Chapter 29: Anticlimactic breakthrough
Felix Sythias’ POV (continued):
I stared at the cube in my talon. I was still trying to work up the courage to activate the enchantment and get shocked. Looking around, I saw I wasn’t the only one having trouble. Unsurprisingly, it seemed no one liked the idea of getting shocked. Strangely enough, the people with the siphon versions of the boxes had much less trouble. After a moment of thinking—totally not a bid for time—I thought I had a reason why. They only had to touch the crystal, while we had to touch the crystal and channel our mana into it. What we had to do felt much more deliberate, and took more effort. It was the difference between asking to be pushed off a cliff into the water below, and actually jumping down yourself. The bar was lower for them, if only slightly.
I glanced at the clock and sighed. I’d been staring at the cube for over five minutes now. Enough with the distractions, it was time to just… jump off the cliff. Taking a deep breath, I took some mana from my pool and guided it through my veins to the tip of my claw and into the crystal. For a moment nothing happened, but then, without any warning, I was shocked. I felt the muscles in my talon twitch and spasm as the faux-electricity coursed a burning trail through my flesh. I yelped and almost dropped the cube. That shock really was nasty.
I sniffed the air, and I swore that for a moment, I smelled burning flesh—a smell I was sadly familiar with after last week's incident—but I knew it was just a figment of my imagination. This was just lightning mana, after all, not actual electricity. It was impossible to actually burn me. Well, impossible with these small amounts of mana, anyway.
It happened so fast I couldn’t even tell what happened with the mana. I had put my mana into the enchantment, there had been a tiny delay, and then I was suddenly shocked. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the device never actually sent the mana back, and just used it to create an actual shock! But I did know better. I glanced up at professor Hobold. Assuming I could trust his word, anyway. Not that he had any reason to lie about the cube.
So, I’d have to do it again, and again, and again, until I finally grasped what happened, and then again and again until I could draw the mana back in without letting it shock me. I grimaced and finally understood why so few people took the advanced lightning magic classes—they never made it past the basic one.
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In the end, I had to give up after two dozen more times—one dozen per arm. While it wasn’t actual electricity, it was still very unpleasant and my limbs got sore. I’d try again later.
Despite trying so many times, I sadly still wasn’t able to understand much of what was happening. The only thing I could glean now was that the mana jumped back from the cube almost instantly. It happened too fast for me to tell anything about the mana itself, but at least I could somewhat detect it. Now that I thought about it, that was probably the reason for the delay as well. The enchantment needed a moment to build up the mana. I wondered what would happen if the lightning mana didn’t jump back instantly, but was instead a steady stream. Would it produce a constant shock? Or something else entirely? I’d have to check the textbook later.
From the look on Alex’s face, it seemed he was more successful than I was. Did he manage to spot something I didn’t? I would have to ask later. For now, I was content with shoving the damned box to the very bottom of one of the saddlebags. I’m sure it was very effective, but that thing was definitely designed by a sadist.
At the end of the class, the teacher told us our homework was to use the box a minimum of twenty times a day and write down as many things as possible that we thought defined lightning mana. There was a collective groan from the students, and a few students just stood up and left. The professor gave them no more than a quick glance while he continued talking.
After he was done, the students dispersed, and I went to chat with the professor for a moment about my instinctive magic issue, hoping he had advice to offer. He didn’t. It seemed I remained the leading expert on instinctive magic. Damn.
I waved him goodbye and joined up with Alex, who was waiting for me in the hallway. We walked back to the dorms and talked about the box.
“I think the instant… discharge? Is that the right word?” he asked, and I nodded. “I think it’s part of the nature of the mana, and not just an effect of the enchantment. Think about it, static shocks are instant too, right? Why would this be any different?”
I thought about it for a moment. What he said made sense, but it didn’t match up with my experiences. It was mana, not electricity, and none of my other mana acted in such a way, after all. My wind mana didn’t blow, and my water mana didn’t flow, so why would lightning mana arc? But what he said made sense, so was he wrong, or was I?
I decided the easiest way to know was to try it out. I drew some mana from my pool. It was already water affinity by the time it exited the organ and entered my body, and I wondered how that happened. It was neutral while inside my pool, but changed the moment it got out. Something to think on later. Now, instead of guiding the mana through my veins, I imagined it flowed through my veins like a calm river through a quiet forest.
I noticed the change immediately. It was small and big at the same time. The change in my control was small but distinctly noticeable. I simply had more control over my water mana this way. It reacted a bit faster, turned better, and moved more smoothly. The big change, though, was that I could now control the speed at which it flowed through my veins, something that had previously eluded me. Before this I could draw the mana out and guide it to the correct places, but it gave me no control over speed. And with how I used my magic, it had never been necessary to figure out. Now I just had to imagine the water flowing slower or faster.
