Chapter 52

When Michael woke up the next day, he realized just how tired he had been the day before. While yesterday’s paranoia had been entirely justified, perhaps his state of mind had amplified it by an excessive amount.

Now that it had all boiled over, like a pot of water left on a stove, all that was left was a little nugget of residue at the bottom.

If they betray me, I’ll just kill them.

He had lost sight of something very important for a moment. His core tenet, a mantra turned into unbreakable truth by the appearance of magic and of the dungeon. Even if Travis and Old Dave somehow betrayed him, even if they took away everything he had built, it was only a momentary setback.

No, not even that. There were no true steps back, not anymore. It would be a step in a new direction, somewhere unplanned. It would show him that he could not trust people, that he must do things by himself, but as long as he was alive he could rebuild. Stronger, with more experience. Without making the same mistakes.

Nobody could, after all, take away his true power: the skills and abilities he had worked so hard for in the dungeon. No matter how harsh of a place the dungeon was, true effort was always rewarded. Overcoming great odds always led to reward.

Why not treat real life the same way? If his fears turned out to be unfounded, then all was good. Effort, but no struggle, just steady gains.

If his two ‘mentors’, for lack of a better word, turned out to be bad… then Michael would take away all that he could from the situation. It would be real struggle and that was where he would see real growth. It almost made him wish they’d betray him for a moment, but then sanity won over. He was not a masochist who enjoyed misery. Even in the dungeon, where gains were tangible, he had to find a healthy middle ground. A balance between safety and hard odds.

In the real world, the balance was trickier to find. Things were less life-and-death, but they were more nuanced. Contingencies might be even more important.

With that in mind, he finally allowed himself to touch the orange skill stone and will the strange system-like prompt into existence. His eyes going wide, Michael did not hesitate one moment to absorb the skill stone, watching in rapt fascination as the biggest fractal he had ever seen—even bigger than his other rare skill—etched itself on the infinite walls of his inner sanctum where all of his magic resided.

A fine mist seemed to fill the dim fractal for a moment, rushing into it from unseen corners of this space Michael still didn’t know how to call. After the process was complete, he felt that the new skill was available to him like all others were, and he was none too worse for wear. Perhaps a little tired, perhaps his head was pounding a little bit, or perhaps he was imagining things.

Putting the mystery of this strange energy out of his mind, he focused on the new skill to read its full description.

(Rare) Spirit Guardian 1

From the realm beyond, a guardian answers my call; with spiritual bonds, I summon friendly creatures to stand by my side.

· Summon a spirit guardian from the astral planes with abilities tailored to your needs for up to 1 minute or until defeated.

· You can communicate telepathically with the guardian and give it commands.

High mana cost per summoning.

It’s… awesome. He thought, staring at the little floating sprite that had come into being almost immediately after he activated the skill. It was a formless mass of energy, and he felt like it wasn’t much use for anything more than being cute. It had appeared out of what looked like a fissure in space-time leading to a formless expanse of white light, murky like spilled milk and filled with veins of various colors faintly visible in the distance. It had closed all too soon to see more, though, using 10 of Michael’s 64 Coppers of mana in his mana pool.

After exactly 60 seconds, the sprite vanished. During this time, he had commanded the little floating light to fly around his apartment, phasing through his furniture and walls much to his awe, and had it set on his arm. It tingled pleasantly, like a soothing massage to both his body, soul and something else he suspected was his aura or mana system. Perhaps both. He still couldn’t see very well within himself beyond his aura of Copper mana. All he could see when looking inside was his crude fae network and the space where his skills were written on the walls of his being. Nothing else. Not his mana pool, nor his dantian, nor his meridians. Assuming he had any.

He tried summoning a sprite again. The skill had mentioned that the spirit would be tailored to his needs, and thus he summoned one capable of scouting around without being seen. After paying the mana cost, higher this time, he watched the portal come into being.

What came through the portal was like a little blob of flowing glass, translucent and barely visible to the naked eye thanks to the way it distorted the light around itself. It was, however, very fast. When Michael asked it to move—and he thought he’d better ask nicely rather than try and command spirits from another place beyond the world—the blob transformed into a little bird made of glass. It couldn’t pass through walls but it soundlessly shot through the open window and darted up above in the atmosphere.

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Then Michael felt some sort of tugging in his mind, like an itch asking to be scratched in his brain. He poked it a little bit, and it didn’t feel malicious. Wary, he willed himself closer, and almost fell when he suddenly lost his balance. Holding himself up by hugging the wall until he reached a chair and sat down, Michael was seeing double. He was at the same time here and up above, soaring the skies in the form of a little transparent bird.

The image projected into his mind wasn’t the best, hazy at the edges, but he could clearly see his neighborhood from up above. There was a certain mental fatigue associated with receiving the images, and it got worse the longer the connection lasted for and the farther away the bird got.

