The room that had been set aside for the operation was a small annex fairly close to the entrance of the facility. Jack had halfway expected that he would end up having to do it in the same room that his testing had been done. When he joked about this to Dr. Trovihnm the good doctor responded. “Oh, well we would have done it in that room to help with security, but with the machines that we had to bring in for this it was decided that it would be better to simply do it out here.”
There was a brief tremor in Jack’s eyes as he considered if he had actually had to do the procedure in that room. With the back-to-back terrible experiences that he’d had there, he was pretty sure that trying to do so would have put him into a terrible mental state. “I have to say I’m not sorry to hear that. Now looking at all of this stuff why don’t you get whatever you need set up so you can monitor what exactly I do.”
With that Jack looked over at the unconscious form of Dilacy and put the thoughts out of his mind. Right now, he couldn’t afford to be distracted.
With his reminder of getting set up the various doctors and nurses quickly sprang into action. It was only a couple minutes later and numerous wires and array sigils were hooked up all over her body.
As they were setting up all of the monitoring equipment Dr. Trovihn asked “So can you walk us through just what we will be looking for and what you will be doing?”
“Sure.” Jack replied “The first thing that I will be doing is pulling out the mana in her body that has been converted over into the system’s. This is fairly safe for me both because I am able to process the system’s mana as well as with how low my aptitudes are. What I draw in is only a tiny amount at a time. This situation is the first time that I have actually seen one of my detriments actually be useful.” Jack purposely ignored all of the illicit uses of his aptitudes that he had discovered over the years.
Dr. Trovhin pondered about if the speed would have an effect on the outcome as he asked, “Does that mean that when we are attempting to replicate this, we will need to be pulling in at the same rate that you do?”
Jack thought about it and shrugged, “I would guess it would depend on just how mana depleted the patient is. The more mana that you have pulled out of them the slower you should go as you need to be extraordinarily careful not to snuff out their life. Plus, there is the amount of energy itself to be considered. I know in my case, if we didn’t have Dilacy here in her current state I would be unable to contain it.”
Dr. Trovihn remarked, “That actually brings up a whole other question. The mana of the system, do you have any thoughts on how we can deal with it? We don’t want to have any accidents where one of the people doing the operation falls under the parasite’s sway.”
“Does the mana itself corrupt things? I was under the impression that it was just the material fragments or whatever they are that would be the cause of the parasitism.” Jack asked confused.
“As far as our records go that’s correct. However, we had nothing on the fact that it was fully aware. Just the fact that it would incorporate other living entities into itself like some kind of gestalt mind. The possibility of it being aware makes us even more wary about coming into contact with it as the worry is there that just like with a person’s mana it can influence people’s minds and perceptions." One of the other doctors cut in.
Jack just shrugged in response, “I mean it probably would, but then you should be able to treat it the same way you normally would a person’s mana then. My assumption would be that you could dump it into a natural array or something like that. Any place where the natural mana would disperse the remnants. Provided you aren’t trying to absorb it yourself you should be fine.”
“Right. Anyways so we draw out the system’s mana, then what?” A third doctor chimed in at this point in an attempt to steer things back on track.
“Oh, right! Well, when the mana starts to get really low you need to keep your eyes out, or I guess whatever sense the monitor’s use. I hadn’t thought about it before, but when doing all this with Charise our communication about what we were sensing was jumbled because we both interpret things differently.” Jack realized at this point he was drifting again and corrected himself, “Sorry got distracted for a moment. As the mana gets to its lowest amount you will be trying to find the part that is different.”
The same doctor asked for clarification, “Different how?”
Jack rubbed his chin as he thought about it, “I suppose that depends on the individual. With Charise, it was like looking at two different colors. The light blue that is the system to me and then Charise who was a violet color. Now do note this is what I was referring to when I mentioned the miniscule sample earlier for the machine to copy. I don’t know if it will be exactly the same but before, the amount of mana left was so little that the slightest error would have snuffed out Charise’s life.”
Jack saw a couple of the observers jotting down notes and nodded before continuing “Here is where you need to copy the person’s mana signature. In their current state any mana being brought in will be converted into the same as the system’s otherwise. So essentially you need to take on the job of purifying the mana for them. In addition, while you are supplying the purified mana you need to continue monitoring and drawing out mana that has converted over to that of the system.”
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His hands trembled as he noticed he had everyone’s undivided attention, “Now when I was doing this with Charise, her own spark of magic was growing faster then the system converted it, especially once I kept removing any mana that it did manage to convert. Eventually it seemed unable to convert her mana anymore. I am unsure of if this has to do with something about the nature of my own mana or just the fact that once her own mana signature hit a certain density it also took on an anti-system trait. It could be either.”
Dr. Trovihn nodded thoughtfully, “That seems like something that we will be able to establish with one or two tests of this nature. Is there anything else that you did?”