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The consequences of this were great. If my mana flowed faster, it would have more force behind it. And if it flowed slower, I had more time to imprint my requests, and could weave more intricate patterns. After some quick testing, I noticed I could speed up or slow down my mana by a factor of almost two. That meant my water magic just became roughly twice as effective.
“Felix? You okay?” Alex asked, and I realized I’d stopped moving and never answered his question.
“I… am, yeah. Sorry, your comment just gave me a breakthrough of sorts. I think you’re definitely onto something there.”
He frowned “A breakthrough?”
I explained what I realized and what it changed.
He scratched the scales behind his ears. “My observation did that? That seems… a little anticlimactic, really. Aren’t breakthroughs supposed to be these big important moments?”
“What, spending time with you doesn’t count as important?” I said.
He smiled, and I felt a fuzzy warmth. “That’s sweet, but you know what I meant.”
I shrugged. “I don’t really have experiences with them, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, okay. Well, at least we now know the idea has some merit. I wonder how knowing that will affect how we experience the box,” he said and glanced at his backpack. He grimaced. “Let’s wait until tomorrow to try it out, though. One more shock and we’ll be eating roast lizard for dinner.”
I chuckled and then remembered something. “Speaking of dinner, I still need to go shopping, was there anything you wanted?”
He thought for a moment, then answered. “Cheese. I can’t think of anything else. Oh! Some snacks if you can find them. I keep getting cravings, but a full on sandwich would be too much.”
“I’ll see what I can find. I’m not sure when the shops close, so I do need to go now then, if I want to make it on time.”
I handed him my key and waved goodbye, setting off down a different road, heading to the nearby student shopping area. I’d wanted to go to the proper shopping area, but that was too far away to reach in time, so I’d save it for Saturday.
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The shopping area was busy. There were students all around, getting various items and necessities. There weren’t all that many shops here, only a few clothes shops, a shop selling school supplies, a general food store, and a bookshop. I made a mental note to check out the bookstore later.
I’d never been here before, since I usually did my shopping in the general shopping district. There were more shops there, and of much higher quality. The shops here weren’t bad, per se, but the shops were priced for students and the quality of the goods suffered because of it.
Walking into the general food store, I noticed a little sign by the door with the opening times. I’d worried for nothing, since the stores didn’t close until nine, and it was only just barely five o’clock. In hindsight, that made a lot of sense. The stores were meant for students, and said students only finished school at half past four.
The store was very cramped. Not only were there a lot of students, the shelves were put very close together. Next time I would ask Alex to come with me. Why didn’t I just do so in the first place? I sighed, it didn’t matter. I took a few more steps inside and quickly realized that this wasn’t going to work, so I carefully stepped backward—right into another person.
“Ow!” the person called out from the ground.
I froze. Not only because I stepped into another person but also because I recognized the voice. It was Tiki.
“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned despite our unsolved issues. Talking to someone with your butt facing towards them was awkward, but I couldn’t even turn my head without knocking down either a stack of cheese or a stand filled with wine bottles.
“I’m fine. Wait a moment and I’ll help you get out.”
I heard her get back to her feet and to start herding people back. A moment later she guided me back outside. I only knocked over one stand—thankfully not the one with wine, that would’ve been a pain to clean off my scales. I would need to pay for it, but that was fine, everything here was cheap.
“Do you need help shopping?” she asked.
The tone of her voice made me think everything was normal, and nothing had gone wrong, but I knew better, and so did she; it showed in her body language. She was tense, and she constantly glanced away. Maybe she was looking for a way out, or maybe she was just unable to meet my eyes. It didn’t matter. Alex said she wanted to apologize, and I wasn’t going to rush her, but I did need help.
“Um, yeah, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
She smiled awkwardly. “I wouldn’t have offered it if it was.”
I gave her a list of items I needed. It wasn’t a long list, only supplies to last the rest of the week, until I could drop by the actual shopping district. Tiki seemed to disagree, as her eyes bulged more and more with each item I wrote down. After that, I sat down and waited for her to get everything I needed, and if she was smart, everything she needed, too.
A while later—maybe twelve minutes—she returned and handed my card back to me. I checked the amount still on there, and it was about right, so I pocketed it, and took a look through the foodstuffs. Everything was there in one form or another except one thing.
“They didn’t have chicken?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Sorry, they ran out earlier.”
That was a little disappointing, but I could live without it. I put the food away, and we stood there in awkward silence. Now that the task was done, all that was left was the gryphon in the room. I wasn’t willing to speak first, and it seemed she didn’t know what to say. She probably hadn’t meant to run into me, and wasn’t ready to talk. She opened her mouth to speak a few times, only to close it again. After a few more tries she settled on: “Can we sit down somewhere out of the way? I, uh, think we need to talk. I have an apology to make.”
I nodded and motioned her to walk. She did, and I followed her out the small shopping zone and down an obscure path back to the dorms. Not many people would walk this path when a much better option was available. That suited our needs just fine, though. After walking for a while, we came across a bench and she sat down. I sat down opposite of her and waited for her to speak.