The rest of that day was a blur of activity at the manor. For the first time since he gained consciousness, Damon was left on his own, with only some maids as company for the majority of the day.
His mother was in her study, and there was a steady inflow of guests coming to the manor. Damon was well aware that many nobles were attempting to negotiate the services of William.
It was a forgone conclusion that Lucy would be bound to the Marlows, so there was no effort wasted trying to bargain for her.
Though he was not present for these meetings, Damon knew that most powers did not harbor much hope in poaching William – their presence here was for the sake of putting pressure on the second queen and her family. The true maneuver would come through the hands of the first queen.
He was stuck in his room, but he could hear each noble family's attendant announcing their entrance to the manor at the gates, and it was interesting to see the growing crowd.
What was a little surprising to Damon was that in all the fanfare, the Marlow family did not attempt to meet with his mother. He was sure that they would make some sort of move to try to retrieve Lucy to the main house, so perhaps they were waiting for a day when his mother would be less busy.
Ignoring the stream of nobles, he focused instead on his mana threads. Up until now, he was still incapable of creating more than one at a time – trying to do so sapped him dry of mana and gave him a headache. Damon knew that the mental strain was the main issue. as opposed to the mana cost. After-all as he was able to maintain and add to the length of an existing strand to the point where it was twice as long and contained twice as much mana as a single thread but was unable to produce and maintain more than one.
There were limits to this too though. After it grew to a certain length, the thread would become too long for him to control the whole thing, so he spent his days trying to increase the maximum length that he could control.
One he reached his limit, he would weave the mana thread into his mana veins and practice moving it around his veins, following his mana circulation system. In this way, he worked on his control over the mana thread whilst also familiarizing himself with mana circulation.
Doing so tired Damon out quite quickly, and by the early evening he was on the verge of falling asleep when he felt a strange pressure on his body. He couldn't quite explain what it was, but a chill ran up his spine. Out of habit, he activated mana view through True-Sight, but kept his eyelids closed.
A swirl of color came to life and Damon could see the mana of the room without opening his eyes. This habit had saved his life many a time when he was travelling in his previous life – allowing him to catch approaching enemies by surprise.
The first thing Damon noticed was that the mana in the room was lethargic. Unlike the normal dynamic, random, free-flowing movement, the mana was distributed evenly and seemed to be slowly pulsing. Most of the naturally distributed mana had been replaced by dark-attribute mana particles, and beside Damon's cot he could see the source of the discrepancy.
The figure stood silently, and was moving their hands in a slow, methodical manner. Damon could not make out exact details, but as mana veins covered the entire body, he could see how the assailant was moving.
Damon's mind raced.
He had not been assassinated in his previous life, but could it be that William and Lucy's achievements had spurred the first queen to take drastic action?
What was worse was that he could not move.
The controlled mana in the room and their rhythmic pulsing showed that the assailant was a high-level Dark element Mage who was using a field. The dark-attribute mana particles were holding Damon down, and with his pitiful strength he was unable to move, much less resist or fight back.
Even though those of the dark element made for excellent assassins, thieves and rogues, the formation surrounding Damon's room should have alerted his mother even if someone on the level of using a Domain had appeared. How had this individual bypassed it?
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As Damon was wracking his brains trying to think of what to do, the movement of the assailant's hands stopped, and seemingly out of nowhere, a concentrated ball of mana appeared in his hand.
It was and orb with a frightening concentration of mana particles. These mana particles were varied in proportion and type, but somehow, they stuck together in an almost solid formation that Damon could not understand even with his level of mana sensitivity.
There were layers upon layers of particles arranged in a strange geometric structure. In the gaps of these layers, the mana had condensed beyond a thick fog and had formed a liquid state that flowed through the lattice of solid particles.
Some portions formed a solid structure that was made of mana particles, but each mana particle carried the weight of multiple particles. At the same time there was liquid mana that was both more and less dense than parts of the solid mana, and the whole structure very slowly morphed. Some of the liquid dispersed in the less dense solid, whilst some of the solid condensed into the liquid. Simultaneously, some of the liquid condensed into the denser solid whilst the less dense solid dispersed into intermediary free mana particles.
It did not make sense, and trying to decipher the structure gave Damon vertigo. What the hell was this sphere, and how had this assailant even created it?
Slowly, Damon saw the hand approach him with the strange orb in grasp, and he felt the orb being pressed into his chest. It was cool to the touch, and it lay on his chest momentarily.
WHOOOSH!
A surge of concentrated energy flooded his body. He did not even have time to process the feeling before a rippling pain shot through his body as he felt his mana veins rupture due to the sheer force of mana flowing through his body.
The assailant touched his forehead, and he passed out.
_______________________
It found Itself in a void. Well not Itself, and not necessarily a void. It understood that it was wrong to refer to Itself as Itself – that would imply that It was, and something told it that it wasn't quite there yet.
There wasn't really a word for what surrounded It. It could not be called the void because that implied an emptiness. It wasn't really empty, it's just that there was nothing. There was everything and there was nothing, all at once in the same place, but there was no real concept of place.
It just 'was'. But not quite.
It decided to move. And when It moved, the idea of movement made sense.
Because It had gone from one place to another, there was now the concept of place.
Because It was once there and He was now here, there was now a concept of time.
"Ah" He thought to Himself.
"I am."
And He was.
_______________________
Damon woke, and his mind ached with a deep pain. He felt like he had grasped something important, but it slipped away from him as he tried to think it through.
It was the middle of the night, and he could hear William in the bed beside him breathing steadily in sleep.
A lot of things clicked into place as he considered what had just occurred.
More than likely, this incident had been the cause of his ruined mana veins in his earlier life. It wasn't to the extent of this life, but William had stood out after his awaking in the previous life. Perhaps that was what had spurned this action.
He hadn't even been able to identify the assailant, but he was sure that their plan was not to kill him directly, but to ruin his future potential.
More important was the strange orb and its mysterious mana structures. It had been able to interact with his mana-veins!
As far as he knew, it should be impossible for almost anybody to be able to interact with someone else's mana veins. Who was behind that orb, and how had they made it?
The large energy contained in the orb's lattice had dissolved into a surge of pure mana, and the force of this mana had most likely destroyed his mana veins.
Bastards.
His lack of talent was not natural – it had been engineered.
He was despondent and was almost scared to try to move his mana. What was the point of him going back if everything would just be the same?
With more fear than he had ever felt through all his lives. He closed his eyes and tried to move his mana.
He shivered in his cot as a sharp pain filled his body. But his eyes blazed with excitement.
His mana veins were bloated, and there many tears throughout them, but they were intact. As he examined himself, he realised that his mana thread had dissolved.
Most probably, the mana thread had something to do with his mana veins still being intact – whether they had dispersed some of the energy, or whether they had served to help repair the veins, he did not know – but he would definitely set aside time to experiment with them.
In the meantime, he tried to activate True-Sight and examine himself, but he felt his mana veins recoil in pain.
Sighing to himself, he closed his eyes and let himself sink back into sleep.
He did not know the exact effects, but he was sure that with this attack, not only would his mana veins become more robust, but it was also likely that his mana stat had been forcefully increased. Just from the amount of mana in his veins ad the rate at which it was being absorbed into his body, he was sure of this.