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Chapter 486
🕑 Added 2022-08-13 12:36:19 +0000 UTCFriday's chapter! Enjoy!
More on Monday.
* * *
Felix trained alone for a time. He pressed his Skills, conjuring shapes out of the limited light in the closed cavern, or summoning fists of acid to sizzle and sputter against boulders. His heart wasn't in it, however, not like before.
Auroral Forge is level 28!
Auroral Forge is level 29!
The gains ended there. His Aspects ached, but far worse was the realization that things were spinning out of his control. The anxieties that had been burning at his Mind were inflamed by the one-two punch of Vess' risky plan and the Fathom's contact. His team was limited, featuring a kid and his pet rock, a manipulative Chanter, and an uncertain warrior. Beef was a good egg, but he was too young—he'd fight, Felix didn't doubt that, but the Minotaur's skillset was limited. Hallow would follow Beef, of course, but its Risen weren't strong enough to face down a Depthwurm let alone the Fathom itself.
Pit he could trust, of course. Isla, however, was apparently working to drastically weaken Vess. Perhaps she meant well, and perhaps the timespan was not as immediate as Felix feared—he doubted Vess would be so foolhardy as to introduce a glaring weakness into her core space right before a fight. A fight, he reminded himself, that she desperately wished to take part in.
Maybe she is willing to attempt this mysterious process soon, he mused. Vess was very dedicated to eradicating draconic Types, and the Fathom most of all. Worse than her going after the supposed dragon directly was the idea that she would do so after damaging her Aspects and Temper. At the very least, the Fathom knew of them, and depending on what it gleaned from Felix in their brief connection, it might even know they were coming.
Felix's training soon lapsed into a long, quiet bout of thinking.
The water flowed around him as he sat in the center of the small cavern, sloshing in time with the pressure that fed inward from the crevasse. Silt and debris settled, until the water was crystal clear, and Felix could hear nothing over his Sunken Ward except the beat of his own heart.
I can't do anything about Vess and Isla, not without pushing them away. If she chooses to go through with something like that, it is her choice. That decision hurt him to make, but it was the right one. Focus instead on what you can affect.
Felix dove into his core space.
Down among the crystalline tree, burning dual cores, and dark, endless abyss at the very center, Felix regarded his Skills. They glimmered, masquerading as celestial bodies, and he sought out one in particular.
Sovereign of Flesh, he thought, isolating the Skill among the revolving multitude before crooking his finger at a number of others. Cardinal Flame. Green Shaping. Auroral Forge. Rime Shaping. Manasight. Theurgist of the Rise. Invocation. Dual Casting. Manaship Pilot.
All of them were caught up in Felix's inextricable Willpower, pulled into the orbit of Sovereign of Flesh. As a Transcendent rarity Skill as well as one he had Tempered with multiple times, it was far larger and more complex than the others. Cardinal Flame and Theurgist of the Rise came close, while Manasight and Dual Casting were the smallest. Yet even the less complex patterns of those Uncommon Skills were hellishly convoluted, each trough and crest within them a unique vibration. Felix flared his Affinity, confirming once more the threads of commonality in the songs of every single Skill that he gathered around his Primary—and once he did that, he got to work.
What little Essence Felix had was drained by the process, and his Mana too. His regeneration fought to keep up, pulling more and more Mana from the environment around him to fuel his cores. Chthonic Tribute also flared over and over again, almost an instinctive reaction at this point, consuming boulder and sand and thick bedrock all around him, but the Essence of inanimate objects was so thin—it was all Felix could do to keep up with the demands of the formation of a Skill Array.
Felix focused instead on weaving the delicate rhythms and chords together, tying the edges of one Skill to another. It was a process that was similar to combining Skills and somehow distinctly separate. Where combining was subsuming multiple abilities into a unified, often totally dissimilar whole, a Skill Array was about working in concert. Like his Bastion of Will, Sovereign of Flesh soon drew the other Skills closer and closer to itself, until each one rotated around its glistening shape like tiny moons around a swirling gas giant.
