“Aah, stop!” The girl stumbles back while clutching at her ears.
“That’s it! STOP HURTING WILLA!” The boy’s shout nearly blows Fredon off his feet, the thunderous volume wiping away his mana enhanced stance. He is then summarily lifted as the little boy throws him over his narrow shoulders. Belying his small frame, the boy easily manhandles the mage as he is carried towards the portal pagoda at high speed.
Not ten second later, the small white building with glowing lines in its doorways comes into sight and Fredon is hurled towards one of them at high speed. With a sudden ‘pop’ Fredon finds himself back on the Mana Island, the plaza surrounding the deceptively simple portal nearly empty.
He feels something on his hand shift, and looking down he sees the thin stone ring that allowed him access to the other dimension crumble into dust.
It takes him a few moments to get himself back to a point where his churning emotions have calmed down. He was just thrown out of an alternate dimension because his mean thoughts hurt a little kid’s girlfriend? Did that just happen?
Fredon then realizes that while he has been making use of the solidified and unchanging character traits inherent to older mages for a large part of his life, his ways might be equally set in stone. Looking around, he no longer sees the emotionless masks that all mages were forced to wear. No longer are the streets covered by empty-eyed slaves.
Instead, animatedly talking people are working on things, building new structures with concentrated and happy faces, instead of the apathetic grimace needed for all earth mana manipulation. He sees beastkins, savage colour skins, and normal, pure humans working together. The most complex formation he has ever seen, read about, or even speculated on - the floating kilometre wide doily above his head - is rumoured to be made by two beastkin women. That little savage skin girl could actually hear the mood of his inner thoughts…
Fredon realizes that he is not the only one that’s unable to handle large changes smoothly. His mind might not be petrified ,but his behaviour so far has been as if his entire skull is crystal. Walking through the rapidly changing city that’s being built upon the Mana Dungeon, the thing he can’t get out of his mind is Valerius’ face.
The two had talked for a while, but an immeasurably wide gap had formed between disciple and master. Previously, Fredon had held all the power while Valerius was unknowingly being groomed for a position in the shadows. Fredon had tried talking about mage politics like old times. Valerius had only been willing to talk about being a lowborn farmer, a position only suitable for the cheapest of slaves.
But his face - the way his eyes had come to life, his entire persona had transformed from meek, downtrodden mage to vibrant and enthusiastic horticulture expert - is the image that won’t leave Fredon alone.
chapter forty-five
Parley
“FUUUUUUCK!!” I glare at my right hand. All I have left is my thumb and pointer finger. This is going to take so much time and effort to regrow…
“CUNT FUCK BITCH-AAAAASS!!!” Okay, stop shouting. I should be focussing on halting the blood flow. Instead, I grab my sword with my left hand. The lower end of the handle and the pommel is gone, but that still leaves me with over thirty centimetres of grip. I channel my power inside and swing backwards at full force.
The blade of blue and red cleaves through the darkly glowing sea, making one-half shatter into snow while the other explodes into steam. The many, many transparent swordfishes are either shattered or vaporized.
The two hundred and twenty-ninth level has turned out to be rather difficult. The floor seemed harmless at first, a dimly lit body of water was all that was visible to my eyes. Instead, I found out that these floors now contain three different elements.
The water element filled the entire room. The darkness element sucked the light from everything, making the deep, dark water feel even deeper and darker. The nature element - which I was not expecting - turned the enemies into natural beings that are near impossible to detect. They look like tuna fish with meat cleavers for noses.
Well, they would look like that if they weren’t completely transparent…
It came down to letting Lola get chopped in half or losing half my hand. Staring at the rabbit who is licking her own crotch again while cradling my mangled hand, I doubt my own snap decision-making skills. Instead of complaining further, I mumble a mantra of “…shit, shit, shit, shit…” under my breath while sucking up all the mana I can find.
