Up to this point, Douglas had a pretty good idea of how to escape. The moment he is blasted backwards by the last hoverbike exploding, he knows he will not succeed. The sheer power of the explosion should have been enough to shatter him into pieces, were it not for the reinforcement of his engraved stone armor. At the cost of a quarter of his mana pool, his reinforcement runes shining nearly as bright as the explosion, Douglas remains largely intact. The only bone he loses as he is blasted backwards is the small shard of humerus he had managed to regrow.
Douglas lands hard, digging a furrow through the earth as he comes to a stop. Less than a third of his mana pool left, he realizes that he will need to change his plan. Running through the rain of projectiles at the speeds needed to avoid them is simply too mana intensive for him to get anywhere safe. Also, Evot is a ruined mess. He is still holding on to her spine, but the fact that he can actually grab her by her spine is enough to tell him she is not doing that great. She still seems to be trying to scream her lungs out, but her lungs are hanging out, so she is not making a lot of noise at the moment.
Wondering why the woman seems so keen on giving away their position, Douglas checks that the dust cloud is still dense enough to be hidden from the projectile shooting mountain. He then holds up his other hand, aiming it at the ground in front of him, and partially casts his decalcinate spell. Douglas spends a few seconds of happily pumping mana into the spell shape, watching the earth in front of him turn to air before he notices something is wrong.
Instead of the spell circle appearing in front of his hand like it usually does, it appears a good meter in front of his broken humerus. What would have been a life-changing epiphany for any other being is merely a moment of ‘a-ha!’ for the skeleton. He quickly realizes that he can indeed make the spell's effect appear somewhere that isn't in front of his hand. No longer needing to hold out his hand to aim his spell, Douglas pumps in some more mana.
The skeleton ignores the world above him as he tunnels down into the earth. He is pretty sure he is going the right way, but the important thing right now is that he needs to get away from the bristling mountain of biological guns. He has spent enough time as nothing but a skull, and his missing arm has proven that he isn’t quite as sturdy as he thought. Being pinned down by a never-ending stream of highly destructive projectiles would be bad enough. The fact that it would be bone projectiles was the tipping point. Douglas can suffer through a lot of setbacks and humiliations without really bothering about that kind of stuff. Having the most precious material in the universe shot at him in such a wasteful manner is a step too far, and it’s actually making him a bit angry.
Chapter Twelve – Progress and Blowback
“Could you please remove your hand from my back? It feels weird.” Evot feels the foreign object retreat from around her spine with a sickening squelching plop. She drops to the oddly sturdy ground, her fingers barely breaking the surface as thick layers of caked of stone slough off her.
The open wound in her back should have paralyzed her with massive amounts of pain. Instead, Evot numbly thinks the insistent feeling somewhat annoying. There was something rather primal and sensual about the way that the skeleton was holding her just now, his grasp the most intimate touch she has ever experienced. Pushing away those very, very strange thoughts, she sits up and looks around, taking inventory of herself.
[ Name: Evot Gilihezal ]
[ Race: Soulbound Human ]
[ Level: 1 (0/100) ]
[ Class: None ]
[ HP: 73/87 ] [ HP/h: 0.044 ]
[ MP: 160/160 ] [ MP/h: 10 ]
[ STR: 7 ]
[ AGI: 12 ]
[ CON: 10 ]
[ VIT: 6 ]
[ INT: 16 ]
[ WIS: 10 ]
[ Armored Core ]
[ Darkvision ]
[ Universal Language ]
[ Wounded ]
It takes her a long time before the blue information in front of her eyes registers. She is a soulbound human now? She isn’t sure she can even be classified as human. Her body and genetic makeup have little to do with the rather primitive race that scattered throughout the galaxy so long ago. Aeons of genetic modification, repopulation from extremely limited gene pools, and mass cloning have long since made a whole range of new species that can’t truly be called human.
And that’s just the human part. What does soulbound even mean?
[ Soulbound Human; their spark of life chained to their physical form through some means, this sapient race can only be killed by destroying their core, soul, and mana source, which are usually in the same spot. +Str +Agi +Con +Vit + Int + Wis ]
Idly touching the horn jutting from her forehead, things start to click into place for the beleaguered woman. Concluding that she might as well go down the list, she mentally asks what the Armored Core thing might be.
[ Armored Core; your core is encased in armor. +2 Con ]
Raising an eyebrow at the rather lacklustre description, she asks what the rest might mean.
[Darkvision; Darkness is no match for your necromantic vision. Renders darkness as late twilight and late twilight as midday to your eyes.]
[Universal Language; Able to understand all intelligent life, spoken and written words.]
Then she realizes that she has been speaking something that is not her native tongue. Feeling a rather severe headache coming on at the sheer amount of terrible implications that a universal language skill like that might have, Evot puts worrying about those existential horrors off for later.
Instead, she looks around again, this time not distracted by blue screens telling her her own deepest secrets. Shaking off another fine layer of flaky stone, she sees Douglas standing next to her, one bony hand still dripping with dark blood, the other still missing. Ignoring the churning in her stomach at seeing her own bodily fluids splattered on the floor, she looks at what the skeleton is doing.
