The Dao of Magic: Book III

by Andries Louws

  She spends a relative hour as her eyelid slowly travels across her eyeballs, pulling up the partial curtain of darkness covering her sight. She decides to not think anything in this time, to just be there, frozen in the air. Without thought.

  Then her eyes are open entirely and she can no longer justify doing nothing. She resumes looking out of her eyes and sees a large variety of sea creatures in turmoil. Turning her attention inward, she starts exploring her new cultivation system. What appears in her mind’s eye is the image of a slender sapling, its top splitting into branches that bear leaves. The bottom splits into curling roots, a fine web of them adorning the lower end of the sapling’s lower tendrils.

  She examines the trunk first, as it is most central. The smooth and elegant bark feels similar to her previous core, only stretched and faster. Every single thought she thinks causes the trunk to light up, data passing just under its surface.

  She follows the roots downwards, picking the branch that’s lit up the most when reaching a split. She follows the brightest root until it fades into nothingness.

  She thinks of when she saw Tree for the first time. Drew had just pulled her inside the pocket dimension and she was greeting the golden, glowing perennial.

  She shakes herself free from the vivid memory. She follows another root to its end and suddenly sees a large list, filled with data. It’s more tree-related memories, this time the results of a process she once commanded to scan all species of trees she came across. She remembers the process, put into place when she was testing the limits of automation, and the results at the same time.

  She leaves the data behind and starts looking at the branches running upwards from the centre of the trunk. She sees something odd further up and decides to follow the branch that leads to the anomaly.

  “-not elements. Look here, the Miss obviously wants us to handle these things. Using fire against water does not work at efficient rates. The elemental transformation circuit is a horrible waste of power.” A cultivator in a white coat is standing in a white room, animatedly pointing at a complex looking object on the table.

  “You fucking wetskin, short-sighted as ever. But okay, I can admit when your stupid ideas have merit. Ice first, then? Maybe earth. But what if we limit the elemental selector to only a few? Maybe close relatives like air and steam.” A beastkin in a damp white coat animatedly points at other parts of the long metal barrel with complex parts, drawings, and things sticking out of it.

  “Ah, a limited selection is not an option we have tested. You handle those, I’ll do the single casters.”

  “Alright. The basic model won’t change much any-”

  And Re-Haan pulls back. She mentally gasps as she finds herself back in her own body, which is now rapidly falling towards the sea. A surge of qi into her brainpan fixes the problem, allowing her to analyse the recent events.

  She is looking at her core still, focussed on a growing fruit surrounded by a particularly dense cluster of leaves. That fruit is the literal fruit of her management. The roots draw upon knowledge and data, the trunk transports it and the leaves are her subordinates. The fruits are the tasks and projects currently being executed.

  Then what are those black things, she wonders? She observes a few shrivelled and unhealthy-looking objects. She focuses on the biggest one, a rotting apple infested with maggots and dripping rotting juices. Flashes of the disastrous mission to retrieve information flash through her mind. She senses active connections to particular roots, her memories of the event. Leaves are also connected to the piece of blight and she sees students sitting and lying down with confusion and worry on their faces.

  Failed products… That needs to be cut off? Maybe she needs to use these failures as fertilizer, learn from them and use them to grow? That seems fitting in more ways than one.

  She spends the next hour of brain time sending everyone a request for an after-action report. She does the same for the other failed projects she sees, following the stench of decay to the handful of rotting fruits.

  Then she visits the small fruits that are about to rot or stagnate. She goes through all the products on her tree, managing them, pruning some, and fertilizing others with new data or orders. Taking a mental step back, she sees nothing has changed. Frowning to herself, she ponders why nothing happened even though she so much work.

  She mentally slaps her forehead when she realizes that the past few hours took less than a second in real time. The thinking capacity of an entire city, but no common sense. She sheepishly recalls every time she called other braincores out for their single-mindedness.

  Re-Haan decides that she has spent enough time inside her own head and pulls her power back into her core. The liquid energy flows into the tree and starts running through the veins, making the entire thing glow with flickering lights.

  She decides to postpone more research until her surroundings are not so chaotic. The sea is still getting whipped into a froth, and the wriggling mass of creatures is getting closer. Rhea holds onto the air and finds it surprisingly easy to keep still without any ground to stand on. She cast her eyes downwards and spots a man sitting on an island, lounging on the beach sipping a drink.

  She grins and flies closer.

  ⁂

  “Ket?” Softly, Tess mumbles a single word while shifting between damp sheets.

  “Yeah?” Comes a muffled reply.

  “Why did we run?” Pulling some hair from her mouth, Tess pushes herself up. Ket’s messy head flops to the mattress as he makes complaining noises. “We totally ran away from a few kids. Why?”

  Ket blinks, and his eyes glow grey for a second. Immediately looking much more refreshed, he sits up and leans against Tess. “They… pushed me away? I have no actual reason for why I dropped the kids through the portal. Hmm, it’s not a lack of information. This is baffling.”

  “It felt like they didn’t match me, or something. I felt it in my core. They scared me in a super, really weird way?” Tess rubs her bare stomach while looking down.

