Chapter 61 – Friction
The mana channels in Jack's arms had repaired themselves.
Mostly…
He stared at the channels in his arm which seemed to be in proper working order now. A week ago, they had been nothing more than charred remains of his wrecked mana channels. His latest “gift” from Andurian, the [Mana channels of the Transcendent Berserker] or [Berserker Channels] as he’d taken to calling them, had worked non-stop to piece them back together.
His legs had far more work to be done, and he watched in fascination over the past week as a scaffolding of his mana channels slowly built itself all the way down his legs, slowly filling out with each day.
To Jack’s surprise, the passive ability drew on his mana.
From what information he could gather from Onem this process was supposed to take a lot longer, at least that’s what the draugr has theorized. But Jack had a seemingly endless supply of mana for the passive. Yes, it was only two drops of mana but each drop represented a couple of days’ worth of condensed mana. This new passive happily drained his two drops of mana until they were about a quarter of their original size.
The smaller drops of mana were, among other things, very interesting to Jack. He had tried and failed on multiple occasions to pull some mana away from the drops, or only use a little bit at a time, but for him it seemed to be a “use the entire drop of mana or none at all”. The passive was circumventing that little rule and draining the drops for him. Jack wondered if there was some sort of unseen synergy between products of Andurian.
The smaller drained drops were also so much easier to control. With the help of Happy Jack and Killer Jack, a plan started to form. If he could figure out a way to consistently drain the mana drops, find another passive that could feed off them and shrink them down to something more manageable, then he might not blow himself up as often.
Jack knew that Onem was excited to see what sort of abilities he had. Now that the mana channels in his arms had repaired themselves, Jack went to lay the first part of his trap.
Someone in his head started to giggle like a school boy and Jack wasn’t sure if it was him or one of his growing psychosis’ in the back of his brain.
Jack showed off his [Lightning Centipedes Bite] technique using the two weakened drops of mana. It was still plenty powerful, but nothing like the sort of destruction he was actually capable of. It didn't even hurt to use it this time, at least not that much. Plus any damage he received his new passive got to work repairing as soon as he created another drop of mana to fuel it. Jack’s display had impressed Onem, and he seemed satisfied that his efforts to heal Jack’s channels weren’t in vain.
It had turned out that Gurthok’s hoard had been made up of mostly mana channel recovery items. These were largely useless to Onem, and since Jack had put on an impressive display, he got to share in most of the spoils. Onem allowed for Halldis to hand over several more potions, balms, salves, and several servings of some truly disgusting food that was supposed to aid in the recovery of mana channels. It tasted like stale gruel covered in vinegar cilantro. For some reason Killer Jack loved it.
Jack smiled to himself at the trick he had played on Onem. Thanks to his little ability showcase, everyone now thought they had an accurate gauge of his power.
They're going to be… shocked when they find out how strong we really are, Happy Jack said in the back of his mind.
Jack groaned. Please don’t use puns.
The passive drawing on his mana also had the added effect of turning his mana channels a white hot blue, giving them an almost jagged and erratic form as they rebuilt themselves.
At no point did the pain ever stop.
His channels burned all day every day without fail or respite. Onem offered that it was likely a side effect of the ability being downgraded to rare as he had never heard of Gurthok suffering from any discomforts, though that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Apparently, Gurthok was obsessed with pain, so it was hard for Onem to gauge what the man found uncomfortable and what was just par for the course.
Aside from all that, his captors mostly left Jack to his own devices, which suited him just fine. Despite a lengthy conversation about trust in the workplace, Onem refused to take the manacles off much to Jack's frustration.
He wanted Jack to swear a soul oath if he were to permanently remove the shackles.
“FUUUUCK NO” Both Happy Jack and Killer Jack said into his mind in unison
This was the first time he got the voices in his head to agree on anything, reminding him that this entire situation was because of a soul oath gone bad.
Jack had no choice but to agree with them. Onem kept on the shackles and left him with a command to focus on his recovery.
