Chapter 165 – Preparation

Timelines were settled, and the meeting dismissed with everyone returning to their appropriate sectors to prepare. Jack would be handling the fight alone, primarily because he wanted to see just how high he could punch above his weight class. The floor raid boss felt like a pretty solid way to measure that. Additionally, Mortimaxx only seemed about seventy five percent confident in what would transpire after his death. Everyone would need to be in position in the very likely event that Mortimaxx was A, lying to us, or B, the Tower decided it was going to shake things up.

Jack pulled up his quest log, specifically the secret quest he had received.

Quest:

Trial by Combat

Quest Tier:

Secret

Quest Sponsor:

The Tower

Objective:

Conquer all Six Sectors of the city and earn the right to challenge Mortimaxx, Lich Eternal. Defeat Mortimaxx in combat and assume control of the City as its new Mayor.

Reward:

N / A

“Defeat Mortimaxx in combat and assume control of the City as its new Mayor.”

It didn’t technically say he had to kill Mortimaxx. He pulled the lich’s phylactery out of his voidsack and inspected the thing. It looked like a simple vase painted black with several purple sigils marking its outside, nothing fancy in the slightest. Mortimaxx knew Jack had it in his possession at this point, but neither of them had talked about it. The lich also made no efforts to get it back, so far as he could tell. For the longest time the vase had a protective enchant on it making it unbreakable. Even Jack storm stepping on it with a twenty-bomb did little to damage it. When they took all six sectors of the city though, that enchant had disappeared and it became breakable. Breaking it meant Mortimaxx couldn’t respawn.

Jack wasn’t sure he needed to break it just yet. He had other plans in mind.

With that, Jack tucked it back into his void sack and made his way to the Cathedrals library. It was up on the second floor, overlooking the courtyard. The library itself was filled with towering bookshelves that ran down either side of the room. It smelled of dusty old books, mildew, and rotten leather. There were cobwebs everywhere and silverfish the size of rats. Jack absolutely hated it here, but Mortimaxx insisted on holding his lessons here. He found the lich at the far end of the library in an open section of the room meant for studying and research, thumbing through a tome that was as large as he was.

“So,” Jack started, plopping down in the seat across from Mortimaxx and kicking his feet up on the table. “Got something in mind for our final lesson? A secret technique maybe?”

Mortimaxx gave Jack a level gaze, and then scoffed slightly. “You couldn’t handle my secret techniques. Tell me your core makeup.”

Jack looked into his core. “Still got the fifty bomb, although it’s more like a forty-five bomb after my channels have feasted on it. Two twenty-bombs, a ten bomb, two five bombs, and I’m recharging up the threes as we speak,” Jack finished with a satisfied nod as another frozen mana drop appeared in his core. He added it to the end of the centipede formation slowly winding its way through his core.

“I hope you aren’t dumb enough to be charging any frozen mana. You know it’s effectively useless against me.” Mortimaxx stared at Jack, his eyes already knowing the answer.

“Righttt… That would be stupid.”

Jack looked at his core once more, this time imagining he was gripping it in his hand. Slowly, he started to turn it to the left. It was easy at first, but the more he tried to turn it, the more resistance he felt. He wasn’t turning it very far, just rotating it slightly. It took an intense amount of effort, but after a long moment of concentration, he felt a click, and his core rotated over a notch. Absolutely nothing looked different about it, aside from the fact he could now generate lightning mana.

It sort of like changing the channel on one of those old TVs with the big knob that clicked loudly when you turned it. He couldn’t freely pick between what types of mana he wanted to charge. He literally had to alter his core by cranking it left or right. It wasn’t that big of an issue really, but it was kind of a pain in the ass due to how difficult it was to turn. He couldn’t manage fighting and changing it at the same time. And no amount of practice made it any easier. Mortimaxx had set him to the task of doing nothing but alternating between mana types for the day. Zero improvements. Which brought him to another issue entirely.

“Do you think this counts as fixing my curse?” He had asked the lich one day during training. “I mean. I don’t even think I was really cursed in the conventional sense. But I found the Omni-Core and successfully installed it.”

“The Omni-Core Mark One “ Mortimaxx emphasized. “I highly doubt Andurian stopped after the first model. It’s only epic after all. There are likely Legendary and Ancient variations. If you’re lucky that is. Maybe he didn’t make any upgrades and you're stuck with that forever.”

“So the Tower can’t upgrade it?”

“Doubtful. But who knows,” Mortimaxx shrugged.

Mortimaxx had focused on teaching Jack how to manipulate mana. A unique function of an epic mana core was the amount of control it gave you over the mana inside. Apparently, there were all sorts of little techniques and ways to manipulate your mana inside your core to interesting effect. If you knew the right patterns to run your mana through, you could even replicate abilities without actually having the ability. The technique that Gideon used to kill Sarah was a form of mana manipulation to purify his mana and make it exponentially stronger, Jack had learned.

