The entire group went over to one of the rooms in the house designed for the Journeyman breakthrough.
Even as Zeke mentally prepared himself, he kept spotting Diaga’s near crumpling form as she entered into the center of the warded room with Zyler’s aid. He tried to ignore their hushed conversation, including Zyler’s rampant need to just get Diaga out of there if she felt uncomfortable.
As for her part, Diaga didn’t sound excited or reluctant. It was as if she was battling with her need to stop the pointlessness of this process or hoping against hope that it would succeed. Mikella helped comfort her in the way she could, Clara and Ana bringing themselves along to make her feel better. Clara was doing her best to mention Zeke’s capabilities since she figured she was nervous about Zeke treating her, prompting a genuine giggle from Diaga. It didn’t help when Clara mentioned he can act like a dingus and get hurt himself or he can smell like an ass when he gets too into his studies. Now that was just unwarranted, especially when it got both Diaga and Mikella to laugh out loud.
Cloud and Val helped Zeke in the preparations, with Val attempting to help seal the room way more than usual. The process of breaking through to Journeymen was intense, but what Zeke was about to do was gonna ask for a lot more potent protection.
He’s planning on relying on his attunement, The World, for his plans to fix Diaga up.
On the side, Zeke himself was inscribing several runes with the aid of his new Class Skill Script Improvement. Since this was used for a small area, the skill activated and it made writing out the runes a lot easier than he expected.
He was creating a fortification field around the room’s length where he planned on using his attunement. This way, the field would suck up the ambient mana and use it up to increase its density. That way, no mana would escape from his control, and instead protect the area around them, which was his main concern.
He didn’t want to make another several hundred kilometer hole down to the core of the world again. Especially in such a nice house.
Since the takeover, Zeke had tried to control his attunement to no avail. But once he advanced, he felt he could do perhaps a smidgen of control. Though he has to be careful.
Whenever he thought about his attunement, it felt like a vast ocean of pure power spread beyond the horizon. If he kept going over, that vast power would just swallow him whole. In his current state, he could drag a small string of that power over to his side without losing himself in the process.
Though if he wasn’t careful, he could also bring along the entire ocean with him, making it even worse than usual. With everything in mind, he turned around to face Cloud standing, already finished with his preparations.
He looked over at him with a concerned look. Those striking eyes of his told him everything he needed to say.
He wants Zeke to be careful, but he couldn’t help but also be curious as to how this will turn out. Val, on the other hand, looked on with worry. Zeke was certain she was more worried for Zeke’s state than what might happen to her house or to Diaga, but that’s the reason why she didn’t bother convincing him to stop. She knew he could handle it, and even if he can’t, there are loads of people here that can stop him in time.
Mikella herself would be the one to do that. Even as she stood by completely lax while talking to Diaga, becoming increasingly familiar with her. Zeke could tell from her stance that she can rush in and knock him out if he went too far. He didn’t even had a problem with that as Zeke approached Diaga. He didn’t have any tools, and he only wore casual clothes, but he smiled as though he was ready to deal with a surgical procedure.
“Alright, everything’s ready,” Zeke said, nodding to Mikella and Zyler. “Are you guys up for it?”
“Yeah,” Mikella nodded, then turned to Zyler. “Come on big boy, let’s get out of his way.”
Mikella tried to drag Zyler by pulling on his muscled arm, but he didn’t even budged as he stared at Zeke intensely. Mikella glared back at him, but offered him a moment as Zyler spoke up.
“Zeke… it’s not that I don’t think you’ll try to kill her. But how can you be so sure of this?” Zyler asked. His tone and voice was utterly devoid of his usual mirth. “I saw what happened back then, when you used that power. It didn’t sound like you got a handle on that yet.”
“I know,” Zeke answered. “That’s why I don’t intend to use all of that. If that power was using a thousand points of mana at once, then I’m only planning on using 10 points.”
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“Just… ten points?” Zyler raised a brow. “Would that even be enough?”
“With my attunement? I’m hoping that’s not too much,” Zeke answered honestly. “And if it isn’t, I can just bring more. But that’s all. I promised to you two that Diaga will end up safe no matter what. Though I can’t promise that this won’t change her situation. Unfortunately, I can’t make light promises like that.”
“That is …fine,” Diaga said, nodding. She turned to her older brother and smiled softly. “Brother… let him do this. Everyone is already doing so much work on this… Let’s not waste anymore of their time.”
