CHAPTER 33: THE END

Jenna eventually learned how to manipulate the Magic in her cloud and pulse to make the glow last long enough that she was able to record the shape of the Spell. Of course, knowing what a Spell looked like was only part of the puzzle. She would also need to be able to understand how to read the fundamental language of Spells.

When she repeated the process with the rings, she found that they were both detrimental. After learning how to read a detrimental Enchantment, she began to practice on recording the specific Enchantments. When she had recorded the shape of the Spells, she asked the question on her mind.

“How do I find the Spell that corresponds to a given Enchantment?”

Updating Schedule.

Her schedule had updated. Now her goal was to learn the underlying language of Magic. It was an intensive study.

Jenna found that she was needing to eat far less than she needed to sleep. When she occasionally checked the time, she realized that she was needing far less sleep than seemed reasonable. By the time that she had a basic grasp on First Tier Enchanting vocabulary, she was sleeping for less than an hour every sixty hours.

Unfortunately, it was clear almost immediately that the rings were not Enchanted with First Tier Enchanting terms. Gritting her teeth, Jenna continued her studies.

By the time she had eaten her last day’s ration of food, she had finished the Second Tier of Enchanting vocabulary and modifiers. It was far harder. Each First Tier term could at most connect to two other terms, inheriting one and becoming the inheritance for another. Second Tier terms, by contrast, could inherit from two and be inherited by two.

It made reading the terms far harder. Rather than it being a standard sentence, reading something like “glass is made hard,” a Second Tier Hardened Glass Spell might read something like “silica (modified: crystalline (modified: not) and solid)” instead of glass, and the easiest way to express hard was at least two dozen terms. She was hoping to be able to identify either the rings or the coins with the new terms.

Thankfully, both were identifiable. Just before the hunger grew unmanageable, Jenna was able to confidently state what both the rings and coins did.

Congratulations! You have identified the Enchantments for Minor Rift Rewards. As a result, you are allowed to take them with you. Would you like to exit the rift?

“Yes.” Jenna had been in the rift for far too long. She was excited to be near other people again.

When she exited the rift, the first thing that she noticed was how much less dense the background Magic was in the general Pyramid. If this was standard air, then the rift was equivalent to constantly swimming. Since she’d grown completely used to the Magic density within the rift, it was the opposite. It almost felt like she was within a void of Magic.

Jenna felt like the Magic within her body was trying to leave, falling into an equilibrium with the background levels. Within the rift, that equilibrium was always higher than her own Magical density, so she hadn’t noticed the issues with letting her Magic do so. Now, though, she felt the need to close herself off from the Magic in the room.

The rest of the year passed by quickly. Jenna saw the occasional other student projected to reach their Tenth Year in the Pyramid, but by and large, they were all loners. When the first year ended, they were all forcibly put into a room as they felt themselves shift upwards.

The twelve of them agreed to do a weekly meal with each other. Each tried to hide the fact that they were only eating once a week, but when it came out, it was another way that they all bonded with each other. Jenna learned and mastered three more Spells by the time that the next rift opened.

When the offer to enter the rift came, the dozen students all llooked at each other and nodded. They had discussed entering the rift together, since it would help all of them. Each had a School and focus that would improve the quality of life while staying in the safe room, to say nothing of the benefits they each had in combat.

Jenna had been spending one day each week working with her mace. The Pyramid’s monsters ceased to be even a slight issue for her. When her robe took more damage than it could quickly heal, Jenna realized that her skin had enforced enough to the point that she took no damage. It made her concerned about growing complacent within the rift.

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When the twelve stepped into the first fight, though, she learned that she was still safe. Each floor that they delved had significantly denser Magic, so they pushed as quickly as they could to maximize their gains within the rift. When they cleared the thirtieth floor without stopping, the Pyramid informed them that they had completed the rift. For whatever reason, it hadn’t given them a single puzzle or bonus room.

There were a number of gold coins, which Jenna now knew were able to be absorbed to increase someone’s Magical density equivalent to a day wherever they were. All twelve of them agreed to share their coins, waiting until they were at the end of their time in the rift.

