Chapter 42

Michael sat in the back of his car, enjoying the ride. The day was far from over, but his long rest inside the dungeon had him feel like this was a whole new day. Only ten minutes has passed in the outside world while, to him, it had been a few enjoyable days of rest.

However, returning to the real world made some of his worries come back, and his mood took a turn for the worse. Since it would be a while before got home, he thought it would be nice to practice magic, to get his mind off of things. The soundproofing privacy barrier was down, but by now Michael had shown Bob enough strange things that it didn’t really matter if the driver saw another or two. Besides, he trusted the guy.

A distortion sphere appeared. He studied the bubble before it vanished with a muted pop, taking some of his mana with it. With his new capacity of 49 Copper, the expense was bearable, and he had coins in case he needed to top up. Ideally, it would be better to practice in the dungeon or at least close enough to it that he could fill up with his mana regeneration, but he had to make do. He didn’t want to delve again today, and until he got the land secured, practicing magic in the open close to the dungeon was not a good idea.

Ideally, the best thing to do was to practice while inside, making use of the time dilation effect and of the mana regeneration. He had not, this time. He had wanted to rest. But now that he was back in the real world, and now that time was ticking again, the feeling of pressure had him itching to just do something.

He summoned another bubble. The angle he was looking at it from made it seem like an inky drop against the moving background of fields and barns as they passed them by.

Wait. This means that the sphere follows my movements, or at least it stays in place relative to my position even though I am moving.

It gave Michael an idea. What if, with his new ability to manipulate skills, he tried to make the bubble move with his mind?

Five distortion spheres appeared and vanished quickly.

They vanish too quickly.

He got a feeling that perhaps he could make them linger around longer if he used his skill to push [Distortion Field] in that direction, but it wasn’t the kind of upgrade he was looking for. At the same time, since the bubble vanished so quickly, he couldn’t even begin to grasp it with his mana manipulation, let alone push it around.

Perhaps I’m trying to do too much.

His next experiment was to make the skill follow his own movements, rather than controlling it with his mind. It was a step backwards from what he really wanted, but at least it would be useful enough to make it worth trying to attain.

Another sphere appeared and was gone before he could even begin to move it. He had tried to move the hand he had summoned it with, but the sphere had stood in place without budging. No matter how hard he tried, burning precious mana to summon more and more spheres, he wasn’t making any progress.

[Distortion Field] was at a bottleneck, after all. Michael knew it wouldn’t be easy to upgrade the skill.

I’m wasting mana. I need to train this skill in the dungeon, where mana is not a problem.

He sighed. He was used to failure, but his recent successes had let him taste what it meant to truly win, and he wanted more.

What about healing? After Drullkrin, I feel like I’m on the cusp of advancement.

He switched to the aura skill. Activating it with no target, he quickly discovered that he could keep it running for a long time without consuming much mana at all. He felt the edges of the skill, its range and its effects, trying to figure out what was going on. Right where the effect waned to nothing, half a meter away from his body, he felt the concentration of magic in the air drop to nothing along with it.

Was his mana suffusing the very air? Or space itself?

It was hard to tell. He started stretching the space his skill influenced with mana manipulation, but suddenly he got the very distinct feeling of resistance, and more mana was sucked from him. To do what?

His mana was falling, although slowly, which made him curious. If the skill wasn’t healing anyone, and wasn’t generating any Qi—he checked—where was the mana even going?

He looked inwards with his mana sense. There was something inside his body, in a place that was impossible to locate by following the rules of regular, mundane geometry. It was like an inner sanctum of magic, a cavern that was dark and empty save for a few luminescent points of light. He had discovered this place not long ago, while resting in the dungeon, but had not tried to force a breakthrough.

Michael willed his sight towards the point of light that was glowing with the most power. His healing skill.

There he saw it clearly. It was a snaky thing, all twisty and with infinite edges and spikes, not unlike the crude Fae network that he had recreated from copying the forest king’s one, yet different.

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He wasn’t surprised, really. He had seen these shapes already in the skill stones. It only made sense that the skill stones transferred these shapes inside his… spiritual body, perhaps?

Looking closer, he saw that the convoluted shape was one that repeated itself infinite times. The closer he got, the more complex it became, the patterns repeating ever smaller with the same rough shape. Like fractals.

Pushing with his mana manipulation while keeping an eye on the fractal, he tried to see what was going on. As soon as he did that, the glow on the skill changed, a section that had been dimmer than the rest suddenly lighting up. He stopped pushing, and the glow shifted to a more central section of the fractal.

The glow remained even though he was doing nothing but using the skill. Dropping the skill, the glow faded but did not disappear. Most of the skill was dark, but the central part of the fractal was not.

A part of his skill, he deduced, was on the brink of a level up. When he pushed with his mana manipulation, trying to increase the range of the skill, he was changing the evolutionary path of the skill, forcing another part of the fractal to glow and attempt to level up.

