The DAO of Magic

by Andries Louws

  She looks at me like a startled rabbit. I scratch my own rabbit under the chin while asking my question again.

  “Did you learn anything today?”

  “Thank you so much for this nose thing, I can see everything now! I had to hug someone before I could recognise them, I never knew trees had so many leaves! This is just beautiful, why are we here by the way? Is that a rabbit? Throw it away, they bite! Why is this fat guy sleeping? Ow, hey Vox, you got out of prison too? I’m sure that the…”

  Despair clouds my heart. Did nobody notice that she was practically blind before? Was this the reason for her airheaded attitude? I feel like beating someone up. I angrily make a fist and feel… nothing. I expected to feel my muscles surge with infused qi, but I barely have a proper skin and skeleton while controlling this clone.

  I wave away the green flows of mana that appeared with my pissed off mood. Calming myself down removes the flows from my vision. I got angry inside of a clone that doesn’t have the proper chemical processes for getting angry yet. These shitheads really get under my skin.

  Angeta is still trapped inside her own creation and Bord is fast asleep. I stare at them for a moment but decide to let them be.

  “What city are we in?” I ask my first question.

  The four look at each other.

  Tess is the first to open her mouth. “The Tower?”

  I keep my mouth shut and look at her expectantly. She shivers a bit; my face must not be completed yet.

  “It’s called Neutalinn, but everyone calls it Tower City.”

  I search my local language database for the word Neutalinn. I find it in the curses and swearing category. It was said three times while I was creeping on everyone, the small sample size the cause for the miscategorisation. The fact that the pronunciation sounds like a medieval dubstep song isn’t helping either.

  “What is the name of the country, kingdom and continent?”

  “We are in the Shi-Eit kingdom. The Capital is to the north. Everyone calls it the Capital.”

  I stifle my laughter as I hear the name. Having English as your base language makes a lot of foreign names sound ridiculous. I have my local language process auto translate as much as possible but I still think in English. I continue asking questions for the next hour or so.

  Chapter twenty-seven

  Topics

  Imentally recap what I learned about this planet from my students. The dungeon city has a name, Neutalinn, but is commonly referred to as Tower City by everyone. That’s pretty self-explanatory. I am currently in the Shi-Eit kingdom. Best name ever. The first part is pronounced like ‘shie’ from shield, followed by ‘eit’, which sounds like the last part of bite. The Capital, it has a name but nobody bothers with it, is to the north, right where the nobles table map said it is. The king is called the First Defender and loses his or her own name upon taking the crown. It sounds pretentious as fuck, but the name flows nicely in the local language. It sounds like a catchy commercial jingle.

  The Capital is a coastal city, with beaches running from east to west. Further north are the pirate islands, slave islands and mage states. This world’s mages have made their headquarters on these islands, and any ship that is flying a mage flag receives safe passage. Any ship with a mage flag without an officially sanctioned mage on board will become a floating pile of driftwood and corpses very quickly. I’m guessing the pirates are working for the mages, their unofficial, official naval force. Sailing without a mage flag makes you free game. It’s a pretty good system of controlled trade extortion, I’m slightly impressed.

  The beastkin have their countries to the east. They are heavily divided based on their origin animals, creating multiple tribal kingdoms with their own rules and law. There is a single beastkin capital where all the races are represented and their leader - the Tooth - resides. The moment a beastkin is born, they are placed in a caste or class that is set for life. You will never see a goat beastkin ruling over other beastkin. Only predators have that right. The only exception are mana-sensitive beast people. And why is the image of a horned goat farmer tending crops so funny to me?

  A lot of raiding, slaving and fighting happens on the beastkin-human border, from both the Shi-Eit kingdom and the beast people. Centuries of aggression building itself up in a vicious cycle of violence. I will have to teach each of my disciples some sort of body changing or disguising techniques if we ever want to traverse those lands. Then again, the majority of my sources of information are human, and Angeta told me that anti-human sentiments are pretty rare deep inside beastkin territories.

