Will woke to the feeling of something wet and soft smothering his face. He flailed, trying to clear his nose and mouth so he could breathe while sitting up. While he was able to clean his face, he was unable to sit up due to the giant paw that was holding him down. Koma stood over Will, ears held all the way back as he tried to wake Will.
“Get off!” Will groaned, and Koma jumped away, dancing in excitement. Will finally sat up and took stock of his surroundings. He was on a gravelly beach made of gray rock, his feet still in the water. He dragged himself back from the edge of the water shivering. His eyes wouldn’t focus right, leaving most of the world blurry. Moreover, his whole body hurt. His muscles were sore in places he had never known there were muscles, but worse, pain racked his bones and organs too. There wasn’t a single part of his body not screaming for attention. But he could still move. Will slowly got to his feet, and was nearly knocked over again when Koma nudged him with his giant snout.
Will held on to Koma’s fur for a long moment basking in his warmth. It took a moment, but Will was able to get Koma to lie down far enough for him to climb onto Koma’s back. Koma trotted off, and Will just held on, less riding Koma than being carried by him. While they rode, Will took a look at his notifications.
Warning: Concept power exceeding safe thresholds.
Runaway increase in Concept Power detected, control impossible.
Warning: If suppression measures are not taken, fatal damage may occur.
Mana Gate (Damaged 16.8%) engaged by concepts.
User unable to engage suppression measures, engaging emergency protocols.
Protocol determined: Somnite Synthesis
Attempting Somnite Synthesis.
Somnite Synthesis successful.
Emergency protocols successful, starting self diagnostic and disaster evaluation.
Evaluation; Mana Gate stabilization array insufficient.
A new module has been created.
Congratulations! You have received Module: Mana Gate Stabilizer!
Please check the new tab in your interface.
Will opened his interface and sure enough there was a new tab. He opened it up and saw a depiction of what seemed to be a black hole with a blue accretion disk turning about it. There were no labels on the image telling what it was, but Will could feel that he was looking at what he had originally called his springtime star. As he looked, he realized that the disk was actually a depiction of the gate, while the black sphere was the star itself. He could also sense, just barely, a vertical line going straight through the middle of the star and the gate. He couldn’t see anything there, but he sensed it all the same. All of these together were his mana gate, and around his mana gate, he could see a web of lines and symbols. As he focused on them however, descriptions started to pop up.
Mana Gate Stabilization Array Level 1
Will reviewed the information that was presented. Apparently, this new stabilization array was very restrictive, but incredibly stable. It wouldn’t break, but Will could only extract a small amount of mana from it. It would take several hours to fill his mana pool now. That was a blow, but the fact that it was the stabilization array level 1 gave him a small amount of hope. Indeed, when he looked around for a bit, he was able to find a list of requirements for his gate to level up. They included things like purified metals of many varieties, herbs, monster parts, as well as twenty tier one soulmasses. Will had no clue what a soulmass was, but he didn’t like the sound of it.
“Hey! Will! Koma!” Will looked up from where he was buried in Koma’s fur to see someone too blurry to make out. Koma immediately turned to the man and loped over. As they got closer, the man resolved into one of the followers, who greeted them and set off at a run. The follower ran as Koma simply walked behind, keeping up easily, for a full half an hour before they came into a clearing. There they found that the whole group had made camp. Emerys, Amalise, and all the followers jumped to their feet and helped get Will down from Koma’s back and onto a cot in one of the tents. Will was surprised to see a metal wood stove alight with fire not three feet away from him, making the tent gloriously warm.
“What happened?” Will asked, as Amalise helped him drink a cup of tea.
“I was going to ask you that.” Emerys said. “They set up the whole trial, and it was obviously a joke from the beginning. Baron Agenhal had no grounds for anything, but then you show up, blow up, and suddenly everyone is on Baron Agenhal’s side. Seriously, I have seen you working on your self control, you should have been able to get through that just fine.” Will could hear the anger in Emerys’ voice, and realized that he was holding back quite a bit. Doubtless Emerys wanted to shake him right now.
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“That… Baron Agenhal poisoned me.” Will said, doing his best to hold down his own frustration. “He fed me a concept enhancement potion an hour before I was to take the stand.” Everyone paused for a moment staring at Will, then Emerys burst out in a string of colorful cursing.
“Damn that man! You know you have a price on your head now, right?” Emerys barely could keep himself from shouting. “Over a dozen people died, and Baron Agenhal is sitting pretty as the head of the Adventurers Guild Oversight Committee.” Over a dozen people. Will felt his chest constrict, but told himself firmly that it wasn’t his fault. Baron Agenhal had schemed and used him.
“Oversight committee?” Will asked. “Is that what he was trying to do?”
“Apparently. Worse, the committee now has full veto rights over any quest or business arrangement that the guild has in Frostfell.” Will fell back against the pillows that had been propped up behind him. He felt horrible, the only bright thing he could sense in the situation was that the tea was apparently some sort of healing tonic. He could feel it working to fix the microscopic damage that had been done all over his body.