Over the next seven years, their bonds grew. The fact that Jenna had a Nature Mage to talk to when she had her first Growth based Enchantment meant that she was able to learn it far more quickly. When she reached her fifth year, she was not even slightly surprised that the Pyramid required her to make extras of the identification Enchantment for the ones she had given Rita what felt like ages ago.

When they reached the eighth floor, there were few enough climbers left in the Pyramid that they stopped being segregated by expected Tier. Jenna was wondering whether she would see Cora again, since she vaguely remembered that they had all been predicted to reach that floor. After quickly scanning the entire group, however, she shrugged. The time they had spent together, while meaningful at the time, was only a few days in the grand scheme of life.

On the last day of their ninth year, Jenna said goodbye to five of her friends. They had all pushed their hardest, and all of them pulled extra study time to help them learn a Ninth Tier Spell. Ultimately, though, their ability to connect with the concepts weren’t enough. Tears were shed and promises to meet up when everyone left the Pyramid were made.

Jenna had started designing Enchantments at the Pyramid’s suggestion that year. She gave each of the departing members a small pin, showing them how to activate the Enchantment on it. They would all be able to find each other once they were out.

At the end of her Tenth Year in the Pyramid, Jenna stood back as all but one of her friends left. With just the two of them left, the Pyramid ceased the pretense that they did any activities alone. They entered the Eleventh Floor to see a room with a single bed.

Her Eleventh Year in the Pyramid was the most stressful one by orders of magnitude. No one had made an Eleventh Tier Enchantment, so she would need to craft one herself. By even the Eighth Tier of Enchantments, what few Spells that existed tended to be made by Theoretical Mages rather than application focused Mages.

Jenna had grown to appreciate the beauty of a perfected Enchantment over the years she had spent studying the language of Magic. So, when she needed to pick what could only be called a capstone project, she returned to that first Enchantment she had learned. Rather than embedding an Enchantment into a piece of ordinary glass, however, this glass would be made of Hardened Magic itself.

As the floors went higher, time within rifts became more and more dilated. Jenna had learned the underlying Enchantment causing that effect the year before. Layer after layer of Time Slowing went around both of their worktables.

Halfway through the year, she had built the first two thirds of the Enchantment. She was able to make Magic deposit into a solid shape, and she was able to shape deposited Magic into whatever she wanted. Those were relatively simple, as both were Tenth Level Enchantments.

It was binding them together that took all of her efforts. In order to make them one Spell, rather than two, each point where the Spells were closed and looped would need to be intertwined. Jenna was grateful that her partner was a Medicinal Mage, because it meant that she had access to reagents that would help her to visualize the high dimensional spaces that she needed to collapse.

When combining two Spells, each dimension began as orthogonal. She had made the Tenth Tier Spells fairly optimized, so each only needed ten dimensions. Visualizing the projection of twenty dimensions on top of each other was a major struggle.

With three subjective weeks until the end of the year, Jenna managed to combine the two Spells together. It was horribly far optimized, she knew, but she didn’t have time to improve it any more. As it was, she wouldn’t have time to make a single mistake as she cast the Spell if she wanted to finish before the end of the year.

Jenna began casting. It felt wrong to have to build each part of the Spell lattice individually. The training she’d undergone while making A Grade Hardened Glass stuck with her, especially given how much faster it made the process of mastering most Spells. Her goal was not mastery right now, though.

The timer ticked down as she chanted, wove, and forced her Magic to conform to the shape she demanded. With the final seconds she had, Jenna wove the final ends of the Magic together.

In front of her was a single piece of what seemed to be glass. Even as she looked at it through her Magical sight, she was hardly able to see the lines of the Spell. She collapsed from exhaustion.

When Jenna woke up, she was alone.

You are the second student to reach the Twelfth Floor of the Pyramid.

After eleven years of struggle, Jenna had reached her goal. She had reached the same level that the Lord of Flames had made all those years ago. The Pyramid didn’t say that she was finished, however.

Jenna deliberated. If she left now, she would be able to pay off all of her family’s debts in an instant. She knew Spells that would take her moments to cast that were worth orders of magnitude more than the debt that she owed. On the other hand, the thought of a year spent completely alone was agonizing after the years that she had spent growing close to others.

Gritting her teeth, Jenna realized that she only really had one option. She began etching Time Dilation into the floor.