Where’s the button to unseal the well? Where is, THERE IT IS. MASH IT, MASH YES, YES I WILL UNSEAL IT!
- . . MY. . . GOD! Unlimited mana for three days? It will be flowing through anything in this chamber? “My friend, did you get the notices?” At his nod yes, I continued, “Well, I am going to unseal this. You are free to stay or go, the choice is yours. Will you stay?” He nodded yes. “Ok, well I am going to start unloading my inventory, then we can get started.”
I had a lot of stuff that I had somehow acquired. I kept any of the food that was already cooked, as I didn’t think rations would benefit from being exposed to mana for that long. On second thought, I might just be wrong about that. Let’s risk half of them. I still had quite a bit of carapaces from the crayclaws, those can sit by one of the benches. Let’s stack the loose scrap metal bits underneath the bench, and the metallic ingots that I got from the smithy on top. I placed my hammerscythe on top of the mithril ingots, and leaned the crossbow against the exposed side of the bench. Following the room around clockwise, I piled up the ores that were waiting to be smelted, but kept the books hidden in my inventory. I even pulled out the shadow infused stone that the old ley line had ran through, figuring adding a good bit more concentrated mana might end up changing it even further.
“Whoah, this takes me back.” I muttered, as I pulled out a crystal flower from my inventory. “Damn, this is from when I killed that crystal alpha, barely over a week into the game.” I went to set it on its side on a bench, when the base of it actually bent and attached itself to the stone. “HOLY CRAP, ITS STILL ALIVE!” I yelped. Pointing it out to my skeletal friend, “Do not touch this. I have no idea how it is still alive after all this time, but we are keeping it, got it?” When the last bit of my inventory had finally emptied, I sat down on a bench to plan out what I was going to do for the next three days.
Practice magic? I just didn’t know enough. Plus, what I did know was rather detrimental to stone. Now that I think about it, I didn’t really have many skills that weren’t combat skills. Sure, I had alchemy and sculpting, but I wasn’t that creative and spending three days sculpting would drive me bonkers. As I was sitting there, twirling one of the few mana stones I had left, inspiration struck. I could try and make a mana stone. They were nothing but condensed mana anyway, and I would have three days of infinite mana to work with. Plan set, I sat cross legged on the sunburst rune and agreed to the prompt when it asked if I wanted to start the process of unsealing the mana well. When it asked what kind of mana I wanted to use, I selected shadow mana. If my feelings were right, I would probably come out of this with a crazy attunement to that type of mana, and it would be a great asset for setting ambushes.
Once everything was selected, a tiny ray of deep blackness shot out of the center of the seal. It flowed along the top and sides of the chamber, before everything was eventually covered. Despite the darkness, if anything my darkvision seemed to be enhanced just by using it. Shrugging, I looked and saw that my mana bar had turned the same black color, and was outlined in flashing silver. Assuming that it had started, I began cycling my mana down my arms and into a sphere in my hand.
An hour later, and I wasn’t making much progress. I kept at it, the sphere of mana I was holding had condensed from the size of an apple to the size of a grape. I could see it roiling within, and it almost seemed as if I had gotten it down to a liquid stage. Wait, what’s the difference between solids and liquids? Phoebe always pointed out that magic got an excellent boost from mental images, something I had been lacking up til now. Instead of simply trying to condense it with willpower, I imagined a latticework of mana, well let’s call them mana units. Each unit is a sphere, at the corner of a cube. Connecting to its neighbors, they are locked into position. They can shake and vibrate, maybe even move slightly back and forth along the bonds, but that’s it. No bending allowed, no other movement. I spent the next half hour focusing on that, and that image only. At some point I had even closed my eyes, and when I opened them after hearing a soft pop sound, I found there was a mana crystal the size of a grain of salt floating where the liquid used to be.
Smiling, I changed my image slightly. Now my crystal was growing, adding more and more mana units around it. Growing in a repeating pattern, no mistakes allowed. This crystal will be perfect. No voids, no shifts, nothing to mar the perfection. I kept that up for several hours, before realizing it was getting to the point where I needed to log out for the night. Selecting the prompt to continue growing the crystal, I logged out and headed to the café.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
“You all right there Marty? You look a little exhausted.” Jon pointed out as I stumbled by some chairs at the café.
“Brain is dead. Give caffeine. Lace it with sugar.” As I was fumbling with the menu, Phoebe slid a fresh soda in front of me. “Oh, sweet nectar of life, thank you Phoebe.” I mumbled as I chugged half the drink in one go. “Ah, that’s better.”
“So, maybe a little explanation is in order?” Phoebe prodded.
“Sure, sure. No Derrick yet?” I asked.
“He went to bed early. I guess he was wanting to do another night raid on a large group of bandits. Most of the smaller outfits have started consolidating as he has been wiping them out.”
“Ok. Well, we can fill him in tomorrow. Something big ‘s going to go down in three days, you guys should find some way to keep training magic.”
“What do you know?” Phoebe asked, always interested in magic.
“Ever heard of a mana well?”
“Sure, all good mages have. They are the source of ley lines, and usually guarded by incredibly strong creatures. As in, dragons tend to plop their hoards on top of them.”
“Well, I’m in the process of unsealing one. So any guesses as to what’s gonna happen?”
