Chapter 85

Michael stood in the middle of a storm of magic. Arcane energies swirled in a vortex around him, mana and Qi and Intent clawing at each other in the air like hungry beasts fighting for supremacy. The storm, while fierce, was centered around a thin bubble of calm, like the eye of the storm. Where Michael’s aura touched, things were still. The energies obeyed his commands, they respected each other’s domains without trying to encroach upon each other. Outside of his control was madness.

Johanne watched from a distance, recording and taking notes. She had never seen the process of creating a new skill from scratch in person, and was eager to get some data about the workings of the strange system that governed Michael’s magic. She knew from what he had told her that his system somehow eased the process, creating fractal pathways for the magic to move through, channels that directed the flow of magic in ways similar to how her mandalas governed her spells. But unlike her mandalas, his fractals grew in power the more he used them, the more he understood them, all of it without requiring conscious thought. He could influence them consciously of course, she would never doubt his abilities, but what was astounding was the fact that even though beneficial, it wasn’t necessary.

How could such a thing come to be was a mystery, but one that intrigued her. Magic was boundless in what it could do, and it obeyed strange and sometimes contradicting rules. If she could learn those rules, and how to force them to contradict themselves in ways that suited her and her lord’s needs, then she could truly harness real power. She already envisioned her Icarus project taking flight, intelligence born of magic. Sadly Icarus was yet a long way from being born, a project that could benefit of the dungeon’s time dilation only in marginal ways.

I should find a way to convince more people to come down here, she thought to herself. For some reason, most people found the dungeon rather unpleasant to be in, even if they only had to stay in the idyllic Valley that was Michael’s domain. They felt its watchful eyes over them, and the pressure quickly became too much for them to bear. Even David, who had initially been interested in using the dungeon’s time dilation mechanics to his benefit, was now rather loathe to enter after spending some time alone in the valley.

It was as if he had seen something that truly disturbed him, but when questioned he had not been able to explain why. Of all the current delvers, only Michael, Travis and she could spend any amount of useful time alone in the Valley without suffering these strange psychological effects.

Meanwhile, Michael struggled to be the eye of the storm. In the end, even though Johanne knew much, she didn’t know how to make a skill from scratch. She could only tell him what she knew, and they worked from there. He knew that he had to balance the energies, and it had been easy at first while he tried to take control of his aura and suffuse it with them.

It all changed suddenly when his aura flared outwards rather than going inwards. It wasn’t that his mental image had shattered, on the contrary, rather he was only now realizing that he had been very wrong in thinking he had found the edge of his aura. What he had painstakingly learned to sense had not been the true edge, but only the inner edge of his Silver aura, and his true sphere of influence extended radially outwards onto infinity like it was trying to colonize space itself. It grew fainter the further away it was from the edge of the inner region, but it was never zero.

Like an electric field.

The sudden thought brought some clarity to his mind. Mentally thanking Old Dave for forcing him to study science and math now that he had the mental capacity to understand them, he decided to approach the problem from another angle. In nature, electric fields expand outwards from a source until they reach infinity, growing ever weaker and reaching zero only at the end of the universe itself. But there are ways to compute them, to approximate their value.

He could use that.

Slowly, he started to extend tendrils of control through the storm raging outside of his inner aura. Slowly, he brought order to the chaos.

It snapped into place all at once.

You have gained a Skill!

You—

And then it all fell apart. The magic dissipated, roaring clouds of Intent boiling over while storms of Qi ravaged the empty field and mana transmuted stone to soap bubbles, ash and cotton candy. Michael cut the process short, removing the source of the devastation that was ravaging the land around him, and he collapsed to the ground, all of his energy pools dangerously close to empty.

You have lost a Skill.

--

He woke up in his treehouse. Blurry vision that took a while to adjust to the low light told him that it was evening, and a pleasant smell coming from the kitchen told him that someone had gone and fetched dinner from the Fae. Johanne was also there, moving about, mumbling things about magic and diagrams. Michael could tell she was pacing close to the wall she had transformed into a blackboard filled with her own unfathomable calculations and speculations about the world.

He also knew she must have brought food from somewhere else because the woman could not cook if her life depended on it. Her creations were borderline poison, much to her horror. She claimed that she would one day discover the scientific truth behind food and devise a foolproof method of cooking, but those days were far in the future, it seemed.

Groggily, Michael lifted himself up. It felt as if he had been run over by a truck. Nothing that a copious application of [Healing Aura] couldn’t fix.

It was with horror that, when he tried to use the skill, he realized that it wasn’t working properly. To be precise, it was healing him, but at the same time, it was inflicting pain akin to being submerged in molten lava for a prolonged period of time. He cut the skill, and the pain disappeared.