“Yeah, but that can wait until after the stuff I just talked about is done. What we did after took place after Charise was actually awake. Okay if there is nothing else, I am going to get started now. Please pay attention as I will not have the energy to answer any questions while I am doing this.” Jack confirmed.
With that Jack closed his eyes and placed his hands onto Dilacy shaking only slightly under the immense mental pressure he felt.
As soon as his eyes were closed his mind leapt into seeing the world of as his mind interpreted it. His small white glow was standing there surrounded by a host of other colors. Some wonderful and others… not so much. Laying there in front of him was a small almost guttered out bit of mana. All that was left within Dilacy’s body.
Taking a deep breath Jack slowly extended small tendrils of his mana from within toward her form. As they sank in, he could clearly see the blue glow of the system. Without a pause he reached for the nearest bits of the mana and began to suck it back into his own body to be purified.
Bit by bit, Jack pulled the mana from her body. Being exceedingly careful that only take the mana that had been changed into that of the system. He was so focused on what he was doing that his sense of anything else around him completely disappeared.
Eventually, just like the last time, as he reached the last dregs of mana left in the body, he saw it. There was a tiny fragment of mana that was a deep forest green. He stared at it intently trying to imprint the color and feel of it as best as he could and began to create a shell around his mana signature to match.
As he built the covering, he could feel his body strain under the oversaturation of mana. He hadn’t even thought about it and had topped himself up before they had re-entered the dead zone. Taking in the mana from Dilacy’s body now was like trying to squeeze extra air into an already filled balloon.
He realized that if he took too long right now to finish making the shell, he might soon find his body paying the price. On the other hand, if he wasn’t careful and he rushed, then his shell wouldn’t work. He felt a small flash of frustration and immediately suppressed it.
Yes, he was under a great deal of pressure, and yes, he’d made a minor mistake. But a mistake did not mean the end, as long as he was careful, he should be able to deal with it. With that thought he concentrated even harder on doing the best job he could.
The instant that he finished making the shell he immediately set out taking the purified mana from his body and sending it though his construct. As he looked at the mana he shrugged. It was about as close to the forest green as his initial attempt at mimicking Charise’s violet color was to her actual signature. It should work.
Jack sent the mana down the tendrils into Dilacy. The last little spark within her was flickering badly as if were just about to disappear. As the nearly identical mana touched it, it rapidly grew. Along side it of course grew the cancerous presence of the system.
Chanting to himself his age-old mantra of “Absorb, purify, use” Jack pulled the system’s mana from Dilacy and into himself. There he turned it into his own mana, converted it to the green that he found in her body and sent it back. Over and over and over again. This same process repeated so many times that Jack forgot any semblance of existence other than the pattern.
After an eternity there was a change. The blue mana that he would draw into himself was gone. He paused in surprise and searched throughout the body in front of him, looking for even the smallest speck of that mana for him to draw into himself and convert. There was nothing.
Jack let out a deep breath and pulled back, letting go. He opened his eyes to see a crowd of people staring at him and a massive ream of paper that had been created at some point. He opened his mouth to speak only to find it parched.
Swallowing a couple times, he produced just enough moisture to wheeze out. “How did the monitoring go? Did you get enough data to emulate it do you think? Also, I guess we should talk here about what Charise and I did next. I have no idea how important or unimportant it was.”
“We got a lot of good data. We’ll have to see just how well we can copy what you did. I’ll be honest, I can see just why we haven’t succeeded in solving this so far if doing what you just did is needed. It goes against any and all convention and sanity.” Dr. Trovihn replied handing him a glass of water.
Jack gave him a thankful look and took a huge swig before he spoke, “Yeah. I can’t really say that I was fully in my right mind when I came up with the idea. It was a combination of factors and I in my rather terrible state decided to give it a try.”
The doctor decided to not comment on that, instead asking, “You mentioned something about another step after this?”
“Yeah, I did. As I said I’m unsure how important it was but after Charise woke up, I had her purify her mana again to make sure that any mistakes or anything with my facsimile of her mana were removed. After that I copied her mana again this time getting a much better overall picture of it. Then with that even better replica I gave her some of my own mana purified and altered to match hers and had her channel some.” Jack explained not hiding anything.
Charise nodded in agreement, “Yeah. That’s indeed what you had me do. Nothing like waking up to a fucking blood covered madman standing over you telling you do so something completely mutantshit insane so that you wont just be left tied up on the ground.”
Jack paused. “Actually, this might make a good test. So, with Charise here, from what we have seen her mana and the system’s mana now reject each other, so her passages should hopefully eventually clear themselves. Hopefully Dilacy’s mana will do the same thing without having to have me give her another burst of my own. If we wake her up and have her purify what she currently has along with then utilizing some while we monitor her, we can see if her mana also rejects the system.”
The director, who had so far just been observing silently, spoke only four words “And if it doesn’t?”
“Well, we’d have to cross that bridge when we come to it.” Jack shrugged.