Despite that, Michael still asked the little spirit to go as far as possible while he used his healing skill to monitor his health. He found out that there didn’t seem to be a limit to the spirit’s range. Its speed meant that it could go quite far in the sixty seconds it was allowed to exist, and while more distance meant that the headache got worse, Michael didn’t get the impression that there was a hard limit to the range of their connection.

Speaking of headaches, [Healing Aura] did nothing to soothe it. It wasn’t physical. It was mental. Some resource was being used up, and it took a while for Michael to realize that it was the same mist that he had seen rush into the skill.

What was it? Some sort of fuel the skill needed to work? Or was it something else?

There was no use overthinking it now. Instead, he focused on what he did know.

What he discovered was potentially life-changing. Certainly, it would have a major impact on how he did things.

Then, recalling his own shortcomings, Michael decided to do one last experiment: he wanted to see whether he could resummon the spirit again or not.

He used the ability, draining his mana down to almost zero for a good cause, giving the same vague impressions of scouting around unseen. What came through was different this time, and the way it worked was different as well.

It’s a whole different spirit, with different abilities and personality.

Through their connection he only got impressions rather than images, feelings rather than clear sight. But the spirit could see much more. It could spot life signs, heat, a sort of power that Michael suspected were radio waves, and much more. It had difficulties communicating, but it could sense even the unseen.

By the time Michael was making some grounds understanding the jumbled mess the spirit sent back to him, the minute was up.

This ability can be super strong, but it’s also a bit random. I need to experiment more with access to mana, see how much variance there is and how to influence the summoning by thinking about what I want to get done in more detail. I also want to see how it handles other requests, going from the basic attack and defense to more detailed requests.

In the end, Michael decided to splurge a bit and do a couple more tests. He just couldn’t wait until he was at the dungeon.

Turns out, he was pretty sure the skill was too low-level to allow for very customized requests. Even when he tried imagining what he wanted in great detail, he felt like the summoning call only took the most important aspects of what he wanted. They were broad and too generic, which meant that a lot of spirits met the criteria in many different ways.

***

It was still early morning when Michael met with Stephan at the park.

“I’m skipping class today, by the way,” Michael told his sensei as they both did warm-up exercises. Michael did not need them, nor did his sensei as long as Michael was there to provide healing. However, it helped put them in the right frame of mind to practice, and it also allowed Michael to save mana after his earlier big spending spree.

Stephan looked a bit disappointed at hearing the news. “I know you think you don’t need it. Well, I suppose you don’t strictly need it, but I still think it would be good for you.”

“I would come,” Michael said truthfully, “but there’s trouble in the dungeon, and I need a clear head.”

“Alright. I won’t insist.”

They began training in earnest, and this time Michael followed along, doing the forms together with his sensei. They stopped at the last kata Michael knew, choosing to focus on the basics rather than progressing with katas Michael had never seen before.

Their hunch soon proved to be correct, for as he did the forms he was already familiar with, all the while watching for the strange flow of Chi and Jing both within himself and his master, Michael soon felt the stirring of something in the place he had come to call his ‘Skill Sanctum’, the place inside himself where all the skills resided.

However, he could feel that the floating mist was too rarefied. The very same mist that had powered the process of absorbing the rare skill stone, the strange energy that had kept his connection to the spirits going, which he thought was something that had to do with the mind. It was now too thin to allow the creation of another skill. It had recharged somewhat in the last couple of hours, but not nearly enough.

As Michael looked around, looking but not paying attention at the environment, his eyes settled upon his backpack and the familiar glow of the magic coins hidden within.

Wait a minute.

He squinted his metaphorical sight. There was something about the coins… something he had already seen within the orange skill stone.

It’s the same! The mental energy! The energy in the rare skill stone! The mist! They are all the same. And the coins carry a very faint presence of that very energy! But even the silver ones barely have any.

By now, too much time had elapsed and the budding skill was threatening to dissolve into nothing. It was now or never.

Acting on instinct, Michael rushed to his backpack and absorbed as many coins as he could, taking care to direct the energy to his Skill Sanctum. It took… all of them. A full third of his whole stash of coins, the other two thirds were hidden around for emergencies, gone in a flash.

Most of the mana was lost as his mana pool was filled, and even qi began to leak out as his dantian was filled. But as Michael’s mind cleared, his willpower bolstered by the energy in the coins, he focused on the Sanctum.

Misty vapor appeared from the edges of his awareness, barely a trickle at first. More of it kept coming, responding to Michael’s mental focus and willpower trained over dozens of dungeon dives. It suffused the Sanctum, rushing into the budding fractal.

Before the new skill was even done forming, it finally clicked. Michael knew what the mental energy rushing into the fractal was. It was intent.

Skill Level up!

[Magic Sense] reaches level 6, pushing past its bottleneck. You discovered the existence of elusive intent, where willpower and magic meet. [Magic Sense] becomes rare. Its range, resolution and the information you can gain from studying what you feel increases dramatically. You get a faint sense of the purpose of whatever energy you focus on.

But it was not all. The process finalized, and a new skill was born.