  “The unknown is scary, even for cultivators. Lack of information about anything can kill. Maybe that was it? Does our subconscious know the difference between a totally unknown cultivation base or a mutant in the night?”

  “No. That was not it for me at all. Like… I’ve been thinking a lot about this, please tell me if I sound crazy.” Tess looks at Ket, who nods with jerky movements. “This darkness is something inside of me, yeah? Like there is something that loves shadows, blackness, and dark stuff in general. But I hate moonless and overcast nights. A total lack of light sucks total ass.”

  Ket thinks about interjecting with some form of an ass-sucking comment, but wisely decides to hold his tongue.

  “I need some light, so what I like is the difference between light and darkness. That’s contrast, right? And I felt like those kids were doing something that didn’t fit in between light and dark. Like a triangle, for example. No, Ket hear me out!”

  Ket rolls his eyes at hearing Tess sincerely try to explain something while using Bord’s favourite shape.

  “A triangle is a totally different thing, it doesn’t fit anywhere between light and dark, do you get me?” Tess shivers a bit, dragging the silky sheets over her bare torso as she lies back down. The room they are in is one of the more luxurious inns in the noble district. The two cultivators had marched inside, paid more money than they ever had in their pre-Teach days, and stormed upstairs. Now they lay in the afterglow of some vigorous and furniture-shattering exercises.

  “This is so stupid. I actually get you. From the moment I formed my braincore and Teach showed me how to do calculations… this is the first time I have found them insufficient.” Ket lays his head on Tess’s chest as he lies back down, reversing their previous position. “Manoeuvring metal around, I either pull, push, or I calculate a vector.”

  Tess makes a sound halfway between a question mark and an annoyed grunt.

  “A vector is an arrow. The faster something moves, the longer the
arrow. Anyway, these methods use numbers. Pushing or pulling is easier, but vectors are more precise. Those kids felt like they pushed on me. Or did I reject them?” Ket waves a hand, causing the shutters to creak open. The light of a still early sun shines inside the room as they both look outside over the crafting district outside the window.

  “Are our cultivation bases self-aware? Database’s history section is filled with all kinds of shit becoming self-aware, right? What’s stopping these bundles of energy from getting a spark?” Tess’s pronunciation becomes slower as she fully realizes what she is saying.

  “Well shit…” replies Ket. “Giving up your cultivation base feels… wrong. It feels worse than being sick, like I was doing something extremely wrong on a deep level.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I puked the few times I re-cultivated. And I get the shivers when I think about doing so again.”

  “So, our very own cultivation bases are rebelling?” Ket is sitting upright again. “I do not accept that.”

  “Alright. I’m trying out that skincore system when we get back.” Tess sits up again while stating this with resoluteness.

  “You’re plenty pretty as is, so there’s no need. Let me become your external core. You would always need to keep touching me.”

  Tess faux gasps as she clutches her chest. “Ket, my goodness! What are you going to cultivate then?”

  “Ronal did this interesting thing…” Ket says as he starts kissing her all over. “He put his core into the most important thing a man has, you know…”

  Tess starts giggling as she pulls Ket backwards into the large bed.

  chapter twenty-nine

  Lattice

  I am worried. I’m worried about something important for once. In what direction am I going to develop my core?

  My heartcore is a bog-standard normal core, divided into a couple trillion sections. Each section is linked to a cell in my body. Don’t ask me how this makes sense, because I don’t know. I have multiple processes running - both in my core and in Database - that are trying to figure out this thing from multiple perspectives, but no dice so far.

  Any animal of sufficient size has more bacteria, viruses, and fungi in its body than native cells. They all form an incredibly complex process, working together to digest food and do all kinds of fancy chemical things. None of these ‘foreign’ cells get a heartcore section. None of my blood cells get one. There are no sections for my white blood cells, and the short-lived cells of my immune system don’t get parts either.

  My skin and all the linings and mucous membranes in my body get linked portions. A large part of my heartcore is ever-changing as my stomach lining and skin forms new cells. These cells die by the truckloads, new ones forming continuously. A mortal’s body dies fifty billion deaths each day. My body has slowed down significantly, the ageing and multiplication process slowing, now that I’ve got loads of qi supporting my physical form, but it’s still happening.

  And my problem is that my heartcore is the core I understand the best.

  Because my braincore is just an empty space. No, that’s not right. It’s not even empty space. Vacuums still contain loads of loose molecules, photons,and neutrinos, and it contains actual three-dimensional space. My braincore is completely, totally, and perfectly empty. And this has me worried.

  Rhea told me about her foundation. I was resting while scanning through the last of the smaller islands, kidnapping anyone interesting, when she descended from the sky. I gave her a drink and she enthusiastically told me about a fever dream and a tree in her head. There were only a few people left on the islands, mostly prisoners who deserved their cells, so we returned to our boat while she elaborated on all the parts of her tree.

  Her roots feed on data and her trunk transports this data to her leaves which represent all her subordinates. These people then turn the nutrients into fruits, the products of their labours. I actually felt her managing my students. Among the defeated library infiltration party were a good few that took their failure hard. She saw this as a rotting fruit and did an after-action report.

