Chapter 131

  The air was still. The soft, orange light of the setting sun made the icy formations glow with refracted light like molten icebergs of lava. Now and again, a lone cloud drifted by, its fringes touching the sight of far mountains where the last vestiges of the sun peeked through a dense layer of fog. From his vantage point at the top of the glacier, Michael could see the paradoxical sight of the Valley’s edge, where the sphere of the sun was visible as it pierced the boundary’s magical fog in the final moments before setting.

  He did not behold the strange sight for long. With his sharp senses, heightened by his fledgling Mind Dantian core, Michael could take all the majesty of the Valley in just a glimpse: a sweeping glance was enough to see more than what careful study would ever allow normal people to notice. Instead, he focused inward.

  The Black Ice had integrated his aura in the form of a fathomless lake close to his soul at the center of the inner Sanctum that hosted most of his magic. The surface of the lake was frozen in eternal stillness, while its depths were hidden in pitch black darkness.

  Michael had discovered, while probing those depths, that he could convert any tier of magic into Elemental Energy, not just mana, and that the higher the tier the better the conversion was. The same went for the Forgefire in the walls of the cave, greedily converting any magical energy into more of itself if given the chance. The mechanism was fascinatingly different, with the Ice spreading its crystalline stillness while the Fire devoured with endless hunger, but the result was the same.

  He turned his attention away from such distractions. While fascinating, the conversion processes were not what he was interested in today. Instead, still within the eerie space of his Sanctum, where the material and the immaterial blurred together, he manifested a body and held out a hand.

  In his palm, a shard of ice coalesced, drawing its energy from the black lake but not made of Black Ice. Instead, the shard was bright blue, almost glowing with compressed, packed power.

  “Ice Five.”

  The exotic state of ice Michael had managed to create before even integrating the Element into his aura. Not doing anything with it seemed a waste, and by the looks of it, Ice V was not that much weaker than Black Ice.

  He brought the two together. A resonance began to threaten the very stability of the Sanctum, the elements refusing each other and tearing the whole space apart in the process. Michael would have aborted the merger had he not witnessed the impossible in the Heart of the Forge. Instead, he felt his greed spike as his mind recalled the complex structure of the runescript in the forge room and began to replicate it.

  The lines of runescript formed quickly, growing out of the black lake like straight fingers of solid water, bending at right angles like circuits of modern mankind’s genius. They wrapped around the unstable energies, wobbled, lost cohesion and reformed. Michael adjusted them on the fly, taking the time to think better strategies, routing his mind through the statistics that enhanced his intelligence, and through the Mind Core that sharpened his senses.

  You have merged Ice V and Black Ice, creating a Unique exotic element never seen before: Hycean Ice.

  Your Elemental Energy Capacity is no longer tied to your mana.

  Michael gasped. The world lurched, his awareness suddenly ejected from the inner spaces of his magic and back in the sensory reality of the outside world. It took him a moment to adjust, the transition so sudden that his protective cocoon of Qi dulling the world down to manageable levels had dissolved and had to be reformed. He tried to return to his Sanctum, but felt a resistance he had never felt before, as if the place was adjusting to the new changes and rejected his intrusion.

  He let it do its thing, eager to see the ramifications of his efforts but unwilling to tarnish the process by forcing his way in.

  “I had no idea my own Sanctum could even lock me out like this… let’s check my status in the meantime.”

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  The holographic window manifested itself in his vision, one of the last elements of his magic other than the dungeon’s own communication windows that still retained the game-like appearance.

  He whistled as he transcribed the new statistics into his phone, where Icarus was already digesting the data. “Damn. Not bad.”

  Then a micro-portal opened next to him, connecting the local Valley network to the outside world for long enough to download the latest updates to his Icarus app. The phone beeped, informing him that a whole day had passed outside and that he had spent much longer meditating on Hycean Ice than he had thought.

  “The interesting thing is,” he told Travis, who was waiting for him outside. “I didn’t get a new skill for runescript or anything like that. I checked, I have space in my Sanctum now, and even when it was full the system still tried to make it fit anyway.”

  “Strange,” the man hummed, “perhaps it falls under Magic Manipulation?”

  “Probably. Now that you mention it, the fractal for Magic Manipulation is close to reaching level 13 now. Anyway, did you find a use for the useless divining rod I got as a reward for beating the fourth floor?”

  “Yep,” Travis nodded, grinning. “The thing’s pretty neat. Johanne ended up hogging it for most of the day yesterday but I’m making up for it today. You, on the other hand, seem pretty salty about it. Are you disappointed with the reward?”

  Michael made a little sound with his mouth, but said nothing.

  “I agree that you should have given a heftier reward,” Travis continued. “It’s got to be commensurate with the effort, and from what you told me beating the fourth floor has been a hell of an effort. Even with your level of power. Let’s not forget the Renegade as well! The dungeon should pay reparations for almost killing you there.”

  Michael frowned, and as the conversation died down, he managed to excuse himself with a rather awkward expression. Fumbling through his pockets, beyond the stack of Gold and Silver coins he always kept on him, his fingers found a small round object filled with unknown magic.

  A pill to bring Unity in resonance with the three Dantian Cores of Cultivation, offering a brief chance for a deeper insight, the message from the dungeon had said. The true reward for beating the floor and, he supposed, a shortcut to even greater power.

  He was reluctant to take it. Not just because it was a shortcut, but also because he didn’t want a repeat of the Mind Dantian incident of a few days earlier. Even now he was barely able to function normally with the shroud of magic and Qi protecting him from the sensory assault of the world.

  In his mind, taking the pill was a 50-50 gamble where it either fixed everything or made it all so much worse. As he thought about what to do, Michael’s wanderings brought him to David. It was no coincidence, he was sure, rather some subtle work of magic influencing the world in minute ways, making sure that his apparently random path intersected with that of his mentor.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked the older man.

  “Physically, I’m back to normal. I was just going to see Doctor Kavins, I want to know what went wrong, walk with me?”

  Michael nodded, “sure. It’s almost as if walking is all I do. I was just walking with Travis earlier. No, err… yesterday.”

  Old Dave chuckled, “the Valley got your sense of time eh? How did it go with Travis?”

  “He’s trying to be nice to me, which looks awkward as hell on him. He offers me whiskey though, which is nice.”

  Dave laughed, “he’s also handing cigars left and right. I think he got hooked on them for stress relief or something.”

  “I don’t smoke,” said Michael, “I hate the taste. Anyway, what’s the big news?”

  All around them, Site 00 looked like a kicked anthill. “Didn’t you hear? The OA goon, Kavanaugh, is coming here later on an official visit.”

  “Do you know what for?” asked Michael. He was the owner of the place, but at times like this he was glad he didn’t have to micromanage everything.

  “We promised him some modicum of personal power in exchange for information. Despite the whole mimic fiasco,” for a moment, David’s aura turned threatening, “he still upheld his end of the bargain, it’s time we give him the carrot. But first,” he smiled, “Kavins sent me a text saying he found some rather worrying things when he opened up the dead abomination that nearly killed me.”