Chapter 164 – Refinement

AG. I paused billing two weeks ago the moment I realised I wouldn’t be able to deliver the 10k plus words a week I want to deliver. It will be paused for a full month giving everyone an extra month, annual subscriptions will be extended from 12 to 13 months. 

The good news is that I’m writing again but chapter delivery is going to be erratic for a little while. I would like to claim I’m fixed, but I’m not. It’s probably just a random virus, but I feel like I’m suffering chronic fatigue. Today I could do half an hour or so and then I had to lie down for a similar length of time straight afterwards. I’ve decided as it’s not getting better I’m just going to push through it as much as possible. This isn’t helped by my wife being basically incapacitated at the moment with back, neck and nerve issues so I’m doing all household chores and kids taxi. 

Anyway I hope you enjoy the chapter. I’m very excited about where the novel is going to go. 

EDIT: I would like to apologise for the lack of communication. I won't promise it won't happen again but sorry.

Tom shifted uncomfortably.

It felt like his leg was being split in half and given the specifications of the room he was in that could very well be what was happening. Raw mana washed over him in waves so thick that any damage inflicted was repaired almost instantly. He struggled against the constraints and his lack of control as other parts of his body were tugged by the invisible forces. This was a race to survive. With all of his mental focus, he tried to draw the near solid mana into him to contain it while also sending it at each of the impacted areas after he felt the machinery or monsters in the room snag him. It was currently thick enough that his barely passable attempts at manipulation, his failure to send it where it was needed, wasn’t yet impacting him.

For a moment, his focus was not a hundred percent on mana manipulation and his mind wandered.

What was happening? He wondered. It was a mystery. The wounds, if they even existed, at this density were stitching themselves back together so fast that they probably weren’t even bleeding. Instinctively, he tried to cast Touch Heal, but the magic she had put in place tore the spell construct apart almost instantly.

He flinched at the spike of pain that stabbed into his forehead. Unfortunately, magical backlash was not suppressed by the potion, its miraculous workings only extended to physical pain. Inside, he cursed at himself. He shouldn’t have done that. He needed to focus. If he had to suffer through this unpleasantness at a minimum, he needed to extract as much benefit as he could.

Once more, he went back to manipulating the mana. It was beyond frustrating. It was like he was attempting to solve a thousand-piece three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with tongs three times larger than the parts. Try as he might, he just couldn’t get a grip on them.. Like he had for the hundreds of cycles proceeding this one he kept chipping away at his task. His attempts becoming more and more frantic as time slipped by. He licked his lips and strained with everything he had because he knew that the abundance of mana that currently surrounded him would soon recede.

In addition to fixing the damage the machinery did to him, he tried to store the mana away. To shove it into his skin so that would scarcity came he would be protected. Mentally, he counted down, knowing exactly what was about to come. When his mind pushed against the mana, it became clear that it was yielding to his demands too easily. Past experience meant he knew exactly what was coming.

It wasn’t about to kill him, but the sickening wooziness and returning to consciousness from the blood deprived state was incredibly unpleasant and it was coming. It would be equivalent to the worst hangover he had ever suffered and there would be no access to a convenient Touch Heal to remove the impact.

Three, he counted inside his head.

With increasing desperation, he shoved the mana into him. He could already feel its purity deteriorating at an alarming speed.

It was going to happen. It was inevitable. The drought of mana was coming.

There was a small chime.

A small part of him wanted to yell in triumph, but he doubted the reward was sufficient to justify even a small amount of celebration. Most likely it was only manipulation, a good first step but not a solution to his current predicament and the coming pseudo death.  It definitely didn’t aid him in keeping his emotions under control.

It was imminent.

Panic gripped him. His missing senses, which were supposed to cause it to be more humane only acted to make the unseen and unheard more terrifying. 

Two, he thought.

Tom focused on the memory of the mana. Everything about it. The way it felt and what it was… His fracturing brain overlaid the process of similar attempts with precognition and lightning equivalents.

It was now!

The surrounding mana was still there, but almost too thin to touch.

One.

