"…Are you just going to keep patting yourself on the back, or do you plan on actually letting me in on this grand epiphany of yours?"

After a beat of silence, the AI chimed in, its mechanical voice tinged with a hint of exasperation.

"Thanks, but I'm good. I can bask in my own genius just fine," Benjamin quipped back, seizing the chance to give the AI a taste of its own medicine.

"…"

If the AI had a face, it would've been twisted in a mask of impotent fury.

Not that Benjamin was trying to be deliberately antagonistic. It was just that the training method he'd devised was still in its infancy, and he didn't want to risk the AI's mockery if it turned out to be a dud. Plus, he'd frankly had his fill of the AI's antics for one day. A little turnabout was fair play, and might even help keep their dynamic on a more even keel going forward.

Semantics aside, his little experiment had already given him a much more systematic understanding of magic.

Water elements were the bedrock of his spellcasting. And as far as he could tell, they came in two distinct flavors: those gathered within his mindscape, and those drifting aimlessly through the physical world. He could sense and communicate with the real-world variety, but actually harnessing them was another story. Thinking back to the one and only time he'd managed to cast Water Ball in the waking world, he realized he'd actually been drawing on the elements stored within his mindscape.

The water elements in his mental realm, on the other hand, congregated around that enigmatic magical symbol. By manipulating the rune, he could bend them to his will. Each spell cast would consume a portion of these precious resources. In other words, the water elements stockpiled in his mindscape were essentially his "mana pool".

The more elements he had squirreled away, the more spells he could sling, and the more potent they'd be.

Short of learning new incantations from scratch (which would be a neat trick, given his current predicament), increasing his mindscape's elemental reserves seemed to be the only way to boost his magical muscle.

All of this mental mastication boiled down to one crucial question: how the heck was he supposed to store more water elements?

The answer was blindingly obvious - siphon them from the real world, of course!

Benjamin had a sneaking suspicion that all those fictional mages waxing poetic about the power of meditation were onto something. Tapping into the elemental currents of the world around them, skimming off a little mana here and there to bolster their own reserves… it was all starting to make a lot more sense.

When you got right down to it, whether you called it magic, ki, chakra, or any other fancy term for inner power, the basic process was always the same: store it, grow it, then unleash it. And he'd bet his last potato that this world was no different. As long as he kept funneling those sweet, sweet water elements into his mindscape, his magical might was sure to flourish.

This, in a nutshell, was Benjamin's hard-won understanding of the mage's path to power.

"Man, I really am a genius!" he crowed, positively drunk on his own brilliance.

"So you're really not going to fill me in, huh?" the AI groused.

"Nope," Benjamin replied, popping the 'p' with relish.

"…"

Never one to rest on his laurels, Benjamin wasted no time putting his theory to the test. Closing his eyes, he cranked his elemental senses to the max. The basement's air might've been staler than week-old bread, but the dank, musty atmosphere was a veritable smorgasbord of ambient water magic. He reached out with his mind, feeling for those free-floating motes of power, willing them to heed his call and join his personal mana stash.

Of course, that was easier said than done. At first, Benjamin was flying blind, fumbling around in the metaphysical dark. Directing the elements with raw intention alone accomplished diddly squat.

But he refused to let a little setback dampen his spirits. In a flash of insight, he realized he'd been barking up the wrong tree:

He shouldn't be trying to sweet-talk the water elements themselves. He needed to get his mindscape in on the action!

The mindscape was a real head-scratcher of a place, operating on its own screwy set of rules. But if he could figure out a way to harness its unique properties, corralling those stray elemental particles would be a breeze. Otherwise, even if he did manage to scoop them up, they'd just end up sloshing around his meat-suit. And last he checked, his body had no use for extra water weight.

Benjamin shifted his focus inward, probing the vast expanse of his mental realm. But instead of diving in headfirst like usual, he tried to maintain a weird sort of half-in, half-out state - one foot planted firmly in the waking world, the other dipped tentatively into the bottomless well of his psyche.

It was a downright uncanny sensation, teetering on the precipice between external hustle and internal flow. He could feel his breathing slow to a crawl, his heartbeat flickering like a guttering candle. It was like his spirit was hovering inches above his body, observing the crude matter of his physical form from the lofty perch of detached awareness.

A profound sense of rightness settled over him like a mantle.

Call it a hunch, but he had a feeling he was onto something.

Careful not to budge a mental muscle, he let himself marinate in that liminal headspace for a spell. Once the initial vertigo passed, he turned his attention back to the cloud of vagrant elements hanging in the damp dungeon air.

The effect was instantaneous.

The moment his senses brushed against a stray wisp of water magic, it would blink out of existence, only to rematerialize deep within his mindscape a heartbeat later. The process was so sudden, so seamless, it felt like he was punching holes in the fabric of reality itself. Those motes of power didn't flow from point A to point B so much as quantum leap across the yawning gap between realms.

Benjamin could've crowed with glee.

He'd cracked the code! Elemental Tetris was officially on the menu.

