When that image revealed itself to me I was at a loss for words… The voices were not. Voice 2 woke up again and Voice 1 had to comment.
Voice 2: “I am heading towards the light? But the work is not yet finished. There is still much to do.”
Voice 1: “Our work is never finished.”
“No you are not dead Voice 2, this is me being able to see for the first time.”
Voice 2: “This is sign of your divinity, spread the divine light to all.”
Voice 1: “Now we can see the corrupted as they are minced and pummeled into fertilizer so that we may benefit.”
“…Just be quiet. Don’t ruin the moment.”
The moment was temporary unfortunately. The vision blasted through me and faded away. It wasn’t even normal sight. The experience was like a blind man using a walking stick to “see” the ground, just in much greater detail. For the most part I could only see shapes in black and white. Yet the sheer joy of being able to see again—even temporarily—overwhelmed me. I haven’t been a dungeon for long but I forgot the pure satisfaction at being able to actually see. My mana danced wildly inside the crystal shell, full of excitement. If I had eyes I might even started to tear up. It was a well needed treat for being transformed into a dungeon. So the way mana rippled through each filament was actually like echo-location or radar. But I needed to have a pulse of mana to happen outside my crystal for me to actually form a coherent image. Like needing light to see, I needed mana to travel out and echo back to me.
The image that my mind abstracted only stretched out to what seemed to be 7 meters. Not entirely sure of the distance though, like time I have no concrete reference to measure it. I saw so much and so little. Really all I saw was a bunch of dirt and a mutant heart-brain thing enclosed in crystal dead center.
But that brief image was seared into my mind. Even if I became human again I don’t think would forget that experience. I saw mostly a gray emptiness. However small changes in the density of the rock and different rock sediments created little specks and shapes in the void. I saw thin, jagged cracks in the surroundings as the rocks bore the weight of the world. There was a galaxy of dots and constellations that existed for my sight alone. And the cracks created small streaks of darkness interspaced in this galaxy. The specks themselves didn’t have much color just slightly more or less grey. Everything was tinged with a slight blue color though with some areas more deeply saturated than others but still mostly uniform. Since I was the most saturated, albeit with a slightly different shade of blue, I figured this diffuse tint was mana. And the mana added a wondrous nebula to my little galaxy of sights. While my core was the shinning center. It was a beacon of light, that brought luster to the constellations of specks. My galaxy had mystery and allure. A painting of the cosmos in a grand fashion.
It was precious.
It was beautiful.
It was gone.
I am by no means a poet but by god I felt like becoming the next Emily Dickinson after that sight. But now I have to face reality again. I am in the lonely dark abyss again relying on touch to experience the world for now. And I still have issues to face.
Pulsing my mana to the outside of my core does actually cause some growth. However, it is horribly inefficient right now, my mana reserves dropped somewhere between 5 and 10 percent. That mana sight was spectacular but I won’t be using it again anytime soon. The filaments grew uniformly in all directions. If I was the size of an apple, then I am about twice as big now. I need a way to make my crystal growth more efficient. And while my mana control is atrocious—I tried to use mana to grow and created sight instead—I don’t think that’s the problem. The filaments inside the crystal just grow too slowly. Flooding the filaments with more mana will make them grow faster but the mana loss is faster too. There is actually a logic to why it isn’t effective. It’s just speeding up time, I don’t actually gain anything. I probably even lose more mana this way. Final evaluation for mana radar: Survival – Faster way to commit suicide, Sight – the only way I can see right now.
(Sigh) Back to the lab again.
Alright first I need a plan of action. So my surface area for the crystal shell needs to increase and growing isn’t an option. I should only plan to work with the filaments that I have. So the best alternative then… would be to change my shape to maximize my surface area. My physics major is finally being useful, who would have thought. I need to flatten myself and spread out over a wider area. Granted I am not really sure how to change my shape besides growing. But progress is progress.
So then how to change my shape? Focusing my attention on my crystal shell again, I try to understand all I can. Since my mana control relied on the muscles in my fleshy part, it was at its worst when my perspective was focused on my crystal part. But it was still manageable and I could still feel all my mana here as it echoed across different filaments. When mana pinged to different filaments, the structure inside did change slightly. But that seems more like its recording information. There doesn’t seem to be a connection to changing its shape. I tried pulsing mana through a specific filament a few different times but there wasn’t any change. There is a clue though. My test filament isn’t near the surrounding rock and when I send a pulse of mana to it, the filament doesn’t seem to try to grow at all. The filament should be putting pressure on nearby filaments as it tries to grow but there isn’t any. Instead the mana ripples outward until it reaches the outer filaments. The outer filaments then expand outward slightly.
There has to be some mechanism in the filaments that allows for the proper growth of my crystal shell otherwise it would probably crack or even shatter as the crystal expanded. If I can control that growth filter, I can control how I grow in a much more controlled manner. That would still require growing but I could actually change my shape and that could work. So new goal; understand the mechanism that controls my growth. This mechanism is probably very simple otherwise I would have noticed it.