All the soothing mana vanished as it slipped from his metaphorical fingers as a vortex stronger than any he could create himself sucked it away.

It was here.

There was no longer any mana around him to help.

A tug on his leg.

Blind, with his limbs constrained and absent his diagnostic magic it was nearly impossible to tell what was happening. He didn’t even have the comfort of his pain receptors to make sense of the sensation. Was something biting him, or was it a suction cap pulling flesh off or a dedicated sharp weapon snagging ever so slightly as it took away a sliver of his flesh with every rotation… it could be any of them or anything?

Who knows what horrors she could create. Maybe it was some eldritch creature being trained to enjoy the taste of his flesh.

He focused on the immediacy.

The mana in his leg vanished to correct what had happened and after it had drawn a small amount from his hips, there was no call for more.

Something yanked on his shoulder.

Had his arm just been ripped off? He didn’t know. The rest of the healing mana stored in his flesh washed over the location. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly sufficient to fix it. Maybe that jerk had been something as significant as his arm being torn off.

In moments, his entire body was devoid of energy. He drew from what little he had sucked into his storage trait, and it did nothing. It felt like he was trying to fill the Grand Canyon with his piss

It was hopeless.

His stomach felt like something had burrowed out of it. His calf jerked as if a shark had bitten it. There was no pain, but he could feel that bits of him were missing.

He remembered the memory of what the mana was and tried to summon it into being. Anything to be able to address the damage to his body.

There was a ding.

Hope flared in him. Maybe that would be enough, or maybe he would need some more sessions.

The surrounding blackness shattered, and he found himself somewhere else.

April sat across from him, smiling.

His stomach rumbled like a cornered, dire wolf. He winced apologetically and then  seized the massive burger in front of him and with two hands brought it to his mouth and bit into it. The empty stomach drove him and he barely chewed before swallowing. He was ravenously hungry.

“I told you that this will be the last one.”

Without responding, he kept eating and then a moment later with the burger reduced to a slightly more manageable size he patted himself down.

Nothing was missing.

Across from him, the beautiful angel rolled her eyes. “Tom that’s not required. You know I always heal you fully when I bring you back here. Where’s your trust?”

He stared at her. “One, I still remember you dumping me from a session straight into combat and I was missing half my leg and two it’s different when it stops mid process,” he shivered. “When you succumb to blood loss something about that makes you kind of numb to the trauma. Getting brought straight here or to battle even if I’ve been fully healed.” He shuddered. “The memories are clearer.”

“Your exaggerating. This isn’t that traumatic.”

He stared at her in disbelief. He knew for a fact she could measure the stress chemicals coursing through his body.

“It’s no more traumatic than it has to be,” she corrected.

“Let’s put it this way. I’m glad it’s over. It is over isn’t it?” he asked sharply.

“Yes, of course it is and for the record I’m happy about that, too. You know I didn’t approve of this..” She handed him the standard clipboard that at some point had appeared in her hands. It was no longer necessary as he could check himself in his system room but the routine was comforting. “I’ll remind you that I agreed to create the training room under sufferance.”

“You wanted me to buy a training plan from the divine champion’s trial and as I said that’s too costly, especially when I suspected that we had the potential to create something functional without outside aid. An assumption I’d like to point out that has been proven correct.”

“Or via my GODs shop.”

“That would have been nine months of work that I couldn’t justify committing to. Time in here is precious and dedicating it to training is paramount”

“It was unnecessarily dangerous and risky.”

“April, stop mothering me. I was right, it worked.” Thankfully, she didn’t argue back. The first attempt hadn’t succeeded and to put it mildly she had not been at all enthusiastic about the second and third ideas he had come up with, so he had never pursued them. They, he was sure would have been failures like the first. This one she had done without complaint. Which was why he had the courage to stick to it for so long. If it had failed, then buying a plan would have been more efficient. Luckily his method had worked “Can I check my rewards.” He waved the clipboard lazily.

She inclined her head gracefully, and he dropped his eyes to read the proof of his sacrifice. Skill: Store Life Mana– Tier 1

This skill boosts the Aspected Mana Storage trait and allows it to store four times more life mana than usual, reduced by 32% due to affinity penalty.

