The Dao of Magic: Book II

by Andries Louws

  Fully healed, it should be the same sturdiness as an Abrams tank composite armour. The planetary defence system sure did a number on me. My suspicions about this planet being someone’s pet project have been pretty much confirmed. No normal planet has a dantian-crippling satellite railgun network, I’m pretty sure.

  This planet’s theme seems to be a variation of the tried and true order versus chaos theme. I want to explore the other continent to confirm this.

  Alright, enough introspective mumbling. Let’s see how the world is doing. I spread my senses through the portal in Tree and feel a heavy pressure. I snake strands of qi through into the real world and make a rough scan.

  Bottom of the ocean, about three hundred metres deep? That’s pretty shallow. I guess this is some sort of plateau. I confirm what my collection of contracts told me, my students are up top, right above us.

  I open my eyes and stare into a beautiful pair of pale grey irises. I can’t help but smile a bit. “Good morning?”

  I hurriedly intercept the casual fist send my way. “No hitting, please. You would undo all the healing. Please express your complaints verbally for now.”

  Her pale orbs narrow in suspicion. They then travel to my torn clothes, the redness still clinging to tatters of black silk and white undershirt. I run a hand over my vest and frown. The simple undershirt I am wearing was capable of stopping pre-ascension level attacks. That satellite tore through it with ease.

  I turn my gaze back upwards and see Rhea thinking. She then turns the first into an open hand. I quirk an eyebrow at the gesture.

  “Your students have rings. Does this mighty dragon not deserve one?”

  My mind stops for a bit. This… I did not consider at all. “Ah… Uhm. I’m sorry.”

  I pull a few materials out of my ring. I pause my healing for a bit and do in a single second what used to take me half an hour before reaching the foundation realm, making a spatial ring.

  A small Tree of silver inlaid on an intricate woven band of gold and black metal drops into my hand. The forest around us settles down from the massive surge of qi I packed in there. Rhea’s hair settles back down from the small cyclone my forceful crafting caused, and I hand it over.

  “I’m pretty shit at expressing emotions, but… thanks.” I look away a bit. Vulnerabilities are so embarrassing. I put the few feelings I’m sure about in the words as I speak them, not quite love, but an intense happiness and gratefulness that she exists, and is willing to put up with me.

  She looks frozen like a deer in the headlights. I grin at her. How could I forget that this lady is a narcoleptic dragon with very little social experiences? We might be a better match than I thought, after all.

  I kiss her. I then have to remind her several times to be careful with my still-healing stomach as we roll around in the grass.

  ⁂

  “RAARG, TEACH! WHERE ARE YOU???” Angeta rages for a bit, undoing much of her progress as she claws the deck in frustration.

  “HWA? Not the whip, Teach. Ket, noooo…” Blurry eyes open wide, Vox jolts upright at the sudden ruckus.

  Ket shivers a bit as he casts another fishing line into the calm sea. Selis is kicking her feet as they dangle over the back of the boat, also fishing. Bord causes a small explosion as he flicks a booger into the sea. Tess hangs in the ropes hung around the mast like a cat.

  “How long have I slept?” Bord answers the still sleepy Vox by pointing at the sky. “Sun was over there.”

  “That’s half of half a day! Are we sure that Teach and Re-Haan are below us?” Vox closes his eyes again, answering his own question shortly after. “Yep, Teach is below. I don’t know how I know, but I feel it.”

  “Contract,” Ket mumbles as he pulls on his line, hauling in a misshapen tuna. He looks at the large teeth jutting randomly out of the fish with suspicion. “Tess, Sel, was this nature and water?”

  “Yeah, guess which one was dark and bright?” Selis looks at him as she asks the question with pride in her voice, one hand casually petting a bundle of white fluff.

  “Bright water, dark nature?”

  “Yep!”

  “Can’t eat this, then. Dark nature mana makes fish taste like leather.”

  The fish sails back into the sea. “Ah, Teach is finally comi-”

  A black item burst from the water, crashing onto the deck with splintering force. Two forms pop out onto the deck immediately. “What’s up, my students! I am back!”

