To comfortably survive transport between the realms, a person needs to have a basic mana form. According to theory, even if it’s barely existent it should be enough to prevent the sort of deep and unsettling pain that I experienced during my first flight. That said, I’d like for my potential future subjects to have as pleasant a flight as possible, so I’m hoping that they can learn quick and grow up nice and strong.
As such, I need to teach my new recruits how to develop a proper mana form, to ensure that they don’t die from shock mid-trip. I’m not sure I really need to concern myself with bad internet reviews, but morals and values aside, I also don’t want to be putting up with tortured screaming the whole trip back home.
So, I’m giving them a basic mana form profile and helping them hold onto it so that they don’t spit all their mana all over the place, like a baby that doesn’t like their mushy peas.
At the same time, I’ll be teaching them to dump out their mana, because if they want to return to Earth in the future, they’ll have to be capable of surviving without mana.
All the recruits are gathered up in this air-conditioned meeting room, cleared of clutter and furniture. They sit on provided cushions since this’ll be something more akin to practicing meditation than a proper lecture, but first we have to hand out translators.
“Now not all of you understand English but we can fix that nice and quickly, because the first thing we have to do is provide you with universal translators.” I say, lifting a silver blob from the bag of them that we brought for this purpose.
“Now, the way this works, is that it’ll crawl up your skin, seep into your flesh, and settle into your body. It’ll spread out through your body and brain, translating in real time any language that you hear, smell, see, whatever really. If you let it, it can even translate animal cries.
“A spoiler, they don’t really have anything interesting to say.” I get a few nervous chuckles, but it helps a few people relax. “Also, it’s twice as uncomfortable seeing a dog hump a pillow when you can hear them going ‘oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! That’s the spot!’”
I pull up my first volunteer, the engineer that was most interested in magic, Karl is his name.
“Now, this does feel slightly uncomfortable, but bear with it.” I say, offering the silver to him. It slides between his fingers and rides its way up his arm before settling in. A faint silver pattern forms on the back of his hand, something that I’ve gotten so used to that I can barely even notice it anymore.
“And that’s it.” I say, “Not too bad, right?”
Karl shakes his head, stretching out his hand and running his fingers over the silver mark.
“You can hear me now, right? Right?” Vii asks, hanging over my shoulder. “It’s been a bit frustrating knowing that no one else in the room can understand me but Kyra and her big bro, but now I’ll be able to talk to everyone again. I hope you don’t mind if I ask a few questions. I asked Kyra about your engineer work, but she doesn’t really understand it.”
“Ah, yeah. That’s fine.” He says, taken aback by her sudden energy. The rest of the group looks towards her in confusion, clearly only hearing a bunch of jumbled sounds.
“Now take this and hold onto it.” I say, handing him a mana shard. “You’ll need it in a second, but for now get used to the feeling of touching it.
I rapidly go through the lot of them, and there’s plenty of whispering and discussions going on to break up the moments. Thankfully none of them have their phones out, or are otherwise actively disrupting the lesson. More than that, the brain-chips are installed without any issues, so that’s good.
“As some of you might have found out already, there are lots of fancy new functions in the translators. A little advice, though. Do not use any Skills until we discuss them. A Skill allows the device to guide your body through a certain sequence of movements, and if that sequence of movements is meant for a squid, you might just break your back.
“Now, moving on.” Before I get bogged down in questions that they are obviously eager to ask. “Each of you have one of these in hand?”
I lift up a mana shard so that they can all see it, waving it around. There’s some considerable confusion gathered in their expressions, as they lift their own with significantly greater effort. The mana inside it resists their efforts to move them around, but there’s not enough resistance to make it impossible.
They all answer in the affirmative, and I recentre their focus on the task at hand.
“These contain mana. Think of it as the basic energy that fuels magic, reinforces your body, and is responsible for all sorts of natural phenomena. If you want to board the ship off this world, you’ll need to be able to use this mana and spread it around your body.”
“What happens if we can’t?” Karl asks.
“It hurts a little holding onto the shard, doesn’t it?” I ask, “Rubbing it against your skin, it’ll hurt even more, and it might even grate at you like sandpaper. That’s mana friction, caused by brushing up against something with much more mana than you have. Where we’re going, the very air has mana in it. It’ll hurt all over, all the time. You don’t want that.
