Chapter 35

Illuminating Concepts

After we exited the arena, I thanked Nefen for all his help. He told me it was his duty as a mage, and a guild leader to make sure I didn't pose a danger to the town. He reminded me not to try to use the elements that I might have problems returning from until I had more control. But said that I could, and should work with them in the arena as often as I could stomach.

He also made a point of reminding me that dinner was in two hours. I turned a little green at the thought of eating, for some reason the memories of what I just allowed myself to accept were eating at me. It seemed to be getting worse as time passed.

I retreated to the shower, turning the temperature as hot as it would go. I closed my eyes, and sat under the stream, scrubbing at myself with soap.

The water soon became scalding hot, I relished the feeling. I felt mana flowing through my body, reminding me that it would protect me. I didn't have to use any other elements, life was all I'd ever need.

I started at that, I pulled myself out of the scalding water and switched my core. The arena had set me back to life mana and I did not notice.

I felt better immediately, I realized that the life mana had been pushing part of my mind away, my recent experience had caused me to fall slightly out of tune with the element. It was a reminder that I would have to be in the right frame of mind every single time I used a core.

Out of habit I reached for the water mana, to ask it to remove the water from my drenched fur. I sighed and shook my head when the mana didn't connect. Unless I switched my core to the matching element I could feel the water mana, but not communicate with it. It would take hours for my thick fur to dry naturally. Meanwhile I was uncomfortable as heck with it clinging to me. I felt a sudden understanding of why most cats disliked water.

I thought about what to do. I could try to use my water core, but that didn't have good odds of leaving me dry. Fire and Air were right out, too dangerous. Light seemed harmless when I used it before, and easy enough to switch away from.

It may seem excessive to feel the need to use mana to dry off when there were plenty of towels available. It was, absolutely, without a doubt. But using the mana in my cores felt like my first and best choice to accomplish anything ever since the class evolution. Sadly, that particular outside influence didn't register with me.

I activated the light core and watched as the water from inside my coat splashed to the ground. I tried to feel out how in control I was at the moment. It was hard to tell, that was the biggest problem when the mana was in control. I would generally know that I was being influenced, but any part of me that would fight the influence got shoved into the back of my head. All ideas that backed that fight would similarly be censored.

That censorship of ideas was why I had stopped seeing Nefen as even being a person. When I was fully fighting the idea of spreading afflictions, him being a person had been one of the foundations of the fight.

I had to accept the idea of inflicting rot, decay, eventual death and possible undeath on at least some things for the mana to stop being directly in conflict with me.

I felt I was in fact being influenced at this point. I tried to understand the influence, it came to me in a flash. Light mana was Analytical, it wanted to Reveal secrets. I embraced those Concepts with ease. I dearly wished that I could think so clearly at all times.

I wanted to know what else it was, so I channeled that analytical nature. Words and their associated concepts flooded into my head, supplied by both the light mana, and the System. Light in the Aspect I was currently channeling was Analytical, Revealing, Illuminating, Insubstantial, and Straightforward.

I liked those concepts a lot. I didn't think I would have problems being influenced to do things I would be opposed to in this form.

The light mana did reveal to me that it had other concepts that I might not be okay with, if they activated. Searing, Blinding, Distorting, Accusing, Oppressive, Merciless, Pitiless, Ruthless, Harsh, and Severe. Among others. Those were all part of the whole of light mana's full Authority. When I rode the mana I only touched a corner of it.

Light mana seemed extremely useful for figuring this stuff out! I quite literally glowed with happiness at having things revealed to me.

I decided I didn't want to switch out of it till I made some more use of its power to help me understand things. I turned my questing mind to the elements I'd used recently.

I didn't know how I would use the death mana in the future, my death mana core was too small to use in a lot of situations. For the moment I thought of it as a form I could use to be at home if I ever got sent to the death area. Under its influence I would be empowered by the area, instead of attacked.

I did wonder how the death corrupted monsters there would react to me. But that would require finding some to test it out, and I had more analysis of things I could do, without traveling.

Life mana, I realized how I was so in charge of my faculties most of the time when I used it. I didn't have any trouble accepting the concepts I was unknowingly picking. Survive, Thrive, Protect, Grow, Adapt. The words raced through my head when I thought of the concepts involved in the aspect of life mana that I had recently been channeling through my core.

