“WOOOOF!”
A bark and a whooshing flame sound later, half the room is on fire. Dark red flames lick the wall, roasting the bats remains but not phasing Lola at all. Fur isn’t just a good shock absorber, all the air trapped in between those hairs prevent any short-term heat damage. Luckily she saw it coming, closed her eyes and laid her ears flat. So far she managed to kill everything here in one hit, how will she react to something that can fight back?
She gets pissed, it seems. A white glow shines through the dissipating smoke.
“SQUEEEECK!”
A high and piercing yell cuts through the din of battle. I take a step to my right in order to dodge the flying flaming dog. It has a really big dent in the side of its head. I look back just in time to witness an angry rabbit exploding through the abdomen of the spider, pulling a spray of black and grey ichor behind her. The spider drops immediately, the missing half of its body and oozing goo. The gnoll has finished waving its staff around and has gathered an impressive amount of magical mojo. The moment it opens its mouth its head disappears. I barely catch the action and replay it in my mind a few times to catch all the details.
Does this rabbit insist on pissing me off? She somehow grew a glowing horn ON HER FUCKING FOREHEAD. I have to spend quite a bit of effort to keep my face neutral. I do allow a frown to form as I direct my gaze towards Lola. Her eyes have a fierce glow, reflecting the shining light of her FUCKING FOREHEAD HORN. Standing amidst a few piles of scorched meat and various liquid sprays, the bright fluffy creature looks like an otherworldly being. Instead of just reinforcing her head, she is using qi to form a construct. Similar to the spear I conjured when killing the wasp, it has a triangular structure and is half the length of her body.
“Are you a uni-rabbit or something? That horn looks ridiculous, keeping it out only wastes qi.” Her horn fades in a sparkle of glowing particles.
“Don’t pull that thing out in front of me, it seriously pisses me off.” I grab the stupid rabbit, haul the unconscious girl with me and walk to the exit on the opposite side of the room’s entrance. “You did good though. While it looks retarded, that’s a good finishing move you made.”
Lola’s qi reserves are near empty again. I walk into the last tunnel while scratching her between the ears. She will need to figure out a better way to gather qi, her lungs just don’t have enough volume to gather mana efficiently. Finishing a fight empty of energy is asking to be killed when you are going solo. Heartcore cultivators are pretty bad at external techniques, and she wasted a lot of power just keeping the horn materialized. On the positive side, she is a lot better at fighting while empty, she has a much larger percentage of her qi reinforcing her body.
“It really looks retarded though…”
The tunnel ends in a small room with two doors. One contains a set of stairs going down while the right doorframe is filled with blackness. I’m guessing that it’s a portal to the lobby. Pushing qi through it disconnects it from me. I don’t feel like walking all the way back up again, I would have to run my arse off to get there before daybreak.
Blindly jumping into any kind of portal is a really stupid thing to do, but luckily I am not the smartest person around. I stick my hand through the inky door. I pull it back and my hand tingles like it’s asleep. It’s completely stripped of qi. This could be a problem.
I breathe out the majority of my power, focussing it in front of my face. Compressing it to a point gives me a white marble. I touch it with my ring and place it inside. Putting Lola to my chest, she gets sucked in the necklace around my neck. Shifting the girl over my shoulder again I step through the door.
I nearly faint when I step into the spotless lobby. There is not a single shred of energy in my body. It’s like I freshly arrived here all over again with one single difference. My solid core. Breathing in deeply, I rip the mana from the air and gather enough qi to operate my spatial ring. Five breaths later I have enough and use it all to retrieve the white marble. I need to hurry up, I feel the girl’s heart rate dropping fast. I pop the white pill in my mouth and suck on it. It releases its contents at the closest place to my core I can get to, the back of my throat.