  “Thank all that is holy, let me in!” Angeta sprints towards the necklace and disappears.

  “What’s up her butt?” Re-Haan asks.

  Teach blinks a couple of times as his gaze focusses inside the necklace. “Too much, you don’t want to know. Do you all know that circulating qi through your stomach disintegrates the food entirely, leaving no residue that needs to be… excreted?”

  Blanks stares greet him. “Hmm, maybe leaving all the learning to Database self-study is not that smart, after all. Alright, Ket! Set sail towards that direction.” He points towards a seemingly random point on the horizon. “First we will fix the ship. Then I will be truthful to my title and teach a bit. Then we’ll start a sect!”

  The entire group visible cringes at the pose the bearded man is in, finger dramatically pointing towards the sky.

  “Speaking of the ship, why can’t I leave you little shits alone without ruining the Ascent! You guys blamed mages the first time, who did all this damage? Dragons?”

  Absolute silence reigns supreme for half a minute.

  Ket’s reply comes in a measured pace. “The majority of the structural damage came from you smacking the necklace onto the deck. All of this is superficial and cosmetic damage. That impact cracked twenty percent of the structural beams.”

  Teach looks down, frowns and shrugs as Re-Haan tries very hard not to burst into giggles.

  ⁂

  Large couches, comfortable chairs and a table filled with food are placed on a pristine ship’s deck. Eight people are sitting and laying in various stages of relaxation as a wide variety of snacks is consumed.

  “Circulating qi through my stomach makes me hungry.” Bord frowns while putting another handful of nuts into his mouth.

  “Guide it through your stomach into your intestines. I have a process running that generates a slow current through my small and large intestine. I have found that disintegrating the food inside your stomach is less efficient.” I reply.

  Angeta’s ears are a faint shade of red. I’m unsure whether that’s from anger or embarrassment. “So, all that squatting I did in the woods…”

  “Enriched Tree’s ecosystem, I am sure. You’re not required to do the qi-assisted digestion though. Just make sure that your digestive tract is largely empty before fighting. Cleaning a gut wound that’s contaminated with faeces is a nightmare.” I rub my still healing stomach through my new shirt.

  “When can we reach foundation realm? I could measure your power somewhat previously. Now you are just a blank slate to my senses.” Ket has been staring at me with his full focus the moment Rhea and I re-joined the students. I don’t even have to consciously rebuff his scanning attempts; his level of qi control is unable to get through my skin.

  “When you want to. The only limiting factor here is the amount of qi available to us. My step into foundation took an enormous amount of qi.” I pause for a moment to run some calculations. “All of the qi inside Tree and all of yours together is a tenth of what I possess currently.”

  The group looks at each other for a bit as I let that sink in. Ket rubs his forehead and Selis has her eyes closed as they both run the numbers. Rhea is nodding to herself.

  “No wonder the dragons came,” Ket mumbles to himself.

  “Yeah, even with a full set of dark and light mana pairs, that still required an enormous amount of energy. A third of the planet noticed?” Selis looks at Ket as water swirls through her hair.

  “Four-thirteenths of the planet must have noticed a mana shift. That’s insane�
�” Ket is looking at me with a weird expression on his face.

  “And that covers Flight Mountain. How many dragons came? And when will Tree be big enough to support a normal foundation realm? Sucking the planet dry of mana will have all sorts of consequences.” Rhea is now rubbing her temples also.

  “A couple of dozen? I was too busy keeping all of you alive to count them.” Vox still looks a bit tired.

  I feel some tapping on my shoulder. I turn my head and see Lola shifting. Is she tapping out a number? “Forty-Five?” She headbutts me. “Fifty-Four?” She stomps a single time. I put her on my chest and start rubbing her belly.

  I turn my head to the dragoness sitting beside me. “And Rhea, half a year before Tree has enough qi to allow that, I think. I made the dark mana excess worse by half a percent by absorbing equal parts light and dark. I think it’s time to wake up the frozen squatters on my moon and start a qi school. It’s also time for you guys to start earning your keep.”

