Oliver couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps it would have been easier to simply accept the possibility of a conflagration of previously unseen proportions than what he was currently attempting. Even if he did accidentally set fire to the trillions of leaves all around him, which wouldn’t happen, it would be the perfect way to die since he would also be cremated simultaneously.
But no, he thought, while getting some warmth would be nice, it would not solve the actual problem, namely being incapable of moving. So, he simply had to keep attempting to undress himself even if his left side was... non-functional, at the moment. He should also set his bones before too long, but that really seemed like more of a problem for after he managed to move without slipping deeper into the leaves. Luckily, he had a plan for that, so long as he could figure out how to remove his pants.
Oliver shook his head, now wasn’t the time for endlessly beating around the bush, now was the time for undressing, and ripping his clothes. He obviously couldn’t do so with his body, one of the problems of the broken person, so he would merely have to use the unknown forces of the universe to undress himself. The only remaining question was which article of clothing on his body would have the smallest possibility of wracking him with terrible pain, should he jostle it while attempting to attune to his new cloth-moving spell.
Eventually, he settled on his right sock as it was the only article of clothing which was completely disconnected from his left, and very broken in a very unfortunate way, leg. He needed to keep his left leg as still as possible, because the bone in said leg was broken in a very sharp manner. He had, of course, yet to cut a vein with the spike of bone his leg was now, but ignoring that he could cut a vein with it was similar to ignoring that you had built your house on a volcano because it hadn’t erupted yet.
Oliver calmed himself, starting to meditate as he so often did in recent times, before attempting to sense the mana of the world around him. He felt nothing, but that was acceptable. He meditated further, his mind calming till only the breath of air his lungs accepted and released time and again was felt. He slowly started to feel something, at the edge of his mind where his now diminished consciousness usually ruled. It was a strange feeling, to be quite honest, and as of yet he could only feel it as a power unknown dancing across his skin in waves. Not waves as they were felt on land, no, these waves took a shape more reminiscent of the waves one would feel while in the water, swimming. But that was not entirely correct either, for it felt not as though his body moved with the waves, no, this felt more akin to the strange fluttering pressure felt where water met air on a field of skin. A shimmering flutter dancing over his entire body as though he stood in a storm of butterflies.
He turned his gaze inwards and sought out the flutter of mana against his flesh, inside of himself, he sought out a ring, a ball, a core, a mass of some sort where his part of the new energy of the world was housed. He moved his focus around his body, searching for the slightest wave of feeling inside himself, yet found nothing. He was, of course, not discouraged by one simple failure, he knew it to be there, somewhere, and he knew he would find it soon enough. After many tries where he eventually ceased searching his limbs, focusing only on his head and torso, he found it.
It was nothing more than a slight flutter against the rest of his brain, a slight sensation of something against the usual nothingness inside of the brain itself. It was fantastically small, no more than a dot of sensation so minuscule that he felt lucky to have even found it where it lay, nestled in the exact point where his brain stem, his cerebellum, and his cerebrum met.
Oliver smiled as two weeks of hard work consisting of sitting still while thinking of as little as possible paid off, and granted him the ability to... perform a variety of unknown actions one of which being granted the capacity to manipulate cloth, which, while not amazing at the moment, probably would become amazing... huh. He should definitely gain a firmer grasp on the limits of magic before he did that again, since his current example for the wonders of magic and what it let him do was very lame.
But for now, he needed to move on the next step of his master plan, namely using his singular spell on his sock in a bid to understand the deeper mysteries behind cloth magic. Easy. Simple. Utterly undemanding. And yet, his mana did not move.
That was fine, completely acceptable even, because while he had used it before, he had only done so once over the course of two weeks, and as such it was simply a matter of comparing the one time when he had successfully performed magic, and the many, many, many times he had not. The most eye-catching factor for what had been different when he attempted magic was the degree of danger he had been in. Most of his attempts had involved surroundings which could really only be described as safe, or at least as close to that term as you could come in a fantastic place such as the ever-fall forest where you were surrounded by powerful and wonderous beasts. Meanwhile, the one instance of him actually performing a feat of magical nature was when he truly and desperately needed to. It didn’t exactly work out that well for him, but that was beside the point.
Hopefully this meant that mana could only be moved with great will, especially the first time, rather than with great need, as great need would make it quite difficult to practice magic. Although he supposed that if necessity was necessary, then he could simply wait until he was dying of thirst.
Oliver focussed on the glimmer of sensation in the recesses of his brain, willing it to move like he never had before in his prior attempts while in safety. He did not want it to move like he wanted new board games like he did in prior attempts, no, he wanted to direct his mana like someone dying of thirst wanted water. At least, he tried to want it that much, and to be fair, he might die if he didn’t figure it out, so there was a very real incentive to feel so strongly about it. But he probably wouldn’t die even if he could not figure out magic, because, well, there had to be some solution.
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But contrary to Oliver’s expectations of having to achieve an unrivalled single-minded focus which would take years to master, it was far more a question of willing it to move very badly. He had, of course, tried said method earlier, but as it turns out, it is, while not exactly necessary, far less challenging to cast spells when you know where your mana originates from, and what path you wish it to take. Oliver likened the difference in difficulty to the difference between solving a Rubik's cube normally, and solving one while blindfolded, heavily sedated, and without actually getting told that you are supposed to solve a Rubik's cube.
