Surprisingly, the Body Guidance didn’t give Alex just one Blueprint. Instead, he was presented with several options of ascending quality and difficulty.
All Soul Apertures boosted the Connection attribute, producing additional mana. For unattuned apertures, the biggest difference was made by possession. You would gain the additional attributes for leveling up regardless of quality, and no unattuned aperture would provide more than three points of Connection.
Attuned Apertures would produce mana of the type that the aperture was attuned to. Just how much mana would be normal versus how much would match the mana type depended on the quality of the aperture. A good aperture could change the ratio of the mana in your body, empowering your Abilities and Enhancements to have greater effect.
Higher quality apertures could also grant more Connection, with the limit for a Tier 1 aperture being ten points. Alex wasn’t aware of a limit for Tier 0s, but imagined it would be next to impossible to reach the Tier 1 limit even if it was hypothetically achievable.
The first blueprint lined up with the easiest idea he’d come up with. The glyph was placed in the center of the cylinder. Instinctively, Alex knew that this aperture would be good enough to qualify for his Mythic Mana Body. The standards were low, since he was just an Aspirant.
This aperture would only grant a point or two of Connection. The only complication for its creation, now that he had practiced forming the cylinder, would be solidifying the mana.
It also wouldn’t do much to change the mana ratio in his body. He’d have an aperture, but almost no benefits from it besides the Mythic tier up and attribute gain on level up.
The second option had the glyph placed along each of the three different pieces. This involved curving the glyph to match the plane it was placed on, which was a significant spike in difficulty.
This would be annoying to create, but the benefits would match up. The increase to his Refine mana would be a big deal for his Tier 1 Mana Body. In the short term, it would allow him to work more on the apertures he wanted to Refine for Jess.
The last option was a thing of beauty, Alex knew as soon as he saw it that he wanted it.
He also knew that he definitely couldn’t pick this option. If they hadn’t entered the trial and he’d been able to spend a few months practicing and studying, it would be feasible. As things stood, there was no way he could form it properly and solidify it into a real aperture with his current skills.
The cylinder in this aperture was closed off. Previously, he’d only created the sides, assuming that the runes were intentionally left open at the top and bottom.
Now, looking at this blueprint, he realized that was just a matter of simplicity. Closing the aperture off would make it far more difficult for mana to exit his soul into his body, but that wouldn’t lower the amount of mana he had access to.
Instead, it would significantly alter the ratio of mana in his body. Refine mana would seep through the walls of the cylinder, while unattuned mana would rebound back into the Ethereal Plane.
The rest of his body would still produce unattuned mana, but this aperture was high enough quality to really take advantage of a Soul Aperture’s most foundational benefit. Having an aperture served almost as a magnet, forcing mana to enter your body at that location instead of spread randomly. With only one aperture, you couldn’t control all of the mana entering your body. Instead, the aperture would produce around half of your normal output while the other half remained random.
Even low-quality apertures still had this effect, which would help make Mana Body design more efficient. This efficiency wasn’t something that Alex could ignore, but its impact paled in comparison to approximately half of his mana being Refine mana. With the mixed blend the rest of his body created, he would have at least seventy percent of his reserves converted.
If it was just a matter of closing off the top and bottom of the cylinder, Alex would take this design on the spot.
Sadly, the full cylinder was the easier change to make. The real complication was the glyph.
The aperture was a thing of beauty, and Alex was happy to just take it in and study the design that he knew he would create in the future. The glyph-like rune was draped across the exterior of the cylinder. An enlarged depiction of the glyph covered both the top and bottom, with four lines that stuck out slightly extended to curve over the edges.
Those lines then led into additional copies of the rune. Some were larger, while some were smaller. The design flowed naturally, with several lines of runes branching off to connect to another line. In a few cases, a line would branch off only to return to the original glyph it left. Not a single line was a true ending of the pattern, instead they would always connect to one another, forming a complete loop.
It was chaotic, and even after a few minutes Alex was only just starting to really get a handle on what he was looking at. There was so much attention to detail, with some of the runes being formed smaller than a line in his fingerprint.
With a sigh of regret, and a shake of his head, he rejected the option. He’d known what his choice was as soon as he realized that the three options ascended in difficulty.