  I smile at my students. They all shiver for some reason.

  “Drew, why would you start a sect of your own?” Rhea asks me a question.

  “Call me Teach. And it’s not a sect. It’s a school, totally diff-”

  A faint wave of dread boots me into combat mode.

  A shiver of my soul. Coming from where? Coming from ahead. Coming from second continent. Energy signature feels dreadful. Same feeling in pit of stomach as I felt in space when looking at the continent.

  Reason? Effect? Unknown. Nothing positive.

  Observe students and Rhea. Glassy eyes. Already fading. No reaction. Temporary memory loss?

  “Huh, Teach, why did you stop ta-” I interrupt Tess and stand up. That was bad, a wave of something very bad just washed over us and no one but me felt it. How long has this been going on? How long have my students been subjected to something that feels this bad?

  “Get inside of Tree now.” I hold up the necklace as I suffuse my seriousness into my voice. My heartcore-boosted vocal cords imprint my command upon everyone here. They all look confused but follow my command.

  “Something bad; I will be right there.” I look at Rhea, who is the last to disappear inside Tree. Just in time for a stronger wave to wash over me, rattling my soul.

  Chapter forty-eight

  Ligna

  I ‘m sitting cross-legged on the prow of my ship. I have my eyes closed. All my non-essential processes are on hold. I’ve paused my healing and set my scanning suite to its minimum functionality mode.

  The final ripples of something I can barely sense are buffering me. They originate from the mysterious continent on the opposite side of this massive ocean. They are freaking me the fuck out.

  Something is fucking with my soul, and I don’t like it one bit.

  I take another breath, calming my rising temper. A blast of energy careens through me again, barely perceptible. I have felt it quite a few times now, enough to notice the phenomenon gaining strength the closer I get to that place. It’s also quite fast. Faster than the speed of sound through air by multiple folds, but nowhere near the lightspeed of radio waves.

  It reminds me of qi radiation. Concentrated quantities of qi generate a tertiary effect comparable to something like neutrinos, an extremely low-power type of radiation that barely interacts with the material world. Maybe mana does the same because this feels similar but different.

  I really want to know what is happening and I am starting to recognise a pattern. Milliseconds before impact I dedicate the maximum safe amount of brain space to my consciousness while swirling qi through my brain.

  My senses grow dull and old as time speeds up. My mind expands, and I become instantly bored, really bored. All my inputs have slowed down to a crawl, and I have a lot of thinking space left over. Immediately my thoughts start to wander to da-

  HHHuummbbRRtggrrrRRGbrrWUWUWU

  Oowww, my head hurts now. The impact that normally only slightly jolted my soul now rattles my brain around inside my head. Higher perception means a higher vulnerability, it seems. Whatever was just broadcast straight into my brain… very disturbing.

  I look at the recorded message and lose concentration. What was I just doing? Aw shit, did I mess up again? I really need to stop doing stupid stuff like this. Sense an unknown soul-stirring pulse from somewhere up ahead? Sure, open yourself up to it to the max, that can’t do any harm, right? Invite that psychic spyware right in, open door and arrows pointing the way.

  I weave a quick spell to secure my Tree necklace to the ship before popping inside the pocket dimension. I wave Ket away and spend some time calming down my roiling thoughts and soul.

  ⁂

  “BORD, COME HERE FOR A SEC!”

  “Whaddup Ket?”

  “You didn’t sense anything? Teach acted like he detected something. He went through his full suite of pre-programmed facial muscle contractions.”

  Bord shakes his jowls in denial. Ares pokes Ket in the side. “Full suite?”

  Ket’s face is serious as he nods. “Hmm, he has this act that he does when he is surprised or wants us to believe he is surprised. First, he freezes for a second, then both his eyebrows rise a fraction. That is all followed by a further rising of his right eyebrow and a perfectly even widening of both eyes. Then his left cheekbone to cheek muscle contracts followed by a tensing of his chewing muscles. This is then…”

  Ket continues to drone off a complex series of highly detailed facial expressions. He stops when he notices that only Bord is standing near him, a vacant expression on his round face. Bord visibly shakes himself back to awareness after a few seconds of silence.

