---James---
The trip back to their home base was similar to their liftoff. Technically not uneventful – They had been jumped by jellyfish-like moon goblins on their way back to the ship after all. The group also needed to deal with a heightened stream of monsters the whole ship ride back…but monsters were more of the same? James hadn’t felt truly in danger so the whole trip felt like a training session where he adapted to his mana moving like molasses and pooling about his body.
Occasional laser attack from a corner. Occasional silent assassin from above or poison-spewing sentient blob of snot. Nothing that important.
If James was being honest, the next week was an uneventful but fulfilling training session as well. Maddy was preparing some poison or something she thought might take down the mountain. Richard was completely isolated in a stone box playing with his new toy. Jess had left on a quick quest to defeat some nemesis or something and Troy was completely distracted by trying to integrate the concept of glistening dew into his abilities.
So what James did alone was fight countless small monsters forcing himself to adhere to random restrictions each time.
He even made a game of it – randomizing a brainstormed list of restrictions with his AI and accepting them no matter how bad of a matchup they might be.
At one point he had to fight completely upside down. Another wearing the heaviest vest he could make in an hour. Another covered in slime. At one point he had to remain as stiff as a board – rotating his body about with his kinetic energy was even harder when he couldn’t direct the flow with his limbs. At another point he picked a single rock and declared he couldn’t attack or touch any monster without using this rock. Imagine being that attached to a weapon.
All those physical restrictions paled in comparison to skill ones when it came to growth. By restricting the type of skills he was allowed to use, James found himself improving by leaps and bounds. One of the more subtle but effective restrictions was to only allow himself to use his aether lens or his mana lens. So much of his current power centered around swapping back and forth between lenses and abusing the strange sort of in between state where the mindset of one let him influence the power of the other.
By setting that abuse aside and spending hours or even a day at a time with one lens or the other active, James began to understand the differences on a deeper level. The ‘two sides’ also had some benefits that only grew with frequent use and by committing to them for long enough the benefit only grew.
The largest ‘benefit’ James could say for using skills with his aether lens was that it truly felt like muscles. Using a skill or collection of abilities with aether – or even better, overusing it to exhaustion – and then allowing it to settle left it stronger than before. The exact reason for that was closer to a slow physical crystallization of esoteric residue insulating pathways – or a path of least resistance being burnt through a material warping it into ‘conducting’ flow better…but James liked to think of it as skill-muscle fibers. There was a direct correlation between working out and pushing himself with aether.
This growth wasn’t an infinite hack, growth usually slowed after a while until your tier increased but it was a slow but steady growth through repetition and pushing yourself to the limit always seemed to nudge that limit farther along. This method of improvement had only grown more pronounced as his aether stopped disappearing into another dimension to teleport around instead of through his flesh in that slippery wishy washy way.
Because aether was a field of something resembling energy without particles, it could flow around and through atoms no matter how tightly packed they were. Just because it could flow through his flesh didn’t mean it passed by unimpeded – James bled from every orifice and frequently burst his skin with black blood every time he pushed himself now.
It was undeniably slower – some of his skills taking over twice as long to activate now.
But even that felt like growth. The more his body adapted to this state, the less damaged he got. The more his aether burst through his skin, the more pores seemed to form as permanent pathways were healed in to place.
And James felt an undeniable sense of quality rise because of it. He was refining his body in yet another way. The power that passed through was more ‘his’ than ever before.
Mana on the other hand didn’t seem to care at all about the actual path it traveled through – even though it cared deeply about the meaning of traveling through that path. It cared about ‘Shape’ not ‘shape’ in that way that was hard to describe with words at least for him. James could use the same mana skill through any of his body parts for example – even if he ‘built’ the intent for his concept in his hands, mana let him pull the power through his body and pop the ‘spell’ out his feet without any side effects. On the other hand, if there was some conceptual tie between a body part and a skill that he broke by shifting it, the skill would weaken while putting in more effort to reroute a skill with aether would not.
James’s favorite memory of his aether training was the time he was hit by what felt like a tornado of projectiles. A swarm of tiny borrowing creatures had controlled thousands of sharp spikes like a hive mind of telekinetic hedgehogs. James had locked in and dodged the majority of the projectiles while feeling like he was in the matrix. Sure he could have tanked the spikes – they were incredibly sharp and incredibly fast, but neither mattered to his ‘armour’ after all.
Something about jerking his body about for several minutes of kinetic-diverting, sped up matrix-dodging had felt sublime.
Mana skills on the other hand didn’t grow through physical repetition – they grew through the meaning of repetition. They grew through his understanding of them and the meaning of the effort he put into them rather than the actual effort. It had the same result – he could pretend they were the same ‘thing’ and yet while experiencing the two side by side, it was fundamentally different.
In other words, while both grew with time and effort, they did so in parallel. The best part was that while switching sides “reset” some of James’s progress there were still permanent gains left behind. “Resetting” his progress had the bonus effect of increasing his overall limit. 1 increased to 10 became 3 increased to 15 became 5 increased to 19.