As soon as he’d realized that the worst one was still good enough, really.
Increasing his Connection attribute would possibly be nice, but he felt it was more likely to be unnoticeable. For most Aspirants and Neophytes, every point counted. For Alex, the difference between another one point and another ten was nothing.
At least, until he had a powerful Tier 1 Mana Body to put his reserves to use.
The second aperture definitely had advantages over the first, but they weren’t worth the time he’d be spending working on the design. The glyph would be far harder to curve than the basic cylinder pieces, and the more complex design would also make compressing the aperture more difficult.
The masterpiece that was the third aperture drew his eye yet again, but Alex pushed it to the side. That blueprint was nothing more than a distraction. Maybe a promise of things to come. It wasn’t something he could pursue now.
Before he could second guess himself, Alex selected the first blueprint.
The picture he’d have of the aperture in his head filled in slightly. The difference was minute, with the aperture being simple enough that the less detailed option he’d looked over while making his selection basically covered the whole thing.
The full blueprint didn’t bring any additional difficulties, so Alex immediately set to work creating the cylinder and placing the glyph inside of it.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Unsurprisingly, he managed to form the rune after only ten minutes. The Guidance had shown him a safe space in his chest to form it, above the stomach on the right side. This would let his ribcage protect the aperture, so he decided not to look for anything else.
While he had to be precise to make sure he didn’t mess with any critical organs, he wasn’t too worried. If anything, having the Refine mana in such high quantities near his organs might be a good thing. He wouldn’t be capable of Attuning his body until he reached Tier 2, but mana could still have some positive effects.
Compressing the aperture would make it smaller than the four sphere apertures Alex had been working on Refining, which could already fit in the palm of his hands. The small structure would allow him to get away with minor mispositioning, but he wasn’t interested in allowing any errors.
His first creation was exactly what the blueprint asked for, but if he compressed it where he’d placed it, it would be pushed up against his stomach. This might be a big deal, or it might be nothing more than a source of minor discomfort. Alex wasn’t interested in finding out.
With excruciating care, Alex started to slowly push the structure into the proper position. Luckily, the presence of the mana in the aperture would allow it to be suspended under its own power. It was a fact of Mana Body creation that Alex could now appreciate without vents trying to pull anything he created out of his body.
With the preliminary structure created, Alex opened his eyes. He’d only been working for a half hour, but the intense focus made it feel like it had been longer.
Anthony and Jess were positioned several feet away from each other, keeping watch in separate directions while he worked.
Alex immediately noticed a corpse a few feet away from Jess, “I missed an attack?” He asked.
“I did tell you that you zone out during Guidance,” Jess replied. She continued to face the plains as she spoke, “I called out for you, but you just had this, uh, weird expression on your face. Didn’t respond at all.”
Alex winced, “My bad, I had a few options for my aperture and one of them was a… work of art.”
Anthony chuckled, prompting Alex to turn to face him, “You really were making that face over a blueprint?”
Alex blushed, catching onto the inference, “Well I wasn’t daydreaming.” As soon as he said it, he realized that this attempt to defend himself was just digging the hole deeper.
“Would almost be better if you were,” Anthony grinned at him, “Did you end up picking that one?”
“No,” Alex replied, “It was too complex. I’d spend the rest of the trial working on it and barely make any progress.”
Anthony’s smile turned into a thoughtful look, “Actually, that might explain it. I’ve heard that perfect apertures are distracting to look at. It’s kind of like an Impression, magic that pure demands attention.”
Perfect apertures were a bit of a misnomer, since a truly perfect Mana Body was basically a dream. Even if there wasn’t a single inefficiency in the design or mistake in the construction, there was still something you could do to improve. Instead of referring to an aperture that had been perfected, the term was used to refer to an aperture that granted the maximum boost to your Connection.
Alex hadn’t heard that perfect apertures left an Impression, but it didn’t really make a difference. He’d built up a strong enough resistance that he was sure his reaction to the design was natural. Some things just drew the eye, and he was self aware enough to realize that a powerful aperture would draw his quite easily.
Was it even self awareness, when it was that obvious?
“Would Body Guidance really offer me something like that so early?” Alex asked. He asked for the sake of discussion more than doubt. He wasn’t ready to get back to work just yet.