The knowledge was clear in my mind that I had begun to lose myself to the life mana after the arena because my recent acceptance of death mana concepts contradicted it, and were still fresh in my mind.

The other aspect of life that I had experienced in my healing trances was Connected, Regenerative, Intermingling, Appreciating, Amalgamating.

That aspect carried inherent influences that would likely always be out of my direct control. It was the aspect that the life mana had offered me for healing, I had to think there was one that was less of a mind and body altering experience than that, and still got the job done.

Aspect was the word Nefen had used during the hours he talked to me. He said an Aspect was a grouping of Concepts related to an element. Everything in the world, not just mana, contained a multitude of sometimes conflicting Concepts. Aspects were like bundles of concepts that could work in harmony. Some Aspects had names, the death Aspect I channeled was referred to as "The Aging Death" it was supposedly one of the more dangerous ones.

You could picture an element as a giant word cloud, some Concepts were a large part of the whole, some were tiny outliers. An Aspect of an element was like drawing a circle around a section of the cloud. You'd almost certainly catch a part of the biggest, core Concept no matter where you put your circle. That would simply be the element itself. It was possible to avoid it, in theory if you aimed intentionally for the furthest outlier Concepts, that was definitely something I had to try eventually.

The very first time I used my death mana core, the Aspect I triggered was different from the one I ended up with in the arena. It was Empty, Numb, Unburdened, Still, Emotionless.

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The aspect of death I had in the arena consisted of Withering, Decaying, Spreading, Painless, Poisonous.

What aspect I ended up channeling was dictated by several things. The first was my own Concept of the element, the second was my needs at the time of channeling, the third was the Concepts in the mana surrounding me.

I would always be drawn to Aspects I had already experienced, mainly because my experiences were a large part of my personal Concept of the mana. I would have to work hard to have an open mind when I experimented in the future, otherwise I'd end up getting something so similar to my previous experience that it might as well be the same almost every time.

Aspects could shift while I was channeling them too. Some elements were outright prone to shifting. Air was one, Water was another. Their theoretical word cloud would even shuffle itself depending on the circumstances.

When I was channeling Air, I had started with Playful, Mercurial, Joyful, Energetic, and Fanciful. It was a fun combination. I didn't so much lose my sense of self to the control of it, as lose my desire to do anything else. That was a pretty important distinction.

As the mana surrounding me joined with me the Aspect I was channeling was added to. I seemed to only personally channel five concepts beyond the core element at a time, but the mana that joined me effectively piled more concepts on top of me until I couldn't possibly sustain my sense of self anymore. Swift, Mischievous, Errant, Wicked, Blowing, Surging, Pounding, Spiraling, Hazardous, Shattering, Destructive, Flattening. Had all been added one at a time as more Air joined the party. The weight of all those concepts was impossible for my mind to bear at my level, even if I accepted them.

The only solution for controlling myself under air that was illuminated for me, was to learn to keep track of the Concepts as they were added. I could keep them separate from my own mind when they were piled on from the outside, I just had to do it consciously. I would also have to watch out for the potential shift in Aspect I was channeling directly.

My mind was beginning to feel strained, all this knowledge the light mana was allowing me to perceive was beginning to overexert my mental capacity.

The light mana itself let me know that I should switch my core, or I would hurt myself. All the concepts it had revealed weren't just words in my head. They were the essence of the words, the feelings associated with them, everything. The mana told me I would do well to attempt to reconnect with this particular Aspect every time I encountered new Concepts. But not more than once a day.

I switched my core back to pure mana. I immediately grabbed my throbbing head. I knew, from parting information given to me by the light, that there was no healing that could touch this pain. It wasn't a physical ailment, it was my mind coping with the quantity and quality of information that it had been exposed to.

The pain was a small price to pay for what I had just experienced. I felt like I finally actually had a path to truly control my use of mana.

I would have to experiment a lot to uncover more Concepts, but once I did, I could aim myself in a more precise way. The light mana had made it clear that I was only scratching the surface of how the various elements could behave.

I almost wanted to get back in there right away, I was so excited by the prospects. But my head hurt, and I had been standing in the shower room for quite a while. Dinner would be happening soon, if they hadn't already started. I didn't want to miss yet another dinner.

I made my way to the guild hall, my ears flat against my head. The world felt so loud, even though it was a fairly quiet night. I could hear people talking inside when I got to the door. They seemed less boisterous than usual for some reason. That suited my aching head just fine, but it made me worried.

