Every single mana mutant freezes for a moment as I pour out qi, spreading my spiritual sense with wild abandon. This confirms my suspicions and a few other theories. The Dungeons produce mana. This must be another reason why the mages are using it as a neutral gathering point, away from the single-element-dominated mage islands. And the Mana Dungeon is projecting all this produced power everywhere instead of in a single direction, like the Tower.
Or it used to, but now it’s spewing my qi everywhere. The circle I left on top of the sphere is working perfectly; it’s just a shame it’s doing nothing to the qi that’s being released into the ground in a downwards direction. Not only is this planet about to be pelted with qi-rich pieces of flesh, it’s also getting tainted from within now…
I could install another qi formation deep inside the ground, but I feel like I have to face this one head on. Am I going to fight the cause or the effect? Plastering this planet full of qi containment circles is an option but would be the perfect example of fighting the symptoms instead of the cause. I don’t think I’ll be able to take on this problem through underhanded tactics this time.
I turn to Rhea and address her solemnly. “We are going to need to do some ass-kicking.”
Her eyes light up. “I’m going to try it. Full power.”
I immediately shake my head. “Don’t, or it will cause a tsunami that will wipe away everything in this “Gulf of Sentience.” It’s a stupid name but that doesn’t mean it needs to be washed clean.”
She slaps my shoulder in a joking manner. “You can contain it. It’s good training for Selis. Those kids are getting spoiled anyway.”
Rhea really needs to do some studying in terms of acceptable social behaviour. That buddy-buddy attitude is extremely unfitting for the potential mass genocide that her plan will cause.
⁂
Selis is secretly frustrated. Ket and Tess are hooking up, Angeta has that frenemy thing with Ragni, Vox is totally getting involved with the axe beastkin and that green woman, Bord is… Bord…, and even Ares is reunited with her old master. And here is Selis, half a sea under her control and it just doesn’t feel as exciting anymore.
It’s honestly a bit baffling to the solid-core-stage braincore cultivator. Or is it cultivatress? SFloating in the void a few kilometres away from Tree, she is surrounded by a metric shitload of water. Her old self, even from a few weeks ago, would probably have slapped her current self, but controlling enough water to wipe away a town just seems so ordinary now.
A frown on her face, she continues her practice. Lakes’ worth of water turns into ice, liquid, and everything in between at a thought. Star-shaped sparkling constructs spin as they transform into white powder, flowing into crystal clear water before turning into a vicious array of spears.
She has been stuck like this for a while now. The difference between a forming solid core and a filled one is not too drastic, she has found. A small piece of crystal in her core allows for more stored qi, enabling brute force attacks. The qi inside her solid core seeps out slowly, but she can wield it with much more finesse and precision.
She is supposed to start developing a concept now, right? The first step in her foundation. That entire task is frustrating her even further. Should she use water as a concept? But which aspect? The rainbows formed in mist are pretty, but so are the detailed sculptures of ice she has been practising fine control on. The massive power behind a crushing wave of water seems near opposite to the cutting precision of ice blades.
This, added to her own history - years of neglect followed by being a political pawn - is preventing her from making any headway in this path business Teach keeps on about. Having achieved full grumpy-hood, Selis waves her arms around as she sends the hundreds of cubic kilometres of water back to their original place, doubling the oceans around Tree again.
Half an hour later she is still grumpy, but the small terrace on the moon allows her to be grumpy with a full stomach. She looks at the bustling activities going on around her, feeling oddly disconnected from it all. Licking the sauce from her fingers, she wonders what will happen in the future.
Teach sent a message to every single student, ordering them to return and prepare for aquatic warfare. Large crates of goods, rations, and weapons are being carried to and from storage areas and workshops. She soaks up the atmosphere for a bit, relaxing in the comfortable chair.
“Get out here now, maybe she’ll listen to another female…” Teach’s voice shakes her from her daydreaming. Probing the mental connection to Database, Selis finds a simple request for her presence. Shrugging internally, she jumps towards Tree, leaving a fog trail in her wake. She arrives near Tree within seconds and is pulled through the spatial distortion the moment she starts feeling for it.