Skill: Create Life Mana – Tier 1

Can create 4 points of Life aspected mana per minute, reduced by 16% due to affinity penalty.

After reading what was written, he put the clipboard down. “Really, Skills have penalties associated with them?”

“What were you expecting? Of course, these skills won’t be as powerful as precognition based ones where you have a one in a trillion affinity. Honestly, you’d have to be stupid to think otherwise..”

He wanted to raise earth as a counterpoint to her argument as at least storage wise it was as strong as precognition, but he guessed he couldn’t as he had never seen that storage boost as a skill and only as a trait. As for lightning, it had been half as strong as his precognition ability already, so had effectively got a fifty percent penalty rather than thirty-two and sixteen percent respectively. He had never questioned it because the lightning regeneration had been the same as earth and so he had figured that was just how it worked. “I’ve never seen a skill with an explicit penalty before.”

 She shrugged. “Why would you have? If this was the first time you had gotten a storage skill, it would probably have read increase your mana by two point seven two times and you would have been none the wiser regarding where that strange number came from. You might even have thought that it was random.” She smiled crookedly at him. “But because you had already seen these before and you’re intelligent you’d have worked out the difference soon enough. The system just skipped that step.”

Before saying anything stupid he considered her confession for a moment. How many of his other abilities with seemingly random benefits were the result of similar factors at play. Probably most of them, but there was no point thinking too deeply about it. The reasons didn’t matter.

She nodded in approval when she saw where his mind had settled. “Your maturity is growing, Tom. It’s good to see. The question we face now that now you’ve got another one of these skills what’s your next focus going to be?”

He looked up at her in surprise. She knew his aims well enough to guess. “What sort of question is that you know exactly what I want to do.”

“You want to concentrate on easy wins, right?”

“Exactly.”

She frowned deeply.

He tensed, recognising her body language.

Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t think that’s the right approach. You should focus on Insanity Guidance. That’s what’ll do you the most good.”

Social Silence kicked in before he responded with something snarky. He shuddered as he tried to suppress the sudden onset of a coughing fit and considered April as he did so to try to determine her angle.  His next class as confirmed by the oracle question  required him to develop not one, not two, but three tier four skills. That was not easy to imagine let alone do in less than five years.  Therefore, if he had useful abilities his limited time with April should be spent on which ones were the easiest to acquire. It didn’t take a precognition of ninety-five to know that was Expert Danger Sense. “Um… pretend I’m an idiot.”

“I don’t need to pretend.” She interrupted sweetly.

He coughed. “Then forgive it. Why exactly would I want to do that?”

The angel smiled. “As I said earlier you are maturing. Basically DEUS didn’t include Insanity Guidance for no reason. She wants you to have it.”

“Yes, to manage MAKROS Unhinged Fury.”

“Obviously.”

“But by the same reasoning, she wants me to get the expert version of Danger Sense.” He responded, trying to sound clueless.

Her eyes narrowed.

“And you said you can turn them into skill stones when I turn fifteen, so even if I don’t earn the skills myself I’ll still get access to them.”

“That’s true.”

“So I’ll get Insanity Guidance before I leave here, anyway.”

She sighed deeply. “And there’s the idiocrasy breaking through. Tom what else happens if you develop a skill manually especially one with multiple steps.”

“You can get sideways evolutions.”

“Bingo.”

Tom considered that for a moment. Not the idea but that April considered them to be important in this context. It wasn’t rocket science. Sideway evolutions and the underage titles were the two things that made developing spells and skills rather than purchasing them worth the considerable time investment that the effort took. “Is it possible I can develop both?”

Her expression told him everything. “Sorry Tom, my modelling says that won’t be possible. Not before you leave this town.”

He hesitated as he absorbed that information and absently finished his burger. She let him. Gifting him the opportunity to find his bearing and accept the simple fact that he had to make a choice. Finally, he used the napkin to clean his hands and mouth before focusing  on her once more. “I believe you, but I don’t understand. Gaining Insanity Guidance will surely require two or maybe even three times as much time.”