When I opened the door, my staff quietly floated to the corner, and I observed a somber atmosphere.

Krassis was missing, and Torill didn't look up from her plate. A frowning Ivo greeted me with only a quiet nod.

I took my seat next to Torill before I opened my mouth.

"What happened?" I asked.

Ivo was the one to answer, his eyes were filled with sadness.

"Krassis and Torill ran into some trouble, Krassis is recovering, there's not much that could keep that man down. But Torill had to use a lot of her power…" He seemed so sorrowful, I didn't understand exactly why, but it made me worry.

I really looked at Torill, her eyes were unfocused, and she was mechanically eating the food on her plate. Her face lacked any expression at all.

Seeing her like that broke my heart. I spoke quietly to her.

"What happened? Will you be okay?" My voice contained a level of concern for her that I didn't even realize I had.

She turned her head to look at me, she didn't seem to recognize me. Her blank gaze seemed to look right through me. Her voice was monotone when she responded. "I'm sorry, we must not be close, since you don't know. But if we met before, I don't remember it right now."

She turned to look at Nefen who had the same sadness on his face that Ivo had shown. "If you think he should know, please tell him what I did, you seem to know." After that, she returned to eating.

Nefen nodded. "Torill is a Spiritist, she can cast some spells using mana, but her true power is asking the spirits for help. The help is never free, and the price is experiences. After she strikes a deal with them for what she needs. She pays with memories and emotions. The greater the need, the greater the cost. She will recover what she paid in time, but how long depends entirely on the deal. Which is something she usually knows after the deal is done, but this time it seems not."

He sighed and patted the poor girl on the back. "She remembers this place as home, she has a vague recollection that she should trust me. She doesn't know what happened, or much of anything else as far as we can tell. She showed up at the gates carrying a gravely injured Krassis. His class will allow him to recover, but even his healing may take some time. I doubt he'll remember enough to tell us what happened once he's up and about. So we're all worried about what could possibly have caused them to return in such a state."

"Samuel has gone to check the area they were sent to, but we may not find out what happened until tomorrow. It's simply too dark to get a proper idea of things for the moment. So we wait, now we should eat before it gets cold, and turn in for the night. Some of us have an early morning ahead." Nefen looked at everyone at the table. "It may go without saying but I will not be preparing a guild breakfast tomorrow."

Everyone nodded, we ate in silence, until Nefen cleared his throat and spoke up again.

"I have considered whether or not to use this measure, Samuel and I do trust you young fools, but I have come to the conclusion that it is better safe than sorry. For what it's worth, I apologize."

Everyone at the table stiffened.

Nefen's voice held power when he spoke again.

'I have been given a Guildmaster's Decree from Samuel to pass along if I thought it necessary. All missions are canceled until further notice, no one is to leave the town, unless otherwise ordered by Samuel, or myself. Violation of this decree will result in System sanctions and official removal from the Brightwood Adventurers guild."

I felt the decree seep into me, It was more than just the command with punishments. I felt like a box had closed around the city. If I wanted to leave, I wouldn't just be risking punishment, I would be fighting a compulsion to follow the order.

Janus looked pissed. "What the fuck Nefen, you can't trust us to stay put by just asking?" The fiery man slammed his silverware down and stormed off.

Martin shook his head, and followed.

Nefen let out a deep breath."I know how young Adventurers can be, the class would push us all to search out the danger. Now only Samuel and I have to deal with that. It is the safest for everyone. I know it's uncomfortable, and I wish I didn't have to do so, but I will not see more young lives thrown away if I can do something to avoid it." He said to no one in particular.

Ivo got up, walked around the table, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry about it, Janus never stays angry long, he's young, and probably was the most susceptible to the call. The rest of us can enjoy some days off."

Ivo returned to his spot and picked up his tankard. "Here's to no calls to adventure under a decree!" He drained the whole tankard. His face looked more sour than the alcohol would account for.

I excused myself shortly after that, the mood was terrible, my head hurt, and I was probably going to get a whole heap of levels from everything I did in one day, that was a whole lot of new uses of mana.

When I got to my room, I didn't lock my door. I would have to find a better solution to my mana issue than that, but the lock seemed almost silly in the walled guild compound with so few people around. So I wasn't overly worried.