That means I only have to think of simple options for the growth filter. As far as I can tell there are only two differences between the filaments that can grow and the ones that don’t; one the growing filaments are all on the surface of my crystal shell touching the outside rock, and two the growing filaments only receive a ripple of mana going out outwards from the center, never inwards due to their outermost position. This means that filaments are only allowed to grow when there is a difference in the concentration of mana as there is between my crystal shell and the surrounding rock. And or, the filaments are only allowed to grow when they only receive a ripple of mana going away from the center. Personally the second option seems easier to test with my secondary mana control, so let’s assume that it is true for now and go with that.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
With my mana control there is no way I can create a mana pulse traveling inward. But I can cheat a little and accomplish something similar. If I time the releases of a few mana pulses correctly I can focus the mana to converge mostly on one location instead of spreading out uniformly as it normally does. Now if that sounds easy it’s not. It’s like throwing a few stones on a lake and trying to get the wave to spread out mostly in one direction. But this will be faster and less wasteful then trying to learn how to control mana directly. I am not entirely sure why I feel like learning mana will take so long, its more just a feeling I felt when I examined my mana for the first time. And I don’t want to risk it. So timed mana pulses it is.
Testing went on for an indeterminable amount of time but it was probably a while. I tried a variety of methods with very, very weak mana pulses to see what would work the best. I tried sending off multiple pulses at once, a staggered release of pulses, sending out several weaker pulses followed by a large one. Soon I was covered in little bumps and raises as I started to grow unevenly by a slight amount. So these trials were somewhat successful. Eventually I settled on sending out one large pulse followed by a staggered release of weaker pulses. This method didn’t use any extra mana and focused the mana ripples in one direction the best out of the others so far.
Now for the real test. I prepared a large quantity of mana this time, around the same amount of mana I lost to the mana radar. A massive ripple of mana rose up but before it could spread outwards I released smaller pluses to redirect it as much as I could. It mostly converged on an area one tenth of my size. Since some mana was being released outside I got brief flash of sight again. A spur grew out the core. The mana rippled back slightly weaker this time, in response I release even weaker mana pulses to redirect as much as I could back to the spur. Another brief glimpse of the surroundings this one was less detailed. The spur grew out longer becoming needle like. Again mana rippled back from the spur, again I released weaker pulses of mana and the spur grew longer. This cycle continued at least 20 times before the mana ripple was too small for me to bother trying to redirect it back to the spur. And the end result was spectacular.
The crystal filaments had grown tremendously far away from me. If I was twice the size of an apple, then that tendril of filaments was about 2 meters from me. That spur of filaments had increased my mana regeneration by almost a third. Of course none of my problems were fixed as I was still losing too much mana. Even if I pour all my remaining mana into growing right now, I am not sure my mana regeneration would offset my mana loss. If I wanted to be completely certain my regeneration would offset my loss, I needed to grow towards the areas with the highest concentration of mana. And to do that I need to see much farther then I have before. Looks like I have the choice to use that mana radar sooner than I thought. There are two options. Option one: I play it safe and just grow in the area I know, hopefully my mana regeneration would save me. Option two: take a risk with my mana and use my mana radar, gambling that there is an area with a high density of mana nearby.
Voice 1: “In the heat of battle anything can happen. That is why you take risks. It is not the strongest or the fastest warrior that wins. It’s the boldest warrior. Go forth so that we rip the throats out of our enemies.”
Voice 2: “You are enacting the will of the heavens, whatever happens you will bring forth divinity. Follow the path in your heart as it is the most holy. Do not worry as you are the embodiment of perfection.”
“…Voice 1 try learning from Voice 2 he is better at being motivational. Slightly.”
Voice 2: “I have received blessed favor from the heavens!”
Voice 1: “I swear a blood oath that you will be destroyed. I will make you experience endless agony”
“Which one of us are you talking about?”
Voice 1: …
“…”
Anyway as much as I hate to admit it, my thinking is in line with Voice 1. On the being bold part not on the killing part. That’s not my thing. I don’t want to kill. I will not kill. I will not rip out the beating heart of my nemesis and feast upon it. If I have to leave things up to chance, I might as well go big or go home.
Mana raged in my flesh as I prepared around 30 percent of my mana. It was a tumultuous amount, it felt like driving a car at 100 miles per hour. It was under my control but could easily slip away. I released the mana pulse.
The mana surged outside of my core as it spread outwards, only trace amounts reflecting back to me. My mind started abstracting the information it received and built an image. 1 meter. 2 meters. 4 meters. 9 meters, 15 meters. I had a three-dimensional map of the world around me for 15 meters or so. It was even more breath taking than the first image. Everything was in sharper contrast and so much more defined. Before aside from the mana everything seemed gray but now I could see faint splashes of green, red, yellow, and all the other colors of the rainbow. The different concentrations of mana were as clear as day to me.
And I could see a large concentration of mana in my vision. It outclassed all of the other surroundings. It would take care of my mana needs and then some. It seemed infinite. I could even reach that mana deposit. It was about 11 meters away from my core. The crystal spur I made was angled away from it, so a new spur would have to be made growing in that direction but I would still make it.
There was just one problem…
From what I could understand that concentration of mana was actually the surface. If I grew in that direction I would be exposing myself to the surface. It would only be a little nub of a crystal tendril and there wouldn’t be any rooms to go through, but still I would be exposing myself.
Can’t back out now. I have to reach the surface to live.
Voice 1: “The time of reckoning draws closer.”
(Sigh) “Onwards we march.”
And so I began to grow… I began to grow towards the surface.
----------------------------------------
And that's another chapter done and done. I will say writing around 2000 words a day is starting to make me a faster writer. Here we get to see more the analytical side of the mc that he didn't really express before. But progress is still slow. Leave comments, criticisms, or compliments if you feel so inclined. Thank you for reading.