The air was damp and full of moisture coated the inside of Luke’s throat, clumping the saliva.
Eughh.
*I didn’t miss any of it*
Crossing the tunnels he found his way to the great hall that was the office of the Crab Man, or rather the Mineral Crustaceanthropes as he learned from one of the books he was given.
*That’s too much of a mouthful.*
Now, opening the giant metal gate was a little strenuous but not so long ago he would pop a hernia trying to open them, it was a nice surprise.
A waft of dust and dampness hit him in the face. Taking in the sights of the constant mess that covered every inch of this space, he easily found Monsoon over his desk, clicking and clacking while focused on some item being worked over in his hands.
With measured jumps he easily made his way towards the desk, soundlessly leaving the backpack at the leg of it and jumping on the chair.
Surprisingly the Crab Man, in all of his focus, still didn’t react to him. So he observed. Some kind of trinket was being disassembled before him. It was a lantern of some kind, made of azure metal with weird sigils covering it. It was a bit bigger than Luke’s head and had a floral fluidity to its shape.
After some time he got more and more curious, if the physical was already so interesting, he wanted to see the inner workings of it.
Focusing both energies in his eyes he released his control from the containing field he was using on himself and let the energies rumble. He closed his head nearer to the trinket when-
SLAM
A massive force smashed into his torso, sending him flying like a thrown brick through the air. Before he could even react he smashed into the wall of the hall, folding like a crumpled piece of paper with his bones popping.
Collecting himself while dropping to the floor, he pushed with his legs and shot off to the side. Landing he rolled behind the pile of trash and started panicking about what to do next.
“By the Waters! You startled me, Luke! When did you get here?!” a surprised voice boomed against the walls.
“…Are we safe? Am I going to get rag-dolled again?” he said peeking his head from behind the pile.
“Yes, yes, you are safe. You just startled me so I swatted you away, how did you get so close? When?” He asked while using his claws to gesture to Luke he could come over.
“A few minutes ago? You looked like you were concentrating so I quietly sat down and got interested in what you were doing. It looks nice, just as I released my energies to see that thing better you fucking cannonballed me.”
“Sorry, sorry, my bad, are you fine? You seem fine… how?” He scuttled closer to Luke and started poking him and lifting him like another trinket to be analyzed. With ease, Luke was rotated and positioned using claws and hands.
“Why did I not feel you,” Monsoon said quietly to himself. A lightbulb lit up in his head as he realized. “You said you released the energies, were you containing both of them somehow?”
“Yeah, I focus Mana to hide the Void and Void to disappear as much as possible, stay contained within me, and not provoke or influence anything outside. You said people might get mad if I fry something accidentally.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Amazing!” he beamed as he put the confused human down. “I read about it, I did quite some reading in my materials, even got some from my friend about your kind.”
“The bird guy?”
“Oh, have you met?”
“yeah, seems nice, but I couldn’t form the Mind Connection, still don’t know how to do it, he had to gesture to me to communicate, I hope that wasn’t offensive”
“Haha, no no no no no, by no means, he loves to play charades. No matter. What you must have subconsciously done is Resonate both energies and amplify the Void effect of consumption of your aura or even recognizable “being” in the space you walled off with your mana. Amazing, when I read about those effects I was wondering how effective they are. Show me again, please.”
While talking he clicked his chair-sized pincers excitedly while a crystal hung in the air, shining and probably recording Luke, and Monsoon grabbed a tome and a surprisingly elegant pen to note things down.
With a raised brow, and this time with his guard up he once again sucked in his energies within. Feeling them coating his skin he willed the Void to do his bidding. Instead of flaring it up, it churned in the container he created. Monsoon was right, it did seep through the mana, feeding on it and changing its concept somehow. Even he himself wouldn’t notice it without focusing.
“Iiiiinteresing, Void users really are Concept Eaters, even on low stages. Oh, I see you are confused. Let me explain. From my research, it seems that your kind doesn’t only use Void to shatter or boost their fighting skills. As the antithesis of being, you cannot directly transform or create with Void. You subtract, like here, you essentially did what some stealth spell could achieve. Instead of hiding you from sight and covering your sounds it consumes any sound you make and makes the reality around you want to ignore you. You are constantly eating the concept of being visible or recognizable. It is easy for me to overpower it once I know about it, but as you leave no mana signature it’s hard to notice unless I directly look at you. Quite interesting. Still, the fact that I can see you makes it only semi-useful. My mind and energies are constantly shifting away from you, probably another effect of yours. But the stronger the being is the more our will can achieve.”
Going over the explanation in his head he turned his powers off.
“Oh, I can feel you have grown, rapidly even. Come now, we will go to another room and you will show me your progress. Leave the backpack here for now and I’ll give you some pointers once we go over what you did. “
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once they entered the dust-covered empty hall Luke started relaying his experiences of the last two weeks. Talking in detail about his methods. Only one question was asked of him at the end.
"Are you stupid?” Baffled, the crab man looked down on Luke lacking any more appropriate words to respond with.
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The kid put himself through a shredder for 2 weeks, copying and breaking down the spell matrix of his Growth Acceleration Spell to heal himself. Not even knowing how to meditate he flushed his system and mind with untamed Mana and Void, without any Body Refining techniques even.
“You Voiders really are madness incarnate.”
The effects were somewhat good, the kid still doesn’t know that even though his body regenerates quicker now and is much more powerful than before, the old, deep wounds on his organs and bones are still there, just the baseline resistance got higher. The damage from his addictions and previous bouts was still there, just deeper.
The fact that he didn’t burn himself out is crazy in and of itself. It must be that constant stimulation Void powers grant eating them from the insides.
Worried, he looked at the man in front of him.
*It must have been hell to go through it*
“ You could have waited for me to give you some basic body refining technique at least.”
“Time is precious and I wanted to get the basics before bothering you again. Plus, I could feel the improvements with time so I wanted to do it naturally I guess.”
If the kid only knew how dangerous what he did was. Maybe, even then, he would still do it. He seems like the stubborn kind.
“One good thing that came out of it is that you artificially extended your rapid adaptation period. Normally, like I told you before, your body and Mana churning and settling to new reality should settle down in a week or two, you are now over 4 weeks in that state and are bursting at the seams but the constant filtration and expanding of the levels of energies you exposed yourself to pushes the boundary further and further.”
“Nice.”
“Maybe, or maybe not. I’ll have to think about the potential consequences. At least the effects were worthwhile. You have now a decent teenager-sized energy potential.”
That did not seem to please the man.
Clasping his hands and smashing his claws like copper bells he announced.
“Ok, enough talking, show me what you managed to learn.”