scene, his sword vanishing into dust and disappearing. He seems to shiver a bit between two images she sees, as he is clutching his thin clothing tightly in another flash of recorded sight. The multitude of dragon eyes trained on Drew guarantee that she catches a glimpse of him at least once each minute of studious searching.