James’s favorite memory on a mana pure training spree was less an event and more an achievement. Restriction resulting in strength was a law of magic but the act of restricting himself so often and in such a wide variety of ways… the shape of his actions you could say – had grown into a pseudo concept.
No longer just an arbitrary action he was taking, it was now a distinct power. Beyond making it easier to restrict himself – a mental block that made it harder to break his self-imposed rules – the concept and way the concept solidified was bent towards his goals. Not short-term power but long-term growth – It was like there was an invisible ‘growth modifier’ whenever he tapped into the power that made his gains larger whenever he restricted himself with the concept.
The week passed in a blur of training and suddenly it was time. James almost didn’t want to stop for the pesky goal of taking down a mountain – he was physically and mentally addicted to the feeling of growing stronger.
Maddy provided James with an entire barrel of green goo she claimed was a spell – and a pair of eyes to direct the spell. Richard provided him with a long metal pole. Troy followed along as backup and Richard told him to film the whole thing.
There wasn’t a complicated plan for this hunt. Maddy’s poison needed to be dumped on an open wound. As long as the wound was big enough it would either work or it wouldn’t – her goo couldn’t just be tossed in the calamities void of a mouth sadly.
The majority of James’s job was creating that wound in the first place. Of all the attacks he had seen, the most effective for opening up a large chunk of flesh was the ‘rod of god’ a group had tried. Sure it had been healed in less than a minute but the attack had still scored a line down the creatures side. Theoretically a nuke had done more damage, but that was wide range and difuse in comparison to the precision strike of a hunk of metal.
Maybe if that group had tried dropping a hundred rods of god they might have been able to kill the creature? Maybe if they managed to embed a nuke in the creature instead of dropping it on it?
As James approached he couldn’t help but feel they were too late.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The mountain sat in the remains of the worlds water. A thin foot of water roughly a kilometer in diameter. Not even a lakes worth left for the planet!
James could visibly see the edge of the pool shrink as it drained into the bottomless hole that was this monster’s maw.
The air was thin enough James had to divert the majority of his energy to grasping bits of it nearby – and even with all his strength it was hard to breathe even this far out.
Taking a deep breath James unlatched his rod from the wagon Richard had lent him, then turned to Troy.
“Want to be in charge of dumping the barrel of goo? You’ll have maybe 10-20 seconds. Can you manage that?”
Troy nodded hefting the barrel a few times then giving James a thumbs up.
With a smile James slowly lifted the rod spinning it sideways with a grunt then slipping into a small harness in the middle. All along one side of the rod a pair of strips lay – lines of twisting exposed filament designed to lighten his burden. With a flex, aether began to flow along his back bursting out of his skin as it connected to the device and began to hum. A second swirl of aether began to head towards his feet where the levitation skill had migrated.
“Be back in a bit. I’ll send you a message when I’m dropping – good luck!” James waved then jumped.
The air grew thinner nearly immediately – as if the mountains field of vacuum extended up in a funnel. James reached out and attempted to grab onto air, feeling a new burden join the first two. He flew backwards further trying to escape the funnel of vacuum and climb up around it…but the ‘funnel’ kept extending out endlessly.
So much air was gone, James felt an undercurrent of dread begin to flicker through his confidence. The danger of this calamity had never been the monster itself – merely the side effect of its continued existence. Why had they messed around with heading to the moon when they could have worked to kill this faster? If Maddy had made her poison two-three weeks ago it would have done less damage to the planet.
Giving up on going around, James began to fly into the vacuum feeling it grow worse and worse the closer her grew to the center.
This was the hardest step by far. James could feel his reserves dropping quickly juggling his three costs. His training had made him stronger but it wasn’t enough. The lack of air mixed with his exertion and sapped his strength. He could do this!
James pushed in bursts and repetitive strains. 50 feet. 100 feet. 200 feet. He couldn’t do this!
James…wouldn’t make it. If he were being honest with himself this wasn’t going to be enough – If James’s goal was just to drop the metal he would have to reach orbit to gain the kinds of velocity they were aiming for. The goal had never been orbit – it was to get as high as he could manage then ride it downwards pushing the whole way. Because of this vacuum ‘As high as he could manage’…was not going to be nearly high enough.
[Troy, change of plans, Can you move the barrel as close as you can manage then prepare yourself to attack as well? I don’t think I’ll manage a big enough wound alone.]
[No problem, give me a minute then tell me when] Troy responded
James forced himself upwards. He pushed and pushed black blood dripping from his nose and dribbling down his back from the pole.
[Done] Troy finally sent and with a final burst James pushed himself directly above the ‘mountain’. Just over a kilometer up. The top of the mountain was just over 100m tall. This would have to be enough.
Spinning the pole to face downwards James flipped the aether channeling through the ‘gravity reduction’ command strip over to the gravity magnification one. Sliding out of the backpack he briefly pulled himself away noticing a visible warp in the air between his shoulder and the strip.
Pulling back towards it James gripped the falling spear and began to pull downwards crawling towards the bottom and looking down like a bear midway up a tree. [I’m dropping, get ready!]