  “Ah, you are done. That was very interesting.” Bord turns around and walks away and starts mumbling to himself. “I’m going to tell Selis that I didn’t walk away this time even though it was boring. I listened and complimented. This ekitet stuff is hard.”

  Ket rubs his forehead for a bit. He then looks around and startles as he notices Teach sitting not far from him. He walks up to him, but the bearded man waves him off while keeping his eyes closed. Shrugging his shoulders, Ket walks off to the clean and angled piece of architecture that is his own small house.

  ⁂

  “Re-Haan, please tell him! He is seriously scary when angry.”

  “I am not going to tell him you got your tail eaten, pathetic furball.”

  “But… but he forbade us all from losing our qi. My tail contained enough qi to make a few new qi-gathering cultivators. And a dragon ate it.” Angeta shifts on her feet in a nervous manner, fidgeting with her fingers.

  The dragoness thinks for a moment before grinning. “He lost enough qi to make tens of thousands of qi-gathering cultivators when he got wounded just now. He doesn’t seem bothered by that.”

  “He got wounded? When did tha-”

  “FUUUUCK. HOW DID I MISS THAT. GATHER ROUND EVERYONE!”

  Wincing from the thundering volume, Re-Haan and Angeta walk out of the tree-shaped house they were chatting in. They, along with all the others, rush towards Teach who is standing in front of Tree as he frowns deeply.

  “Ket, double check these numbers for me. Two kilotons of octo mana crystal turned to qi with a propagation rate of one point zero zero three per day, cumulative, spread in a pattern that disperses a third to the ground distributed over the next month, a third over the next decennia and a third reaching the sun in a couple of thousand years.”

  Ket pales.

  “So, it really is that bad?” Teach frowns again.

  “A meteorite? Where?”

  Teach rubs his stomach.

  “Dantian then. But that’s so unlikely…” Ket waves a hand to Selis. She makes a finger pistol in his direction, followed by a splash of water that starts circling on top of Ket’s head. She adds more as steam starts to waft from the heating water.

  “Getting hit by a meteorite in space is… The number has twelve zeros. The chance of then getting hit in the stomach has more than twenty. What direction?”

  A sma
ll stick figure appears beside Teach. A slightly curved surface appears beneath the figure, continents and clouds just visible on its surface. A dotted line comes from the upper right, making its way over to the small human. Then another lines swoops in, nearly perpendicular to the surface of the planet, and smashes through the small bearded humanoid.

  “Debris spray angle?” Ket asks as he stares at the animated drawing.

  A small cone appears from the opposite side of the now falling stick figure. Other dotted lines miss the falling figure as they steak past.

  “A year. The next beast hordes will contain qi animals. Ten years later they will all be cultivating animals. The third meteorite will hit the sun in twelve years.”

  Teach raises a single eyebrow at that. “Why is that important?”

  “The third meteor went through your spray. It will deliver an uncertain amount of qi straight into the sun.”

  A single ripple of power emanates from Teach, leaving everyone breathless.

  “Drew, what is happening?” Pale eyes stare at Teach as they take in the facial twitches partially hidden under a beard.

  “Nothing I can’t fix. I will have to speed up my plans once again, it seems.” He takes a deep breath, visibly collecting himself.

  “Good news first, I reached foundation realm, woohoo!” Puffs of smoke and confetti explode from behind the man who is standing in a triumphant pose. Glitter rains down as miniature fireworks explode around his head.

  ⁂

  Why did that bloody celebration process go off now? I wave away the manifested festivities as I see no reaction from my unappreciative crowd.

  Things are worse than they seem, it seems.

  “Bad news is that we can’t leave this world without some proper defences. As Ket correctly estimated right now, this planet is protected by very dangerous weapons. They can’t hit us under this thick blanket of atmosphere, but we should make it a rule not to fly too high.”