While the others began to organize their new home, figuring out where everyone was going to sleep and assigning purposes to various areas, Greg got to work connecting it to the underground base. “Alright, let's see…” Greg muttered, transforming into Bianca and reaching for her mana, trying to figure out how it actually worked. He wasn't exactly sure what he was doing, but he felt something happening as he channeled the mana, keeping it going until something clicked and he felt some kind of node form. “Okay, now all I need to do is…” Greg trailed off as he suddenly felt something happen to the node and a moment later a portal opened to reveal a decidedly displeased looking Bianca.
Bianca narrowed her eyes at him. “Greg?”
“Yes?” Greg replied.
Bianca let out a vaguely exasperated sigh. “Why are you expanding my web?”
Greg paused. “The same reason you do? To connect two points through a subspace? I just didn't realize it'd connect to your subspace… though now that I'm thinking about it, why wouldn't it? I'm using the same exact mana, so it only makes sense that it'd have the same effect.”
“I see.” Bianca frowned, not sure how she felt about Greg having unfettered access to her subspace. That was her private space! Even though she was letting Greg store his other body in there, there was a difference between having a guest and suddenly discovering it had another owner. “Why are you connecting these two points?”
“Well, you know how the ranking rewards just came through?” Greg asked, Bianca nodding along. “Well, I'm sort of the top ranked over on the unformed side, and one of the rewards was my own building. However, I just spent the last week or so building and reinforcing an underground base, so I'd rather not just give up on it, you know? I figured I could use it as a bolt hole or something, but for that I need a way for people to get there, so…”
“You decided to use my mana.” Bianca nodded in understanding, before pausing as she realized something. “Then… this is the unformed section of the ship?”
“Yup.” Greg confirmed. “That isn't going to be a problem for you, is it?”
“Of course not.” Bianca denied. “But… I don't think we should tell Brutus you now have the ability to deposit an army of unformed in our midst.”
“Ha! Yeah, that probably wouldn't go over well.” Greg agreed. “Not that there are a whole lot of people over here who would appreciate knowing that ferals have access to the unformed section either… Anyway, I wanted to ask you, is there any way to make these portals permanent? If that isn't an issue for you, of course.”
Bianca stared at him, then glanced at the portal that they were currently talking through, then back at him. “Yes? Portals remain open until closed. Though I would appreciate it if you positioned the portal so others would not be able to enter my subspace…”
“No problem.” Greg agreed. “How do I do that?”
Bianca sighed. “Let me show you.”
*
Bianca spent the next half hour teaching Greg how to manipulate her subspace, including how to locate the various nodes she'd created, which led to an interesting revelation. “Wait, you still have access to Earth?!?” Greg asked incredulously.
“Yes?” Bianca confirmed tentatively. “Is that strange?”
Greg paused. “I wouldn't say it's strange… it's just- surprising? I mean, I can't even begin to explain how far we are from Earth at this point. The fact that you can connect to it from this far away is honestly kind of impressive. Though I can still connect to my smoke on Earth too… so maybe not that impressive. It is magic, after all.” He frowned. “I suppose the better question is how your nodes-”
“Anchor points.” Bianca corrected.
“Anchor points, sure, how they actually stay stable on a ship moving at what has to be a significant percentage of the speed of light.” Greg continued. “Unless… maybe it's that warp idea where the ship isn't moving itself, it's moving the universe around it?” Greg cocked his head curiously as he pondered the question for a moment, wondering at the nature of space travel and magic in general. His mind then turned to what kind of spells Bianca’s mana would be suited for. He'd mostly been focusing on helping the ferals think tactically, so he hadn't given any thought to how they'd develop beyond that yet, and Bianca’s mana could offer some interesting possibilities. Something to do with creating persistent effects, maybe? Her nodes never went away, after all… Greg blinked as an idea occurred to him. “Hey… would you like a sponsorship?”
Bianca frowned. “Is that possible? Your ranking is from the unformed section. I'm not sure your sponsorships would apply to me.”
“There's nothing to say they won't and there's no harm in trying.” Greg shrugged. “So again, do you want a scholarship?”
Bianca hesitated. “What would you want in exchange?”
Greg raised an eyebrow. “Nothing? Or… well, okay, so in general my friends and I have been staying out of the faction conflicts, but that isn't something we can maintain forever, you know? At some point we'll reach whatever planet the aliens are going to dump us on, a which point we'll need a faction for support, and we'd really prefer to end up with one that isn't going to fuck us over, you know? So, I guess what I'd want in exchange is your help building a faction we can all be proud of? One that supports people without trying to control them and all that idealistic crap that will probably end up crumbling under the pressure of reality. Though we can probably at least work to get the ferals and the unformed working together…”
Bianca eyed him strangely. “Why me?”