My dizziness fades as my core space fills with power once again. The moment I have some to spare I shove it into the girl over my shoulder. The core prevention rune I put on her is gone too. I remake that along with a sleep rune, a simple array of three ‘Z’ letters getting smaller. I set it to make her sleep for two days after some quick math. I mentally shout a bit at the qi to heal her. She should be all fixed up by the time she wakes up.
I walk out of the dungeon and make my way through the dark streets. I recall the data I have gathered on this city; my mental processes have been processing it this whole time. I check a certain mental storage space and look for convenient hiding places. An abandoned attic with a swivel window in the trade district comes up as number one. It’s on the way to the south gate, so I start walking.
I sense a wave of power coming from the necklace. Lola has finally figured out that you can use qi for more things than attacking or creating god damn fucking horns on foreheads and is now sensing the environment through the necklace. Body cultivators have a harder time using their heartcore to control qi outside of their bodies, but they can do it after some practice. I pick up my pace as my core gets partially filled again, the marble in my mouth slowly growing smaller.
The attic windows don’t even have a lock. As I hoist the bonelessly flopping girl through the opening I take a look at the interior. Dusty as hell, it seems to be used as storage for old furniture. I lay the sleeping form on the best-looking couch after sweeping the dust away with a gust of qi. I then form a small circle made from power. I clear my mind and begin mentally shouting at it.
‘THERE IS NOTHING HERE, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG PEOPLE, MOVE ALONG!’
I place the qi ring gently on her sternum after channelling my best cop impression for a minute. People can now sit on the couch and not notice the sleeping kidnap victim. Looking over the entire scene, I use some qi to spread the dust evenly, wiping away my footsteps and covering the couch in a fine layer again. I jump through the window, letting it fall shut. I nearly land on an early rising group of people, making myself unnoticeable just in time.
While leaving the group murmuring about that strange gust of wind, I make my way over to the gate I entered the city through. While walking I spread my spiritual sense though the entire city. I’m looking for more people that have a similar affinity to the sleeping girl. It takes a while as I slow down to a leisurely walk. I have located a few hundred people with odd energy signatures flitting through their bodies by the time I reach the city gate. The guards on duty all look at me and I do an admirable job of ignoring them.
I decide to stretch my limbs a bit, so I bring Lola out and look at her. Without saying anything I pump qi through my legs and start running south. With the wind whipping through my hair and Lola sprinting here and there I start thinking about what I need. First I need more qi. I can make mana tornadoes, but that is conspicuous as hell. I don’t believe nobody sensed those power up moments of mine. Second is an item I can make with just about any object as a base. Third is… kidnapping people! This is going to be the first time I will wilfully commit such a crime. I can’t wait.
Chapter sixteen
Tree
Ilove running. Pumping my legs to an internal rhythm while playing some music in my mind from memory. I can simply focus on moving my body to the beat and stop thinking for once. Squinting my eyes against the wind I take stock of my surroundings. I’m running over flat grasslands, going back south. I have left the road and made a detour around the inn. The sun has started peeking over the horizon, lighting up shards of fog still clinging to the grass.
I will need an artefact for the next step in my plan. I’m not talking about my priority list. That is just a global living guideline. The plan I’m working on right now is something that I never needed to do before. I don’t ha
ve enough qi to enact it though, so I will have to fix that. I send more qi into my body and speed up. Lola is keeping up with ease.
Body cultivators - I call them heartcores - integrate their qi into their fleshy body. Mind cultivators or braincores like me have the biggest qi pools but their bodies are barely any stronger. I need to manually apply reinforcement to muscle groups in order to produce impressive feats of strength. Normal cultivators have their core in their dantian, I call them gutcores, and are a bit of both, able to produce magic combined with average strengthened physique. Qi users going the body cultivation route have the majority of their total qi locked inside their flesh, bones, skin and organs. This qi is not available for conscious usage by the cultivator, something I call structural, or deactivated qi. Heartcore cultivators can use a little bit of power to aid certain fighting skills, but they won’t be performing any grand spell works anytime soon.