The closer the Skills moved, the more Felix could feel the invisible connections between them solidify. It was like utilizing his Adamant Discord or Skein of Fate: as each Secondary Skill joined the Array, a pulse of power flashed between it and the Primary. It moved too fast for anyone normal to be able to perceive it, but it was there, a wrist-thick cable of relevance. The cable repeated, Skill after Skill, a strobing connection that seemed to grow more brilliant with each additional addition to the Array. It grew heavy, a solidity that weighed on his core space with incredible pressure until everything abruptly pulled inward, and a surge of vigor shot outward in all directions, ripping Felix's awareness up and away.
Felix sucked in a ragged, wet breath, and opened his eyes.
Sunken Ward!
Instinctively, he fumbled a Mana Potion to his lips, before flaring his ward again, and the deep blue barrier flashed back into place. It had almost lapsed, stuttering over an incredible lack of Mana within his channels, something that hadn't happened to Felix in a long, long time. He coughed. <<What in the world—?>>
Around him, the little cavern had been worn down. The boulders, even the ones he hadn't smashed, had crumbled into chunks and the water itself was oddly still. Lifeless and listless. The sandy ground had been leached of all color where it wasn't missing entirely—Felix sat at the base of a pit, the sides steep and smooth, and beneath him was only thick, lifeless bedrock.
I absorbed this pit with Chthonic Tribute, sucking what Essence I could out of it, but the rest...He spread his Perception outward, alarmed at how dead everything felt. The rest was drained by my Mana regeneration? It was the only thing that made sense. Mana regeneration pulls power from the environment, converting it into usable Mana depending on the attunement a person settles on. For Felix, that meant anything was fuel for his fire...and he'd used a lot while constructing his new Skill Array.
He stood up and apparently that was entirely too much for his obliterated cave; the water trembled and flexed and the walls of his pit, of the cavern beyond, sloughed away. In an instant, Felix was inundated by a rain of blinding, dead dust as it all crumbled. Holding back a cough, Felix swam upward through the dark, cloying debris and slipped out of the crevasse.
Outside the little cavern, the life returned to the environment. Currents pulled at him, plants undulated across the walls, and small crustaceans scuttled across the sands. The wide cavern where his team slept was just ahead, and Felix's flared Perception caught most of them still within.
Hours had passed while he'd established his new Skill Array, hours where he'd slowly drained the world of vital Essence and animating Mana. It was strange to Felix, knowing he could accomplish such a thing. Stranger still to think of how far it might of spread, had he more time. If his regeneration got any stronger, how much more could he siphon away? Would it affect living creatures too? The idea of it frightened him a little, but Felix shook himself. Don't dwell. Just be more careful next time...and make sure no one is close by.
He swam back to his team. It was time to get moving once again.
* * *
He inspected his new Skill Array as he parted the fronds at the front of the cavern. As his Bastion looked almost like Earth surrounded by a number of colorful orbs, his Sovereign of Flesh was an ebony and ivory colored gas giant. It loomed, Jupiter to his Bastion's Earth, and all of the Secondary Skills in the Array spun at various speeds around its circumference. Cardinal Flame was red-gold and burning, like a miniature sun, it and the glowing Theurgist of the Rise half the size of Sovereign. Manasight and Invocation hung closely about the latter, each the size of small moons comparatively, both shimmering with shifting, mutable writing in silver and gold fire that was echoed in Theurgist. Manaship Pilot was near as well, though it hung slightly apart from all the rest and rotated with a slower confidence. All of the other Skills glittered like jewels around the rest, spinning in rapid revolutions around one another.
Felix whistled. In the same way that his Bastion Skill Array felt stronger and stable, this felt poised on the edge of frenetic activity, like an engine waiting to be ignited. Or a bomb about to go off. It was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.
Let's just hope it works as advertised. Karys had claimed they would strengthen one another and Felix needed all the boosts he could get.
Within the cavern, he found the War Naga still buried in the sand. Still asleep. Beef and Hallow too, though they were tucked back against the far wall. At some point the Homunculus and Multipede had moved to the bulky Minotaur and were now draped around him like the world's worst pair of scarves.
