Aster Loka
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Chapter 93
🕑 Added 2022-03-09 17:02:01 +0000 UTCMana filled Levi’s body, much like how air filled a balloon. Thin at first as it returned from its expenditure, but filling in steadily. He could shift its density around, decrease its weight in some places to thicken it at others, or 'poke a hole' at any point to push mana out through.
But temperature? That wasn't something he'd ever thought about. Now that he concentrated on its temperature specifically he found that mana felt entirely neutral. It was neither warm nor cold, but it clearly could become either.
Well, it responded to visualization in effect. Why not in nature?
Levi focused on the impression of cold, willing the mana to change. He never would have guessed that the way to make mana into air magic was to adjust the temperature, but if it was really this easy...
Soon he felt entirely the same as before, his mana unchanged. But concentrating on changing the temperature did give him something to focus on.
He sank deeper into his inner self, forcefully evicting any worries that tried to intrude, and let his mind drift through the calm pure sensation of mana filling him.
It was surprisingly peaceful.
Moving his mana was as second-nature to him as moving his fingers, he could infuse weapons or armor as naturally as he could type. More so, perhaps.
It flowed around in that alternate way system energy did, occupying the same space as his physical body without interacting with it. It moved as he moved, following exactly, but it couldn't be said to actually be within him so much as within the impression of him. It didn't flow through his blood or hide in his skin, or anything like that, it was another layer completely.
Cold, he told the power, but it was like commanding his arm to move when he'd slept on it wrong and it had gone numb and unresponsive. He knew it could do what he needed it to, but the command wasn’t translating to action.
He wasn't sure how to 'wake up' his mana to allow it to change. He'd been using it for the same things for so long, but this was something different.
Cold.
Nothing happened. His mana remained pliable, flowing wherever he pushed it, gradually filling to capacity, but otherwise the same neutral force as ever.
Either his visualization was off, or he needed to approach the shift of its nature in some other way.
He spent the next several hours so deeply engrossed in his attempt that he was surprised when he came out of his concentration to find Laurence was no longer sitting beside him.
Levi felt vaguely dissatisfied with his progress - or, rather, complete lack of progress. It reminded him of the early days navigating the system, when he knew something should be possible but just made no sense and didn't fall into place in any way that could be considered reasonable. You could tell it was designed to be accessible for someone but certainly not for you. Something like trying to interpret foreign sign language by a third party's physical description of how it looked.
The feeling of but it should be working was the same.
Mana was somehow worse. At least the system had words, images, connections however tenuous. Mana? All you had were incoherent sensations. Was it like being underwater, with pressure all around that would seep in through any opening in your mana skin? Was it like breathing, like having blood run through your body? Was it like seeing light and interpreting it?
No, and yes, all at once. He'd long used the air analogy for his own visualization, himself the outer bounds from which his mana could be sent out, but to truly convert it like a wizard and form something tangible and real from the system-provided mental energy was a whole other level of difficulty.
Of course, if it were easy, he would have been taught a long time ago. If it were simple, everyone would know every important spell.
He still felt impatient.
"Anything to report?" he asked Flomper, who was lying on her back by the boss room entrance.
She favored him with a scowl, but shook her furry head.
"Where’s Laurence?”
She waved to the exit portal.
“Did Charles show up?” Levi asked, immediately concerned.
Flomper waved one paw lazily above her in a complex gesture that Levi couldn’t interpret.
“Guess I’d better check on him.”
Laurence, it turned out, had gone for takeout, and was already on his way back when Levi pinged him. Levi checked in on Becca and Skarm who were keeping watch, and received confirmation that no one at all had come near the dungeon. He also found that it was later than he'd expected, many hours having passed in his mental exploration.
"Hey, Levi! Coming out to meet me?" Laurence laughed as he trekked through the underbrush from where he'd parked on the side of the road some distance away.“Want some?” He proffered the paper bag, containing fries and chicken sandwiches.
Levi took a handful of fries, suddenly reminded of his promised bribe to Flomper. “Next time you’re out, could you pick up some bacon for me?”
“Sure. Any breakthroughs on the wizard training?”
“None yet. Do you have anything more on the process than ‘make it colder’?”
Laurence snapped his fingers. "Oh, right! Sorry, I forgot you were out of it when I had my breakthrough. Ignore the colder thing, that was a mistake."