“Hey, Selis. Please stop those waves. I could do it but that’d take a lot of my power. Thanks.” Teach smiles at her with a suspiciously strained grin. Blinking rapidly, Selis tries to orient herself. A blue horizon clues her in on the fact that land is far away. The stones under her feet project an air of apathy. This in combination with the shoddiness and general crookedness present in the tower she finds herself standing on causes her to realize that she is surrounded by mages.
The sea directly around the large cluster of buildings she is on is frothing and white, a wide variety of limbs, flippers, and other warped animalistic traits poking out of the sea surface. “Maybe turn around when you’re done gaping at the scenery?”
Selis whirls around at Teach’s comment, just in time to be nearly knocked flat by a wave of wind and noise.
*ffffFFFT-HRUUUUUUUMUUUUUuumuuu-”
The weirdest sound Selis has ever heard hammers against her eardrums. She spots a white dragon surrounded by a purple glow flying in a lazy circle. The dragon has its mouth open, aimed downwards into the sea. A warping beam of faintly glowing purple carves a deep hole in the sea, the very air around her shaking as the water is divided into two. The awe and admiration Selis feels is only partially caused by the sudden influx of positive air mana.
“YEAH, STOP THAT PLEASE!” shouts Teach as he points Selis’s gaze at the massive waves of water generated by the dragon’s mouth-beam. Blue hair whipping around, the demure girl stares at the spectacle for a few more seconds. All the animals in a large radius around the dragon’s - who Selis now recognises as Re-Haan - breath attacks are mushed into a red cloud of watery bits.
“THIS WAVE OR THAT WAVE?” Selis shouts.
“BOTH!”
The dragon has made a quarter circle around what Selis has recognised as a much-changed Mana Dungeon. One wave is rapidly gaining height as it rushes towards her location. It seems to grow in speed too quickly, growing from ten meters to a full fifty in a short time. Selis is sloshing her qi through her brain at this point, allowing her to realize that this is caused by two reasons. The circular wave is concentrating due to it growing smaller and denser combined with the steeply sloping seabed. Selis is standing a good kilometre high up, but she is pretty sure the waves’ splash will reach her.
The outgoing wave is rapidly growing smaller and will only become visible near the shore again. Selis ponders what would take more energy, having to shift a metric tonne of water a single centimetre or moving a litre of water a single kilometre. Grinning at the seeming impossibility of the task, Selis speeds off.
chapter thirty-six
Triturating
Mage Fredon is patient. The apathy natural to all mages of the earth has served him well his entire life. Using it in combination with the empathic and trustworthy aspects of the lighter side of earth mana has allowed him to learn about, and then climb, the true ranks of mage-dom.
His younger days were filled with the usual mage activities, geared towards amassing and controlling as much mana as possible. Some things stood out to the silent man - a child from a large commoner family that had the luck to get tested - and he took notice.
He enthusiastically learned and practised from apprentice to journeymage. The fact that maste
r mages all disappeared for weeks on end clued him in that something was wrong with the entire system. The number of young mages is truly large. The mage towers where recruits are tortured under the guise of learning emotional control were always full, as well as the lecture halls on the mage islands themselves.
But the number of powerful mages was truly too small for the mass of recruits. He heard of mages dying now and then, life at sea is inherently dangerous and accidents happen, but not enough to explain the disappearing, high-level powerhouses. Fredon read through any record he could find, scouring all the known libraries and administration archives he could get access to.
Mage Fredon is proud of his ability to read between the lines, and thus decided to stop gathering more and more power, shifting his efforts to control instead of raw force. And that’s how he was inducted into the actual ruling class. Another mage that had seemingly stopped growing - labelled a talentless hack by all - introduced him to the council.