For Jack though, mana manipulation meant cycling techniques. When Mortimaxx asked him what types of techniques he was using to manipulate the mana drops, Jack informed the gnome he just held them static in his core.

That earned him a dumbfounded expression from the lich.

“Mana wants to moooooveeee,” he stressed. “Its nature is to move, to flow, to fluctuate. How you even managed to keep a drop of mana so heavily condensed static within your core is… Impressive. It’s no wonder you’re so good with mana if you were using ham fisted methods like that to control a fifty-fold drop during your time on the first floor.”

“I could hold up to four drops, and fight at the same time,” Jack said with a cocksure grin, enjoying the praise.

Mortimaxx shook his head, a bemused look on his face. Ever since then, he and the lich got together to experiment with his core and the mana drops and develop cycling techniques that allowed him to control more drops of mana. If he could keep the drops of mana moving in a pattern, they didn’t resist him.

“Keep it moving in a circuit. Give it patterns to follow. Mana wants to move. It won’t fight against you if you don’t fight against it,” Mortimaxx would repeat ad-nauseam while Jack was deep in a trance trying to wrestle the varying sizes of mana drops.

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All of that brought them here, to what would presumably be his final lesson. After Jack rattled off the drops in his core, Mortimaxx held out his palm, globes of mana floating out, each representing a drop of mana in Jack’s core.

“Galaxy formation,” the lich said.

Jack watched as the globes of mana fell into a sort of galactic spiraling shape, with one large globe of mana at the center, and several more globes orbiting about, evenly spaced.

Jack glanced inside his core and focused hard, pulling the drops out of the centipede formation and into the Galaxy Formation. After several moments he had achieved the new cycling variation.

“Triangle,” Mortimaxx said next. This time the orbs fell into a triangular shape, still trailing after each other but in a closed loop. At the center of the triangle was still the largest globe, and the triangle itself was turning slowly around it.

Jack mimicked the technique, this one a little easier.

“Spiral,” Mortimaxx said again, changing the formation before Jack could get a knack for the previous one.

And so it went for the better part of an hour. Mortimaxx giving him different patterns and formations to run his drops of mana through. When Jack added a new drop of mana, Mortimaxx added a new globe of mana to the formation spinning above his palm.

Few things made Jack sweat, but this training required levels of concentration and effort that left him sitting in a puddle. Jack was panting, and had a massive headache as he tried to mimic the most complex pattern yet, a set of three small galaxies all spiraling around each other. Jack lost control when two drops of mana bumped into each other, causing him to lose control of all the drops, and a panicky few minutes as he tried to wrestle them back under his control, back into centipede formation and the lazy figure eight.

“Very impressive. You’ve done exceptionally well, Jack.” Mortimaxx said, his voice full, and sincere.

Jack didn’t quite know what to do with that. He was smiling. Blushing almost.

“Quit that, you turn into a giggling child every time I compliment your efforts. It makes me not want to do it.”

“Sorry. It’s weird. I half expected you to clock me upside the head for failing that last one. It’s nice to get compliments,” Jack beamed.

Mortimaxx gave him an almost pitying look. “Has no one truly ever complimented your efforts?”

Jack couldn’t think back to one singular time Rodeo had ever given him a compliment that wasn’t laced with sarcasm. “Maybe one time-” he started to say.

“Jack,” Mortimaxx said cutting him off, “I do not say this lightly. You are an exceptional talent. I almost regret that I don’t get to see…” he trailed off, realizing what he was saying and stopping himself.

“About that,” Jack started, only for Mortimaxx to silence him once more.

“No. We must discuss our fight. First, ground rules.”

“Ground rules? You need a handicap?” Jack taunted.

“No, you fool. Maybe rule is the wrong word. Safety measures,” he tried. “Safety measures to ensure you don’t pointlessly die trying to kill me.”

“Which would be…”

“First. You aren’t allowed to use the fifty-fold drop.”

“Didn’t plan on it,” Jack countered. And he really hadn’t. He was fairly confident in his ability to beat the lich without it.

Mortimaxx simply scoffed. “Do not think this will be an easy fight. I will not be myself once the challenge is issued…”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the Tower has given me an exceptional amount of leeway in assisting you. For the fight it will not. In fact, I suspect it may take over completely.”

“All right then,” Jack said leaning back, “So I’m fighting the asshole tower version of you. Got it.”

“Next rule. Under no circumstances are you to utilize the Lightning Engine,” Mortimaxx said more gravely this time.

