“Alright everyone. It’s active. The channeling will take over two hours so get comfortable. Do not leave the circle for any reason. You could be hurt, or worse!” Gwen shouted as Kelsey activated her skill.

As Kelsey activated Warp, she knew immediately that this was going to be the hardest thing she had ever done with her magic. The dome of purple mana surrounding the platform immediately began to tremble and shake, threatening to collapse in on itself. It was like a water balloon that had only been partially filled.

She quickly tried to stabilize the barrier by spreading the mana to the problem locations, but the moment she did, another section of the bubble would begin to collapse inward. She was doing everything she could just to keep it from tearing itself apart. Thankfully, mana was pouring out of her in a rapid, uninterrupted stream, constantly adding to the pressure she felt from the dome, slowly helping it reach stability.

Kelsey knew that all she needed to do was wait for enough mana to fill the barrier. Once it did, the mana would stabilize the dome by itself.

Several minutes passed as Kelsey desperately worked to keep the dome stable, but, in her haste to reinforce a section near the top, she made a mistake. She lost concentration for a single moment and a small hole was ripped into the side of the dome and mana began rushing out of the opening in a flood, escaping into the surrounding air.

She knew that if she didn't fix the hole soon, it would surely get worse and her whole skill would collapse. She didn’t even want to think about how badly the blowback of a skill failure this large would hurt.

Patching the hole in the dome became her first priority and she redirected her attention towards making the dome whole again. As she did this, the dome's stability waned and began to shake violently. She was splitting her focus to the best of her ability, but it was like playing whack-a-mole. As she tried to stabilize the dome, the hole would let mana pour out. As she tried to repair the hole, the dome would shake and begin to collapse.

She was making very little progress. Nearly all of her regeneration was spent replacing mana that was leaking out from the gaping hole in the barrier. She was getting frustrated, but she gritted her teeth and kept working.

Closing the hole required mentally manipulating the halves of the barrier closer together. Once two pieces touched, she could force them to fuse, creating one solid section of barrier. She needed to do this process incredibly slowly as drawing the two halves in too fast would case rips in other locations on the dome.

Twenty minutes later, she got her first small victory. She had closed the hole enough that the barrier was filling at a somewhat reasonable rate. Kelsey didn’t have exact numbers, but she thought that at least fifteen percent of the mana she regenerated every second was now being held inside the dome.

It wasn’t much, and it would mean that channeling this Warp would take most of a day, but it was a start.

She continued doing everything in her power to close the hole while maintaining the structural integrity of the dome for another half hour, until, finally, the hole was closed.

It had been over an hour of channeling and her best guess was that she was only ten to twelve percent of the way through the total mana needed.

She was already exhausted, her mind was strained from struggling against those two problems for such an extended time, and she still had another two hours of channeling to go. It was as if she had just wasted an entire hour, which she supposed she had in a way.

Stopping the dome from shaking was now becoming much easier as more mana had entered the dome. She thought that within the next hour, the dome would be able to maintain its own integrity without her intervention. Once that happened, this entire process would become automatic, and she could focus solely on channeling.

Unfortunately, her mental exhaustion struck again. About half an hour after fixing the hole, someone in the crowd near her tripped and fell down onto some boxes. She had been good at blocking out the things happening around her, but this distracted her for a precious few moments too long and the dome tore once again.

Not this shit again…

This time it was not a small hole, but a giant gash in the side of the barrier. Seeing the new tear, Kelsey almost gave up, her spirit nearly failing, but she felt Gwen’s hand tighten on her shoulder and that helped her muster up the willpower to continue. She knew that if she failed now, they would be forced to stay in Saldeya another day or two for Kelsey to recover. Gwen had been doing a decent job at hiding it, but staying in Saldeya, even as long as they had was wearing on her. Kelsey could tell she wanted nothing more than to be rid of this sandy wasteland forever.

Kelsey dove into the problem once again, switching between maintaining the dome and fixing the hole. The dome was rapidly losing mana, which meant that every moment that hole existed was a moment that her job got more difficult. Every single point of mana that leaked from the wound meant that the barrier became that much less stable. With a gash as large as this one, and a dwindling mana pool meant that she now had a ticking clock.

For an entire hour Kelsey wrestled with the gash in the barrier while ensuring that the dome didn’t collapse, her mind was at its breaking point and she was nearly back to square one with the dome itself, most of the mana having leaked away from the hole. She knew that if all of the mana vacated the dome, it would collapse, and she would suffer blowback from her skill shattering. She didn't know what that kind of blowback would do, but it would almost definitely knock her unconscious for at least a few hours.

She had also made almost no progress with the hole itself; the dome was still losing more mana than she was regenerating, albeit less than before. She had maybe thirty seconds before the dome would fail completely.

With very few options left, Kelsey's heart began to race in a panic. She wanted this to work... needed this to work.