Did he really want to force the skill?

He thought about it, but in the end he decided that there was no hurry. He would let it upgrade naturally first.

With his decision made, he activated his healing again and looked inwards. Now, he tried to direct mana and Qi towards the glowing section of the fractal, slowly raising its glow until—

Skill Level up!

[Healing Aura] reaches level 3. It is now more efficient, faster, and will be less taxing on the body.

The glow faded from the skill, the only light within the fractal being the magic Michael was supplying to keep it active. Deactivating the skill, the whole thing went dark.

What if I try to extend its range now?

He activated the skill, pushed against its limits, and looked inwards again. Now the ‘tail’ end of the fractal was glowing again, influenced by his actions, but the glow was so weak to almost be invisible compared to the activation light of the skill.

It would take a while for the glow to intensify enough to try another level up.

Michael was satisfied, though. Now he knew how to tell which skills were close to upgrading, what direction they were going to take, and he could influence their growth if he wished. He got a feeling that forcing a skill too much might damage it, but he had no proof.

***

There was karate class later that evening, and Michael went there while feeling completely apathetic towards learning more useless stuff. If what he learned here wasn’t applicable to combat in the dungeon, or combat with magic in general, then the only reason he still went to class was what Stephan had said to him about this dojo being the last normal place in Michael’s life.

Then Michael thought about Phillip, and the lawyer’s face made him dislike normalcy, if this was how it looked like. Thus, Michael approached the dojo with the intention to quit, perhaps asking sensei Stephan if he could be allowed to greet Master Taiko one last time—an excuse to see whether the old karate master glowed with magic or not.

It had been a while since Michael last saw someone with a magic aura, which only amplified his surprise when he stepped into the locker room.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Stephan asked, concerned. Michael was staring at him slack-jawed.

Phillip snickered, but a stern look from both of them silenced him. Michael noticed with satisfaction that when he moved, the lawyer flinched. It had not been enough to make him shut up, though.

“Ogling the sensei?” Phillip taunted him, “no good.”

Had it been anyone else, Michael would have laughed, as it was some genuine banter between guys.

“Nothing like that,” he said instead.

Class was boring, and Michael’s heart wasn’t in it. He was trying to figure out what he was seeing when he looked at his sensei. The aura was not magic, Qi, or elemental energy. It was something he had never seen before, and he wanted to know more.

The man in question noticed, and after the lesson pulled him to the side.

“You’re glowing, Stephan.”

“What do you mean?” the man asked as they walked to their respective cars. Michael noticed Phillip stealing a look at his car, but Bob rolled down the window and motioned to the man to get lost, and Phillip begrudgingly complied.

“There’s some sort of aura on you. Remember when I told you about auras?”

“You mean magic?” Stephan said in a whisper. “How is it possible?”

“You tell me,” Michael said.

“Not here.”

“Dinner?” Michael offered. He was rather hungry.

“Sure. I know a place where we can talk. You pay, though, you can afford it.”

They got in the car, and Bob drove them to the restaurant. They ate, neither of the two brushing the main subject at first, only enjoying the food and making small talk. Then, after dessert, Stephan ordered a beer and asked the question.

“What do you see when you look at me?”

“You’re glowing. There’s a faint aura around you, but it’s tighter than any aura I’ve ever seen, like a second skin. It’s not opaque either, I can see a bit inside. The places where this energy is most concentrated are your bones and muscles, as if I was looking at an x-ray of you.”

“And it’s the first time you see this? I didn’t do anything special since last time we met.”

“I think it’s because one of my skills upgraded. The one that lets me see magic. Are you sure you have no idea what this is?”

Stephan shook his head.

“I think you glowed a bit brighter during training, as if you were moving the energy around,” Michael added.

This time Stephan hummed, lost in thought.

Michael decided to make use of this pause in the conversation to check on something, following a hunch. He closed his eyes for a moment and looked inwards. Indeed, there he saw the fractal of his mana sense, glowing, on the cusp of a level up. Michael sent energy to it while picturing clearly what he was seeing when he looked at Stephan.

Skill Level up!

[Mana Sense] reaches level 5. You see Chi and Jing, a glimpse into a new world.

You have reached a bottleneck, to advance further you will need a special insight into the nature of the skill.

Skill Upgrade!

You now understand that there are as many kinds of energy as there are stars in the sky. Magic is not just mana, that much is clear. [Mana Sense] becomes [Magic Sense], upgrading into an Uncommon skill. Find more kinds of energy to upgrade the skill further.

“Do you know what Chi and Jing are?” Michael asked, reading the description of the level up, not letting himself get distracted by the second message, no matter how awesome it was.

Stephan’s eyes bore into him with a sudden intensity. “What did you just say?”