The amount of power in the previous level was rather high, something I should have checked. But I was starting to feel mentally tired, and messing with fake emotions has always been particularly draining to me, so I decided not to. I keep cursing the rabbit while creating a small vortex of power around myself, channelling all the power to my damaged hand.
It takes me around an hour of manual reconstruction before my hand is in a usable condition again. I say usable - not perfect - as the strength in those three fingers are several factors below the rest of my body. I especially need to take care to not pull on the connected flexor and tensor muscles in my forearm, as that would shred the results of my hard work in a heartbeat.
In the meantime, I have taken the time to explore the next room using my spiritual sense. It’s a massive blank space, a seemingly endless white floor that stretches into infinity. So, this is the end of the Mana Dungeon? This floor is identical to the Tower’s last floor. But that floor was the ninety-ninth, and this is around two thirty.
Ah well, I guess that’s just how far these things have grown over the years. I don’t even know what the dungeons need as food. Is it lives, matter, or just having beings inside it?
I muse on these topics some more while stepping out of the stairwell. Hmm, this is interesting. The stairs go up from this floor, but I just emerged from a triangular building that suggests that it’s actually heading down.
This time, my musings are stopped by enemy attacks. I jump high into the air, flipping backwards while swinging my sword through the massive tentacle that just swept me. Breathing in, I feel that the mana levels are the highest I’ve encountered so far and are evenly distributed. I form my braincore into a small model of a turbine compressor, a piece of machinery that moves as much air as scientifically possible.
I start spinning the fans, willing it to only move mana. The small cyclone appears again, this time without me having to support it. The sheer vacuum of mana that I’m creating is enough to stir the multi-layered power into motion for a few kilometres around. The small flow of qi coming from my braincore turns into a steady river as I deepen my breathing.
Half my power is taken by my heartcore, who hurriedly channels it towards my regrown hand via my bloodstream. That taken care of, I inspect my immediate surroundings.
Lola is hanging off of the large octopus’s eyeballs, viciously gnawing its tender flesh. I see her spitting out a large chunk of meat before she jams her horn - a swirling red this time - through the opening. She avoids the exploding eyeball goop by kicking off the monster, shooting towards an eagle made from long metal strips, her horn now shining blue.
I look at the two dim bunny faces on my sword, a clear indicator that Lola has learned to hold both power flows while using them alternatively. I nod in appreciation of her development and get to work.
I turn around and am greeted by a wall of bullets. I reflexively hide behind my sword, driving it into the white floor as I duck. The bullets ping off, and I shift the blade’s angle after each impact, grinding the white floor to powder. I sense that the reflected projectiles do nothing as they bounce off the incoming horde of beasties.
Instead, I pull my sword free and start swinging it like a baseball bat. I take control of the fire flows for a single millisecond, enough to heat the bullet I’m batting back into a supersonic cloud of plasma. A few hundred hits later, I conclude that it’s a rather energy-inefficient way to fight.
So, I change my approach. Deciding to act on a total whim - a combination of an old video gam
e and something I’ve been secretly wanting to try - I change my braincore into a perfect scan of my sword. I then make a few modifications while double-checking my braincore and sword are linked in all ways I can think of.
I put my sword on my back, letting it freeze itself to my torn clothes with a flash of frost. I then pull on the handle, which causes my modification to activate. A long and slender baseball bat slides free from the much larger blade. One third is glowing red while the other is a frosting blue. I somehow can’t get the smile off my face as I turn into a blue and orange blur.
The projectiles and monsters I smash back leave frost trails or streaks of flame in their wakes. The blue ones punch through the constructs with shattering coldness while the red ones burn deep holes. My heartcore gets used to the new mode of fighting rather quickly, and the Dungeon seems to react.
No more projectile shooting foliage forms, instead, the beasts I destroy are replaced by an endless amount of fast, smaller creatures. Seeing that there will be no more bullets to hit back I shove the bat back into the hollow sword.