  Pretty much all food comes from the dungeon thus explaining the lack of any farms. There are other dungeons scattered around the lands. If a dungeon isn’t farmed regularly, the beasts inside will spill out and make a danger zone, according to the legends. Any new dungeons found are claimed by the Kingdom and if the contents of said dungeon are profitable, a city will spring up around it very quickly. There have been no publicly known cases of people finishing a dungeon. Their origin and how they work remains a mystery to the populace.

  I’ve also learnt that the massive walls around the Tower are there to defend against autumn. Why autumn? “So, all the beasts roam around as the summer ends?”

  Tess answers me swiftly. “Yes, mana mutants lead large packs of lesser beasts during the all-rain. They come from the wilderness, probably looking for new territory.”

  “All-rain? Does it rain everywhere in autumn?”

  She looks at me weirdly again. I’ve been here for just about a week, please be a little more understanding.

  “It rains everywhere in autumn.”

  I focus my attention on my real body on top of the tower. I compare the sun’s position and size to my memories from the past few days. The sun does appear to be growing smaller over time. This planet must be on an elliptical orbit.

  Earth had seasons due to its axial tilt. The unchanging arc of this sun implies that this planet is rotating on a straight axis. The seasons must thus come from the difference in proximity to the sun. I want to slap myself for not noticing the sun getting bigger and smaller, my excuse is that… I have no excuse. I love anything space related, damn it.

  Worldwide seasons seem pretty neat though, I wonder if this planet knows about skiing and snowboarding yet? I focus back on my clone and continue asking questions.

  “And it’s cold and snows everywhere after that?”

  “Yes, winter is followed by spring when new life blooms, followed by the current calm season, summer,” Tess replies, her answer containing the hint of something like a nursery rhyme.

  I add the unknown words to my library, picking up their meaning from context.

  “You guys know anything about the rest of the world? Are there other continents beyond the sea?”

  My word for continent literally means big swath of land. Sometimes one has to improvise.

  “What, why? Why would you ask that?”

  Tess is looking at me like I murdered her parents.

  “That’s lethal knowledge, you know.”

  Information that kills. This is getting interesting.

  “Are you automatically killed when you learn such information?”

  “No, the world ends there, the gods of old and the Flight have forbidden us from going beyond the islands. It’s a death penalty to even talk about it.”

  That is very interesting information. I had already planned on producing scanning drones to map this planet. I immediately increase the priority of that task by a large amount. It’s also one of the first mentions of gods I have heard. I derived the meaning of the word from making a language context diagram, and deity or god was the most likely result. And they are old. Are they just old or gone?

  “Okay, that is enough questioning for now. BORD, WAKE UP!”

  I make a chopping motion with my hand, sending out a sharp strand of qi. The tangle of roots around Angeta falls apart and shows me an unconscious and sweaty heap of fur. I hope she learns a lesson
about proper ventilation from this episode. Bord has wiggled himself upright and is intensely staring at the few scraps of food left on the plate. I just sigh again and put it back into my spatial ring. He looks at me with teary eyes.

  “Did you even try to solve the sums?”

  “Ah, I am still stuck in this chair, why?”

  I look him in the eyes and only see confusion. I was getting my hopes up with how Lola turned out, but it truly seems that pig-headedness and body cultivation go hand in hand.

  “Please try to notice when things happen around you.”

  “Why? First master Fellis took care of me, now you’re doing it!”

  He beams a happy smile at my face. I try to ignore him but the sickening happiness on display sours my mood.

  “This master Fellis was buttering you up, you know.”

  I get a confused face in return.

  “He was going to make you his boy toy. I think he is a feeder; he must like his pets with some meat on their bones.”

  “Master Fellis said that I was his special boy!”