Fredon learned of the formations that power each island’s single-type-mana attractor field. He learned of the steady stream of crystallized skulls needed to power these devices. His morals rebelled at the human sacrifice needed, but this too was explained to him. The only way the mages can remain diverse and strong is when the usual competition is backed by an unbeatable home field advantage. Only when attacking the base of other mages is tantamount to suicide, can a stalemate be achieved.
He learned of the mana stones all mages develop and how overuse of mana crystallizes parts of the brain. He also learned of the lifespan mages have. A master mage without a crystal can live up to be three hundred years, his fellow shadow council members proof of this fact. Overuse of mana - as encouraged by the entire mage schooling system - will guarantee the forming of a crystal seed in the brain. The mage’s days are numbered at that point, as the crystal overtakes brain tissue even when no magic is being cast.
Terrified of the headaches that were a sure sign of initial crystallization, Fredon only practised mana control with low amounts of mana. That’s how he took notice of Valerius, the only mage he has ever met that has more fine control over earth and stone than him. Happily steering mage society from the shadows, he spent his days in obscurity.
But on a totally normal quarterly trip to the Mana Dungeon, all kinds of things started going wrong. Fine control comes with fine senses, and the waves of mana disturbances went unnoticed by all the soon-to-be crystal mages. The usually gentle-flowing mana currents were tossed around, shockwaves of large-scale mana disturbances reaching the gathered shadow council.
Then Absence Island, the home of the darkness mages, vanished. Those bored and uncertain nerds didn’t really add a lot to mage-dom in general, but they made most of the less-than-legal mana-enriched drugs. The island disappearing also made a quarter of the total mage income disappear. All that money was usually spent supplying the creeps with slaves, but the simple fact that an entire island could just vanish was the council’s worst nightmare.
Things got worse when a completely unknown force invaded the Mana dungeon and somehow rendezvoused with a being in the guise of the Smiling Immortal. Reports about some of the group’s individuals being recognized cast light upon bureaucratic corruption. Entire cadres of mages had failed to report relevant information, such as a group of unknowns rampaging and easily overpowering low-ranked mages in Tower City. This lack of oversight only added to the confusion.
Then reports about collapsing Islands reached him. The collapse of his own home, Strata’s Eternal Tower, crumbling into dust sent him in a manic fit of hysterical panic. Disintegration’s volcanic explosion could have been an accident but news of the systematic destruction of all the islands was enough to recall every single mage and declare a state of emergency.
It was a good thing too. The first sign of trouble was from mage delver parties that reported strange happenings in the Dungeon. Having all the mages crowded on top of the large sphere was problematic, so most combat-capable mages went Dungeon delving, until the Dungeon mobs started walking upwards, killing many a mage unprepared for the suddenly-much-more powerful enemies.
So, Strata and all the earth mages were assigned to construction, rapidly creating new habitats for all the stuck-up mages. The earth mages were the most vocal complainers - understandable if you went from a pampered lifestyle to being forced to dredge up mud and moulding it into a growing jungle of buildings. Then half of it got wiped away by a slowly growing tide of large sea creatures.
Even though mage Fredon sees himself as a patient man, the current shitstorm has his nerves frayed and his reserves of patience drained. He does not even take into account the dwindling food stocks and the disappearance of the largest source of mana crystals. The food can be mitigated by the nature mages, but the lack of mana stones will hurt all mages in the long run. Natural mana levels are not high enough to cause the crystallization process. Sitting in his private room, the bedraggled mage goes through the numbers one more time.
Rubbing his eyes does not change his conclusion, no matter how much he wishes for it. He has enough awareness of his own situation to realize he is one of the better-off mages.
The fact that the old earth mage Tonn Vink was the man in charge of the Mana Dungeon when the general recall began is something Fredon is extremely thankful for. Having gained the knowledge that a part of his mind would be literally set in stone - or to be precise, crystal - he had made himself an indispensable confidante to the up-and-coming magus. He’d even stood guard as Tonn went through the month-long paralyzing headaches that comes with the initial crystallization. The solidification of his role as a trustworthy person has been extremely useful so far.