Closing her eyes and focusing entirely on her domain, Kelsey reached out with both of her hands and split her focus as best she could. Instead of fixing the hole for a few moments, and switching to stabilize the barrier, she attempted to do the impossible: fixing both issues at the same time.

She did this by assigning jobs to each of hands. The left hand was focused on the gaping wound in the side of the dome, and the right was focused on stabilizing the barrier.

Kelsey knew that trying this was incredibly risky. People were not able to split their focus between independent tasks unless one of them was something a person could do subconsciously, like driving a car. Neither of her current tasks were anything close to subconscious, but she had to try.

If she failed, the skill would shatter and she would be knocked unconscious, potentially worse. There wasn't exactly a lot of information on what happened to a person who failed a skill that required hundreds of millions of mana. For all she knew, it would kill her.

As she tried, she felt the part of her brain that was maintain the dome's integrity mess up, causing another small gash to appear in the side of the dome.

Seconds later, she made a mistake while trying to fix the hole, undoing much of the progress she had already made.

Feeling angry and frustrated at herself, Kelsey grit her teeth and focused even harder, putting every shred of willpower and determination she possessed towards her task.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough, and another hole was ripped in the side of the dome. Based on her estimation, she had ten seconds before the skill would fail.

Kelsey was seconds from giving up and letting the dome dissipate, accepting the pain that would come with that decision. Canceling the skill herself would be painful, but at least it would be preferable to the skill failing on its own.

Just as her willpower was failing and she had almost given up, she heard a ding in her mind and something… changed.

Suddenly, it was like she had several people helping her. She had been focusing on both parts of the process, but all of the sudden it was as if the dome's structure was being maintained by itself. She could tell it was her mana that was doing the work, but it wasn’t ‘her’ that was working.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Too exhausted and busy to check the notifications in order to figure out what happened, she simply focused on completing the task, switching her full attention towards repairing the various holes.

She was now able to focus entirely fixing the hole as her unseen partner worked on the dome’s integrity. A few minutes later, the dome was repaired, and she was left with nothing to do. The dome was being maintained by her mana, and her mind was finally free to rest for a few precious seconds.

Quickly checking the dome to make sure that it was indeed being maintained successfully, she opened her notifications.

*ding* You have learned the general skill Parallel Thinking - lvl 1

Allows the user to split their mind into separate streams of consciousness.

Levels in Parallel Thinking will increase the number of separate consciousnesses available.

*ding* Parallel Thinking has reached lvl 1 -> 2

As she read the notification, her Senses of the Magus skill spiked violently in a positive way. Like it was telling her that this was something important. She had never felt her Senses of the Magus react for anything that wasn't an attack before, so the feeling was certainly new.

What? That’s something that's possible? My Senses of the Magus skill practically screamed at me. Based on the fact that my mana is seemingly controlling itself right now, I can see why...

After reading the skill and considering a few possible uses, Kelsey refocused her efforts on the dome, making sure that no more tears or holes would be created. As much as she wanted to dive into her new general skill, she was still more concerned with the Warp completing correctly.

Thankfully, it was much easier now. She was simply on cleanup duty, focusing on spots and areas of the dome that were under the most strain.

Working with her Parallel Thoughts skill was like working with someone who knew your every intention and desire. The parallel mind never got in Kelsey's way, and she never got in its. They worked in perfect harmony the entire time.

Compared to when she started, it felt much more like a normal warp she would use when traveling by herself or with Gwen.

Now that she had some more freedom, she looked up at Gwen and motioned for her to lean in for a whisper.

“I just unlocked a skill called Parallel Thinking, do you know anything about it?” Kelsey asked quietly.

Gwen shook her head. “Never heard of it. What does it do?” she asked.

Kelsey was about to explain what the new skill did, but her Senses of the Magus skill spiked in warning so she thought better of it.

“I’ll tell you about it when we find a private place to talk, I have a feeling this is one of those things I should be careful with talking about too freely.” Kelsey answered in a whisper.

Gwen nodded her head in understanding and stood back up.

The next two hours of Kelsey’s life were relatively relaxed as she let the other parts of her mind deal with the work of managing the dome’s stability. Her brand new Parallel Thinking skill also leveled up a few more times during the process and she spent some of her time experimenting with it.

At first It was difficult to tell specifically what the skill did, but over time she learned. It seemed like each level simply added another stream of consciousness. As her skill leveled to three, she was suddenly inundated with the experiences that one of the other minds had been dealing with since acquiring the skill. It was as if she had done the managing of the bubble herself and had all the memories from doing as such. Thankfully, it didn’t exhaust her in the same way as it would have had she actually been the one to do it, but she now had a little bit more information on how the skill worked. It was also nice, because her other mind had learned some nice tricks for maintaining structural integrity for the warp bubble, tricks that she now knew too.

Another thing she noticed was that she now felt like she had a part of her brain that was free and unused. By her estimation for how the skill worked, she guessed that she had an additional three streams of consciousness now that the skill was level three. Deciding to do some testing, she focused on the free part of her consciousness to briefly replace one of the ones that was working on the dome’s integrity.