  Database informed me of a significant uptake in both general productivity and mood when she was done. Tree also noticed, and the necklace around my neck buzzed with positive energy. I also suspect that Tree is getting awfully close to Rhea for some reason. Still, it’s a tree. I’m not going to feel jealous or be suspicious of a tree.

  So, she’s doing great. And just with that short description, I could think of a hundred ways for her to grow.

  I can’t think of a single way for me to grow. And that’s my problem.

  Except for gathering more raw power, of course. But that’s also a problem. An unguided explosion is going to lose to a guided and shaped charge, in terms of high-level killing power, every time. A kilo of TNT will kill a lot of unarmoured targets, sure, but it wouldn’t do shit against a tank. You need a way to apply the force of that TNT into a single point to get through that kind of armour.

  Just gathering more raw power isn’t going to work… Not unless I can deduct the most optimal way of applying that raw power. But that’s what I’ve been doing all this time.

  Then again, that’s also not true. My previous core was information and data. From a word to a book to a world filled with libraries. The best solution for a situation was always there; I only had to find it and execute it. Now my core is just empty space.

  Then again, I’ve already shown that I can change my braincore into anything I want. And I have a heartcore. People are not going to suspect me of being a physical powerhouse when all I’ve shown them is mental prowess and spells.

  But the very malleability of my core is a jack-of-all-trades situation. I can change it into pure speed but will lose to someone who has their entire cultivation focussed on speed. If I were to change my core into a defensive one, wouldn’t the speed guy be useless against me?

  So, I should train that changeability. How can I train that? I’m usually all for testing everything, but I’ve not tested any limits yet. Maybe I need to go do that. Then again, I’ve had no need to test it. Like at all. I love that all the fights here have been easy mode, but it’s making me lazy, I think.

  Testing my empty core, let’s focus. First, I need to lay down some categorizations. How do we do that? That is a question that has been answered by librarians, luckily for me. Dewey Decimal System to the rescue!

  I can ignore a couple, right off the bat. History, geography, literature, social studies, and recreation are subjects that I will put on the lower end of the useful spectrum. I’m sure that I can come up with some form of a weaponized thesis on the history of emancipation in a magical world after a lot of work, but there are easier ways to kick ass.

  The basis should be the zeroth class - computers, information and knowledge. That’s Database. Next!

  Philosophy, psychology, religion, language, science, and technology are left. I spend the next few minutes mulling over these concepts and how I could apply them to myself.

  I stop when I realize that the image of Conan I used previously is part language, art, literature, and history, subjects I just classified as less than useful. Should I look at this problem from a different viewpoint? The Dewey system is based around professions and disciplines. Maybe I should focus on a science-based classification? Physics, chemistry, and biology might be better bases from which to train my braincore.

  A process kindly informs me that all low-priority pings have been ignored and that a threshold has been crossed. It thus decided to interject itself into the forefront of my mind as per its own directions. It further informs me that I should stop thinking in circles and get out of my head. I rub my eyes and take a deep breath.

  I am on the sailboat, cutting through the choppy waves towards the north. The wall of churning foam is coming closer at a harrowing speed. Rhea is standing behind the wheel, curiously testing the finer points of aquatic navigation as she provides her own sailing wind. Lola has frozen her own ass to the steering wheel and is ha
ppily flopping back and forth as Rhea steers.

  I grab my sword and swing it. Before Lola can react, I take control of the ice and send a stream of it forwards. The sea turns to ice in a long streak ahead of us as the blue wave of power steals all the warmth from both water and beasts. Lola gives me one look of betrayal while she plops on the deck, the ice stolen from under her.

  She is about to squeak indignantly, but I grab her at the scruff of her neck and throw her forward.

  “Melt us a path, you useless furball!” I shout after her. I keep hold of the icy flow that ebbs from my sword and watch in glee as Lola explodes in flames. Her irritation is forgotten quickly as she jumps around the frozen landscape, smashing, melting, evaporating and burning us a path to sail through.

  “Lola just became a subject! Because she is helping me maybe? Her leaf has a little bunny face on it!” Rhea smiles while sailing around a floating whale carcass.

  “Did you try taking the fruit from your tree? Maybe you can make use of the products directly?”

  Rhea holds her hand out and a flaming apple spins into being. I feel my mouth falling open. The flames are identical to the ones coursing through Lola and my sword. Rhea smiles even wider as she drops the apple and sweeps her hand out to the side.

  A monstrous item, a combination of steampunk and mystical runes, pops into existence and starts belching out a concentrated stream of blue power. I follow the beam and see the sea freezing over where it hits. Rhea nods to herself and freezes the beasts that managed to escape my wave of cold. The cannon seems to be powered by a simple construct similar to the mana canons, only using qi as a power source. I start studying the thing, but before I can really get started, Rhea waves again and makes the item disappear.

  Another wave of her free hand causes a small round object to fall into her hand. She looks at it with interest, pulling on a ring with her other hand. I see a metal piece fly off and freak out. “Throw that thing away now! What the fuck are you doing, you crazy woman! Don’t go pulling grena-”