“I mean, I didn’t plan on it, the set up is kind of annoying to pull off, but if it comes down to it-“

“How many times do I have to tell you,” Mortimaxx groaned, “that technique is actively killing you. It’s pulling from your lifeforce every time you use it.”

“Yea yea, I get it,” Jack said, waving him off. He didn’t really get it though.

One of the first things Jack wanted to try when he got his mana back was the [Lightning Engine]. He had no idea how it operated, and it was the thing that allowed him to kill Uber Rodeo, so learning how it worked felt important for the next oh shit situation he found himself in.

He needed at least two drops of mana to activate it, and he had to do it himself, rotating his drops together and building up enough friction to meld them into a super drop or something. He wasn’t really sure on the specifics, which was sort of the problem.

“A lifeforce technique,” Mortimaxx lectured, “is what happens when you are so desperate for more power, that the Tower steps in, giving you a sort of loan against your own life. They are illogical techniques that shouldn’t rightly work, at least not at your ability level. The Tower is circumventing your lifeforce to essentially fill in the gaps and make the technique work for you. Think of it like baking a cake. You have all the ingredients except for the eggs. So the tower steps in and gives you eggs, although the eggs have been fashioned from your very own blood.”

“So I just need to find whatever the egg equivalent is for the [Lightning Engine], and then I can use it safely?” Jack had asked.

“In theory, yes. But the Tower usually only hands out lifeforce techniques when there is otherwise no possible way you could conceivably get your hands on the required ‘Ingredients’. Essentially, the required skills are so far beyond your reach the only way you’ll ever get the ability is to utilize it via lifeforce.”

To Jack, that just meant the technique was incomplete, but he wasn’t sure. And he still wasn’t overly sure what losing lifeforce meant outside of he was likely going to die sooner. But he was pretty good at avoiding death. So, he might use the [Lightning Engine] for the fight.

Mortimaxx’s unimpressed death stare told him the lich was reading his thought process.

“Allright allright, no fifty-fold mana drops, and no lightning engine. Any other tips? I was thinking of running a different mana-drop set up.”

“Don’t tell me. Keep that information to yourself. Talk to Karlisle for advice. Or Elera, she’s a talent and half. Hell, talk to your entire team. They’re all rightly skilled in the use of mana.”

“Ok then,” Jack said, standing up. “I guess I’ll go strategize with my teammates.”

Mortimaxx, gave him a wave, returning to whatever book he was reading, and Jack left the library a bit lost in his own thoughts.

He didn’t really want to kill Mortimaxx. For the first time in his life, he had a teacher who he enjoyed. He actually looked forward to his training sessions, a thought that made him barf a little in his mouth. Plus, he didn’t want to be the guy who went around killing his masters. It was turning into a depressing pattern.

He wasn’t opposed to just blowing off the secret quest entirely, but Cristopher had upped the stakes in rather dramatic fashion. Still though, he had a few bad ideas he wanted to try before putting the lich down for good. Jack thought it was fairly obvious that he no longer wanted to die.

As Jack left the library and headed towards the waypoint, he found Elera leaning against the wall waiting for him.

“Sorry about burning down your bar,” she said, a small smile on her face.

Jack walked up next to her, throwing his arm around her as they made their way to the waypoint. “You can make up for it by buying my potions from the Nutt-house.”

“Ew, no, I’m not going to that disgusting place. Did you know the gnomes were running a drug operation out of his lab? I had to torch the place and run them out of the city,” Elera complained.

“ You sure like torching things,” Jack said more to himself, “Also, maybe let Hannah borrow the quiver. We are going to need it.” Jack continued. He was of course referring to the legendary quiver. Hannah didn’t talk to Elera for days when she took it back to the first floor.

“Tough ask. One of my rangers is using it, and I’m afraid he needs it more than us.”

“Things not going so well on your floor?” Jack asked.

“Not at all,” she sighed. “We severely underestimated just how deep underground the Twilight elves were. No matter how many we kill they just keep coming. Massive colonies of those low life den-dwellers,” she spat.

“Think you’ll need to go back?”

“What? And miss all this fun? I think not,” she protested. Although the words didn’t quite match her tone. She seemed unsure herself.

“If Cristopher can really follow though,” she continued, “then I think we should be fine. We can just relocate to the second floor and let the twilight elves rot away into oblivion on the first floor. Although we are going to have to do something about the lack of sunlight here.”

Jack nodded along. He liked Elera. Despite the fact that they fought constantly, it was the fun kind of fighting.. Being with her was sort of like driving a McLaren at full speed, only to find out someone cut the breaks. Things were going to end badly, but it would be exciting the entire way down.

The two of them parted ways as they reached the waypoint, Jack making vague promises to come visit her in sector three once he finished his preparations. He glanced back at the cathedral. At the end of the week he was going to kill Mortimaxx.