10. Caravan Palace - Lay Down

The two other adults left to search out the town. The main street wouldn’t provide much in the way of what we actually needed; an unattached car battery and an unbroken vehicle to put it in weren’t likely finds on the thoroughfare. A hardware store or a repair shop would both be hidden further back into the range, next to the more residential parts of Evergreen. But Marie and Moore might be able to find a proper first-aid kit, or an unbloodied set of clothes, or even something as simple as a proper place to spend the approaching night. Any of those were pretty high on my personal list of wants. Instead, I was confined to a dining chair and already feeling a bit dizzy from anemia.

I’d give a lot just to get back to my bed.

Jake came up to me with a set of cloth dressings, then started to replace my bandage silently. The little idiot probably went to find something besides dishrags earlier and must’ve lucked out while I was busy magically imploding. He kept looking up at me curiously a couple of times as though he wasn’t sure what to say. It was understandable – what are you supposed to talk about to someone who’s not going to be able to answer?

“Stephen says you’re an idiot and you’re gonna get yourself killed.”

I let out a windy chuckle at that. I caught when he said that the first time, yes. Well, the least I could do was be a good listener.

"It’s not funny!” The kid was probably younger than he looked. His pout was what sold it – teens tried anything and everything to look older, and he wasn’t quite at that step yet. All the more impressive when he efficiently swapped out the already bloody rags and cleaned the wound properly once more. It took two large pads to cover the strip torn into me, and I couldn’t be more thankful as I crossed out ‘seek medical attention’ from my personal wishlist.

“…Have you seen someone else die yet?” The sudden question swept the small humor out of me.

Oh… No. I haven’t. I knew there were some experiences that would never leave you, though. I pat him on the shoulder, unsure of how else I could convey that I really wish he never had to deal with that. Words would never do the thought justice anyway. It wasn’t a feeling that could be deconstructed into a simple apology.

“It’s not a good thing, like people said it was back before. I really don’t want Stephen to die. O-or Ms. Corinth, or Sarah. Not even Mr. Moore, even if he’s mean sometimes. I got a class, helping them, and… I don’t want you to die either. So… Get better soon, please.”

The words were a strange mix of a demand and a heartfelt wish, in that way only a kid could do.

I’ll do my damndest. That probably starts with fixing up my core. If I could manage it. The small trickle of mana I’d been feeding it seemed to drain out faster than I could pull it back in. Anything larger than the small blue-white string of mana put a lot of stress on it. Putting myself back together would probably hurt just as much as breaking myself in the first place. I looked around, trying to figure out if I had the leeway to shut my eyes for a bit. The drowsiness had already been shut out a while ago, replaced with a need to focus on consolidating all of the craziness I’d somehow lived through.

Stephen was stoically leaning on a railing, making no reaction to his brother’s speech while looking down into the small creek that flanked the building. The light crackling from the final embers of the bar cooling down were steadily being drowned out by the flowing water. The long patio spanned the length of the bar and spilled out into the surrounding pathways, leaving us a healthy distance from the fire and in a somewhat secluded nook, behind another one of the buildings further down the row. The afternoon was already starting to encroach onto the mountains, casting some shade from the tallest peaks as it dipped further into the horizon. The discarded bottle of Everclear had been set up against a few conspicuously placed bottles of hard liquor. Looked like someone had tried to save the bar with an armful of the stuff. I wondered why anyone would want to go on a bender in this kind of scenario (not a hard question, that), then I saw Sarah pack a rag into the neck of one, humming away at a discordant tune. Huh. Casual Molotov. She was still kicking her feet in time with an off-key pop song. This girl’s on fire? …Why are all these people scary in their own way.

When did she even grab the alcohol in the first place? It didn’t feel like anyone had the time to go around collecting resources while I fought with the --… I didn’t exactly fight it, did I? ‘Engaged in a session of mutually assured destruction’ was more accurate, given the state of my core and the damaged ‘fiery core’ I had in my pocket. Maybe the mental bout took longer than it had felt. The dim red core buzzed every so often when it rubbed against the battery that had found a home there too. Having one potential bomb in my pocket was fine, but two was starting to push it.

But things looked safe enough, besides. I closed my eyes and focused.