“Why not you?” Greg replied. “You have a useful ability, you're competent, we work well together, and you already have a history of dedicating yourself to making the lives of the people around you better. I think you're pretty much exactly the type of person I'm looking for.”
“What about the others?” Bianca asked.
Greg cocked his head. “I suppose I could give them sponsorships as well… the only one I'd really be worried about would be Brutus, since he's still pretty vocally against the unformed. But then again, he has still worked with me, so he clearly isn't unreasonable about it… and if we make him actually work with the unformed, maybe he'll see they aren't so bad?”
Bianca got an odd look on her face. “You wish to force Brutus to work with the unformed?”
Greg paused. “Well not force… more like heavily incentivize?”
Bianca frowned. “Would you condition your sponsorship on his cooperation?”
“No, but if the two groups end up working together on challenges, then if he refuses to cooperate, he'll either miss out on a challenge or have to attempt one on his own.” Greg replied. “If things go well, he may end up not being a part of the group at all, as we would always be doing challenges together, you know? Obviously we wouldn't want that, but since our goal is for ferals and unformed to work together, if he's that resistant to working with them, then it wasn't going to work out anyway.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“I suppose that makes sense…” Bianca agreed tentatively.
“Of course, all this hinges on whether or not I can actually give you my sponsorships.” Greg added, tapping at his network device, and attempting to assign a sponsorship to Bianca. “Ha! It worked!”
“What- I haven't agreed yet!” Bianca exclaimed, checking her network device to see that she did indeed have a full sponsorship available to her.
“Oh… well, too late now, huh?” Greg shrugged. “Don't worry, I'm not going to hold it over you. In fact…” He pulled up his network device and assigned sponsorships to the rest of the feral team as well. “There, now you all have sponsorships! No strings attached, cause despite any disagreements we have, you all seem like good people to me, and I want to see good people get stronger.”
Bianca scowled at him for a moment, then shook her head in a mix of frustration and incredulity. “You are a ridiculous man. Now, what can I do to help?”
Greg chuckled. “Just focus on getting stronger, like you would be anyway. This whole thing falls apart if we can't defend what we build, you know?”
Bianca paused. “Then I think I know exactly how we can help you. After all, we have plenty of experience keeping our people safe from those who would wish them harm.”
*
Over the next few days, Greg slowly watched his new faction grow, through no fault of his own, as once Greg introduced Tessa to Bianca, the whole thing was pretty much out of his hands. Bianca immediately began to reestablish contact with the network of ferals she'd developed back on Earth, using them to lay the foundation of their new faction on the feral side of the ship, which met little resistance due to the relatively undeveloped nature of the ferals. On the unformed side, Tessa contacted the people Victor had identified, the main hurdle there being convincing them that they actually needed a faction. They were all isolationists like the squad, not wanting to get involved with politics if they could help it, so the idea of joining any faction didn't sit well with them. It took work just to convince them to accept Greg's sponsorships for fear that Greg would come back with ‘expectations’ later! Thankfully, they weren't asking much of them, just maintaining contact and a basic level of mutual defense to start, so they weren't too resistant.
That wasn't to say Greg didn't have any part to play in all this, though. First was, of course, his sponsorships. He still had twenty to hand out after the fourteen he'd assigned to the squad and the feral team, so they decided to split them equally between the two sides, using them to pull people over to their faction. Second, he was in charge of expanding their defensive options. In particular, Bianca and Tessa insisted he create a secret base back on Earth as the ultimate hideaway for people they absolutely needed to keep safe and a last resort escape option in case the worst happened, such as the aliens turning on them all or something. Something Greg really wished wasn't a legitimate possibility, considering how much he was growing to appreciate the aliens he regularly interacted with… a part of him honestly just wanted to ask the Archmage why they would kill all the non-mages, because a part of him couldn't fathom that she would agree to something like that without a good reason. But of course, he didn't, because he was well aware that just because the Archmage was good to him, it didn't mean that the Archmage was actually good. There were plenty of people out there who were only good selectively.