  Is he mentally handicapped? He looks so happy right now. “He was going…” I mime my left pointy finger going closer to my right fist. “To put his penis…” I pantomime the act with my hands. “In your bum and fuck you.”

  These are not baseless rumours, I had the… pleasure… of observing him going at it myself. That was the first time looking at a map mentally scarred me. That basement under his mansion is a true horror show.

  “His garden is filled with decaying fat eighteen-year-old corpses.”

  He still looks at me without a trace of intelligence in his eyes.

  “Haaah, I don’t care. You would have had a miserable few years left to live in his dungeon when you became fat enough. He likes to raise his toys like livestock and seems to enjoy the look of betrayal on their faces when he displays his true sadistic nature.” The penny hasn’t dropped yet but now the rest are looking at me askance. “I was curious if the Fellis guy has maps, so I scanned his entire house. Including the dungeon.”

  Now I let a shiver run up my spine while showing a slightly haunted look in my eyes. I don’t let it show too much, though Tess and Ket seem to get the hint. Vox is looking at me as if I am telling him the sky is blue. “Do you guys know anything about an army marching here?”

  Changing the subject is not running away, is what I tell myself. The lack of a reply tells me that they have no knowledge on the changed subject. “How about a big flying beast in the sky?”

  They all turn pale.

  “Y-You saw one of the F-F… Flight?” Vox barely manages to push that last word out of his mouth.

  “Give me all you know about the Flight in one sentence please.”

  They all look at each other for a long while, until Ket decides to speak up. “They are the true rulers; every kingdom or area has a Flight Guardian. We don’t know where they come from. They were here before us.”

  “They are immortal and all powerful I assume?”

  Selis butts in for once. “Even all the grand mages in the kingdom couldn’t possibly crack one scale, they are really pretty though. Why are you white by the way? Our Kingdom’s Flight Guardian is white too. Grass is sooooo pretty, there are so many blades! Thank you again for this looking thing, I really like it. The king meets with the white dragon once every five years, I got to see them from afar, it was huge! The dragon I mean; the king is normal person sized. There was also this…”

  I hold up my hand to stop the deluge of words. “They are called glasses, thanks. That is enough for today. Here are your next assignments.”

  I let my actual body breathe out a large portion of qi and push it inside the pocket dimension. I sink it into the ground and raise up six massive pillars, reaching high into the sky. I float my qi clone upwards and pull some cheap items from my spatial ring, putting them on the flat tops. Bands of colour mark which pillar belongs to whom.

  “Tess, yours is the black one, Vox is white, Selis, blue, Ket, grey, Bord is red and Angeta’s is green. Please tell her when she comes to. Don’t bother climbing a pillar not your own.”

  Casting one last look at my kidnappees, I shake my head and pull my qi clone outside.

  Let’s get an update on the army and the dragon. Wind whips my hair around as I take a look at the sights below me. The army is still marching. Their destination seems to be the Tower; they are coming here in a straight line. I can’t see any dragons at the moment, and the city is covered by clouds. Looking downwards over the edge nets me a white and fluffy view. I think it’s about time I come up with a solution to this qi spewing tower.

  Chapter twenty-eight

  Force

  Ican finally stretch my mental muscles again. My core is at the first crunch core forming stage and slowly growing. The massive increase in power a higher density core gives me is enough to start simulating some basic models. Wait, no, I meant my multiple cores. This dual core thing is still new to me. Allow a thousand-year-old guy some adjustment time, yeah?

  The things I’m simulating are magic circles. I set up a three-dimensional grid with a resolution of a few thousand measuring points along each axis. Using this simulation, I can observe how my mental imprints and various circle shapes interact. The mana-gathering circle in the Tree was a shoddy construction. This way of brute force rapid prototyping will allow me to make something that’s many times more effective for the same power and material expenditure.

  I use a simple circle as the baseline for any complex construct. I assign the circle a base function; then it’s just a matter of adding more stuff in a logical fashion. The outer circle of this formation will act as a double one-way barrier, keeping physical stuff out and qi in. I spend the following hour tweaking the circle for optimum effect.