‘Shattered’ was an apt description. Fragments of the glass-like bead floated around a not-quite-real space below my stomach. Jagged cracks spanned the whole thing, some being hairline fractures while others were clearly the holes left behind by the cloud of chips and flakes spreading out into the space. I touched one with a thread of external mana, hoping to nudge it back into place. Only to find that it wouldn't interact at all. It took a few moments of trying before the external mana escaped my grasp, still without any progress.

I had the smallest bit of mana within the broken core to use, the product of feeding it what little mana I could. I still wasn’t clear on what the difference was between the mana outside of my core and this special, personal resource. But it was clearly able to do things that regular ambient mana couldn't, just because it was ‘mine’.

I twisted a string to flow out of the core, just to find that the barrier between ‘in' and ‘out' wasn’t allowing the mana through. It was simultaneously leaky and blocked? How did that make sense? I lead the string around, poking at the edges of the core, trying to find an exit. Eventually, I found a hole – or maybe it was more accurate to say it had found me. The mana had slipped into it, and finally obeying my will, it had been sucked through like a vacuum. The hole was in an undamaged chunk of the core. It seemed that usually the core was permeable, with dozens or even hundreds of these holes facilitating mana entering and leaving the core. But the extensive damage had clogged the system.

It felt far more intricate than something that could've been made by stuffing a bunch of mana into a hole in my chest. Did the System make it for me? Or had it always been there? The little design I could make out felt way more biological and natural than intelligent.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Some of the mana that I'd taken out had literally slipped through the cracks, dispersing into the air while the string became even tinier in the process. The mechanism after it had gone through the hole was obscured, the mana moving lightning fast through an intricate set of chambers before dropping out into the real world as a blue-white sliver of the stuff. I’d take what I could get though. It wasn’t like it would be the end of the world if I could never use magic again – I’d gone the longest time without, after all – but I was 90% sure I’d be far more dead by day 365 without it.

I maneuvered the magic into one of the largest shards that had broken off, gingerly wrapping it around the crystalline fragment and dragging it back to the core. I was right – the ‘personal' mana was made of different stuff. It could physically work against the shards in a way that ambient mana couldn't.

I eagerly slotted the shard into its place, the big puzzle piece only having one place to put it. I wasn’t all that surprised when nothing happened, though I'd hoped the core would have a self-healing feature. I'd give a few ideas a try when everything was in place. I started multi-tasking, pulling more mana into the core where it would allow me, and taking some of the processed mana to add to my steadily dwindling string.

“Hey Stephen, could you give me a hand with my skill?” Sarah piped up and broke my concentration, causing one of the strings I had made to completely disperse into the aether. I’d grumble if I could.

“Hm? What's up?” Stephen turned around to face her, still casually leaning on the rail.

Hey be considerate here, I'm trying to perform surgery.

“My crafting skill is being weird. It hasn't leveled up at all since I first got it, even though I've been making stuff all the time.” She spread her hands out to the several molotov cocktails arrayed on the patio table.

I don't think anything that simple counts as crafting, miss. I shook aside the stray thought and created another string to use.

“What's the skill called? The names usually hint at how you're supposed to use them.”

“It’s [Improvisation]. The skill description says it's supposed to be a ‘crafting skill for mundane materials.’ So that's what I've been doing, but it hasn't budged at all.”

“Yeah, but you aren't using most of the stuff you're making. You just hand a pipe bomb to Moore and he kills things for you.”

“It was just a bunch of cleaning supplies packed into a tube; I didn’t know it would blow up like that. My skill said the bleach might be a good poison when you mix it or something.”

Is she talking about chlorine gas? Who in their right mind--

“…I’m just saying maybe you need to be the one to use it? Skills aren’t really my thing. I could tell you about attributes if you want. I’ve put one point into each stat already. But I haven't really been trying to level any skills… Oh, but Jake's done that a lot."

The boy jumped at being mentioned, and stuttered a bit before he could get his thoughts in order.

“Ah? W-well… you just need to… The skills tell you how to do stuff, but... it's only stuff you've heard before, I think? You need to do things the skill never tells you about for it to level up. I-if it’s right, I mean. It'll level up if you try something and it works.”

