Equipping the starmetal suit once again, just to be safe, Felix poured mana into the spell form. Right when the spell was about to cast, Felix felt the spell form shift slightly. The nodes he had modified to change the distance of the destination portal, the targeting nodes, moved just a hair. It was so minute that in any other spell he would have ignored it entirely, in this one, in that specific place he knew something had happened.
He was about to stop the spell but then hesitated for a few seconds. He had already verified the spell form multiple times and knew that what he really needed to further improve, was to actually cast a portal. It also wasn't a large flaw that was quickly spreading. The spell form had slightly shifted but the spell actually seemed more stable than it had before. Hesitantly, he pushed the last bit of mana into the spell and braced himself for whatever happened.
Anticlimactically, a circle appeared in the air in front of the spell. There was no sound, no large flashing of light, just a simple circle two meters in diameter. Carefully craning his head to peer through the circle without putting any part of himself through it, Felix saw a small metal lined room with a large metal door.
It took him a few seconds to realize this was the room Erolan had added below him. It took him a few minutes again to figure out why the portal had been opened there. Initially he thought he had simply screwed up the modifications to the spell form, because it was highly likely they weren't perfect. He eventually put it together though that the room beneath him contained multiple anchors which was why the coordinates had shifted themselves.
He continued to pump a few thousand mana a second into the spell form to maintain the portal and threw a few random objects through it. Then he stopped supplying mana and watched the circle simply vanish just as suddenly as it had appeared. After verifying there was nothing left in the room in terms of spell forms or mana that might explode, Felix ran down to the vault and found all of the items he had thrown through.
Unfortunately, he was severely limited in terms of how much he could experiment because of how much mana the portals consumed. Some rough math based on Erolan's findings put the cost of a portal with an absolute target at around 20 to 25 million mana. Even the one he had just cast which was supposed to be relatively cheap had cost more than his entire mana pool.
There was no way he could cast multiple portals so he needed to get it as close as possible on his first attempt. Also given how much time he had left in the world event, he had to spend as much time as possible collecting mana. Ultimately, he was just going to have to cast the portal and hope. Unfortunately, Felix didn't have access to the absolute coordinates of a star but it wasn't impossible for him to find them.
Hey Grim, hear me out before you say no. What if I just open a portal and let a star suck it in? I could put the body and seal in a vault then set up a portal to open after a short delay. Then I close the portal to the vault and… presto?
Actually… that's not the worst idea ever. You would need coordinates that were at least close to one and putting a delay on a ritual isn't too difficult, I've never heard of it being done but, I don't see why you couldn't? It would definitely destroy the item though, at least I'm almost certain it would.
Yeah, I was thinking I would open one then use the coordinate measuring spell on a any star in the sky. Then I set up the ritual with those coordinates and stars are natural anchors right? So, the risk of it being sucked somewhere else is essentially 0, right?
Yeah. Your logic is sound as far as I can tell. You just have to hope you get everything right the first time. It's not like you can open that vault back up again, ever, to check if it worked.
Yeah. I also don't have enough time or mana to try again. Hopefully I get enough experience with the first portal I have to cast.
Felix wanted to get just a little more experience with portals before he started working on his final attempt so he started experimenting. Felix used the same mold he had first used, with some minor modifications, and poured mana into it, much faster this time because he knew it worked. This time, after the spell had been cast, Felix reached out for the remaining spell form. Most of the mana had been consumed but a a thin outline was left behind that he channeled mana into.
Felix, on a whim, slightly nudged the coordinates in the spell form but felt something pushing against him. He continued to gradually push against it until finally, the spell form gave way. The portal itself, on his side, didn't move but all of a sudden, light poured through the opening. Felix almost let go of the spell but the warm sunshine on his face stopped him. He nudged on the rest of the targeting nodes and found them much easier to move now that he was out of range of the anchors.
All he really needed was to get a feel for what functional portals were like in different situations. Once he had moved it around for a few minutes to scour the city above, Felix smiled. Not only would this make finding a star he could use to dispose of Erolan and a seal much easier, but he also realized he had a little more time than he had expected.
Looking down over Ky'bel, Felix had seen that the majority of movement within the city was still a few kilometers from the outer wall. He still had a couple days until they had finally searched through everything. There were also very few people in and around the camps on the outskirts, so it wasn't like they were preparing themselves to assemble the key and enter the final vault. Ideally he'd have liked more time, but he should have just enough for him to collect the necessary mana by his estimate.
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Ding You have gained 14 levels in [D - Arcane] Mana Engineer (202 => 216)
Felix didn't waste any more time and left the basement then headed out past the castle gate. He carefully increased the size and speed of the vortex that fueled his mana core as much as he could. Then, he solidified mana pulled from his core as quickly as he could and stowed the resulting batteries in his inventory.