“Not to mention that that’s the easy part. The transportation from Earth will fill your body with mana and shift it across. I don’t know the mechanics behind the magic, but I do know that it feels like your entire body is boiling from within. You’ll want to claw off your own skin, it’s so painful.
“If you can’t pass this class, then you can’t come with us.” I say firmly.
They startle a little, and some of them focus their attention on me at my statement.
“Will we become like Vii?” Gemma asks, looking towards my girlfriend.
“Nope I was born like this.” Vii says, standing a little prouder, and spreading her wings out.
“You can modify yourself if you can get as powerful as I am, but that’ll take some time. For now, focus on getting the basics down.” I say.
“First of all, you want to hold the shard in your mouth and try to suck the mana in from it.” I say, “Only a sip, the smallest taste of mana. It’ll start converting deep inside your chest, eventually becoming yours. Essentially this just means that it’s native to your soul and you can manipulate it and form magic out of it. When that transition happens, you have to swirl the energy around inside, like a whirlpool.”
The gathered employees carefully hold the shards in their mouths, wearing tense expression as they try to figure it out.
“You don’t need to worry too much about swallowing it, but it might hurt if you can’t get your mana form up and working by then.” I tell my gathered minions as they close their eyes with strange expressions, all while sucking on the mana shards like a sour candy.
“Wouldn’t food be better?” Vii asks, looking out through the group. “It’s how kids usually get into working their mana forms, after they lose their dependency on their mother. It’s like, how it all works.”
“Maybe, but it’ll disperse from the food much too quickly.” I say. “Earth is more than happy to soak up any mana we let out, so it’s just not an option.”
For a while there’s nothing much of note to speak of, I mean it’s not like we can expect them to have a breakthrough in a moments time, I took a while to figure it out and I was in a much more desperate situation surrounded by mana. Justifying their slow pace with that, I’m a little wounded when the first employee seems to have figured it out.
Patrick shivers by his wife’s side, smiling happily and talking quietly to Gemma.
“You succeeded?” I ask, walking past the meditating employees to kneel by his side. Unfortunately, it’s rather difficult to see a persons mana form, and he’s not in a position to be casting magics that I could see.
“I believe so.” He says. “It felt much like indigestion for a half hour or so, then it was this powerful wave of energy washing through me. Most of it escaped faster than I could do anything about it, but I managed to hold onto a tiny amount of it.”
“Good.” I say, feeling upstaged. Here I thought I was talented, but an old man can beat me to figuring this out. “Make sure you have a firm grasp on that mana cycle and try to develop it as a Skill to keep it up while sleeping tonight. For now, you can draw a little more mana to add to it, until you’re at the limits of what you think you can handle.”
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“So, it’s meant to feel like indigestion? I feel like I have a freaking stomach ulcer.” One of the young women says. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No, that just means that you’re converting a little more mana than Patrick, make sure to keep it cycling when that pain goes away otherwise you’ll lose it all.” I say, taking a seat at the front of the room again, and addressing questions.
It seems that we have a surprisingly large number of them that can figure this out quickly.
Was I just a bit slow?
I mean, I can certainly consume more mana than they can handle. My resilience against pain is enough to give me a significant advantage, but it’s still unnerving to be shown up like this. I was stumbling around in an alien world, I was practicing fighting, all before I could figure this stuff out.
“You’re a good teacher.” Vii says, settling in beside me and watching them. There’s still more than a few looking at her with curiosity, and even a few which seem disgusted by the sight of us so close. Not that I really mind, so long as they can stay professional while doing their jobs, I don’t really care.
By the end of the first training day, we have a dozen people with budding mana forms. I’m not entirely sure how well it’ll protect them from the effects of realm transportation, but I just have to hope for the best.
“Well, keep a hold of those crystals and keep working on it.” I say. “Meet here again tomorrow for more training, and if we get past that we might have the time to discuss actual magic. You’ll be receiving your wages tomorrow, so don’t forget to provide your account information.”
There are plenty of questions, for obvious reasons, but with some help from Vii and Berty we get through most of them and promise to go into more detail tomorrow. Eventually I can see them off properly, except for the group leaders which stick around for a brief discussion. There are a few details I need to go over with each of them before we can get ourselves some free time.