“Wha? But how am I supposed to make something I've never learned how to make…”

“Sounds like you need to find a few books.”

“Reading!? Shock… Where do I even find books on traps and explosives?” She melted into her chair, laying her hands on top of her head.

“Oh! I know that one!” The two older teens looked back at Jake, who had his hand raised proudly. “The Improvised Munitions Handbook!”

All of us felt a fresh kind of horror.

“…What?” He shrunk back a little.

“Where the hell did you learn that.”

“Uh… it was on a TikTok.”

“…Maybe an apocalypse was for the best.”

Sarah got up and slapped Stephen on the arm. “Quit joking around. That was very helpful, thank you Jake. I'm not sure it'll be in the library but I'll check first thing when we get back. I'm sure a librarian will help me find it.”

Stephen snorted. “Fat chance.”

Hey man, don't doubt librarians, they face a decade of higher education just to help old ladies find cooking magazines. If this was a bet my money would be on them. They're a determined bunch.

I’d lost concentration a dozen times over. But I still listened to their idle chatter while I pieced together my core. It was slow going anyway – even after getting the shards back into place my capacity never went up, so progress didn't accelerate even as the core was starting to come together. Trying to cram any extra mana in there sent a shuddering spike through my body in a very clear ‘stop that’. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

I was getting better at splitting my concentration though. At first all I could maintain was one string, then I started to experiment with two, lassoing the ephemeral cloud of flakes into a tighter net around the core. Eventually I’d gotten coordinated enough with them that the System decided I was due for a reward.

[Shape Mana (G) Lv. 3] => [Shape Mana (G) Lv. 4]

My thoughts turned to how the skill increases worked. Did the skill increase because I’d gotten familiar with controlling two strings of mana, or did it increase because I’d been training fine control for the past hour? Likely it was both. There probably wasn’t a set milestone involved, the skill's level just represented an overall progress to some lofty peak. I had to wonder what would happen if two people specialized in controlling their mana a different way, one through sheer quantity and force, and the other through fine control and finesse. At some point, they would probably have the same skills at the same levels, but their styles might make them vastly different.

At that point, what did the skills even do? I could feel that my control had instantly solidified just the tiniest bit more, maintaining two strings becoming just that much easier, but it wasn't that far off of what I'd accomplished on my own.

Oh. Maybe that was it. It's the floor. My control would never get worse than this, which used to be my best. That would be interesting, if that were true. Did that mean that someone with a marksman skill would never be less accurate than their best shot, the moment they got the skill for it? And there was always room to improve…

Reaching the limits, then breaking past them with another skill level behind you. For some reason, that appealed to me a lot.

The smallest shard finally clinked into place; the shimmering orb of my core whole once more. No fanfare or lightshow this time either, the whole thing sat inert. The process ‘only’ took me a few hours, compared to the moments it took to break it. I just had to spark it back to life, somehow.

Very, very slowly, I unwound my mana out of the core, spooling it into a net that I began to fit around the fractured sphere. I fit the sparkling light into each hairline crack I came across, binding the edges together like a supernatural glue.

Simultaneously, I grabbed at the ambient mana, flexing my Dull Magic skill to extend it as far out as I could, as powerfully as I could.

I focused on my limits while shaping the sphere. Extend farther. Drain away more magic. This wasn't combat, so I took it slow. Eventually the sphere got to an unsustainable radius, constantly radiating away mana from the barrier as more was being tossed out just as quickly as it was being replaced.

This jumpstarted my core the first time. I didn’t know how my new [Concentrate Magic] skill would affect it, but I’d certainly find out.

I flipped a switch. Broadcasting myself outwards I snatched at the mana bearing down on my skill, then yanked it inwards.

The pull was way stronger than the first time around. I’d accelerated it to a dangerous speed. Instead of a gentle ripple constructively interfering like the first time, this was more like one tidal wave colliding with another.

[Dull Magic (G) Lv. 2] => [Dull Magic (G) Lv. 4]

[Concentrate Magic (G) Lv. 3] => [Concentrate Magic (G) Lv. 4]

Well, I'm sure it'll be fi-

The small bead of light imploded.

Shit.

Y’know, maybe I was an idiot.