Feeling heavy, he tried to brainstorm possible reasons for this. There was a dull throb reverberating through his body, coming from somewhere that wasn’t strictly physical. It took him a few seconds to realize where it was coming from.

With trepidation and no little amount of worry, Michael let his consciousness sink into his Skill Sanctum.

There it was, the problem. The whole place felt heavy, strained, overburdened. He had tried to fit one more skill in it and had failed. He could see where the new skill had tried to take hold, appearing now like burnt lines on the stone of the sanctum. Around them, the capillaries of mana and magic were damaged and burned, still trying to feed a fractal that wasn’t there anymore.

He could feel the fractal as well. Having manifested the skill once, he knew on an instinctual level that it would be easy to manifest it again. Narrowing his eyes and keeping a tight grip on his own energies, he let a trickle of Mana, Qi and Intent flow towards the scar in the Sanctum’s wall. The fractal began to etch itself anew, forging new connections to the vascular system of the walls and absorbing intent from the thunderclouds.

Barely halfway through the process, a searing pain gripped him. He immediately halted the process and observed as in its half-completed state, the fractal was causing the whole wall to dim, every single other skill losing their luster as not enough magic was present to sustain them all. With a sigh, he willed his own Sanctum to shatter the incomplete fractal, which was seared off the wall in even more burns. The other skills returned to their vibrant luster, as if life was flowing back into them.

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The feeling of heaviness, which had increased to being almost physical pain, returned to a dull throb that told Michael that every action had consequences. His Sanctum had pulled a muscle, but fortunately, it had not broken a bone. It would have if he had kept going.

Turning to the many fractals in the walls of the sanctum, Michael considered what he knew, trying to come up with a solution to his situation. The fractals all took up energy, from the simplest of them to the more complex.

The simplest were those for the common skills. Even among them, they were different from each other, their complexity representing the level of the skill. But even the most complex of them paled in comparison to the fractals for the uncommon-rank skills, which in turn were nowhere near the complexity or rare skills.

Michael willed himself closer to the wall. In this place, he had no physical presence, but somehow he still retained the concept of distance and location. Right now, he felt himself staring at the wall, at one of the walls, the only one filled with skills. All the skills took up only a speck of space in the immense wall, like he was staring at a smudge of paint on an empty canvas. Behind him, he felt the presence of the unnaturally still mass of Ice energy, while from the walls, he felt the roiling heat of the Fire. Somewhere, in the center, unfathomably far away and yet a mere step behind him, was his soul. He could not see it, but he could feel it like a ball of violet oily energy in his mind.

He inched closer, his metaphorical eyes almost pressed against the wall of the Sanctum.

The skills all took something from the wall, even when they were not active. Like their very existence had to be sustained by magic, consuming some finite resource Michael constantly generated and expended to keep them there. When he activated a skill, the pull on this resource increased, along with a new pull on the other energies he was familiar with: the elements, mana, Qi, Intent.

In the end, the solution was simple. He had no reliable way to increase the capacity of his Sanctum since he had no idea what determined its limits. Perhaps all it took was time. Perhaps his skill capacity was tied to his mana pool, which in turn determined the amount of Elements, Qi and Intent that he could hold. Perhaps the mana pool itself was determined by some hidden stat he could not see. Perhaps it was something else. He could spend years in the Valley, coming up with a solution.

But I would probably go insane well before that.

Living in the Valley was insidious. No matter how long he stayed there, only ten minutes would pass in the outside world. However, the longer he stayed, the less willing he was to leave. It would come a day, he knew, that he would lose all interest in leaving. A day where he would have stayed long enough down here that the outside world would not matter anymore. The day when he would have lost his sanity.

Which means that I need to consider the other solution.

The other solution was to free up space in his Sanctum. How? By removing unnecessary skills. But Michael was not really willing to sacrifice anything, not even the least used of his skills, especially since he knew he would lose them forever if he removed them. All of his skills were now bonded to him, too much time had passed since he absorbed them, and no skill stones would come out of their sundering.

He was, once again, at an impasse.

Except. He had taken to trying to replicate common skills with [Magic Manipulation], didn’t he? Then why not try that again?

He left the Sanctum long enough to tell Johanne what his plans were. The woman forced him to eat before he returned to his own inner world so that his body would not waste, but soon enough, he was back at the wall filled with the fractals of his skills.

He summoned [Magic Manipulation], the mental flick of the switch putting magic itself under his control. Even though he could move around all the kinds of magic he knew, the only ones he could project in order to perform unbound magic were Mana and the elements. The skill’s description said as much.

(Rare) Magic Manipulation 6

In the ether's embrace, the threads of mana dance; with deft manipulation, I weave the strands of magic, shaping reality with the gentle touch of a sorcerer's hand.

· You can control, store and project mana and known elemental energies with a range of 50 meters.