This all means that Lola in her normal state can beat the crap out of me. I need to rely on other tricks in order to beat someone like her. She might be stronger than me but if I suspend her in a network of qi wires she wouldn’t have any leverage to reach me. This means any team of practitioners would ideally have at least one of each. That way they can compensate for each other’s weaknesses.
I break away from this train of thought when the forest comes into view again. Slowing down, I start a casual jog. A white flash passes just in front of me. A certain rabbit seems to be having fun jumping off of tree trunks like a ping-pong ball. I reach a recognizable clearing by the time I’ve started working up a slight sweat. Lola isn’t even breathing harder. Stupid cheating horn-toting piece of adorable fluff.
I slow down even further as I detect various living beings in the clearing. I jump into a tree and traverse the last few metres to the edge of the woods jumping from branch to branch. I spot a colourful hodgepodge of wildlife chilling on the grass when I hear a snap and a squeak. Looking behind me, I see Lola tumbling down, taking a branch filled with square and purple leaves to the ground with her. Just as I want to scold the stupid thing for giving our position away, I feel a myriad of gazes peering at me.
The entire group of funky wildlife is staring at me. They don’t do anything else; they don’t even stand up. I blink my eyes a couple of times and drop to the ground. Their gazes follow me as I walk around the edge of the clearing, their necks and head the only things moving. This is really weird. What is going on here.
On a whim, I simulate some fear. My eyes grow wide and my eyebrows reach for the sky as I observe a slow movingly blue vortex centred in the open space. Did I create a permanent mana phenomenon? How much am I fucking up this region? Are these animals going to become much stronger thanks to this mana hotspot?
I shake my head and decide to make the most of the situation. My core is running on fumes now, there is no liquid qi left in the tank, I used it all during my sprint. Looking over the animals, I find a path to the centre that is fairly unobstructed. I walk slowly through the horde of animals.
“Lola, come here for a bit.”
The white bunny slowly hops my way. I reach the clearing centre and sit down. I pat my leg and Lola nuzzles up to me. I grab her and place her in my lap. Looking her in the eyes, I take a deep breath, filtering out any mana before breathing it out. She seems to get the hint after a minute of demonstrative breathing and her nose starts twitching slower as she takes deeper breaths.
I breathe out the last of my qi, forming a circle around me.
‘DON’T TOUCH. JUST CHILL. BE COOL. DON’T COME OVER!’
The thin circle of qi shimmers and changes slightly, settling on top of the grass. Closing my eyes, I re-enact the scene that happened here the day before yesterday. A swirl of mana starts gathering around me. I simulate all the emotions I have categorised so far, keeping an eye on the amount of elemental mana that is circling me. I could automate the emotions with mental processes, but that would leave me an emotionless husk. That would probably be the beginning of my second insanity episode.
I exert more mental force, forcing the mana to gather faster. I do some fine tuning, pulling on the wood element less (We are in a forest after all.), and pulling harder on the rest. Taking deep breaths of the mana laden air I feel my core slowly filling up again. Sending some of the new qi into the vortex speeds up the process some more. A small part of my mind is keeping tabs on Lola; she seems to be getting the hang of it. Her breathing is getting deeper and slowing down even further. Can animals meditate? Is there an instinct that promotes peace of animal mind?
I shake my head and focus on my own breathing. The animals closest to me all stood up and moved back, creating a clear space around me. I can feel more animals from across the forest moving this way. Feeling the mana rush to my brain with every breath, I grasp all the qi in my core and squeeze. I form a minuscule drop that immediately gravitates towards my core, hugging it closely. The tornado raging around me grows even bigger, channelling more mana my way.