“So, how’s it progressing? Can we get everything we need?” I ask Karl. He’s currently the head of our engineering crew, which is such an eclectic mix of professions that I know it’ll cause some internal strife later on.
“You can provide electricity on site? If so, I believe we’ve made orders for everything we should need, and it should be delivered in the next few days.” He says. “I also have the team downloading everything they can, from weapons schematics and building blueprints to movies and music.”
“Electricity is no problem.” I say, satisfied with the progress report. “Are there any issues at all?”
“Everyone’s confused, nervous, and suspicious. There are a few considering reaching out to the authorities about all of this, but I’m not sure what their thoughts are after this session.” He says, “I have no doubt that they’re already posting about this online, if that’s a concern for you.”
“Berty, will this be an issue for you?” I ask.
“Oh, I think I can actually use it to my advantage.” He says, a broad smile rising on his lips. “I might need you to speak with a few people though, if that’s fine.”
“Do I need to flatten any cities? Show people what happens if they decide to kidnap you?” I ask. I mean it mostly as a joke, but if he thought it appropriate, I’d certainly consider it.
“No, that would cause more problems.” He says.
“Oh, so I shouldn’t mention my death laser/spy satellite array?” I ask. “I mean, I’m not exactly ready to rule Earth, but I’d hate to lose so many people because of nuclear war or something stupid like that.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” He says. “When was this a thing?”
“Well, it’s something that I’ve been considering for a while, but I couldn’t get them put together in time.” I say. “I’ll be making a series of satellites that can connect directly with my mind, each with the power to blast a nuke out of the sky… potentially. My magic isn’t entirely as fast as I want it to be. I should be able to make it work faster, but I’m not sure about that yet.”
“Okay, so that’s a frightening possibility.” Berty says. “It’s best to keep plans like that to yourself for now, yes?”
“Eh, I guess. I’ll be working with these guys in a few days, I see no reason to hide anything. Besides, I’m sure you guys don’t want Earth to turn to radioactive slag while were gone either.”
“Certainly not.” Patrick says, “But I think there are people who would be worried that you could do something similar.”
“I’m more pinpoint accurate.” I say, “I can destroy a whole city, but it’s not as good as just killing the few people who are causing trouble in it. Wastes less energy too.”
“I think there should be other issues with that sort of thinking.” Gemma says, “Aren’t you concerned about the innocents who might be killed?”
“Not really.” I say, with a shrug. “That happens… a lot. I’ve killed a few people that I know didn’t deserve it, and there’s… I threw baby insects at their queen and mother to keep her off of us… I killed a gremlin kid because I thought he might scream… the universe is a shitty place. You’ll have to get used to it.”
“I’m not sure ‘getting used to it’ is really what you want, is it?” Gemma says, not even flinching at my rather awful admissions. “Isn’t that why you reached out to us? You had concerns about how you’re dealing with all this, no?”
“Actually, there is one other issue that I’ll need you to consider.” I say, changing the topic. “Anything can eventually become an intelligent living being with enough mana and time, so there’s not really any such thing as vegetarianism. So, if you decide to make a garden in our new world, make sure to eat the lettuce before it starts calling you ‘mama’.”
She blinks up at me, opening her mouth to say something but hesitating.
“I’m not joking. It’s a whole… thing.” I say. “Most of the beasts we hunt are more intelligent than the animals on Earth too. It’s ethically… well there’s different ethics. Another thing I want you guys to consider.”
“Is there anything else you’re forgetting to mention?” Patrick asks, his brows knit in concern.
“Oh, yeah.” I say, suddenly remembering an something that might excite them. “You two might want to get that mana stuff figured out quickly. It can extend your life. I’m not sure how it’ll work for those who are already aged, but apparently it can significantly extend your life-span.”
“I was expecting another horrifying idea that would leave me concerned about cooking dinner this evening.” Gemma says with a sigh. “We’ll continue work with the mana, and see about discussing things with the others of our profession. I think it’ll be important to hear a few different opinions on some of these issues.”
“Well, tell me if you do need anything.” I say.
“If you can find the time, I think it would be good if we could have a session.” Gemma says, “Just to get to know each other a little, and work on our professional relationship.”
“I’ll work some time into my schedule.” I say, resigning myself to it.
“How accurate is all of this?” Matt says, “The data on this device, I mean.”