“Why not?” Anthony asked, “The whole point is to improve your Mana Body.”
“That’s true,” Alex nodded, “I’ll have to experiment more with it once I’m Tier 1. I’m definitely going to work on creating that aperture after we’re out of here.”
Anthony smiled, “I’ll be working on my aperture as well, but I don’t plan to chase perfect until I’m level 25. Might not bother, honestly.”
It was clear that Anthony wanted to talk just as much as Alex did. Jess was normally fun to talk to, but Alex couldn’t really blame her for being more quiet than usual. Anthony wasn’t the type to push when it was potentially harmful, so he’d probably just been sitting there staring at the grass while Alex worked.
It hadn’t been that long, but sitting in silence wasn’t a skill they’d cultivated at the Academy.
They chatted for a bit about their plans for after the trial. They both wanted to create powerful Mana Bodies quickly, fully aware that they would have barely more than two months before New Chicago’s campaign in the goblin lands to create a new settlement.
The topic soon turned to that invasion, but Jess interrupted them, “Alex, how’s your aperture coming. Have you done anything more than selecting the blueprint?”
It was an unsubtle way of telling him to get back to work, but it wasn’t unjustified. Alex was the one who wanted to get out and start exploring the most, after all.
“I’ve already formed it,” He replied, “I just have to compress it until it’s solidified now.”
“Oh,” That brought Jess up short, “Already?”
“Well, I’d already managed the cylinder earlier,” Alex explained, “The blueprint I chose is just a matter of putting the glyph into the center of the structure. It didn’t take that much work.”
Jess had clearly thought that he was slacking, but the realization that he’d finished the first half of his work made it hard to argue he wasn’t progressing.
Sure, it was the easy half, but that was still something.
Alex didn’t feel offended by her assumption. They’d known each other long enough that she’d called him out when he actually was slacking plenty of times. Mainly on schoolwork, he was self motivated on swordsmanship and magic work, but the habit wasn’t one that would vanish.
Also, he wasn’t going to hold some negativity against her in the middle of maybe the worst few days of her life.
Still, they’d been chatting for a bit by now. The social interaction had helped him relax, and he was ready to get back to work.
“I’m going to attempt to compress it now,” He stated.
“Wait, Alex,” Jess stopped him, “I’m sorry. That was more accusatory than I meant it to be.”
“No problem,” He gave her a slight smile, “You’re just trying to help.”
With that, Alex got back to work.
When he’d formed his mana veins, Alex used a design that was self-compressing. It allowed him to focus on resisting the pull on his mana from his aura. The resulting veins were robust, but they didn’t transfer mana as quickly as they would if he had used a rune more specialized for that function.
Now, working on his aperture, Alex didn’t have the ability to lean on compressing runes to do the work for him. They would interfere with the design, leaving him with a less than functional result. The four sphere design was proof that apertures didn’t have to be impressive, but throwing in different runes would quickly ruin any blueprint.
Compressing a rune naturally involved mana, a lot of mana. Alex began manipulating mana in his body to surround the structure he’d already created, letting mana seep into the cylinder to surround the glyph and coat the internal walls as well.
While there would be shrinkage from the act of solidifying the mana, most of the work of compression came from increasing density. This meant that he just had to push more and more mana into the structure and glyph until it began to take on physical form.
By all accounts, this process was incredibly hard. Alex buckled down and sharpened his focus, working to drown out any outside stimuli so he could work on the compression. He was fully prepared for this to go wrong, resulting in the structure falling apart instead of solidifying.
With the amount of mana he was using, he might even cause damage to his organs.
Alex readied himself for a struggle with his mana, knowing that this might just be the most difficult piece of Mana Body work he’d done.
Instead, it all slid into place easily.
In less than a minute, Alex’s aperture solidified. The surrounding mana seemed to flow into the structure without issue. Where he’d expected a struggle to wrangle his mana, he’d instead found that it wanted to go where he led.
A grin spread across Alex’s face as he realized the reason.
Refine was all about improving himself, of course his mana would fall in line for this type of work.
Immediately after that realization, the grin faded. He should’ve taken one of the harder blueprints.