It worked and she was flooded with new information from managing the dome. It was an extremely odd feeling, suddenly having memories of something she hadn’t actually experienced.

She repeated the process with the third part of her mind and received its experiences as well. She knew from their experiences that the other parts of her mind were also exhausted, so now that she had an extra one, she continued focusing on fixing hotspots, and rotated the extra parts of her mind in and out, letting them rest in a rotation. She had two parts of her mind solely focused on the skill, one resting, and her primary consciousness that was casually watching for problems with the dome’s inegrity.

This process continued as her skill leveled to four, and then to five.

Once her skill reached level four, she was able to sit back, and fully relax while her new skill took care of the entire problem of managing the Warp, cycling themselves out as they got exhausted.

When the Parallel Thinking skill reached level five, she reactivated her domain and set one of her consciousnesses to manage watching the domain. She would occasionally get updates from the consciousness and she would be flooded with new information about what was happening around her. Since it was seemingly a copy of her mind that was updating her with the information, she also knew exactly what stuff was important, and what could be ignored.

I finally found a way to learn more from my domain. Maybe this is why my Senses of the Magus skill spiked so hard when I read the skill description…

Deciding to put off the rest of her testing for when she actually arrived in the Mageblood forest, Kelsey sat back up and prepared for the pain that was inevitably going to arrive once the skill activated fully. She had been channeling now for over three hours, and had at least another twenty to thirty minutes to go before the skill would be finished.

She was already starting to get a headache, and considering that the skill hadn’t even activated yet, that was a very bad sign. Thankfully, the dome was now maintaining its entire integrity itself, which meant that she had three parts of her consciousness that were just sitting idle, relaxing with her. She made sure that one was still casually watching the dome, ensuring there were no unexpected issues, and one watching her domain for any signs of danger; not that she expected any.

Now that she was able to, Kelsey stood up and stretched her legs. She had been sitting for several hours, completely locked in on her objective.

Standing up on a nearby box, Kelsey looked over the heads of The Librarians. “Hey everyone! I’m sorry that it has been taking so long, I had a small problem, but it's now resolved and stable! We have about twenty minutes until the teleport will activate, please hang in there a little longer!” she shouted across the platform.

An unknown voice in the crowd spoke up. “Hey, lady, I’m sorry I don’t know your name, but we know! Most of us saw it all go down. We thought we were finished when that giant tear got ripped in the side! But hey, you did it!” the unknown man shouted.

As he did, the rest of the guild members nodded their heads in confirmation and murmured in agreement.

Kelsey’s face flushed with embarrassment. She didn’t know that people had been watching her intense struggle against her own skill. “Thanks everyone! Like I said, twenty minutes or so!” she said before stepping off the box and walking over to Gwen.

Gwen was grinning at Kelsey’s embarrassment, but she still tried to reassure her. “I think they’re more impressed than anything. Our old spatial mage would only take a few people at a time. He went on and on about how hard teleportation could be as the mana use went up. They likely respect you now more than ever.” Gwen said as she patted Kelsey on the back.

Kelsey smiled softly. “I hope you're right. It isn’t every day you see someone struggle to use their own skill.” she said, chuckling softly.

Gwen’s eyes were filled with mirth. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s as rare as you think it is. Remember, most people don’t have the advantages you’ve had since level one. It takes most people a ton of practice to do even somewhat complex things with their skills. Much less teleport this many people at once.”

Nodding slowly, Kelsey realized that she was being foolish. Of course people struggled with their skills. She was in the process of using an astronomical amount of mana, it would be crazy if she hadn’t struggled at least somewhat with it. “You’re right. Can’t always be perfect. Have to practice to get better.” Kelsey said confidently.

“Alright, I’m going to sit back down and prepare for the Warp to activate. I have a feeling it's going to be rough. I may need your help getting into my bed depending on how bad it is.” Kelsey said as she sat down.

Gwen nodded. “Not a problem. I’ll take care of everything once we arrive.” she said, placing her hand comfortingly back on Kelsey’s shoulder.

Kelsey felt much better after standing up and walking around for a bit, but now it was time to buckle down and focus on the skill’s completion. She could feel it was getting close, and when it activated, she would have one more job.

So, she waited. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, and finally twenty six minutes after she sat down, she felt it.

Her Warp skill activated, the mana in the dome collapsing and channeled through her in one giant wave. She put every single one of her split minds on the singular task of maintaining the warp’s integrity as it shrunk everyone and everything inside into a singular point. This process took only moments, but as it was happening, Kelsey felt her control slip briefly before being forcefully reestablished by a different part of her mind.

It worked. A few moments later, Kelsey could hear birds chirping and the sound of running water.

Then, the pain came. Like a tidal wave of lava crashing into her mind, Kelsey’s head burst into searing pain and she collapsed onto the ground, the dark blanket of unconsciousness taking her instantly.