30 minutes up. Less than a minute down. Jumping away at the last possible second, James tore his momentum away and threw it at his spear – slowing his own decent while increasing its speed by a nearly imperceptible amount.
An ear piercing screech of warping metal and tearing flesh rang out even as James altered his direction midair spotting Maddy’s barrel.
Falling sideways James flew passed the barrel wrapping one arm around it then flipping his direction once again. Halfway towards his line of damage a pair of arrows suddenly appeared. One black, One white, the air between them a sharp line of contrast.
Troy’s arrows entered the skin silently then imploded, ripping open nearly a meter of flesh.
James grabbed his momentum for a second time and gave it all to his payload. With a twist his barrel shot towards the wound.
Turning James began to run. His skin prickled in the void, his empty lungs screamed and everything hurt. James’s eyes were blurry and damaged a crack splitting open his vision. Blood was dragged out of his skin from the vacuum – his power ripped away from his control forcefully.
But he’d gone through worse pain. His body was less dependent upon oxygen nowadays and he’d fought blindfolded too much for the vision impairment to slow him down.
Soon the negative environment began to improve. James reached Troy’s spot and together they backed off. James turned trying to blink away the darkness in his vision before realizing one of his eyes had popped completely.
Maddy suddenly spoke from his shoulder and James felt his eye begin to reform.
“Thanks,” James nodded then turned and tried to observe the creature.
The mountain took several minutes to fall and when it finally did it didn’t die in a dramatic way – no stumble and crash to the ground. No roar or explosion of gore.
It barely even moved – its mouth closing silently as it drifted away.
The largest indication that anything happened was the decay of whatever field the creature had created.
Air began to flow towards the creature even faster than before as the controlled suction became an equalizing vacuum.
The air rushing in hit the water in the center with a soft womph – a small gustier floating up in the air.
And then it was over a juicy achievement popping up for all who contributed.
----------------------------------------
---Maddy---
Maddy felt immense relief as the mountain died. There was a moment or two there where she worried it wouldn’t work.
Days of constant effort to create this spell. Countless reinforcements of melted monsters and minerals. Rivers of mana built up slowly but surely and it had barely been enough!
The exact method she had used was simple. This mountain had incredibly high defensive stats. It was barely affected by fire, acid, void – a blanket defense against nearly all damage they could think of. Maybe the creature had low mental defense or something else out of their reach but mental mana was currently nerfed and banned so they weren’t even in consideration.
No, the key Maddy had noticed was in the way the creature healed. Life mana. It was also apparent the creature had a specialized body instead of a generalized one – there was no way it would be able to defend against what it did with a goopy generalized one.
Most creatures had low to non existent defense against healing – and Maddy had physically seen the creature heal before. Her life-sight had seen life mana swirl to the surface and smooth away damage before.
The problem of course was making life mana damage a creature. Making ‘her’ life mana damage a creature.
The solution was in shifting magic. Way back when, Maddy had created spells that could shift between life and death – eggs that hatched into healing for her friends and death for her enemies. Once they had fully landed on one side they were incredibly hard to flip back to the other but she had still managed it…and more importantly she was no longer the same person and her goal was always to dip into one side instead of taking a plunge.
Her ‘two sides’ were split. Her death eyes and life eyes no longer a single pool.
By reaching for that old magic Maddy found she could with great difficulty recreate the scale and she was no longer bound to the same two elements.
She could make a pure mana construct that shifted between dark-life and dark-destructive-death.
Stage one of the spell focused on being as beneficial as possible. An external healing designed to flow through the creature in as un-impeded a manner as possible – reaching as many vital areas as it could healing anything and everything the monster might have missed. Like a virus that masqueraded as an immune system, the mana of her deceitful spell didn’t even have a whiff of death in it to start.
She had created the purest healing she could imagine – a condensed and refined healing liquid that could bring someone back from the very brink. The monster’s body had sucked in the healing spell like it had sucked in everything else, instinctively pulling such a beneficial wave throughout its form. One eye had been in charge of this section manipulating it from afar.
Stage two was the hardest possible part for Maddy – shifting that magic from life towards death. They were both her mana. Both her affinities. Both pools were linked with pure mana at the center – even if she swapped the eye holding onto the reigns of the spell, it should still be hers. A second eye directed this part of the spell before handing it off to the third and final ‘her’ as fast as she could manage.
Stage three was to do as much damage after the shift as possible – the dark destructive death focused on killing from within in a thousand tiny ways. She maintained a link to her external death pool and funneled plenty of that purer death into this one attack.
This damage was still resisted by the creatures massive passive resistances but her spell was now closer to vital areas. Even if a large portion of the creature was nearly immune, bits of its biology needed to be vulnerable. It needed to have a core or two. It needed weak points.
And from what feedback Maddy had received, she could confirm the calamity had four hearts each hidden behind meters upon meters of flesh.
Each heart fell, one by one – the final heart holding on for a nerve-wracking amount of time before falling as well.
But in the end all that mattered was that it fell.
Finally they were done. One of the calamities was down and Maddy thought she saw a wave of ‘something’ burst from it sinking into the world around them before fading.
One down. How many more to go?