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Chapter 301 - Going Dark
🕑 Added 2022-03-21 23:00:04 +0000 UTCEnjoy!
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Excerpt from the second draft of An Earthling’s Guide to the Larger Universe
Common Utility Path Abilities (Continued)
Identify
Identify allows the identification of the properties (and sometimes characteristics or history) of an item. It is commonly available to crafters of the appropriate type, though it’s still common for others to get a more generic, less detailed version.
There are cases where Identify can give incorrect information. While this is the most famous for cursed items, it’s true of ordinary items as well.
Analyze
Analyze allows for limited identification of the characteristics of beings; most Analyze abilities will work on anything other than inanimate objects, though more specialized versions do exist. In most cases, Analyze will only provide information that you either know or have a way to find out easily, though higher-end Analyzes may give additional unknown details if you also have a sufficient Tier advantage.
If you are confident of what you are seeing, Analyze will not correct you. Over-reliance on Analyze can get you killed, but at the same time its appropriate use can be very helpful.
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Serenity snapped his Status closed and glanced down at the pedestal. A pair of green crystals had appeared; he snatched them up, since they were the only reward other than the monster cores they’d collected that anyone was ever going to get from the dungeon.
As he turned to tell them it was time to head out, Serenity saw that the others were already leaving. Echo waved at him to hurry.
There was plenty of time, but Serenity had to admit that he didn’t have any desire to spend longer in this dungeon. He followed the others out to the road, then turned and watched as the dungeon collapsed.
There wasn’t much to see as the countdown continued, even magically; it was simply a field of corn. As soon as the countdown ended the magic holding the dungeon in place twisted. For a moment, the outer entrance to a corn maze was visible, then it was a patch of greenish darkness in the same shape.
Lightning struck the corn field from the clear sky and dirt seemed to rise from the field. Suddenly, a blast of wind swept over the group; the air was filled with bits of plant and dirt. When it cleared, the scene was calm again. The corn looked like it had been hit with a hailstorm, but that was the only visible damage.
Serenity watched the ley lines as well as the physical world. They pulled one way, then the other; the nexus shifted around as both of the ley lines forming it danced like a plucked string. He could see them tying themselves into a knot, but he didn’t see any way to prevent it. He simply wasn’t powerful enough to redirect a ley line.
Anchor it
The two words rippled past Serenity on the ley lines, forming echoes in Gaia’s voice. Serenity knew the technique her voice referred to, but he didn’t understand how it would help. It was part of many spellforms, used to provide a reference point. An anchor also provided a safety net for a malformed spellform; it would give a direction for the magic to drain if the spell disintegrated instead of casting correctly. Serenity had several positioned carefully in the outer framework he used for most spells; they were simply part of the overhead and he didn’t think about them often.
Serenity wasn’t certain what purpose adding an anchor would have to a ley line, but only one of them had long experience with ley lines, and Serenity knew that wasn’t him. He’d used them to power and ground magic, but he’d never tried to affect how they ran. It was worth a try.
He did like running magical experiments.
Serenity built the largest magical anchor spellform he could manage. It was stripped down to its purest form, then enlarged. Serenity wanted to be certain it could handle the amount of energy that would run through it.
Nothing happened; it wasn’t even touching the ley line, even though it was in it. Well, he knew how to gather energy from a ley line for a spell; he’d try that and funnel it to the anchor.
It was a spell construct that he hadn’t used since he came back in time. There really hadn’t been a good place or time to use it; it took a lot of mana to control, so it was only rarely even useful. As it came together, Serenity noticed something odd: it was warping essence around itself. Many of the tricky features were simple, once he realized they were simply there to manage the flow of essence as well as mana.
If he used both essence and mana to create it, it would be far simpler and faster to make and cost less to use. Serenity dispersed his half-formed spellform and tried again, crudely shaping essence instead of mana in some places. When he finished, it was obvious that he was far more skilled with mana; the mana portions were clear and concise, while the essence portions looked like a child’s work. Still, it was better than the pure-mana version, which handled the essence portion like trying to draw with his hands in mittens holding a long stick.
He finalized the spell and felt the ley line’s power flow into him and through him into the anchor. At first, it felt good, a revitalizing shower washing away the debris that had accumulated as he spent time on a planet that was simply not powerful enough for him.
The second ley line wandered over the first and was caught by the anchor. It no longer felt like even a pounding shower; now it was like a flood, scouring its way through everything coating his magical channels and forcing them wider. Serenity expected to feel pain, but somehow he didn’t.
Possibly because there weren’t any nerves there, but in that case how did he know what the magic was doing?
Serenity pushed that thought aside and concentrated on the ley lines themselves. They were vibrating, but the movements were already much smaller and they no longer attempted to move away from the achor. Serenity felt Gaia reach out to him again. Her voice was far clearer this time.