· Known elemental energies: Fire, Ice.

· You can control and store Qi with a range of 25 meters.

· You gain the ability to force skills to act outside of their scope, bending them to your will.

· You can use projected energies to directly influence the material world.

Perhaps his aura could help, but he wasn’t feeling confident in using it for this purpose just yet. Besides, it would be akin to wanting to learn how to drive before learning how to walk.

Staring at the skill fractal for [Crude Body Enhancement] for reference, Michael started to manipulate mana. He lost himself in the process, hours slipping by unnoticed. Johanne had to wake him up several times to make sure he ate and moved around enough, a thing he found a way to avoid doing by using his healing to stimulate his tissues and prevent muscle wasting.

Finally, after what felt like days of hyperfocus, he did it. The fractal appeared in his mind right as it was on the wall, powered by his manipulation skill and his willpower. Nothing else. No skills. No help.

Only what he came to call Fractal Unbound Casting: the use of his [Magic Manipulation] to replicate existing fractals and mimic skills.

Returning to the real world, he repeated the steps without the reference of the wall. Sure enough, his body grew with the unnatural power of repurposed Fae magic.

“And now,” he muttered, “the hard part.”

Returning to the Sanctum, he approached the fractal on the wall. Before he could have second thoughts, his hand morphed into a rending claw of magic, just an image in this inner world of icons and meaning. He lashed at the wall, sundering the fractal. A sudden sense of loss came over him, his mind on the verge of breaking. He felt like an addict losing access to his substance of choice, and to all other sources of emotion. He felt empty, hollow. A shell of his former self.

He had the presence of mind to use [Candle Light] skill on himself. Only after a full day of using it did he feel human again.

He imagined that someone else who lacked such means to heal their mind would be left utterly broken by the process of sundering their own skills. Instead, he survived, and his Resilience statistic on his Status grew by several points. It would only make the process easier next time.

Leaving the sanctum, Michael took a deep breath and prepared himself for the moment of truth. Summoning [Magic Manipulation], he tried to picture the skill fractal for the skill he just sundered in his mind.

He was shocked when it came to him just as easily as before.

A grin colonized his face. Fractal Unbound Casting was a success.

“I can see your canines, my lord.” Drullkrin said. He had been conversing with Johanne, but Michael had not even seen him come, “I take it your efforts paid off?”

“How was it?” Johanne asked, speaking over the goblin.

Michael only chuckled, exhaustion taking over as the tension and adrenaline left his body. Still, he was giddy and positively brimming with excitement. “I can remove all my common skills to make room.” He grinned again, “isn’t it a total win?”

“Definitely,” said Drullkrin with confidence.

“I would not remove [Okinawan Mastery] if I were you. There was a hint that it could grow into something more, no?”

Michael nodded, “Alright, but I need to remove one other. The only other common skill I have other than [Crude Body Enhancement] is [Fast Reflexes].”

Johanne hummed. “It will be interesting to see how mimicking a passive skill will turn out to be. Proceed.”

“As if I need your permission!”

Before Johanne could retort, Michael returned to the sanctum and sundered the skill. As expected, it took much less time than before to recover from the mental backlash, and he was back in the real world in less than an hour.

“Alright, let’s see how it behaves.”

Without further ado, he summoned [Magic Manipulation] and shaped mana into the fractal for [Fast Reflexes].

The world slowed down. “Damn,” his own voice was low-pitched, slowed down in his mind, “this is different than how it felt before.”

With a snap, the world returned to normal speed.

“I think I understand,” said Johanne after Michael explained the problem to her, “I think the emulated fractal lacks integration with the rest of your systems.”

“Meaning?”

“Your mind will not adjust its perception of time to take into account the bonus, unlike with the other skills. What’s your Reflexes at without using the fractal?”

“It’s 260, according to the status,” Michael said.

“And with the skill,” Johanne said, “it jumps up by 40% in one go. If we assume that the average stats for a human are 100 in each category, the fact that you don’t notice any anomalies means that your body is already acclimated to the anomalous stats you boast. But when you intervene with outside sources, like when you replicate a fractal with [Magic Manipulation], the compensation mechanisms do not kick in.”

“It’s fine, though.”

“Yes. You do sacrifice the passive enhanced reflexes, but you can still summon them during a fight. Have you tried holding more than a single fractal in your mind?”

“I have been trying as we spoke. Almost impossible. As soon as the second appears, the first begins to destabilize and falls apart.”

“Do you think it’s a hard limit?”

Michael grimaced. “I think I need to train my mind. Which will be a pain in the ass.”

“Indeed. But it is possible. I will try to devise some training aids. In the meantime, do you think you can proceed with the aura masking skill?”

“Maybe tomorrow. I feel drained.”