  I end up with a rather ugly looking thing. Four ying-yang symbols to draw in all the energy around it, and a golden mean ratio spirals to transport said qi to the centre where it will be compressed into a single point. Spikes jutting out from the sides are meant to scare away any inquisitive strangers while a smaller spiked ring around the force-field is there to dissuade anyone from breaking it with force.

  It will absorb any qi the Tower produces for a few weeks, according to my calculations. I don’t know yet if it will have enough compressing power to form solid chunks of condensed qi, but it will prevent the apocalypse for a while at the very least.

  I stand up and look around. Shards of white stone are still laying everywhere. I bend over to pick one up but find it firmly stuck to the ground. I take a better look and see it is melding back into the solid rock. It must be beginning to reconstruct itself. I should take my students on a dungeon dive later, let them get some practical experience. Any qi that’s touching the stone is still lost to my control, making the entire structure appear like a black hole to my senses.

  I stretch a little, popping sounds coming from my back along with a pretty good feeling. I thought that mental cultivation could be addictive, but body cultivation is like hard drugs compared to the mental soft drugs. It’s pleasurable in a similar manner, just on a much higher level.

  I look around and see the army has advanced a bit further. I do an automated visual sweep around me and find the dragon again. I find it hiding in the sun, so I take care not to look at it directly. No need to let unknowns know that I know about them. This is a good opportunity to spread some misinformation, however.

  I start dancing. My usually awkward movements have gained a certain grace after my heartcore formed. Shuffling about, I do all the dance moves I can remember. First comes the submarine move, grabbing my nose while sinking through my knees. My other hand makes a vertical wavy motion, indicating water. Then the peace signs over the eyes, that’s a classic. I do some rockabilly moves and start creating the circle.

  Heeeey-Macarena, AHOY! With a shake of my butt I place the ying-yang circles one by one. A few twirly moves later, the spirals are in place. The spikes are created by doing some rhythmic shadow boxin
g. I decide to just spaz out as much as I can for the last part. With flailing limbs, I let the compression centre form. I spread my arms about, waving them wildly in the air. The circle is guided into position while stomping around, imitating some traditional African dance, or something.

  I go all out and throw some break-dancing in the mix. I am giving that dragon quite a feast for the eyes. I notice that the white lines of qi start disintegrating. Mentally berating myself for getting too into the dancing, I re-focus my mind on locking the circle in place. I stand up and place the glowing thing above the uneven floor, right over the spewing geyser of qi. I then link it to the concept of the surface instead of the physical material. That should prevent the dungeon from stealing the circle by growing around it, like Tree did.

  I jump high in the air, corkscrewing and flipping like mad. This is actually really fun. The moment I land, the circle flashes with a bright light and it starts working. I feel the surrounding qi getting drawn to it, allowing me to cancel the mental process that was keeping the qi from flying away. Any new qi gets sucked into the centre immediately. The qi still floating around will be absorbed in a minute or so.

  I could have done all that with a single hand wave, but where is the fun in that? I don’t plan on showing potential enemies any of my true skills. The shrinking bubble of qi must have piqued the dragon’s interest as a process alerts me to the fact that it is flying closer. I can see its white scaly body by the time all the loose qi around me has been sucked up into the glowing circle’s centre.

  I look back at the ornamental circle and give it a mental yank. It starts slowly spinning, the rotating spirals producing a mesmerising effect. A short while later its spins fast enough that only a transparent white circle is showing. A field shimmers into existence around it, the protective force-field slightly bending the light.

  And what is that ruckus in my mind? Ah, my threat assessment process has started ringing every alarm-bell it can get its hands on. The dragon is deemed a threat unknown and dangerous enough to send the analyser into high alert. DEFCON One, people, ready battle stations, ready battle stations!