The small white length of bone that is his left arm pointed forwards, his other hand hangs low. Evot can see due to the fragmented blue circle shining in front of Douglas. Blinking her eyes, as dust somehow seems to materialize inside them, Evot stands on shaky legs. Walking closer, she squints against the soft breeze coming from the wall. “What are you doing?”
“Tunnel.”
Looking back, she sees an odd sight. The tunnel they are in is slowly closing itself, monogamous stone somehow appearing out of thin air. Taking a step forwards, Evot notes that they are somehow standing inside a slowly moving oval of empty space. “What do you mean by tunnel? How is this place moving forwards like this?”
Douglas is silent for a long while. Evot spends the time looking around some more, trying to catch a glimpse of the process that happens around her, occasionally patting herself down from the dust that keeps covering her. Then the light vanishes, and Evot’s eyes take a full minute to adjust to the new darkness. Douglas’s two blue pinpricks of flickering light the only illumination, Evot sits down opposite him. “Why did you stop?”
“Mana is gone.”
“That was magic, then? That was how you make this cave move?”
Although the flames in his eyes remain unchanged, Evot feels his gaze turn on her. “Decalcinate.”
“What? Say something else.”
“What?”
Evot nods slightly. “So it isn’t that Universal Language thing. I could understand that just fine. What is this decalcinate thing?”
“Earth to air.”
“So you turned the earth to air?”
“Yes.”
“And that got undone at the back of the cave? Is that why I keep getting covered in dust?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Instead of answering, Douglas holds up his hand, another one of those complex circles appearing around his bony limb, this one shining a muted grey. “You showed me this before, but wha-”
The visual effect of the grey lines and symbols is nothing special. Evot has seen better holographic animations coming
from children’s toys, after all. The fact that the complex circle seems to be having some form of actual effect on the hard rock they are sitting on is something new, though.
“This… This is how you do magic?”
Watching shards of earth crack and float upwards, dissolving into air that is so compressed, it refracts light, Evot thinks back. Every time the skeleton seemed to have done something non-physical, these blue images appeared. Faded memories of Douglas flinging spells in the space station appear in her mind’s eye. The complex play of symbols and runes that played around him when he was scribbling on the white ship must also have been magic. Feeling like slapping herself for not seeing this earlier, Evot starts studying the spell shape with renewed eagerness.
“How do you cast the spell, then?”
“Mana.”
Evot keeps watching as more and more of the grey circle blooms with blue light. Each new section of scribbles lighting up does something else to the small bit of matter being transmuted. Thinking back, she also realizes that Douglas has been answering her questions all along. What seemed like single word answers made up of nonsense could be seen as a minimally viable answer, when seen from the perspective of a moronic skeleton. Taking a deep breath, she shivers as she feels her lungs slide around a bit, the wound in her back not yet closed. Pushing away the trauma from all the gruesome wounds that she has been suffering to the back of her mind, she pulls her inner researcher to the forefront.
“So, am I right in assuming that the rough and jagged style of the inside of the circle coincides with the nature of earth?”
Douglas stares at her for a long while, a rather pregnant silence sitting between them. He then tilts his armored head and slowly nods, answering, “Yes.”
“And the flowing and more spacious nature visible towards the outside of the circle is meant to represent air?”
“Sure.”
“And the lines are just mana transportation means?”
“Uh huh.”
“And these symbols all mean something unique.”
“No.”
“And these lin- What, no?”
“Rune is two halves.”
Studying the lines of unfamiliar script, Evot starts seeing patterns. Each seemingly random scribble looks to be made up out of two halves. The right part of any rune is very similar to the left part of the next rune. Her eyes lighting up with understanding, Evot grins at Douglas.
[ New skill learned; Runes lvl 1 ]
Blinking at the sudden realization that her earlier theory is correct, Evot’s eyes open wide. Then she realizes that she knows the meaning of a few of the symbols, and her heart starts beating faster. Beginning at the start of the complex spell, she starts reading the spell formation like a book.
[ Runes lvl 2 ]
She wonders at the simple yet ingenious way in which the target area is designated. She marvels at the self-correcting circle that keeps circulating a small stream of mana endlessly, sending the correct proportion of power to the containment fields and the transformation portion of the spell. It takes her a while to understand why some runic halves seem to miss their counterparts. Then she realizes that real world concepts hold the other side of those runes. Instead of transforming or transporting meaning, those singular rune halves either affect or detect something in the physical realm.
[ Runes lvl 6 ]
Then Douglas stands up, the endlessly fascinating circle winking out of existence. She sits there, blinking the haze of a deep study session from her brain. “It’s been years since I got to sink my teeth into a subject like that…” Wonder in her voice at the amazing state of flow she had been in, she realizes that she knows magical runes now. New trickles of information keep entering her mind’s eye, as if the universe’s best direct neural mapper is gently teaching her, cooperating with her consciousness instead of overwriting parts of her brain directly.