That’s the only reason Fredon and his fellow council members aren’t scraping and scavenging for food and bunking with the rest of the low ranked mages. It’s also the reason why he’s alone in a rather spacious room with large windows. His current quarters are directly above the old coot’s, having convinced the half-senile codger that the top floor of the tower is just storage space instead of his relatively lavish living quarters.
The powerful mages are all completely predictable in their behaviour and thus easily manipulated. Their unchanging personalities do have drawbacks, though. The entire mage society is much more prone to breaking and shattering than bending. This has forced him and the rest of the true rulers to run around putting out fires in a desperate attempt to keep the system going.
He’s about to check the casualty reports again when a sudden thump from above saves him from the depressing numbers. The entire tower is hastily built and there are no ways to walk on the roof. Wondering if a mage has made an emergency landing for some reason, he stands up and walks to the small balcony he made himself.
“Get out here now, maybe she’ll listen to another female…” The strained voice of an unfamiliar man reaches his ears. Fredon scurries back into his chambers, frantically and silently searching for something to stand on. He has managed to drag a small table to the balcony and is about to stand on the rickety piece of furniture when he suddenly remembers where he has heard that voice before.
That’s the bearded man that kissed the Dungeon-damned Smiling Immortal! None of his fellow council members remembered much about that event, and Fredon suspected that some form of amnesiac was applied to all of them. Why only he has his full memories is another mystery that has been hounding the beleaguered man.
With shaky knees, he manages to stand on the table and peer over the edge of the roof. That same man - tall and thin, with simple clothes and a beard - is looking at the mass of mutants at the base of the dungeon. The man then looks upwards and the spying mage falls from the table and nearly from the tower entirely as he spots a dragon circling nearby.
“One moment, ya maniac! She’s nearly here!” shouts the man through cupped hands. The dragon, bizarrely enough, seems to nod its head before lazily flapping its wings. Then a blue-haired girl pops into existence next to the man.
“Hey, Selis. Please
stop those waves. I could do it but that’d take a lot of my power. Thanks.”
The subsequent thunderous attack on the sea by the dragon, through the medium of a giant mouth-beam and the calming of the waves by the small blue girl, has Fredon convinced that these maniacs are to be blamed for all the shit he has been going through.
The anger in his gut develops until the dragon has made a full circle. Nearly all the mutants in a few hundred-meter radius are red clouds in the tumultuous water, but Fredon is now so angry he starts seeing green.
“You… you, you, you absolute villains!!” Words flow from his mouth as he starts ranting. He barely notices that he has climbed onto the roof and started stomping towards the bearded man. “YOU ABSOLUTE MANIAC! Sending out waves of mana wasn’t enough, no. You people, because I’m sure it’s your guys’ fault, had to mess with the Tower, beat up my mages, destroy Absence, and TOPPLE ALL WE HAVE BUILT!”
Furiously waving a finger in the face of the cretin, he continues ranting, spraying the taller man’s face with spittle. The man holds out for half a minute. He then frowns and Fredon’s world crumbles.
⁂
The little guy shouting in my face was pretty funny, I have to admit. I’m amused until the little shit starts spitting in my face. I imagine killing him in a couple thousand ways, change a small bit of qi to that intent and let it waft over the yelling guy. Seeing him shut up and keel over is almost worth the saliva on my face.
Also, that guy was blocking my sight on the newest development. An area of sea ten kilometres away and a kilometre in diameter rises up, a bulging mountain of water that is slowly sluicing off of a truly horrendous monster.
The first thing to poke through the mountain of water is a rather impressive number of teeth. What follows next is a complex collection of feelers, scaled tentacles, and hanging teeth-filled jaw sections, like a mutated bobbit worm crossed with a lamprey eel’s mouth. Congratulations to that one transformation that Rhea practiced a few days back: you are no longer the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.
The Dao of Magic: Book III Page 31