“We need to tell Lord Atherton I was poisoned.” Will said. “Baron Agenhal can’t get away with this.”
“Sure, sure.” Emerys said. “But it won’t do any good. You wrecked the entire courthouse and prison. If there was any evidence, it's gone now. At least it will clear your name in Lord Atherton’s eyes.”
“And what does he think of me?” Will asked, his whole demeanor heavy.
“He was cursing your family to the tenth generation the last we saw him. But he was alternating between you and Baron Agenhal, so I couldn’t tell which was for you or for him.” Emerys sat down on a stool, and Will realized that his eyes were starting to work properly again. The tent was huge, surprisingly huge, having space for at least twenty cots. In fact, Will was sure that it was bigger than the clearing it had been set up in.
“Like the new tent?” Emerys asked. “It was a gift from Master Windrider. He gave it to us as an apology for not getting us out of there himself.”
“It’s nice, bigger on the inside?”
“You know it.” Emerys grinned.
“What happened after I went out on the water?” Will asked. “I fell unconscious after launching myself away from Koma.” Instead of answering, Emerys got up and pulled aside a tent flap. Will found that he could see all the way to the sea, and beyond to where a giant prismatic pillar reached up from roiling water.
“What the hell is that?” Will asked.
“That is the biggest piece of Somnite I think anyone has ever seen.” Emerys said. Caused a bit of a wave when it appeared, both literally and figuratively. The real wave wrecked half the ships in the harbor, most of which belonged to Baron Agenhal. The figurative wave caused dozens to try to get close enough to harvest some. Problem is its gassing off so much mana that there is a twenty foot wide hole in the water around it. No boat can get close enough without falling in. People are going crazy seeing so much wealth evaporating in front of them.”
“I’ll say it again, what the hell is that?” Will asked. “I haven’t ever heard of Somnite before.”
“Oh, well, Amalise can explain it better.” Emerys said. “If I tried to explain it I would just tell you it was crystallized mana, and Amalise would shock me.” Amalise gave him a dirty look before turning to Will.
“Somnite is not crystallized mana, because it is not a crystal at all. It is a lot more like glass. It is an amorphous solid with little to no internal structure. That makes it famously unstable unlike true crystalized mana. Under normal circumstances, gaseous mana will sublimate off of the surface of the Somnite until the surroundings have reached saturation. Then, liquid mana will form on its surface until it has all been converted. However, if you put a piece of somnite in a proper mana container, you can make a liquid mana reservoir that will be a great source of power for magic items.” Will stared at Amalise for a long moment.
“See Amalise,” Emerys said. “Just tell people it is crystallized mana. It is way easier, and people will actually understand what you are saying.
“I understood what she said.” Will responded. “I just wasn’t expecting such a scientific explanation.”
“You understood that?” Emerys sat down and gave Will a wide eyed look. “What kind of tutoring did you have that you could understand that?!” Will just gave an uncomfortable shrug.
“That is basic science where I come from. Everyone is supposed to be able to understand this by the time they are in their mid teens.” Will said, and Emerys got a weird look on his face. Amalise spoke up.
“You went to an academy or school in your homeland? How young did you start?”
“I was five, though I was nearly the oldest one in my class.” Will said.
“I thought you said your parents weren’t rich until you were a teenager.” Emerys said.
“They weren’t.” Will said. He didn’t want to get into an explanation of the public school system. He had enough problems with it, but he did suppose there were good things to be said about it. “The school was paid for by the government, and everyone went.” Emerys and Amalise sat back on their stools a bit. And then Amalise gasped. Will and Emerys looked at her in question, and she put her head down in embarrassment. It didn’t stop her from asking her question though.
“Will, are you a hero?” Will was taken aback by the question, and Emerys burst out laughing. His laughter drowned out any conversation for a good minute before he got it under control. The air around Amalise was feeling quite electric as she glared at Emerys, before a bolt of electricity jumped from her hand and impacted his chest. He flew off his stool and sprawled on the floor of the tent, where he lay groaning dramatically for a while before getting up and giving Amalse a dirty look in response. She simply ignored him, sitting with her nose in the air.
“Amalise, please. The idea was ridiculous and you know it. Nobody would be stupid enough to perform the ritual when they would have tier four gods from Divinity’s Peak coming down on their heads.”
“Unless it was a tier four god that did it.” Amalise retorted. “I don’t know why, but it could have happened.”
“I still don’t know what you are saying.” Will said, and both Emerys and Amalise looked at him.
“Amalise thinks you are a hero summoned from another world. But that is patently impossible because anyone stupid enough to perform the ritual would have been taken to Divinity’s Peak for trial and execution.” Emerys said. “Anyone strong and wealthy enough to pull it off would not be that stupid.” he finished by looking pointedly at Amalise. Amalise was paying no attention to him however. Instead she was looking at Will who fidgeted awkwardly.
“I’m right.” Amalise said. “I am right!” Emerys looked at Will for confirmation. Will winced.
“I don’t know about the whole hero thing, but I was summoned from my world.”