Levi sighed. He'd just spent half a day meditating on a mistake? "Well, at least it helped pass the time. What is it I should be doing instead?"
"Well, see, it does get colder, but it doesn't get colder internally. It's as you're casting the spell that it shifts, so if you were trying to convert your entire mana pool to wind magic... I think you may hurt yourself if you succeeded, wind magic is sharp."
"Can't be that sharp, drift spells exist."
"Which work by standing on the flat of the blade, probably."
"I don't get that impression at all." Levi had seen a Ventamancer in action, and he hadn't looked like he was standing on anything. He'd moved through the sky in a way that didn't have a direct translation to anything else, not quite swimming, not quite floating, not quite running. Shifting his body minutely to create dramatic changes in direction or speed, cocking one leg, or extending an arm, as though adjusting to some flow no one else could see or feel.
Laurence waved away his argument. "That's not important. The point is, don't try to change your whole mana pool's nature while it's still inside you. That was a dumb suggestion, I didn't know what I was doing. Can you focus your ping very close and small, and fire it several times in rapid succession?"
Levi furrowed his brows. "Yes?"
"Good. Perfect. Then I want you to do that while I cast. I'll do it as slowly as I can, just watch close."
Laurence held out his hand, and Levi started pinging it. Mana expanded out from Laurence's hand, a small dense bubble, that flattened out into a blade even as the one behind it began to form. The density increased as it changed shape, even though no more mana was being added. Or... not density, perhaps, but solidity. Clarity. The mana clarified into its final form, then blasted out in a flurry of wind blades that sliced a swath through the tangled weeds around them.
"Oh, we should probably be out of sight, shouldn't we?" Laurence looked up and down the road, but no one was coming. "Let's go back inside."
Once back in the dungeon, which Frosty and Cen were doing a good job of keeping clear of any new monsters that had appeared in the meantime, Laurence tried to more clearly explain his process while Levi tried to replicate it. It certainly seemed that it would be easier to change a small portion of mana to a different form, but it seemed to escape his long-formed rigid patterns completely. He could shape it too well, could increase its density and volume, could imitate everything Laurence did with raw manipulation, but imitation wasn't enough.
The tricks Laurence used to shift its nature wouldn't work for Levi. For Laurence, it was creating new shortcuts for a foreign energy. For Levi, that energy wasn't foreign and changing how he used it after so long was all but impossible. At least in a single day.
But now that the subject had come up, he felt a strong desire to figure it out. He'd spent years fully invested into the Swordsman path, learned everything that could be learned about fighting with his manablades.
He could vary mana flow and overcharge his weapons in brief bursts at key moments. He knew instinctively when to leave an item active and when to deactivate it to save on mana, how much strain a power stone could handle before it needed to be rested. When to rely on sheath enhancements and when to eschew them.
He could cycle power armor with the best of them, shift focus between twenty different potential power draws to maximize exactly what he needed to access in every moment, without wasting a drop of mana in the process.
But all those skills mattered nothing when he had no equipment, when he was standing at the back directing an army of minions instead of facing demons head to head. He was already in foreign territory, but kept trying to use the same maps he'd always relied on.
He needed to find a new way of thinking if he was going to actually learn magic. And... he wasn't sure he needed to. It would be nice, sure, add flexibility to his fighting personally, but pitting himself directly against his foes wasn't the path he'd chosen this time around. He'd seen the best wizards that humanity could provide fall right alongside the best blademasters. Neither class would suffice. Once the later waves arrived, no one would be enough. That's why he needed to expand his reach, to claim control of powers above and beyond what humanity could attain.
So, ultimately, he didn't need to learn magic himself, he just needed to find a few mage-type minions who could do it faster and better than he ever could. Working together, relying on his companions to support him and know he'd have their back too, that was how he wanted to live.
He wasn't a one-man army, never had been and never would be.
And as much as he tried to imagine himself standing back safely and directing the fight from a distance... he knew that when it mattered, if any of his allies or minions was in danger, he'd be just as fast to throw himself into the fray in their defence as he'd done for his human comrades back in the doomed future.
And from that perspective, he had every reason to want to learn every type of ability he possibly could. If there was ever a time he needed to jump in front of a swarm of scarabs to save Peter, or Gordon, or Skarm, having the Gust spell on hand would probably be worth however many weeks of frustration it took to learn it.