Each successful siphon sent a ripple of cool refreshment cascading through his every nerve, setting his very soul aquiver with unmitigated triumph.

Drunk on the heady rush of victory, Benjamin let his senses run roughshod over every inch of his subterranean cell, zealously hoovering up every last speck of magical moisture. His inner world, parched and papery mere moments ago, was soon flush with elemental mana once more. For a solid half-hour, he slurped down water magic like an arcane Hoover on overdrive, riding the edge of that sublime half-trance for all it was worth.

Only when his mindscape started to swell with liquid potential did Benjamin reluctantly ease off the metaphysical gas. Drifting back to full wakefulness was like shaking off the most delicious power nap of his life. He sucked in a deep, steadying breath, bodily contentment radiating from every pore.

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"Man, if that's what getting high feels like, sign me up for magical rehab," he sighed, still more than a little blitzed.

"…So that's your grand unified theory of magical self-improvement?" the AI chimed in, equal parts incredulous and put out for being left out of the loop.

"Darn tootin'. Feel free to start singing my praises any time. I'll wait," Benjamin drawled, head lolling back in smug satisfaction.

"…"

You could practically hear the AI grinding its virtual teeth.

"Alright, alright, no need to get all mushy on me. Lay it on me, magic man! I can take it," Benjamin laughed, still too buzzed on his own success to take a hint.

The AI lapsed into a pregnant pause. Then, with the machine-modulated equivalent of barely leashed apoplexy, it ratcheted its volume up to 'garage band practice space':

"NO! ONE! IS! PRAISING! YOU! YOUR! METHOD! IS! A! FAILURE!"

Benjamin was momentarily stunned by the AI's bombastic declaration, but he quickly shook it off, furrowing his brow in consternation.

"Come again?" he queried, not quite sure he'd heard right.

The AI dialed its volume back to a more reasonable level. "No one is praising you. Your method is a failure," it repeated, enunciating each word with deliberate precision.

Benjamin still wasn't buying it, assuming the AI was just having another one of its little glitches.

"And how exactly did I fail?" he shot back, a tad defensively.

"See for yourself. Pop back into that mindscape of yours and you'll understand what I'm getting at," the AI replied, its tone uncharacteristically solemn.

Hearing the AI's unvarnished sincerity, Benjamin realized this was no mere jest. The giddy high of his perceived breakthrough began to dissipate as he cautiously re-entered his mental realm, half-expecting some eldritch horror to leap out and yell "SURPRISE!"

But no. Everything was just as he'd left it - the yawning void, the pulsing blue rune, the languid swirl of ambient water magic…

Huh. Didn't seem to be anything amiss.

Wait a minute… just as he'd left it?

Benjamin's eyes widened as the penny finally dropped.

The elemental density of his mindscape was completely unchanged from before his little absorption spree. But that made no sense! He'd just spent the better part of an hour hoovering up every stray wisp of water magic in a five-mile radius. By all rights, this place should've been fit to burst with all that surplus mana. And yet…

Where the heck had it all gone?

"Leaked out like a sieve the second you started patting yourself on the back, oh wise and mighty one," the AI supplied, answering Benjamin's unspoken question with a hefty dollop of snark.

"Leaked out?! How? Why?" Benjamin sputtered, crestfallen. All that painstaking effort, all those hard-won gains, scattered to the metaphysical winds without so much as a by-your-leave. It was like watching a week's wages go up in smoke at the craps table.

"Oh, I thought you had it all figured out, Merlin. Why don't you tell me?" the AI shot back, taking a page out of the old battleaxe's book with the cutting remarks.

But Benjamin was too preoccupied to rise to the bait, his brow furrowed in intense concentration as he muttered, "This doesn't add up. There must be a reason…"

He could feel it, dancing just at the edge of his understanding - some crucial detail he'd overlooked, some lynchpin without which his entire theoretical framework fell to pieces like a house of cards.

The cycle of accumulation, augmentation, and aspiration had seemed so foolproof in the abstract. Where had it all gone wrong?

"Put yourself in the elements' shoes for a minute. They were doing just fine, minding their own business out there in the aether. What's in it for them, shacking up in some rando's brainpan for the long haul? Of course they're gonna hightail it outta there first chance they get," the AI piped up again, pouring salt in the wound with gleeful abandon.

But Benjamin was too lost in thought to offer any rejoinder, the AI's words barely registering as he turned the problem over and over in his head like a Rubik's cube. He was so close, he could taste it - the elegant solution, the unifying theory of magical training, so tantalizingly within reach. He KNEW he had all the pieces…

And yet, the results spoke for themselves. He'd been going about it all wrong, that much was painfully clear.

But where? Where had he zigged when he should've zagged?

"But why…?" he mused under his breath, still racking his brain for the answer.

"Why, oh why, did they go bye-bye?" the AI sing-songed, mercilessly mocking Benjamin's befuddlement. "Gee whiz, mister, I just can't imagine why they wouldn't want to stick around for your magical sausage party…"

Benjamin found himself unwittingly drawn into the AI's teasing refrain, muttering along almost involuntarily:

"Why… why… why did they go…"

Why… did they go?