He’s one of the more excited scientists and has taken the lead in getting everything into proper order. His messed, short black hair makes me think of him as a youthful mad professor.
“You’re looking through the information Skills?” I ask, flicking a few open. They’re the Skills that contain knowledge which simply can’t just be imitated in motion. “They were mostly taken from experts of their field, many from an empire that has supposedly reached the edge of what can be discovered through scientific inquiry.
“If there’s a problem with the information stored in this thing, then I think you’ll have to tell me, because I’m not smart enough to see anything I can correct.”
He nods to himself pinching at his lower lip as he quietly whispers to himself. “I’ll be looking into it. This mana too. I need to know what this energy really is, and the nature of our control over it. Is there really nothing about that part? What you’ve been calling your soul?”
“There’s not much information on it that I can find.” I say with a shrug. I do realize that there’s probably some real concerns to be had about that, but I have much more to concern myself with. Leave matters like that to the experts.
After dealing with a few more questions, they head out on their way. I observe them through the tag that I put on them, and while I’m worried how effective it’ll be in the long run, it’s already fading a little, but I’ll be watching for now.
Berty’s phone starts ringing and he steps away to take the call.
“How come you think the therapists so important?” Vii asks when they’ve all left. “Like what do they actually do? They’re not real healers, you wouldn’t really need them with how good magic healers are. So, what do they actually do?”
“That’s a difficult question.” I say, taking in the thought and trying to figure out how to express this part. “You know how sometimes people get addicted to something, or they start acting in a way that hurts themselves, or I don’t know, things just aren’t right with them. Good therapists help you to understand why you’re doing those things and help you figure out how to change yourself into someone you’d rather be.”
“Okay…?” She hums thoughtfully. “I think I get it now. We had something like that back home, but it’s like… different.”
“Different how?” I ask.
“Well, there’s a magic that specialised healers can use that can erase habits, or bad memories that are causing issues. I didn’t use it myself, but they can also do fancy things like showing you an alternative reality where you live a different life, so you can explore all the different things you could be, and work towards it. It’s used with criminals a bunch, too, but it doesn’t always help them.”
“There’s no chance that we can visit and pick up some of those Skills and magics?” I ask.
“No.” Vii shakes her head. “Not… I mean. There might be, but…”
“Time travel stuff?” I ask. “Got it.”
“Yeah… ah! Wait, time travel?” Vii asks, startled. “No, I only see the future and stuff.”
“You’re not really good at keeping it a secret.” I say. “You’re from the future, right? Or a possible future? Or something like that? It’s the reason you see everything around us as if it’s history, and it’s the reason you’ve been worried. You’re still not sure that you haven’t broken the future.”
“I… yeah…” She admits. “Does everyone else know?”
“I’m not sure, but Nel has probably figured it out and Eshya probably doesn’t even care. Adler… I’m not sure she really knows what to think about all that stuff.” I say, heading out the door. “Do you want to go somewhere before dinner?”
“Ah, Kyra!” Berty interrupts us, hanging up the phone. “That was dad. They’re home.”
“What?”
“They’re waiting for us at home.” Berty says.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Stats and Skills
~Mana Form:
Current mana density: 32,705 / 60,892 units
Current mana volume: 16,255 / 30,266 shards
Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):
Kyra: 30,266 shards
Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards
Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards
~Forms
Mana Canon
-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)
-Blood Fuel (20,000 mana shards)
-Bone Magic Storage (40,000 mana shards)
-Nail Shifters (50,000 mana shards)
Dancer
-Flash Nerves (8,000 mana shards)
-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)
-Burst Reflex Muscles (35,000 mana shards)
-Layered space Muscles (80,000 mana shards)
Turtle
-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)
-Catalyst Sweat Glands (140,000 mana shards)
-Repulsive Skin (80,000 mana shards)
-Prehensile hair (10,000 mana shards)
-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (100,000 mana shards)
Investigator
-Wide eyes (5,000 mana shards)
-Wide ears (5,000 mana shards)
-Sharp nose (5,000 mana shards)
Misc.
-Clean bowels (Adapted)
~Favourited Skills:
-Tag and Film
-Trapping
-Stealth
-Mana surge movement
-Annihilation defence
-Annihilation flame burst
-Annihilation net
-Eyes of an Empire