The mana flowed easily out of his core, clearly the mana which made up the core was heavily compressed naturally, as the volume of the mana he released was greater than the core itself. Although perhaps volume was a misleading way to think of the energy, as rather than a mass it was more accurate that the Energy was more diffused as it passed though him. The mana moved quite swiftly, and as it went through his brainstem, nothing more than a flutter of energy, which, admittedly, was quite unnerving as it moved through his very vulnerable brain and spinal cord.
As the mana thrummed softly through his head, he eventually switched the path it took from brain stem to spinal cord, where it moved just as swiftly. His mana created a soft hum of sensation as it ran down his spine, a soft sensation, almost gentle in its nature as it passed through him, the hairs along his spine standing on end, though whether from the sensation or the leaking energy of the mana he did not know. The flow continued, slowing down slightly as it passed from thick ropes of nerves to the curved solidity of his hip, and even more so when he experimented with directing it through his flesh. But eventually, it passed from hip to thigh and from thigh to shin, until finally it reached his foot, where he brought it to the very tips of his toes before he expelled it his sock.
His sock sprang to life, moving with his mana, which seemed to grant it sentience, at least, that was his more fantastical guess. Because like anyone would after realizing that they were a sock, it shot into the air to get off his foot, dragging his leg high into the leaves behind it as it did so and taking his shoe with it as it leapt into the leaves above like a missile, never to be worn again.
The awakening of his sock was, however, a slight problem for Oliver, even if he was very happy to have used his right sock rather than the left.
The loss of his shoe was completely acceptable, no doubt about it, as it was quite honestly only weighing him down in a situation where being light was preferable. And while Oliver was adult enough to admit that perhaps it would be nice to possess a pair of shoes when he was no longer under threat of dehydration due to being stranded in a sea of dry leaves, it was still tolerable. The loss of his sock, meanwhile, was far less so.
That sock had carried a significant part of his plans on its fibres.
He had expected to jiggle off his sock, then slowly bring it to his torso, where he could then experiment with his spell until the stiffening aspect became continuous, and he learned to tear it in half. But, alas, it was not meant to be, so he would simply either need to make his third attempt at the spell with his pants, which was fine, because really, if he avoided cutting an artery when he fell, then what were that chances that he would when he simply... jostled it a bit. Besides, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t learned a lot from the singular experiment he had performed on his sock, it taught him that the spell was more powerful than he had initially thought. After all, it had sprung off his foot even with only – Oliver glanced at his mana, only for his inner monologue to halt in surprise – He had learned that he should not use a hundred and thirty-eight of his mana points while experimenting. A truly valuable lesson.
But it wasn’t like he had other options rather than his pants, sure, he was wearing underwear, but he was quite a bit more concerned about using the underwear, which was so near his left leg, than he was about practising on the end of his right pants leg. On the other hand... the edge of his boxer shorts had climbed out of his pants, and if he made sure to direct his mana properly, then he could very well take his underwear, well, not off exactly, but away from his leg. It would possibly be slightly painful, especially if he didn’t mind his mana usage carefully, but the result would have a piece of cloth attached to him in a place he could practice without care. Oh well, Oliver thought, how painful could it possibly be?
As it turned out, quite painful. However, after he had hissed in pain for a short moment while thinking of how he had never been more thankful for not being able to afford new underwear without truly wearing it out first, resulting in it being quite frayed. But, after the pain was gone, it did truly give him a grand opportunity to test his spell to its fullest, and, after a good deal of experimentation stretching for hours upon hours, he eventually found out how to harden the cloth in a more lasting fashion. He simply needed to push his mana everywhere equally all at once. Or more precisely, he needed to maintain equal force both upwards and downwards in the cloth, which, while quite hard, was not impossible so long as he focused mightily. The equal force then prevented any lateral movement in the cloth, and as folding of any sort also required lateral cloth movement, it was essentially stiff as a board and very light. it was slightly strange that even as the small glimmer of light so pale as to be useless for actually seeing disappeared, the temperature did not drop further. At least, it was until Oliver finally reasoned that the leaves must be quite the material for isolating against the cold, at least when there are meters upon metres of them. After having solved the mystery of the warm nightfall, and giving his mana time to recover, he returned his attention to his plan.
Oliver proceeded to tear his pants apart at the inwards facing seam by wrenching, carefully, at each side of the seam, resulting in only a minimal amount of blinding pain. That, unfortunately, left him naked, before he proceeded to carefully align his pants into one decently wide and very long board. Just wide and long enough, in fact, for both his broken limbs to remain safely atop it, if barely.
Oliver smiled widely as all his efforts over the past many hours spent practising and planning came together in one quite possibly literally singular achievement. And what a beautiful image they formed. A practically naked teen except for one shoe and sock on a surfboard made of pants which he could, carefully and with extreme focus, propel forwards with his mind and mana so long as he slammed his mysterious energy against the inside in the direction he wanted to go, ridding on said spectacular device through the leafy sea found below the ever-fall forest. Oliver grinned madly as he thought of how he would rub his clearly grand success in Aelin’s, and possibly Emma’s face, depending on the circumstances, when he found them once more. Did it hurt Oliver’s quite literally flayed hand a bit to hold the edge of his marvellous creation? Sure, but what else is a potholder made of your own folded underwear meant for? And who in their right mind would say that the Brain class was useless when it let you create wonders such as surfboards made of pants?