She only wakes from her haze when her open eyes start aching, the dry rock covering them pulling the very moisture from her cornea in a most painful manner. The layer of rock encasing her cracks, and she emerges from the dull stone like she is being born from some freaky egg. “Why did you stop showing me?” Evot is surprised that she hears genuine desperation in her voice as she walks over to the skeleton.
“Mana full.”
“Ah, okay.” At a loss for an argument, as that is a very good reason, she stares at the partially glowing spell shape floating in front of Douglas. To her utter horror, she sees that only a fraction of the amazingly interwoven shape is illuminated. All the obviously lovingly crafted safety procedures, safeguards, mana surge protectors, and auto balancing features are dark grey. The only areas illuminated blue are the base targeting solution and the transformation bits. Horrified at this casual butchering of such a gorgeously created piece of circuitry, Evot stares at the skeleton. “Why in all heck are you only activating a part of the spell?”
“Don’t need the rest.”
“Like fart you don’t need the rest! Your efficiency is pure shit right now. The amount of power flowing through here is just a trickle compared to what is needed. You are wasting ninety percent of your power. Most of the mana you pump into the spell is wasted with keeping the stone in that gaseous state, you know that? The transformed material stays in its high energy shape for way too long like this. You could increase your productive yield by multiple folds if you only incorporate this portion over here.”
“Can’t. Don’t want this.” Douglas points at another cluster of runes with his intact hand.
Furiously looking at the runic feedback loop that controls the portion of mana fed into the actual transformation runes and the sustain runes, she sees that the preceding connection is made up of the shaping module. Opening her mouth in protest, she sees that the skeleton is correct. Powering the section Douglas is pointing at would contain the generated air, preventing new rock from being turned into gas by blocking the entire process. “Why don’t you make a new connection between there and here then?”
“It’s not there.” Evot immediately feels guilty at the sheer amount of accusation Douglas managed to put into that single line.
“I know it’s not there, but surely you can modify this shape?”
“No,” replies Douglas, his voice containing a finality similar to a gravestone slamming shut on that line of conversation.
Frustration bubbling up in her gut, Evot tries picturing what a better form of the design would look like. The thing Douglas seems to be doing with the shape is a continuous process that turns earth into air. But that isn’t right, Evot suddenly knows.
[ Runes lvl 7 ]
“WHAT THE FUNK IS CALX?” she roars. “LIKE FRAK IS IT THE UNBURNABLE MATERIAL! Which absolute nogging came up with this fudge? Phlogiston? That is burnable material? Waah, what is happening?”
It takes Evot a long time to come back to her senses. She spends at least an hour ranting her little head off, uncaring of the whistling noises coming from her still punctured lungs as she vents and raves for a while. The sheer discrepancy between what science has taught her about the world and the newfangled theories that are being stuffed into her brain take her some time to work through. She vents her frustration by kicking and punching the cave wall a lot, yelling some more, and all in all, making a lot of noise.
Douglas is oddly silent during all of this, listening to her frustrated orations with his head cocked at an angle. He continues partially feeding the spell shape with mana, slowly yet surely moving through solid rock. Weird vibrations shake the little moving bubble of open space now and then, but nothing severe enough to make it collapse.
Evot is silent for a long time. Only when Douglas lets the partial spell shape winks out of existence, sitting back on the ground once more, does she resume talking. “So these magical savant idiots… What’s a worse word than idiot? These basic ignoramus cretins thought that the entire world was made up of two elements. Douglas, please interrupt if I am wrong, please.”
“Okay.”
“Great. Thanks… So there is phlogiston. This stuff is material that can burn, right?” Looking at the silent skeleton for a few seconds, Evot resumes pacing. “Burning phlogiston, with fire, obviously, causes it to dephlogistonate. This then becomes air, the equivalent of gaseous oxides, usually of the carbon kind. That is a whole bunch of baloney… Then something like, for example, photosynthesis can phlogistonate this dephlogiston, turning it back into burnable material again, which is the aforementioned phlogiston.”
Evot rolls her tongue around her mouth for a bit, wondering how she is managing to pronounce all of these foolish words so fluently. “Then there is calx, which is all the stuff that does not burn. And here it gets illogical because calx is ash and does not burn. So calcinating something does what? Recombining it with phlogiston in order to form unburned material?”
Douglas says nothing, once again.
“No, because turning earth into air is the process of decalcinating. Turning calx into not-calx. But calx has no decalx counterpart? Did those dummies try to incorporate nitrogen somehow? Did they find that nitrogen takes energy to burn, and that it makes up a large part of standard air? Or are they turning noble gases into solid matter? And what gases are you turning that stone into, anyway? Does it turn the silicon into silane gas? No, that should create a massive surplus of oxygen.”
Evot continues pacing while looking at the ground, occasionally throwing her hands in the air. “Alright. Air does indeed exist out of both unburned and burned material. Dephlogistonating takes the burned, turning it into something combustible. Decalcinating takes the unburnable, turning it into fire-proof earth or other solid material. The reverse is also possible, but here either water or earth is turned into air.”
GalaxSec: A Sci-Fi LitRPG (Skeleton in Space Book 2) Page 14