“Two,” she clarified.

“Time as upgrading Danger Sense.” He finished. “Which means upgrading Danger Sense improves the chances I’ll get time to get the other two skills before I turn fifteen.”

“Yes, definitely.”

Tom was clearly failing to see something important. “I don’t understand. My maths isn’t mathing.”

“It is and your instincts are correct. If you choose Insanity Guidance, you won’t be getting both of the other tier four skills before fifteen.”

Confusion warred within him, and he stared at her in shock. He felt like a child being lectured on the theory of quantum entanglement. “So you’re saying do Danger Sense?”

“No Tom. You don’t need all three skills before you turn fifteen, just before you are ready to acquire a class. That gives you an extra half a year to gain the last skill.”

“But I can’t create these things in the wild.”

“You can, but it’s harder and also irrelevant to this discussion. You’ll still have three months of access to me after you turn fifteen, because you’ll probably be waiting for the other two before doing the tour. That’ll be enough to get the third skill, or at least get you so close that you’ll get it before you earn the necessary experience.”

“I see that,” he said carefully. “But half the reason I was going to choose Expert Danger Sense was one of time. The other was that it’ll let me be more aggressive on the spell development.”

April grinned like a cheshire cat. “I’m not saying don’t get it. I’m saying don’t get it via me. Obtain it as a skill stone that’ll let you be more aggressive earlier.”

It was an approach he hadn’t considered. Not acquiring Expert Danger Sense via self taught would cost him twelve points on the underage title, but April had made it clear that he wasn’t going to get both anyway and he trusted her judgement. But then again, if he went with Expert Danger Sense he wouldn’t be able to complete both of the other tier four skills so it was a genuine twelve points loss. “April, I get what you’re saying but this is going to cost me points towards the underage titles and that’s pricey”

“No Tom,” April interrupted him. “Do the maths. You’re going to reach sixty-four points but you’re not reaching a hundred and twenty eight. My way won’t cost you  anything.”

She was right.

“And if you get Expert Danger Sense now, you can push harder on your spell development immediately. They might let you gain an extra level in the spell title.”

He nodded. Her arguments were logical, and he had to admit persuasive. “And you really think this is for the best.”

She said nothing her fingers tapping the table. Then she sighed. “Tom, I don’t need to answer that. Just ask yourself a few questions. What happens if unhinged fury triggers at the wrong moment? Or against the wrong person? What occurs if Eloise says something nasty to Briana and you take Bri’s side?”

“I won’t.”

“Are you sure Tom? I reckon I know what would happen, but ultimately only you can answer that question. You’re the only one who knows how much you can resist the rage.”

He considered it from every angle he could and lowered his head. April was right. It was plausible. A little bitchiness and a month since his last episode he could definitely see him losing control and against a child, with Soul Rend being boosted, unless a volunteer was next to him they would be too slow and volunteers were rarely close enough.  

“Fine. Let’s learn it.”

An instant later, an intricately carved stone appeared in her hands and she passed it to him. He raised it to his forehead, and it was done.

Skill: Expert Danger Sense – Tier 4 – Level 3. 

Reveal imminent threats including non-life threatening ones to body, soul and mind.

He looked up at April. She gave him a thumbs up and from her that meant clear approval of his plan to use the ability in a non-standard way. The risk of backlash of a spell misfiring and hurting him was always present, and now that danger was a lot less likely to occur. The addition of the soul and, more importantly, the mind protection might not seem like much, but for someone about to delve into experimenting with powerful soul magics it was a welcome addition.

Satisfied, he nodded and a moment later, reality vanished and he found himself in a lightly wooded forest which would contain enemies, probably ones that were going to be specialised in flaying his soul. There was more training to do. 

That evening, as he was settling down to sleep or at least preparing to go to the Divine Champions Trial the normal invitation came through and he accepted it.

Instantly he appeared in his usual spot two metres from the bed.

Kang was not alone, so he immediately tensed and checked that there were no other guests.

There weren’t. It was just Dimitri waiting for him for the third week in a row. “Kang, Dim,” he greeted. “I’m guessing this is a thing now.”