Seconds later, I pull it free again, this time willing the massive hunk of metal to disconnect and split in different ways. I pull a slender sword free that’s longer than the base blade itself. My grin is getting painful now; this is so cool.
I press a button and the sword clatters to the ground in pieces. Small pieces of sword that are connected by a central length of chain. Each sword section has a red and blue part, black metal filling in the middle.
I should have Rhea dress up in scant strips of purple leather while wielding this thing later.
The endless mass of small critters is eviscerated as I become a storm of red and blue again. This weapon is fun too. I catch a glimpse of Lola and see her sitting on top of the entrance we came in through, doing absolutely nothing. I shrug and continue whipping the long blade around.
One endless horde of small elemental constructs later, I am faced with monsters that are thirty or so meters large. My grin still going strong, I snap the weapon back into its original longsword form, perfect for piercing those hard to reach places.
Many, many hours later Lola and I are both panting heavily. The little rabbit is also surrounded by a small cyclone of mana. The mana levels have dropped by a few percent, quite the feat when considering that I can’t find an end to this level in combination with the ultra-dense mana.
I look away from our latest victims, a nearly endless parade of flying monsters and suddenly-appearing traps. I’ve had a relatively easy time of it, thankful for the fact the dungeon doesn’t seem capable of summoning those spatial tears at will.
Lola is looking a bit worse. Her pools of fire and ice ran dry a while ago and she does not have the mass needed to be a super-efficient physical fighter. Instead, we are cooperating, me doing the damage while she is doing small-scale battlefield control. She can’t do a lot against the large monsters we have been up against, but a kick here and a nudge there is all that’s needed to imbalance a foe or make a heavy attack hit the floor instead of me.
I also kept my sword the same shape after some more experiments, the internal energy was depleted by a rather large amount after each shift in form.
But it seems to be over now. I look behind me and the massive tiger that we just killed is also gone, pulled out of existence by the dungeon’s odd quantum fuckery. I put my sword on my back and rub my hands. Let’s have a friendly chat with the dungeon now that the introductions are over…
Spreading my qi across the entire floor, I find a small hole a kilometre away. I start jogging, determined to get some answers. The memory of nearly being pushed out of existence is still fresh in my mind, so I start taking precautions.
I carefully start shaping my braincore into a miniature version of myself, correct down to the placement of each individual cell. Once that model has a sufficiently realistic resolution, I zoom in on the statue’s braincore location. There I start crafting another miniature version of myself.
I actually manage to craft sixteen of the things before my nose starts to bleed too heavily for my comfort. I sit down for a bit, regaining the qi I spend by rotating it through my skull and relaxing for a few minutes. The chain of miniatures in my core solidifies as I rebalance my mental state.
I then take the smallest one - the seventeenth level if you count my own body - and pull it outside. This takes some more mental prodding, and I end up with all my qi rotating through my core and brain again. I manage to reverse the entire array after only losing a few more litres of blood through my nose.
I pat Lola’s head a bit, who has been anxiously whining as I went through my self-imposed psychic torture. I spread my qi through the blood still dripping from my nose and onto the floor, surrounding my blade with it. Once all the iron is absorbed, I filter the rest of the sediment through centrifugal force and drink the clean water.
I also eat around ten kilos of food, giving Lola a large pile of leaves to nibble on. I felt the veins in my nose burst a while ago but didn’t dare spare the mental effort of keeping them closed. My preparations took a bit more focus than I had expected.
Now I’m feeling clean, full on food, water, and power, and ready to tussle with an alien supercomputer! Snatching Lola away from her food, I start walking towards the hole going downwards, taking it slow to get used to the weird feeling of being surrounded by a thin layer of my own braincore.
Once again, I’m not completely sure how this one works, but my heartcore seems rather insistent about this being a good idea. It hasn’t steered me wrong yet…
An hour later, I am looking into the dark hole. A smooth ramp goes down at a steep angle and I see shifting lights at the bottom. I grab onto the air surrounding me and force myself upwards with a bit of mental effort. Keeping my core in this unnatural shape is not easy, leaving me little room for applying my will on other subjects.