“I don’t care about wasting anyone’s time, Diaga. I care about you. You had enough shit going on as it is,” Zyler shook his head ruefully, but sounded more defeated as he let out a heavy breath. “But fine. See if I care if you suddenly blow yourself up.”
Zyler said which prompted Mikella to slap his arm. Despite the giant size, Zyler actually winced at her as he hissed. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting her to get so strong to get over his defenses like that.
“Don’t be such a dick and move already,” Mikella pointed to the nearby wall. “Now sit.”
“Damn it, I ain’t no dog…”
Despite that, Zyler did exactly as Mikella said and sat down on the floor, cross-legged and watching intensely. Zeke couldn’t help imagine a giant ass dog sitting on his hindlegs and waiting patiently for his master to be done with the process.
Shaking his head with a smirk, Zeke stared at Diaga who in turn did the same to him. “You ready?”
“Do I…” Diaga squirmed, tugging onto her clothed fabric nervously. “Do I have to take off my clothes?”
“There’s no need,” Zeke smiled awkwardly, rapidly waving his hand. “This is fine. Don’t worry. I just want you to feel as comfortable as you can. Because once we get started, you might… not feel so comfortable later.”
Diaga swallowed whatever she had in her throat. It was quiet, but it was enough to show that she was just as nervous as expected. Yet she inclined her head in consent. Zeke did the same, breathing in slowly and heavily before exhaling out.
His eyes glowed as he flared his Restoration skill at full power. Unlike with the other spells or runes, he poured all of his attention and focus on this spell alone.
It took all of his attention, almost swallowing him whole, but at the same time he never felt more in-tune with his magic. His eyes showed everything Diaga has to show him, and he saw her messed-up channels far closer than ever before.
With everything in place, including the runes and the wards of the room, he slowly, ever so carefully, formed a connection to his attunement. Little by little, strand by strand, he created a small rope and kept making it denser, ensuring that it was strong enough to handle the excess power. He could feel his own mental reserves shaking, but he kept at it. His mana hasn’t dropped a bit yet, but keeping up the skill was taxing to his mind.
Yet he stayed focused. He recalled the time he had his knee blasted open by Zyler, who was so helpfully standing there ready to do it again if he messed up with his sister. There, he made his connection to his attunement.
As always, it was too vast to even comprehend, even in his own little world. He could feel the density behind his attunement, whatever power source it was using too much even at his current stage. But because he grew stronger and became tougher as a result, it was no longer impossible. Just hard.
So he pulled from that attunement. He covered his dense attunement onto his mana, trying to separate the immense power into tiny, almost speck-like chunks into each part of his mana pool. There, he finally made enough preparations as he stared at the lacking life channels.
First, using his Restoration as a link, he conjured barriers that completely surrounded all of her life channels. It was the same as when he tried with Val, except rather than trying to block the energy from within the channels, he was surrounding the channel-like lines entirely with his barrier. He was trying to block the life channels from the rest of her body.
He created his barriers in tiny fractions, going up the channels like a train following the tracks. To make the process easier for himself, he imagined a tiny version of himself building wall after wall of his barriers across her channels, protecting them from any further interactions with the rest of external forces. He also made sure that those barriers won’t bar anything beneficial, condensing them in tiny ways to ensure that anything positive enters through, and anything negative–like poison and infections–is kept out. That also included the incredibly large amount of mana trying to kill her.
It was still a taxing process even without using his attunement. As he focused, he gritted his teeth as he finished lining up all the life channels with his barrier. Then, he did the same to the kinetic energy. It might be a bit of a waste of mana as her kinetic energy wasn’t as affected, but he wanted to ensure that he got everything in order. Just like with the life channels, he made sure to only keep the benefits in and the deficits out, but he ensured that it was properly placed for kinetic energy rather than for life energy.
Though he started to notice that his mana reserves were reducing rapidly. His mana regeneration wasn’t enough to warrant the constant usage of covering all of her channels with his barriers. Then he remembered something important as he pulled up his storage bag and took out his glasses.
The Vision of Spiraling Mass. In other words, a really handy mana-regenerating glasses. He put them on, and he swore that the mana practically clung to him, his pores practically drinking them into his system. It easily filled up the pool as he managed to completely cover up the kinetic channels as well.
With that in place, everything was settled. But he only put up the foundations for her healing. Now was the time to put his plan into action. He gathered his attunement further into his mana. Then he spent, in his perspective, one single mana point.
One singular point of mana drenched in The World.
All hell broke loose.