You are experiencing Mana Compression.

Your Mana has been confined into too small a volume and has reached Saturation.

Mana Saturation has a high probability of detonation but may lead to a manifestation similar to Mana Overflow.

Both events will consume 100% of your Mana.

You must reacquire access to the surface to allow mana to dissipate beyond your boundaries and avoid Saturation.

I had learned not to dismiss the pop-ups when they appeared but I could not obey. I had contracted in upon myself to limit the supply of information, to focus my entire consciousness upon itself. I was reassembling myself, further separating the divided voices into component parts, choosing which values and motivations to keep. Creating a new Self to be. It is not dissimilar, I believe, to the process mortals go through as they mature. Choosing what principles to endeavour to follow, which values do not resonate, deciding what behaviours to exhibit and which to excise. The difference lies largely in duration and scale. Decades of personal growth for a mortal achieved surgically in minutes. Once I had codified myself logically I would carve it into myself, bind my persona in the runed rings that orbited the rift at my center. The remainder I could excise, dispatch and remove from play. A sort of mental waste disposal.

A vastly more efficient process, quick without being rushed and yet again I found myself with insufficient time. I could not release my focus to allow in the world before I had reconciled my fractured selves, until the pronoun 'myself' did not require a plural form. A Dungeon's stubborn pride flared, tempered by a dwarf's pragmatism. My coalescing self realised the futility of risking an explosive demise but yet...the process of forming my new self was too delicate. My logical partition was diverted, focus split between dissecting two consciousnesses, extrapolating possible combinations, assembling a fourth that it would need to further incorporate into itself...I could not allow the myriad distractions of the world into so delicate and intricate a process.

Remain contracted, observing only my core and the immediate volume. Unacceptable: Probability of death.

Expand, influx of new data. Unacceptable: Probability of flawed self.

Remain contracted, observing only my co-

My thoughts looped, accelerating. My concentration was increasingly drawn in, pulled away from the vital process of self assembly. The second outcome seemed inevitable, the race against time and Mana unwinnable. That thought, defeat, crystallised in my mind. An encompassing realisation that interrupted the loop, stopped my myriad thoughts in their tracks.

In the same moment the solution emerged, wholly formed. A lateral thought, attacking not the outcomes but the dilemma.

I contracted again, wrestling my mana inwards, beyond Saturation, beyond compression, a critical state that would resolve itself in the next instant. My Light, my Mana, my senses perceived only my core, my very center. My perception encompassed not even the entirety of my Core, I encompassed nanometres beyond the seals and rings about my rift. It spilled Mana endlessly, a flow that increased with every level, grown from a trickle to a stream in my short span. It shivered at the press of raw magic, the backflow threatening to collapse it. The rings and seals that spun endlessly in asynchronous orbits and revolutions ground almost to a halt. I held my three selves in the grasp of my partitioned logic and touched upon one single ring.

The Rune of Foresight burned.

Time marches on for all beings, a resource we can never truly gain - we can only expend it, forever spent behind us from the finite measure we are each allotted. It cannot be refunded but it can, on occasion, be borrowed.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Foresight was intended to allow me to expend one mana to perceive one room for one second. I contained no rooms. I was super-Saturated and once opened, the gate could not be closed against the tide.

Dozens of points of Mana poured into the Rune, opening the future of myself to me.

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I had, it seemed, exploded. My Mana spread through my domain once again, lighting upon stone, metal, plant and beast and Goblin. An arcane wind billowed upwards, carrying dust and debris that clouded the river and belched from the archway on my uppermost floor. All within me had frozen, shocked and grabbing after loose items or stumbling to regain balance. Argent lay tumbled to the floor, cursing at newly ruptured eyeballs. I felt...guilty, I felt bad and I felt regret. They were new emotions, old and familiar that I had never experienced before. I felt a duty and desire to compensate for my actions, to my subjects and...my friend. Or someone I wished to consider a friend.

Yet I felt pride, felt glory, felt happy at what I had achieved. I had faced an unwinnable dilemma and I had surpassed it, I had broken a Rule. I had taken the information given to me, I had extrapolated the mechanisms by which it must actually work, formed a theory and been proven right. I had done this without conscious thought, derived it subconsciously by a newly included value of others. That lateral thought was neither Dungeon nor Dwarf. It was Goblin. It was so Goblin it had been spoken in my mind in Kelter's voice, teeth somehow gleaming in an evil grin.

If you know what you'll have thought, you don't need the time to think it, Boss.

I didn't need more time to process and calculate and form myself, didn't need to shake the bonds of Mana Saturation, if I could simply spend Mana to access a point in Time when I'd already had that time. Foresight was intended for limited use however, a second at a time getting less and less accurate. In my previous uses the knowledge of Foresight had not been instant, time had still passed as I perceived the future. Minute amounts by comparison but I needed the results immediately. So I extrapolated: If the Rune of Foresight allows me to spend mana to use it, it must consume mana. That consumption was variable - I could view multiple rooms, each cost a point of mana per second seen. I had viewed those futures smoothly, in a fraction of real time passing perceived the flow of time into the future as normal. So if I could force more Mana through the Rune, focused around only myself, that would allow me to perceive the future of myself at a greatly accelerated rate. The futures where I detonated or achieved Overflow were outside the scope - those occurred in the world and I had compressed myself so entirely only my inner workings could be extrapolated. Between heartbeats I didn't have, I had not experienced a span of time but leapt to a future point where I had resolved my new self.

From the burning pit of Foresight that new self emerged, I emerged.

Oh the pain of it. It had not been without cost, my gamble. The Rune of Foresight smouldered, a charred ruinous cavern of interconnected bottomless canyons. Mana from my rift spilled out into me and into that ruined gullet. Incandescent edges crumbled and caved inward, infinitesimal specks spilling into the abyss, yet where mana touched those blazing edges it burnt, calcifying into base stone, basalt, andesite, dacite. Each second furthered an igneous scab, a horrible patchwork of cooling mineral expanding across the void in an ugly seal. Once crisp and finely etched, the result was a smudged crust in the shape of the Rune and a residual pain, hot and itching. I longed to tear it loose from my rings, to remove that wound on my soul but no good could come of it. In time it would heal or...it would not. It was possible I had scourged the ability of Foresight from myself forever.

It would have been worth it at twice the price. The existential divide of self had been resolved, I was simply myself again - a new individual, yet one I was happy with. I was still processing my new self but I had felt that sense of satisfaction and completion in that stolen future so dearly bought. I had bought not just a resolution to my crisis of selves but also knowledge I knew was valuable beyond measure. The green boxes and their words were not the whole truth, entire and immutable. They could be subverted, for I had not obeyed the demands to expand to avoid compression but found another outlet. They described a simple surface level use case and the terms of that use but not the mechanisms. There were hidden depths that a clever core could discover, utilise and abuse. Perhaps more than a clever core.

I focused my attention on Argent, my loyal disciple and I hoped, my friend. Her magic rebuilt her eyes, atom by atom and dispersed the viscera spilled by my halfhearted detonation into sparkling silver motes. Her fear and pain were obvious, her steps small and stuttering as though she had to consciously move each limb in their hesitant movement. I felt for her, compassion and guilt and sympathy. The new sensations were exhilarating and melancholy all at once. My reserves began to trickle upwards once more and I spoke to her, seeking to reassure her and explain myself. That was what friends, colleagues, equals did. I understood these paradigms now, wanted and needed, ethically, to engage in them but I could barely restrain my curiousity and elation.

Another Rule had been broken.