He quickly realized though that the second battery was slower than the first and the third much slower than that. The aether around him was still slow for whatever reason. Since the mana wasn't coming to him, Felix flew into the air and flew in a spiral outwards from the castle so he could collect as much mana as possible.
As he flew into the air, he noticed the aether was more responsive and less sluggish the higher he got. It was also almost imperceptibly more sluggish on the outskirts of town and to the south, though it was so slight he wasn't sure if he was imagining it to confirm his own theory.
Given the aether was more responsive up high, close to Ky'bel, he theorized it had something to do with how recently and how often the aether had been used. While his ruminations didn't affect his mana collection in any way, it was a suitable pass time that surprisingly resulted in another profession level.
Ding You have gained a level in [D - Arcane] Mana Engineer (216 => 217)
To be certain he had enough mana, Felix didn't stop until he had created 251 batteries. He was going to stop at 250 but decided he would make one more just to be safe. Felix flew straight back to the castle and walked down to the basement. He thought about getting rid of his mana collection spells that were currently keeping the castle as a low aether area but decided against it.
He wasn't entirely sure it would make a difference, but he figured the lower the aether was, the lower the chance it might interfere in some way with his portals. Not that he had ever seen or heard of it happening, he just didn't exactly know how sensitive portal spells were. In the end, he figured he was better off leaving it the way it was while he had been experimenting.
Felix didn't know how much time he'd have left so he skipped his morning routine and got to work right away. The first thing he had to do was find a suitable vault he could destroy. While in theory any vault would do, Felix and Grim were pretty sure at least some of the vaults were located deep within some planets.
If there were people living on the surface of those planets, Felix's portal into the core of a star would almost certainly kill them if it didn't immediately collapse. He had no intention of risking an accidental mass genocide so they combed through the vaults to find one they were certain would have minimal side effects.
Looking through Erolan's notes, Grim had found the best candidate for the first portal, a barren planet Erolan had planned on using as a plan B escape route. The conditions on the planet itself were harsh and unlivable meaning it was unlikely anyone would find him there. What made this the best choice in Grim's opinion was that there was no life on the planet or any sign of life nearby. This meant it was unlikely that a city had sprung up or a god had claimed it.
Felix also didn't want to try his experiment on the surface of the barren planet they were going to use. He was pretty sure he couldn't breathe on the planet and he was worried there might be something like solar radiation that might interfere with the portals. He had no idea if that was even possible but he had no intention of risking it.
Looking through the vaults Erolan had kept to himself below the castle, Felix found the perfect candidate. The vault was supposedly located inside of a massive asteroid and Erolan had kept it just in case he had needed to store something particularly dangerous. Felix was initially worried that the asteroid might not exist anymore but theoretically, if that were the case, the anchor located within the asteroid would also be destroyed. He wasn't exactly sure what would happen but he was pretty sure opening a portal that pointed at an anchor that didn't exist probably wouldn't be too dangerous, he hoped.
The first step of his plan, Felix set up the entrance to the vault he had chosen in the center of the basement. It already had a battery built into the key so all Felix had to do was activate it. Once it was active though, it required mana to sustain itself while it was open and Erolan had achieved this with ley lines. Throughout the entire city, he had set up channels of mana that fed the vaults scattered about. Apparently portals using anchors were so cheap, that all the ley lines really did was collect up the aether and direct it. Erolan didn't have any kind of mana engine or massive battery.
Felix placed the key to the vault in the middle of the room and set up two batteries to supply it with mana once it was open. In theory one would be far more than enough but he also didn't want to get stuck in there so he added a second for redundancy. Also, now that he had access to it, he used the coordinate measuring spell to find the absolute coordinates of the room around him.
As soon as the spell displayed the coordinates in front of him, Felix could have sworn the symbols seemed vaguely familiar. He hadn't seen these symbols specifically before, but he had seen something very similar. He didn't worry about it too much because he would likely start recognizing them in the future, if he saw them again. Felix memorized the symbols so that he could open a portal back here if he accidentally got himself stuck in the vault or somewhere else.
Felix activated the vault key and a two meter wide portal appeared before him shortly followed by a rapid gust of wind and the air around him suddenly dropping in temperature. Peering through, Felix saw what appeared to be a large open cave with dull rock in every direction he looked. He was sure it was some boring combination of minerals that asteroids typically consisted of, his only hope was that it was able to provide some amount of minor insulation.
Felix began pouring heat into the asteroid to ensure the vault wasn't fatally cold and used a simple wind spell to cycle the air and keep it even. He only needed it to be workable for a few hours while he finished setting everything up. He didn't need it to be warm, and he would gladly settle for it not being close to absolute zero. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .