Chapter 108: Chapter 108

The next couple of days went by pleasantly enough. Despite me telling Khagnio that I wasn’t going to be so afraid of the undercity and the Roaring Claws that I’d hide away in the temple, I wasn’t so stupid as to completely ignore potential danger. There was a balance between remaining cautious and going complete hibernation-mode.

Thankfully, a lot of what I really wanted to take care of were things I could do at the temple. For instance, all my training could be completed there pretty easily.

I was practicing more and more with Flare’s newest Affix. Capacity had me storing the energy in more ideal shapes now. Since the pockets of heat energy couldn’t exactly move with me, I shaped them in a long, curling manner to swivel around in a wide area.

This meant that, during a fight, I could have Concentration acting on it no matter where I was within a given region of space. The same went for flying. I could shape Capacity into elongated storages of heat energy, which I could tap into with bursts of Flare as I flew.

I actually tested that one out. A quick float using Siphon, and then I was using Capacity and Concentration to store the heat energy, and then Flare’s innate bursting properties had me shooting through the air. I was also slowly getting better at controlling the flaring release itself. As in, instead of letting the entire Capacity heat pocket explode, I could localize chunks of it to Flare out sequentially. This obviously helped my flying a lot.

It still was a little convoluted, but I was getting better at flying.

I had so far been using Capacity to store heat in the air around me. Air was… a terrible conductor. In fact, if I was remembering right, it was actually a decent to good insulator instead. Could I instead try pushing heat energy into something that would work better as a storage? As a capacitor for heat, of sorts?

The real question was if Capacity even worked like that. I tried drawing in and pushing some heat to store inside the sleeve of my cult robes.

Apparently, I was underestimating things because the entire length of my robes covering my arm caught fire.

“Ah, crap,” I muttered. “Shit.”

I tore off the whole sleeve before it burned me too much, then stomped on it to put out the fire. Well, I considered as I lightly massaged my singed arm, at least that proved Capacity could store heat in pretty much anything.

Next, I tried storing some heat energy in my own flesh. Again, that grew too strong too quickly. My arm overheated very quickly, and before I actually burned myself, I drew out the heat with Concentration to drive it into a singular, tiny point to create one of the blasts that helped me move mid-air.

No luck. My body wasn’t capable of holding anywhere near even close to the amount of heat I needed. Wait.

It could. Yes, it absolutely could store heat.

People channelled and used fire and other damaging elements all the time. I was sure of it. After all, I had seen Cerea frying dungeon monsters with her lightning. Sure, I hadn’t exactly seen her using electricity in ways that should normally have burned her, but I was certain it was possible because of my talk with Kostis.

Because I had seen him turn an entire finger into the same smoke he was fond of manipulating all the time.

Threaded Reinforcement. That was how I could store heat within myself. Kostis had mentioned that turning one’s body into an Aspect was a function of an awakened mana core, and I was working towards that with my Spirit Affix.

It didn’t quite work out that way. The threads I had stuffed into my arm to form those seemingly permanent cracks of magic didn’t fully take in heat drawn in with Concentration. Well, they did for a bit, allowing me to stuff my arm full of the potential to use Flare without overheating or even making me feel that warm in the first place.

But after some time, maybe an hour or so, the heat began leaking out pretty fast.

That was fine. I preferred it that way. Gave me even more of an impetus to complete the Threaded Reinforcement throughout my whole body before it came time for the dungeon trio because I figured actually finishing it would let me hold magical energy for longer.

To that end, I took some time over the next day to force more and more of the mana from my mana core into my chest. Of course, I wasn’t satisfied when I completed it. Another Sacrifice removed all the cracking threads throughout my torso, and I began the process of reinforcement once again.

Not only was it making the reinforcement denser that way, but I was also pushing back the mana implosion some more. I still had four days left on the countdown.

“Why are you—” Sreketh sniffed when I had re-entered the temple to not completely isolate myself and prove to my fellow cultists that yes, I was still alive. “Wait, is something burning?”

“Um, yes,” I said. “That might be—”

“You’re burning, Ross? Are you alright?”

I assured her I was fine and explained how I had burned a bit of my robes again over lunch. Guille and Santoire were both a little awed, and Sreketh looked like she wanted to admonish me about irresponsibility, but it was the Scarthrall adventurers-to-be who were really excited.

“Amazing,” Vandre said. “So you can hurt yourself with your own Aspects! Incredible.”

Lujean was nodding excitedly as he ate lunch. “I can’t wait to manifest my own.”

Atholaine was grinning wide, baring all her fangs. “I wonder how burnt blood tastes like.”

We all stared at her.

“What?” She looked at us like we were the crazy ones. “I was just wondering.”

I laughed and shook my head. “Just please be responsible if you start experimenting. I know you’re more, uh, durable than I am. But still.”

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They all nodded back seriously, promising they would do their best not to emulate me. Cheeky shits.

“I’m trying to get Manifestation,” Sreketh said when we talked some more about the Affixes I was training with. “I’ll report back if I can start using it to bring my paintings to life!”

That was… honestly a pretty neat direction to take her development. I supposed getting Manifestation made sense for Paths with more complicated Aspects than things like just Flare and Illumination that I got.

"Sreketh," I said. "When you've got a bit of time, could you draw up some maps for me? I might keep a few handy in case I need to go somewhere quickly."

She snickered but agreed.

I spent the rest of the day focusing on Gravity. That was my main goal, after all—the new Affix idea I had gotten after the fight in Ring Zero.

There had been that moment where I had tried to make Infusion work on a vertical surface. The wall to the tower wasn’t lying horizontally. It hadn’t helped to increase the individual weights of the bricks higher up the wall because the ones supporting the bottom supported the rest well enough.

But trying to infuse the bricks separately instead of the entire wall at once had brought another idea.

How granular could I get with Infusion? I decided to test it out.

As much as we ought to have rebuilt the broken parts of the temple entirely by now, I felt like a hidden benefit of leaving some of it in disrepair was all the free bricks I got to experiment on.

When I used Infusion on a brick normally, the whole thing got weighed down—or when I used Siphon, the entire brick lightened. But before, I had tried using Infusion and Siphon at the same time, together with Field Manipulation, to rip apart the ground. Could I do it here, but just with Infusion and Siphon, applying it to individual, localized sections of the brick?

I tried it. When the violet mana threads of gravitational effect started moving between me and my target, I could feel a very weird shift in weight. It was constantly changing. Growing heavy one second, lightening the next. Not exactly what I was looking for.

It felt like I was making progress, though. Slowly. Very slowly. The changes in the brick’s weight were working because I began to feel portions of the brick lightening while other areas grew heavier than normal. And these separate regions of changing weight grew more and more individualized, smaller and more distinct the more I focused.

My goal was simply getting the ability to modify weight as far down as I could go. To an atomic level, if I could.

After all, Field Manipulation had showed that it wasn’t simply the effect of this planet’s gravitational field that my Aspect of Gravity could modify. I could play around with forces of both attraction and repulsion too.

Whatever definition of “gravity” the Weave used here on Ephemeroth would make scientists weep on Earth.

I was still focusing on granularizing Gravity’s effects, going deeper and deeper. The differently weighted areas of the brick grew smaller and smaller. Progress. Still, it felt like it took hours of effort, and I definitely wouldn’t manage it in one day. I’d need to come back to it.

For now, I took a break then helped train with the others. The Scarthralls especially.

I had given them enough pointers so they could spar amongst themselves. But that wasn’t going to help them grow as fast as fighting against me, especially when I didn’t hold back too much.

“You grew this strong in less than three months, Cultist Ross?” Vandre asked.

He was practicing more and more with his Aspect of Aetherblood. Recently, he had started employing a strategy where he coated himself with the acidic blood, which made anyone attacking him think twice.

I had assured him not to worry about the times my kicks and punches caused my skin and flesh to start to painfully vaporize. My Augmentations, namely Mana Injection and Mana Heal, took care of the little injuries pretty easily. The pain was just an added annoyance. Fresh chapters posted on NoveI[F]ire.net

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not stopping here. I’ll be in Gold before you know it.”