Dimitri in his chair stretched and then shrugged. “I had nothing to do with it. This is all Kang. He’s the one doing it for you guys.”

Tom arched an eyebrow. “Us guys?”

On the bed, Kang smiled happily. “Ja.”

“You’re not the only one getting weekly meetings.” Dimitri confirmed. “All the reincarnators are getting them and they’re damn useful. Graduates often tell me how lonely and isolated they felt while studying here. This is the way to help prevent that and Kang has promised to keep them happening.”

“Ja.”

“Which means I can drop the face-to-face meetings or at least reduce them to once a year. It’ll save me a heap of time and let me support you guys better. On that subject, can you tell me what you are up to?”

Tom scratched his head as he considered the question. “I’m working toward my first class.”

Dimitri nodded. “That title that allows you to ignore a requirement of a class is massive. To think you can get legendary off the bat.”

He shrugged. “It’s not as huge of an advantage as you’re imagining. Most of the great classes have an incredible list of near impossible prerequisites. Removing one is like a drop in the ocean. Have you seen the requirements on mythic classes?”

“I have.” Dimitri answered.

“Some of the ones I’m looking at required you to have created a rank ten spell from scratch.”

“Which you can circumvent? At least your second class can.”

Tom wagged a finger at him. “Yes, if that was all, but they also need you to have made a rank eight skill and two different rank seven spells and…” He shook his head and shuddered at the memory. It might be a long-term aim to try to get that class, but it was not something he would manage during the competition. “What I mean to say when they have ten impossible prerequisites, then removing one doesn’t do much.”

Dimitri grinned. “That’s why they’re mythic classed.”

He remembered who he was speaking to. “You obviously have a legendary class do you have a mythic one as well?”

In answer, Dimitri waved a hand and a spell of such complexity briefly flashed into existence that it hurt his brain just by looking at it. It was at least a tier ten spell but was probably even higher than that.

“No, not yet. I need to learn that spell. I’ve cast it successfully a grand total of four times and none of them were close to perfect. The whole reason I took this job was to gain the time to practice it to completion.”

Having seen the sort of ridiculous bonuses that accompanied the more powerful classes Tom could see why taking a decade of dedicated practice to meet a requirement might be worthwhile. Especially if you contributed in other ways during that time. “Makes sense.”

“So, what abilities are you working on?”

“The usual crazy mix, learning the skills to eventually get Insanity Guidance with April along with upgrading Soul Bulwark. That’s painful. Every monster April sends against me has to be rank thirty or something. Their soul attacks are vicious and while they’re not supposed to be physical based monsters just their rank discrepancy makes it hard for me to deal with them even after I’ve tanked the soul attacks.”

“And with Spells?”

Tom grimaced at that question. “That’s not going as well. I’m working on Lower Soul Defence, but with the lead in spells being tier three’s I can’t exactly practice them in the real world outside of the isolation rooms and lair runs. I’m trying to get around that with the divine champions trial, but attempting them there while my real body does some other magic sink makes each cast thirty percent harder and so far I’ve got nowhere.”

Dimitri raised an eyebrow. “That’s a series of interesting choices. Lower Soul Defence, why the hell have you chosen that?.”

“It was the best soul spell I could get especially when my offense is going to be skill based.”

“I was sure you’d go for something like, Project Soul, as it has no overlap with your other abilities.”

“I’m specialising to be a damage dealer.”

“I know, but you’re also a natural scout.”

“I’m not.”

“Historically you have been.”

“I’ve never had that role. I was a tank.”

“Stop lying to yourself Tom I’ve chatted extensively with Eden. You were good and were the secondary scout after the party lost Jingyi.”

“Don’t give me that shit. Everyone was a scout if they survived the tutorial and I thought long and hard about where I wanted to put my effort in this life and it wasn’t to become a stupid generalist. Lower Soul Defence was the best option for a soul skill. Bulwark already covers defence, and I have multiple attack options. Scouting, truth telling, long range communication is not something I want to invest resources into.”

“There were sensing arts…” Dimitri pushed. “Many of them would have helped in battle.”