Other than that, Greg started making little hidden bases for their new allies as well. Nothing to the level of the underground base he'd made for the squad, but since giving someone a roof and a bed was practically nothing for him, he figured it could be one of the basic perks of joining their faction. If nothing else, being on their side was going to be comfortable. He also used his challenge points to buy an epm sensor so that the squad could test the efficiency of their spells and an advanced illusion device that could simulate practically anything and had so many extra features that Greg didn't even read them all before buying it, all of which basically amounted to it being the ultimate training aid, to the point where he had to wonder why it was only two hundred challenge points. It could even fit ten people at once! He just could not fathom why it was so cheap, so much so that he had to ask the Archmage about it.
“Are you averse to reading?” The Archmage asked seriously.
“What? No, I love reading.” Greg replied, confused.
“Then why do you fail to read the most basic information packets we offer to any degree of thoroughness?!?” The Archmage retorted, pulling up a page on her network device and showing it to him.
“Uh…” Greg quickly scanned the page, which detailed the privileges owning a building on the strip granted him. He had read it before, or at least skimmed it, so he wasn't sure what the Archmage was referring to. The Archmage sighed in defeat and pointed to a small section in the section on the building development store that Greg had thought only dealt with what was in the store. “All members of the top one hundred receive a percent discount which is equal to one hundred minus their position…” Greg awkwardly read aloud.
“These are the things you miss when you only read enough to get a basic understanding of the text.” The Archmage grumbled, dismissing the page. “You are lucky that a basic understanding is all you have needed so far, but you will need to learn to notice the details at some point. You won't always have a teacher to explain things to you when you miss them.” She paused. “Maybe that should be a focus for one of your minds in the future. Though you would need to understand what it means to be detail-oriented to produce such a mind… which may be difficult for you, but would be a necessary step on your path to becoming an archmage.”
Greg blinked. “It would?”
The Archmage paused. “I suppose I've never explained what it takes to become an Archmage, have I?”
“No, but Lapodala said something about needing to understand my smoke so I can create an intent that counters it and produce pure mana.” Greg explained.
The Archmage nodded. “That is true, yes, but it isn't simply understanding your smoke that is necessary. Otherwise anyone with a simple natural mana like heat would easily become an archmage. No, what you must do to purify your natural mana is understand yourself. Your natural mana is, in essence, mana's expression of who you are, and even if you remove the major effect of producing smoke, your mana would still be full of your personal intent, and in order to produce pure mana, you must create an intent that perfectly counters you. In essence, you must fully conceptualize your polar opposite.”
“Which, for me, would include being detail-oriented.” Greg muttered, nodding slowly, pausing as a thought occurred to him. “Wait, if I make a mind that's detail-oriented, wouldn't that make me detail oriented, changing my natural mana?”
The Archmage shook her head. “Your natural mana is a product of your innate self, of who you would be with no outside influences. Otherwise it would constantly change over time as a person grew and matured, which would make becoming, and even more remaining, an archmage an excruciating endeavor. This does however present its own challenge in discovering this innate self, as many people are warped by their experiences throughout their lives, for good or for ill. I don't believe this is an issue you face, however. One of the reasons I was drawn to take you as my apprentice is that you at least seem to be very clear about who you are.”
“Heh, yeah.” Greg agreed. “Not that who I am isn't a contradictory mess sometimes, but I know my issues.”
The Archmage smiled. “The realization that the complexities of an individual rarely align in a perfectly coherent manner is also an important step on the path to becoming an archmage. Many people have gotten lost trying to make sense of something that merely needed to be accepted. Of course, the converse is also true, but if understanding one's self was that easy, archmage's wouldn't be so rare.”
“How rare are archmages?” Greg asked.
“The average is close to one in one thousand, though this varies based on species and community.” The Archmage replied. “Some of the older and more powerful species and civilizations can reach one in one hundred, and certain communities within them even reach one in ten, though I imagine there are… costs to such a ratio.”
“Honestly, I'm just imagining slug people with barely any personality.” Greg chuckled.
“Their rate is actually one of the lowest.” The Archmage waved dismissively. “It's hard to discover a variation that barely exists. No, the more effective method is to breed for extreme personalities, but extreme personalities can be… unreasonable.”
Greg blinked. “The slug people actually exist?”
The Archmage cocked her head. “I am unclear on what a ‘slug’ is, but there are races that experience little to no variation in personality. They are very stable, but as I said, they fail to produce many archmages. Though the archmages they do produce are generally exceptional.”
“Huh. Tradeoffs to everything, I guess.” Greg shrugged.
“Indeed.” The Archmage agreed. “Now, I believe we have spent enough time on this subject. Let us proceed to our lesson for the day.”