“Un. . .seal?” Phoebe hesitated, eyes going wide.
“I think you see it. Wonder how it’s going to affect everyone?”
“Marty, it’s going to cause chaos.”
“Human sacrifice? Dogs and cats living together? Mass hysteria?”
“Nice one Venkman. All jokes aside, yes. This is going to throw magic usage into absolute chaos. I’m really looking forward to it. Three days you said?”
“Yep. Probably around midday.”
“So, have you been doing puzzles or something to break the seal?”
“No, just have to go and sit there for three days. I’ve been doing some endlessly repetitive task that requires a lot of mental imagery.”
“Ouch, those are the worst.” Jon commiserated, before launching into a story of how the most boring job he ever had was working on a line in a factory. All poor high school Jon had to do was pack boxes in the same direction as fast as he could go. We lost the thread there, commiserating over all the stupid things we had done in high school. Eventually I called it an early night, and set an alarm to make sure I was in the game as early as I could be.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Three days later
I could feel it. The seal was on its last legs, spider webbed with cracks throughout. The small pieces near the original column that had broken through were starting to disintegrate. I had made a lot of progress on my kobold made mana stone. The auto function of my avatar could do a decent job, but I still thought I did better when I was running it, which had led to 14 hour days in the game and a jet black crystal that was slightly smaller than my torso. It was a faceted sphere, and I could only imagine what I could do with it. Hell, I could probably run the magical needs of a small country off it.
“Oh, oh god it hurts.” I groaned, as I straightened out my knees after three days of sitting idle. Once I had spent a minute stretching and getting feeling back, I started madly packing everything. I didn’t even look at a lot of the notifications, just frantic stuffing things into my inventory. I could have sworn I had left more metal on that bench, but oh well. All of the ingots were streaked with blackness, but that’s all the time I could spare.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Where is it?” I looked at my skeletal friend, who was now also shrouded in darkness. Even the flames within his chest and eyes had turned black. “Where’s the crystal flower?” I practically shouted, knowing we had less than two minutes to find it and get ready. He pointed to the bench, and I saw several crystal petals on the seat, though they now started out as pink and had veins of darkness encroaching from the edges. I swept them into the inventory, and looked at the stalk of the former flower. There at the end was a massive seed compared to the original flower, almost the size of a racquetball. I picked it and shoved it in before making one last sweep of the room.
A cocoon of darkness spun itself around me and the skeleton, and when it unfurled I was in the middle of the barracks training grounds, being stared at by Khaliss and several trainees. They immediately lowered their spears and started advancing on the skeleton. “WAIT! HE’S WITH ME!” I shouted, and they stopped. Before I could explain further, the entire city was shaken by a massive quake. As we all regained our footing, there was an incredibly loud trumpet fanfare, complete with confetti shooting out of the corners of a world wide notification.
“So Angus, been up to anything interesting recently?” Khaliss chuckled.
“Saw those notifications, did you Khaliss?”
“Indeed. Now, perhaps you should take care of your skeleton friend. There are several people eyeing him with worry. SHRIK! GODAN! Escort Angus and his friend wherever they need to be.”
“SIR, YES SIR!” Shrik and Godan shouted and saluted, before falling in slightly behind my skeleton companion.
“Ok, I guess we should head to the temple of Thanatos first, then I need to check out my evolution options.” I said, more to myself than anyone else. We made swift time to the temple, as people seemed to be reacting to me a lot more than usual.
“Welcome back brother, you’ve been rather busy.” The high priest said as we walked in.
“Thank you brother. I have several things to take care of, but first this. My friend here”
“Say no more, brother. Our Lord has filled me in on the situation. Say your goodbyes, and when your friend follows me I will open a portal back to his heaven. Simply walk through it, and your heavenly body will reform around your bones to ensure your rest isn’t disturbed again.”
“Thank you brother, and thank you Thanatos.” I said, bowing to both the priest and the altar before turning back to the skeleton and offering him my hand. “Thank you again for all your help, I truly appreciate it. I’ll miss you, but you have earned your rest. Return and enjoy it, my friend.” He pulled me into a hug, before turning and following the high priest. As I watched them go, I walked up to the altar.
“Lord Thanatos, I have slain the necromancer with the dagger, but ask that you delay the rewards until after I have evolved. At that time, I will also advance my ranking within the church, if that is acceptable.” I felt a slightly cool breeze run across my back, and assumed that was fine with him. Following Shrik and Godan back to the training grounds, I looked over several of my notifications.
Wow, talk about fantastic! Now, let’s see about evolutions.
Wait, what the fuck is that last one? Divine rarity? There is no divine rarity, it caps out at legendary. What is this divine shadow. . . what did I end up creating? Pulling the stone out of my inventory, I looked at its description.
By the gods, I was holding a stone with 15 TRILLION MANA IN IT! No wonder it took me three days of constant channeling to create the damn thing. Well, obviously I was going to choose the highest tier evolution material, even with the unknown end product. Once I chose it, my view went grey and a popup filled my vision.
Wait, what? I get to meet with the big wigs? Oh, this isn’t going to be fun. Before I could get too worked up, I heard once more the trumpeting fanfare I was starting to loathe.
Logging out in 3. . .2. . .1. . .