“And I considered them,” Tom admitted. “But in the end, they’re part of a scout’s tool kit, not mine. Others can tell me the best spot to hit.”

Dimitri laughed. “Fine, you’re an adult and can make your own build choices. What’s your thoughts about the wador?”

“The fact that they’ve disappeared?” Tom clarified, remembering the gazette article he had flipped through.

The big man nodded. “Exactly that. Their numbers have been reducing for years, but now they’ve abandoned everything apart from the capital. Just got up and deserted their pacified lands.”

“And the capital only has their kids, or kitten as I guess you’d call them, and a couple of adult guardians. Right?”

“Yes, the bare minimum to raise their remaining children. We’re talking about no more than ten for the hundreds of non adults there.”

“I assume they have defences against the wilds, but how about the insects. If they come for the easy kills and let’s be honest, it sounds like something they would do. What then?”

Dimitri shook his head. “Nope, nope. The insects won’t be able to hurt them. The wador have clearly been planning this for years. Their capital has a load of automated defences. I’m talking a hundred kilometre wide dead man’s land where everything that enters gets killed. There’s no way even a million insects would get through. A dragon squad could brute force it, but I don’t think there’s a chance of them being pulled away from their existing positions.”

Tom barely heard the latter bit as he was focusing on what Dimitri had said at the start. “A hundred kilometres of dead man’s land?” he asked doubtfully.

“I know it sounds like a lot.” Dimitri admitted. “It’s circular, and that’s the radius. There are multiple gun emplacements, golems, trapped elementals, grands spells, walls and all sorts of stuff.”

“But that’s bigger than almost every city on earth.”

“Yep, they’ve been building it for thirty years and you know how fast magic can facilitate structures being built.”

“So whatever they’re doing must have been planned from the start.” Tom concluded.

“Very much so. The question is what.”

“Their competition bonus is that they can respec.”

“Yep,” Dimitri agreed.

“So they can do anything.”

“That’s the problem.” Dimitri said. “Our strategic council agrees that their coming ranking attempt should be sabotaged, but we don’t know what they’re doing.”

“And they’re stronger than us. The estimates were that if everyone massed all their forces all the other warrior aligned species would be  five times more powerful because of humanity’s losses.”

“Triple or quadruple that for the dragons and maybe the insects as well. Yes, we can’t fight any of the species head on which is why I said sabotage. As for what they’re doing. Considering their capital we think they might be intending to create some grand wonder and given what our purchased intelligence suggests they’ll do it in all the local nation clusters.”

“And that’s confirmed that they’re not targeting only the local cluster?”

The big man nodded. “Yeah. Very much so. The information’s not even classified as it’s been referenced in the gazettes a couple of times. There was an article about two years ago about how a thousand were spotted in the sea ice cluster.”

“The what?” Tom asked.

“Sea ice cluster. It’s a shallow sea mostly covered with ice that stretches over an area twice that of the entire surface, including the oceans, of earth. You probably haven’t heard about it because it’s two clusters away. That’s two decades of constant travel to reach.”

“And the wador were there? A thousand of them? Two years ago?”

“Yes,” Dimitri confirmed. “It’s why some people think they’re planning on building a series of wonders. Maybe something like communication hubs.”

“Or, as the giants showed us there are other creative ways of getting points. they might be preparing assassination teams or regime changes or a new type of crafting.”

“Easy Tom there’s nothing new in this place.”

“A forgotten type of crafting, then.” He corrected. “From the effort they’ve put into this I fear it’s going to make them relevant on the ladder again.”

“Yep. They’re up to something and it’s not war.” Dimitri said darkly like the fact they weren’t attempting war was a crime and from humanity’s perspective he was right. A war would be localised, the points they could gain capped. This effort, this spreading of their influence could mean that they could touch tens of thousands of different empires and if what they were trying was revolutionary enough, it would bring in millions of points.

“Sixth on the ladder,” Tom whispered. “We can’t allow that.”

Dimitri didn’t meet his eyes and lowered his head. What they had to achieve felt insurmountable.