Shackled and bored, Jack attempted to befriend the local draugr. What else was there to do during recovery. Despite his best efforts, none of the draugr liked him, nor would they talk to him. He tried his best to get a flag football league started, but they seemed far more interested in shuffling aimlessly.
Typical Zombie. Jack thought to himself and he watched another disinterested draugr shuffle away from a backgammon game he had laid out with rocks on the dirt floor.
Jack instead found himself walking the mines. Since recovering the treasure, the mines had been emptied out.
He didn’t necessarily like it in the mines. It was dark, creepy, and sort of lonely. Plus, Halldis had her evil torture dungeon down here so he had the added task of avoiding her at all costs. It was familiar to him though, and he found a small comfort in that.
Jack’s hand traced along the rocky wall of a tunnel he had mined himself, falling deep into thought.
He had been thinking alot about the [Quaking Mana Technique] that Kalvin the lightning centipede had “gifted” him via electric shocks to the brain.
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With his new found freedom of thought, it seemed like his brain had finally managed to parse through and organize all the information, allowing him to search through it without splitting headaches. He also couldn’t be positive, but it seemed now that he was underground in a cave it made understanding the information even easier. That was something he would have to file away for Sam. Jack smiled at the thought of Sam going into a question tizzy over this possible revelation.
Focusing back on the technique, Kalvin had been right; the mana techniques of the Geolords was straight up brain dead.
It involved them balling up their mana into small misshapen rocks and slamming it inside their core over and over again. They didn’t actually have earthquake cores, just simple earth mana cores, but by slamming their balled up earth mana into each other they could generate some type of earthquake mana that could empower their techniques.
The problem was, none of them knew when to stop. The idiots would just keep slamming and slamming all day every day like an endless concert of “We will rock you.” The Geolords would push themselves for days, falling into deep meditation as they slammed their mana into each other. This pattern would repeat until their cores cracked and broke. They considered it a mark of honor to create such powerful “earthquakes” that they broke their own cores.
No wonder these assholes got wiped out, Jack mused to himself.
Some of the “saner” Geolords not bent on destroying themselves from the inside out were far more interested in things like friction. When Jack focused on the meaning of that he got impressions of tectonic plates sliding together, creating immense pressure until they “slipped” and created a true earthquake. Instead of slamming their earth mana into itself, they would instead ball it up and grind it together in an attempt to create high pressure friction they could weaponize.
That was the basis of their cultivation technique. What cultivation was, Jack had no fucking clue, but he’d heard the word thrown around here and there, and the quaking mana technique referred to it a lot, so it was likely important.
The process was difficult, if not incomplete as far as Jack could tell, which is why they stuck to slamming their mana together to create earthquake mana.
The first stage of the technique involved the Geolords balling up their mana into two orbs inside of their core.
While maintaining two separate orbs of mana, they would then grind them together without letting either ball of mana absorb the other.
Once they could successfully grind the orbs of mana together came the third step. Pressure.
They had to apply an intense amount of pressure creating extreme friction between the orbs as they ground against each other. This is what they considered the crux of their cultivation and was the true form of the [Quaking Mana Technique]. They would let the pressure build and build and build until the “slip” happened. The resulting shockwave, or earthquake, would generate the appropriate mana based on pressure applied.
As far as Jack could tell from the information provided by the technique, only one Geolord had ever pulled this technique off. The subsequent earthquake mana that was released inside his core caused him to explode.
Jack stared at the two drops of mana inside of his core. It seemed to some degree that adapting this technique would be perfect for him. Jack could just skip step one, there was no forming of orbs necessary. The nature of his cursed core and how it formed his mana into their own drops made things easy for him. Second, he didn’t have to expend any mental effort trying to keep the drops of mana from absorbing into each other because they flat out refused to do so, despite any attempts he may have made trying to jam them together.
Jack's only reservation about this technique was the fact that the subsequent shockwave generated exploded that poor Geolord. Jack wasn’t entirely sure what would happen to him, but if the rock guy with weak ass mana exploded, he was certain the end result for him would be nuclear in proportion.