Just ten minutes later my core is full again. Packed to the brim with liquid qi. I keep on breathing mana, increasing the qi pressure. The moment I feel my core slowly growing I lose my grip on the mana swirling around me, causing it to fly away from my centrifugal grip. The bunny on my lap looks at me. I wash some qi over her body and see that her qi density has improved. My qi filled petting will be a lot less effective now. A few hours in the mana dense part of the clearing will allow her to form a solid core, but it’s a bit early for that. Taking a last deep breath, I stand up and look around. An entire zoo worth of animals is staring at me. The blue bear I saw a few days ago is there too. Even weirder beasts have gathered now. I spot a green striped tiger with ant legs standing next to a monkey-faced sheep.
Shaking my head for a third time, I walk towards the south. The animals slowly make a path, peacefully getting out of my way. Was I a beast tamer in a previous life? Maybe I got a cheat skill from a loli goddess when I entered the planet. Looking back and flaring some emotions I see that the faint mana tornado is still there. I look at it for a couple of seconds, measuring the mana density as precisely as I can. I sense the mana concentration vanishing extremely slowly. Extrapolating the data point lets me calculate that it will disappear in a few weeks. I will have to measure it again when I return to the city to improve this prediction.
A grey striped cat with shiny antlers steps out of my way and I’m free from the weird silent encirclement. Lola is timidly following me, shooting furtive glances everywhere. The moment I reach the trees I wave goodbye to the gathered mute group of beasts and start jogging again. Next destination, the mountains.
Another half hour of jogging later I reach the village. I skirt around it with a wide margin. Just as I am catching my stride again my qi radar finds an anomaly. A ridiculous mana hotspot has intruded on my senses. This couldn’t be the tree, right? I increase my pace and reach my previous camping spot. At least, I reach what is left of my camping spot. The tree I used for shelter and simple conversation has grown twice its original width. It is also chock full of elemental mana.
An idea forms in my mind: maybe I don’t need to go to the mountains after all. The tree was a mighty specimen when I found it first, and now it seems to radiate a feeling of power, further enhancing its imposing size. It isn’t leaking any power, but the circle I drew must have filled the tree to capacity, shifting its growth process into high gear. A smile forms on my face as I realise what I have to do.
I walk closer and place a hand on the trunk. The tree is indeed filled with mana. I sense some qi around the tree’s base and find my mana gathering circle perfectly preserved inside the wood. My blood has dried up by now, but the tree has formed cavities around my drawing. The function of the circle seems to have transferred to these cavities, taking over the job as catalyst. I sink my consciousness into the tree and prepare.
Forcing the mana together one by one is not going to work. I can only keep one emotion in my mind at a time, else my mana sense becomes very blurry. I will
have to do something slightly dangerous here.
Double-checking all my understanding of this world’s elemental mana system, I make a nice little mental table.
Element
Positive
Negative
Wood
Gratitude
Anger
Fire
Love
Hate
Earth
Empathy
Apathy
Metal
Anticipation
Regret
Water
Courage
Fear
There, isn’t it nice to have things neatly organised? It’s probably not fully correct but it represents my own understanding of this system to the best of my abilities. Now for the dangerous part. I take a small chunk of my mind and divide it into ten pieces. Each piece gets a singular emotion assigned to it. I do it as quickly as I can, creating a new process that contains a timed self-destruct command as a safety measure. I feel my mind growing flatter with each emotion I lock up. This is not good for my mental health, so I should hurry.
The tree in front of me starts blazing in colours the moment I do this. First shades of green, then red, yellow, grey and blue. The proud rainbow tree is a truly magnificent sight. At least, it would be if I wasn’t an emotionless calculator now. I feel wrong in the head, layers are stripped away and a cold frost starts coating my mind. I immediately command all the mana in the tree to merge, using my locked-up emotions as a focus. I feel resistance, and the mana slips my grasp.
With an unintelligible shout, I rip the emotional cluster apart, warmth and a bigger perspective filling my head once again. That was very uncomfortable. I feel something poking my leg and a glance down shows me a freaking out Lola. I pet her a bit, calming down from that ordeal.
The DAO of Magic Page 13