He had just shaken his head with a wry smile. The others had trained and sparred with me too. All of them, even the originally reluctant ones like Jalais and Sigrouen, had come around to my vision of them using their newfound vampiric powers and potential in direct ways like adventuring. They were happy to train and improve their Paths, Attributes, and Aspects.

Their outlook might change when we were faced with the prospect of clearing an actual dungeon, but till then, everything was fine.

Especially because I impressed upon them that this training wasn’t just for adventuring and all that. I reminded them about the Blight Swarm, about the threats to our very lives we were probably going to be facing in time. We all needed to be as strong as we could to face down danger of that level.

The next day, I focused a bit more on cult business. Apparently, as Aqrea had discovered, the money from the Greater Brillwyrm meat extraction was finally running out. There went my temporarily perpetual line of income.

“Well,” Aqrea said, inspecting the paper in her hand with so much intensity, her eyes might bore a hole through it any second. “The money went to setting up the Ration House. We’re finally getting started on the construction. I’ve also invited the proprietor for it, like you asked, Cultist Ross. He will drop by sometime tomorrow.”

“Are you going to work there too now?” I asked with a corner of my mouth curling up in expectation.

Aqrea smiled back. “If my services will be useful—”

“They will. In fact, I think you could run the whole operation yourself if you really wanted to.”

“I’ll pass. If I spent all my time there, you’d drown. With all due respect, Cultist Ross.”

I laughed. “Don’t think I didn’t hear that hesitation before the with all due respect.”

“Well, you do value honesty.”

I sat back on the office chair and considered for the moment. Money wasn’t too necessary. It wasn’t like I had to get treasures to Sacrifice and push the countdown back. So far, Sacrificing Threaded Reinforcement had helped a great deal, though I was pretty sure I couldn’t rely on it for too long.

Basically, I needed to go off on the dungeon delving adventure Kostis was setting up for all of us sooner rather than later. Where was Cerea? Shouldn’t she have arrived in Zairgon by now?

With that business taken care of, I focused harder on trying to gain my new Gravity Affix again. How hard could it be?

I felt like I was making progress. The more I tested with the brick, the more it felt like it was about to explode under the stress I was putting on it, which was actually not a bad thing. I just had to control it so that there was less of an explosion and more of a malformation.

And that deformation—or the potential for it, at least—was what made me feel like I was getting there. My goal was to be able to manipulate “gravity” at an atomic level. Surely that was possible, right? That fine level of control sounded a bit overpowered, but also, it didn’t sound like something I shouldn’t be able to do.

While I spent most of the day making progress on my new Affix, I was eventually interrupted by Khagnio of all people.

Since he had arrived personally to the temple before, the others knew him and showed him in.

“I bring salutations, mageling,” he said upon seeing me. “From the old fart.”

I blinked. “You mean from Riptide?”

“That’s right. Any luck finding out about your little mystery?”

I sighed. “Not particularly.” I told him about what I’d seen, though I admitted it wasn’t too disappointing because I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Right, they’re not going to discuss anything important before operations. But Ring Two meetings… it’s not uncommon for undercity leaders to do so. Some of them even have residences there, believe it or not. I know Shagor’s partner is linked to a bunch of Great Houses.”

It wasn’t surprising to hear the Roaring Claws answered to someone as well. “Right, that’s what Hamsik said. He’s looking into it from his side of things.”

“Cheer up, mageling. Here. This’ll help.” He pulled out a familiar case and handed it to me. “Courtesy of the leader of Riptide. Consider it an honorary member’s entry gift.”

I took the case. Unsurprisingly, when I opened it, I found the rather disgusting necklace inside. “Your leader is just… giving it to me?”

“That’s right. And he’s giving you this too.”

Next, Khagnio gave me a small deep-blue bandanna with a strange symbol sewn on it. It looked like a wave with a hand in it, like someone was drowning. Rather ominous.

“Welcome, Ross Moreland,” Khagnio said with a big, shit-eating grin. “To Riptide.”