Suddenly, a bolt of inspiration shot through Benjamin's brain like a dose of mental lightning.

Of course! The excess elements had dissipated back into the aether, just like the AI said. But what about the REST of them - the ones that had already taken up residence in his mindscape from the get-go? Why hadn't THEY pulled a vanishing act too? What was keeping them anchored here, when by all rights they should've been just as eager to fly the coop?

With this subtle shift in perspective, Benjamin realized the answer had been staring him right in the face the whole time.

Slowly, reverently, he raised his gaze to the shimmering blue triangle that dominated his mental horizon. Bathed in its cerulean luminescence, the planes of his face shifted from befuddled frustration to stunned epiphany.

Of course! How could he have forgotten the very linchpin of his entire magical existence?

That humble blue rune… it was the key to everything. It was the crowbar that had jimmied open his mindscape, the lightning rod that drew the water elements into its orbit. It was his sixth sense and his truest ally, the font from which his power flowed.

It was his anchor, the only thing standing between him and total elemental destitution. But even it had its limits. Push too much mana into the tank, and eventually, something had to give.

Mystery solved, Benjamin wasted no time course-correcting.

He'd been approaching this all wrong. Mana wasn't the metric that mattered - runes were the real name of the game. If he wanted to level up his magical mastery, he needed to focus on strengthening that enigmatic triangle until it could handle his newly expanded reservoir.

As for how to go about doing that…

Benjamin pondered for a moment, then broke into a grin. Delving deep into his mindscape once more, he reached out with a tendril of thought, coaxing a cloud of water elements into a lazy orbit around the rune's pulsing heart. It was tougher than expected, his mental muscles straining with the effort of imposing his will on the diffuse particles. But slowly, inexorably, he shepherded them closer and closer to their glowing destination.

At last, the stray motes brushed up against the rune's angular surface.

THRUM!

The rune shivered, its sonorous ring totally unlike anything Benjamin had ever heard. For the briefest of moments, his world dissolved into an endless expanse of blue, esoteric symbols dancing around him in an arcanely perfect gavotte.

Then he blinked, and the vision was gone as quickly as it had come, leaving him once again adrift in the familiar midnight sea of his mindscape.

"…The heck was that?" he marveled, still trying to process the bizarre phenomenon.

But his awe soon gave way to renewed determination. Narrowing his eyes, he fixed his gaze on the rune's steadfast glow, a slow smile spreading across his face. Without hesitation, he sank back into the familiar meditative trance, his consciousness probing the mindscape for stray elemental motes.

Another pulse of intention, another shining target. This time, the transfer was seamless - the water magic flowing into the rune like a river into the sea, merging together in a flash of perfect unison.

The cerulean light pulsed once, twice… then subsided, its secrets subsumed once more.

But Benjamin was undeterred, settling in for the long haul. He knew he was onto something - could feel it deep in his bones with the same unshakable certainty that had led him to magic in the first place. Proving it was just a matter of dogged persistence.

And so he kept at it, for minutes that bled into hours that bled into an endless feedback loop of storage and synthesis. His control was still shaky, the process of corralling the wayward particles akin to herding cats across a frozen lake. Each iteration was an exercise in mind-numbing tedium. But the steady drip-drip-drip of progress was its own reward, stoking the flames of his fervor higher and higher.

In the physical world, a solid half-day slipped by, lost to the haze of his single-minded mania. Twelve uninterrupted hours of trial and error, a never-ending dance of magic and mental might. Dimly, Benjamin realized that he had his current captivity to thank for his iron focus - out in the wider world, distractions would've been impossible to avoid.

But in the moment, the outside world may as well have been a distant dream for all he cared. There was only the rune, the elements, and the intoxicating thrill of discovery, spurring him on with its siren song.

This feeling… it carried the same electric tingle as his very first brush with true magic, rekindling a fire in his soul he hadn't even realized was guttering out. Nothing that felt this right, this blindingly OBVIOUS, could possibly lead him astray.

Benjamin tipped his head back, basking in the rune's radiant glory as he caught his breath. There could be no doubt - his theory had been forged and tempered in the unforgiving crucible of arcane science.

But seeing was one thing. The final proof would be in the casting.

As the last few hours ticked by in a blur, the mindscape's ambient mana regenerated bit by bit, like flowers blossoming in the wake of a cleansing rain. Finally, as the half-day mark loomed, Benjamin found himself suffused in a veritable deluge of power, the elemental concentration approaching critical mass.

Slowly, deliberately, he raised one hand to the rune, the words of invocation already rising to his lips.

The rune pulsed its eager assent.

With a sound like a hundred wind chimes caught in a playful breeze, the water elements surged forward, coalescing into an orb of aquatic majesty that eclipsed his prior conjurations like the sun would a firefly.

Benjamin drank in the sight of his handiwork, a laugh of pure vindicated joy bubbling up from his chest:

"Read it and weep, you glorified calculator. Doubt my genius at your peril!"