The possibility of “generating” a different type of mana with the technique somewhat interested Jack. He had nothing else better to do at the moment. He also had no idea if it would even work with lightning. This technique seemed all about creating a more volatile, dangerous mana to empower earth techniques. If Jack could somehow rework it to create a less volatile, more stable mana that he could use instead of his mana drops he would be unstoppable. He just had no idea how to use the cultivation technique to achieve the opposite results.
Jack looked around the dimly lit cavern he found himself in. The treasure gone, there was nothing else here to draw in workers. He couldn’t even hear the sounds of the Draugr shuffling in the encampment above.
“HELLO?” Jack shouted into the darkness of the cave. Nothing sounded back to him except a distant echo of his own voice.
“IS ANYONE GOING TO STOP ME FROM USING THIS UNKNOWN AND POSSIBLY DANGEROUS TECHNIQUE THAT MIGHT BLOW ME UP FROM THE INSIDE OUT?”
He listened again, but still nothing.
Whelp, I tried.
Jack sat on the ground and focused on the two drops of mana in his core he had spent the last few days reforming. Holding them stable inside his core was one thing. Trying to manipulate them to do anything was a different beast entirely.
He lost control of them at least a dozen times as the drops seemed to go berserk any time he tried to make them do something.
Jack was sitting cross-legged on the ground but felt as if he had run a marathon. He was drenched in sweat as he bore down on the two drops of mana, forcing them to move closer and closer to each other.
It felt like when magnets repel against each other only these magnets had tiny electric guns that were shooting at Jack from the inside.
Jack grit his teeth as painful sparks of lightning erupted inside his core as he pressed the two drops of mana against each other and started to rotate them in a counterclockwise fashion.
It was difficult and required every ounce of concentration Jack could spare, but when he started to grind the two drops of mana against each other he felt some sort of resonance ring out in his body. Jack took that as a sign he could move on to the next step.
When he got the rotation down, he began to apply pressure. That’s when his manacles flared to life and started to burn him. He instantly lost control of the drops and they went berserk inside his core. A second later he recovered from his surprise and desperately tried to bring them back under his control.
Jack sat there for a long moment trying to figure out what the hell had set the manacles off. The only current command he had to follow was…
That was it. Onem had ordered him to rest and recover.
Whatever the hell he was trying to do seemed to conflict with that order.
I guess doing something that might result in blowing myself up doesn’t fall under the umbrella of recovery, Jack thought.
Jack tried again anyway.
This time he stopped at step two; the grinding of the drops against each other.
Jack fell into a deep focus as he concentrated on maintaining the position of the drops of mana as he ground them against each other. Nothing but dangerous sparks of lightning jolted out from the point of contact. He followed the tugging in his mind as he worked the core, following the path of Geolords own experimentation. Slowly but surely as he got the movements right, the speed right, the pressure right, it seemed to calm down.
Something resonated throughout his entire body as he honed in on the friction created between the two drops of mana. It felt like diving headfirst into a static TV screen. It felt like white noise for the soul.
Jack stared deeper at the point of contact while grinding his drops of mana against each other. There was a hot white lightning being generated that made him feel… Calm, maybe? Or focused even. It was strange, like some sort of quasi-enlightenment. He could feel his entire body. His two Jacks who had been watching with an uncharacteristic quiet intensity from the back of his mind were gone, but he could still somehow feel them. He could feel everything. The world around him was in perfect detail. The darkness creeping in, the scavenger creature deeper in the cavern, the subtle shifting of the dead stale air from the mines. He shot an eye open to see someone walking in.
The Taskmaster.
“Clean yourself up and follow me. Onem has summoned us.”
Jack looked down at himself. It looked like someone had been pouring buckets of water all over him. The technique had left him drenched in sweat. Jack grimaced as he pushed himself up off the ground, wobbling a bit as he tried to catch his balance. He felt wiped out.
Whatever the hell he just did, it took a lot out of him.