Pit, however, was awake.
One of the glowing sea plants had been secured to the craggy wall by clumsy, if industrious paws, and it cast a faint light over the pile of Pit's saddlebags. Their contents had been spilled out onto the fine silt, potions and rations cast about without much care. Thankfully, Sunken Ward extended to their personal affects, operated by Felix's Intent rather than a strict bubble around each individual. Perhaps if he relied on System Intent, the codified assistance baked into the Skill's pattern, perhaps then it wouldn't allow the ward to cover such things. The why of it all was lost on Felix; who knew why the System had developed the way it had? All he knew was that by having conscious control of his Intent, being able to utilize the Chant, meant he could boost the Skill in various ways both obvious and subtle. In this case, Sunken Ward covered all of them and anything on their person. From food to baubles. All it cost was a truckload more Mana, but he had it to spare now.
Felix blinked. His thoughts had felt a bit sluggish since emerging from his long meditation, but now his Mind struggle to accept what was in front of his eyes.
Pit had a book in front of him. He was reading.
<<Since when can you read?>> Felix asked, putting his hands on his hips.
Pit looked up, trilling a happy greeting. <<Learning. It's hard.>>
<<I'll say. Wait,>> Felix peered at his friend. In the low light he'd almost missed it, but as he flared his Manasight Felix could see the bright sparkle around Pit's eyes. <<What are you wearing?>>
<<Spectacles.>>
Voracious Eye!
Name: Spectacles of the Fledgling Scholar
Type: Accessory (Enchanted)
Lore: Designed and inscribed to enhance the reading speed and comprehension of the wearer, these spectacles are tools used by the mages of the Lucent Towers on their more promising students. They are rare creations and quite difficult to create, the secrets to doing so kept hidden among the gleaming spires of Levantier.
Improved Cognition I - Reading comprehension and knowledge retained is increased a small amount.
Leaf On The Wind I - Reading speed is increased by a small amount.
He was wearing glasses. Little circular lenses of gold crystal had been cut and set into a frame made of thin silver. They were perched atop his beak, unwavering despite Pit's movements. <<Where did they come from?>> Felix asked.
Pit tilted his head, paw held over the page he was reading. <<Same place as the books. The Grandmaster's old library. He had a couple pairs of them, though Zara told me they're extremely rare things. I wanted to learn to read, like you and Atar and the Dangerous One—ah, Vess, I mean.>>
<<Huh.>> Felix wasn't mad or anything, just impressed. He did wish that he'd had glasses like that, back when he'd had to learn to read from scratch. <<What are you reading? God that's a weird thing to say out loud to you.>> Felix crouched down and read over his Companion's shoulder. <<'A good general will know when to deploy her mages and when to pull them back for recovery. Recovery is the greatest concern in battle.' What is this?>>
<<Notes From The Blastlands. It's a book on war strategies and stuff.>> Pit looked a little embarrassed almost. <<Now that I'm faster and have more power, I want to know how to use it best. When Zara mentioned reading to learn, it made sense. So...so I got these out.>>
Next to him were six more volumes, all thick and inscribed with sigils declaring them memoirs and treatises. <<Pit, that's amazing.>> The tenku warbled in delight, his feathers and fur ruffling. <<I'm proud of you. Keep it up.>>
Felix looked around. <<Where's Isla and Vess?>>
Pit gestured with a paw, back toward the hanging fronds. <<Out. Sparring I think.>>
<<Sparring, huh?>> Or were they proceeding with their plan? His worries returned, but Felix pressed a portion of himself closer to his Hunger. The emotions were pulled away, devoured by the abyss within him. <<Finish up your reading, bud. I need you to wake up the Naga so we can get moving.>>
Pit groaned as if he'd been asked to climb a mountain and run a marathon. <<Why? Where are you going?>>
Felix had already started swimming forward, back toward the fronds. <<Get them up. I want to leave in ten minutes.>>
<<Fine.>>