Good enough, the nexus has reformed. You can let go.
Serenity released the spell.
The moment he was no longer maintaining a spell, he felt the pain his scoured channels should have given him before, followed immediately by relief as they healed cleanly. It was still a relief that he could heal so easily, and he pulled up his status to see how much he’d used.
Somehow, his Level had jumped significantly since leaving the dungeon. Far more than the dungeon had given him.
It had to be either from his realization about the ley line spell component or from running so much mana and essence through himself. Serenity hoped it was the knowledge; learning was far less painful. Either way, the discrepancy had to be his Path; it must be a magic-based Path. That made sense with its name.
It didn’t help that he was not even remotely in the dungeon’s league. The 50 XP he’d gotten was probably the minimum the Voice would give for a dungeon run on a newly-introduced planet; that would drop with time, but Serenity wasn’t certain how long. He hadn’t realized the minimum was so low to begin with.
Of course, the only previous times he’d been this far above the power of a planet, he’d been concentrating on things other than dungeons.
“You stopped glowing.” Morwen’s words pulled Serenity away from his Status.
As he looked down, he saw that she was correct; he wasn’t glowing. He still felt the comforting movement of the ley line across his aura and he could tell that he was consuming some of the energy to refill his healing.
Didn’t the glowing stop when he was eating? He’d been told that before. Serenity forced himself to stop consuming the ley line energy. It was annoying, like walking into a restaurant full of delicious smells while hungry, but it wasn’t hard.
He didn’t start glowing. He could feel the energy move into him and flow back out, but none of it was turning into light. “You’re right, I’m not. Good; I’d rather not glow every time I walk through a ley line.”
Serenity allowed himself to go back to consuming the energy. He could see how far less of it flowed back out of him while he was eating; had he glowed before simply because he was pulling in more energy than he could handle?
It seemed all too likely. Now he’d stretched his channels a little and could move more at once and he wasn’t glowing anymore. It also explained why he’d stopped glowing previously when eating - there wasn’t more unused energy than he could handle.
He could have managed the same thing by simply controlling how much energy he pulled out of the ley line in the first place if he’d realized that was the problem. It would have taken concentration, but he was sure he could have at least reduced the glow. He’d have to remember that for the next time he ended up in a strong ley line, if the glowing started again.
Serenity smiled to himself. That wouldn’t be until the next time he was off Earth and somewhere other than the Tutorial. At a guess, Serenity thought that would be about another five months. Serenity wanted to have the invasions under control by then. At the current rate they wouldn’t have them all handled, but Serenity knew that they needed to close them all as quickly as possible. Five more months was how long the Tutorial would run, which made it a good time to aim for.
“Earth to Serenity.” Echo sounded amused as she waved a hand in front of his face. “I know you’re happy, but can you pay attention?”
Serenity turned to her. “Yeah, ah, what do you need?”
She giggled and shook her head. “See, I knew you weren’t paying attention. What’s that?” Echo pointed down at the edge of the road, where Serenity had set the anchor point. There was a large crystalline boulder sitting there that Serenity had somehow completely overlooked.
Minor Magic Spring
This ley line nexus anchor point leaks a small amount of refined affinityless mana and essence, which may be gathered or used to power an ongoing spell. If left alone, it will slowly condense into a fluid and may gain an Affinity depending on its surroundings.
Serenity glanced up at the others. They were all staring at him. It would probably be easiest to include everything that happened. “Well, after I broke the dungeon core, the ley lines weren’t fixed in place anymore and there was a pretty large magic release. I’m sure you saw it.”
“The lightning. I knew it wasn’t natural; it didn’t even feel like lightning.” Morwen sounded completely confident.
Serenity nodded; she was correct. “Yeah. Well, that set the ley lines to vibrating. Gaia asked me to settle them down-”
Morwen gasped. Serenity stopped and waited, but she didn’t say anything.
He didn’t need to mention how uncomfortable the spell was, did he? Nah, that wasn’t relevant. “This is where I anchored the nexus. It looks like - well, there are a lot of things that can happen at a nexus. A dungeon is one of the most valuable, but a magic spring can be just as good. It gives off magic and some will even produce liquid or solid mana.” Serenity frowned and stared at the boulder, watching the mana and essence wisp away from it. “There ought to be some rhyme or reason to what happens at each nexus, but I don’t know what it is. I’d expected the destroyed dungeon to either turn into a chaos point or spawn another dungeon. I know nexii in towns often form city crystals, so there has to be some logic to it.”
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Author's Note: Serenity overlooked the boulder because it formed while he was looking at his Status. It's not growing anymore; it's big enough to act as a magic spring for this nexus already.
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Have I mentioned lately that Serenity is occasionally (frequently) an idiot about people?
At least Morwen's used to it. Thomas was like that in college, too.