I float downwards at a leisurely pace. The moment my toes go lower than the floor level, I feel them wavering. I smile grimly and focus on the image of me that I hold in my mind. My toes stop trying to disappear as I do so and I continue floating downwards.
“PPPUUURRRPPPOOOSSSEEE!”
I blink rapidly as the most overbearing and incompetent attempt at communication nearly blows me off my feet. I can barely recognize the bone shattering sensation as speech, and it takes me a second to sort out it’s trying to talk.
“Hello to you too, Root. I want to get off-planet after accidental teleportation.” I reply in a neutral tone.
“IIIMMMPPPOOOSSSIIIBBBLLLEEE!”
“Speak clearly man, this is no way to talk. Just will some air into and out of existence away from my sight. That should allow you to form sound waves, right? Oscillating your entire being like that seems rather painful… and do you mean that getting off the planet is impossible or that teleportation is impossible?”
“CCCRRRIIITTTEEERRR!”
“Ah, my apologies. Lola, stop looking everywhere. It can’t do stuff in observed space; some beings are shy like that. Be a polite and civilized rabbit for once.” I grab Lola from my shoulders and hold her to my chest. A quick calculation later tells me that together, we were observing nearly the entire room. I retract my own qi to form a shell around my body instead of the spread-out spiritual sense I had going on before.
I have continued floating downwards during the odd conversation. The experience with Tower’s dungeon core flashed through my mind. There it felt like certain possibilities were taken away, preventing me from even considering them. But that seemed to have backfired back then, allowing my heartcore to sense which two possibilities were left open for me. Leaving or destruction.
“WWHHYY HHEERREE”
My hair waves as it is blasted by the strong shock waves created from the thundering noise. This place doesn’t feel like that at all. It feels like a petulant child pushing at an adult’s leg, completely incapable of removing said adult through brute force, but still pushing back and screeching.
Instead o
f the two doors that the Tower had at the bottom, this is just a solid ramp leading into a large room, around fifty metres high and a hundred wide. The ramp leads to the room’s centre, where another of those pitch-black rectangle’s rests. Lights play across its surface, like an endless abyss of stars springing to life and dying seconds later.
“As I said, I want to get off this planet, and I’m not willing to sacrifice large amounts of qi, time, or materials to extensively test the space-based defences. Portals and shit won’t become available until I’m much more powerful, and then I’d only be able to hop a few light-seconds at first. I want to know what’s up with this shit-fest of a planet.”
I have reached the large object. It looks like a plank, one by four by nine. One squared, two squared, three squared. This shape seems familiar, but I fail to remember.
“OONEE”
I raise an eyebrow.
“FOOREIGN”
I nod encouragingly.
“ACTIVATE SCAAAN…”
“Hmm. Then what about two?”
“TWOOO… DAAMAGE… GUUUIDEE AAND ACTIIVATEE POOWER”
I start smiling at the thing. There we go, this is progress. I sit down and proceed to have a long conversation with the sparkling slab.
chapter forty-six
Foreboding
A week. An entire week has passed, and Re-Haan is getting worried. She’s spent the last seven days sitting on top of the decorated tower while overseeing the defensive efforts. Things have fallen into even more of a routine as the influx of beasts has shifted from a constant stream to a slight trickle.
She squints her eyes to spot the latest approaching monster - a tier five - just in time to see the qi cannons fire in concert. They expertly carve away at the massive beast’s armour, allowing a coordinated group of fullblade wielders and other fighters to engage.
Keeping an eye on the battle with the oversized sea snake, she continues worrying about Drew. His group came out a few days ago. They all reported that Teach had gone on ahead while they recovered a bit more. They supplied some more interesting titbits, such as the level layouts up to floor one hundred and sixty along with the fact that the dungeon seems to refill with enemies after a full twenty-four hours.
The Dao of Magic: Book III Page 39
