Chapter 121: Chapter 121

Ascelkos was back at the Mage Guild, which was where I found him that day. Apparently, he had been busy visiting the members of his tribe still outside the walls of Zairgon. Members who would need space to live that they couldn’t afford, or even find, in Ring Two.

Which was where I came in.

“You’re attracting quite a few looks,” I murmured.

We had gone up to the spot on the second-floor gallery that Kostis and I liked to frequent. That was one of the most private areas of the Mage Guild that was still essentially out in the open and public, and we were still getting surreptitious glances from other mages all over the guildhall.

And it truly was from all over the guildhall. While the ones on the gallery with us had at least enough shame to pretend they weren’t looking, the others… not so much.

I saw a bunch of familiars keeping an eye out. A parrot with lightning wings on a chandelier, the fox with flaming fur lounging near the steps, and so on. Even the trio of magical, glowing beetles on a nearby windowpane had to be someone’s summons being brazenly used to spy on our little meeting. These mages really needed to get a life.

Ascelkos puffed up his weirdly aquatic chest like the attention was only something to be expected. “I don’t blame them at all for looking.”

I stared at him, then laughed. “Alright, then.”

We didn’t waste time, especially after I told him that I had to prep for a dungeon delve and would be out of reach for a bit. Ascelkos was happy to move the conversation along.

“Would Ring Four be able to house a few thousand new additions in a short time?” he asked.

“Can you be more specific?” I asked back. Then added, “We should be able to, but I want to discuss my plan regarding that, and for that, I need some actual numbers.”

“That makes sense. I don’t have the exact number, unfortunately. Acquiring a headcount is a bit difficult when your tribes are so disparate and unwilling to easily cooperate.” He shook his head. “But anyway, you don’t need to worry about that. I would say it’s between seventeen-hundred to nearly two thousand people.”

Ascelkos winced just a bit at those numbers, like that was a great burden. But honestly, with how much abandoned space was left over in Ring Four, we really would be able to fit them.

“Space isn’t going to be an issue,” I said. I continued before he could look too relieved. “However, the space we do have available isn’t in the best of conditions for living, much less for living during a siege of monstrous bugs.”

“That was one of the problems I was fearing, yes…” Thıs text ıs hosted at novelFɪre.net

“With your help, though, it shouldn’t be a problem for long.”

I explained what I had in mind. After working for the construction company, I had more or less established a connection with the foreman and potentially the company owner, especially after the former had stood witness to how chummy I was with their clients. Together, we could use this connection to essentially get the construction company to work in Ring Four.

“Ah!” Ascelkos’s eyes widened as he understood my plan. “You want to commission them to fix up all the areas of Ring Four you want us to inhabit.”

“Exactly. And the funds to do so will come from the Council, since I’m guessing the agreement was to host all the Anymphea inside Zairgon.”

Ascelkos nodded. “I don’t doubt you, and I think that’s an idea with a great deal of potential. But at the same time, we will need to deal with pushback from some members of my tribe. They will not be happy staying in Ring Four.” Ascelkos dipped his head. “No offence.”

“None taken. And honestly, same here. I haven’t discussed this plan with anyone in Ring Four yet. I should be able to make them understand but there will be some who aren’t happy, of course.”

That was mostly the extent of our discussion. Ascelkos shared some details of the kinds of tribes who would be staying in Ring Four and I told him a little bit more about the state of things there, including with the Scarthralls and everything. He said he’d make judicious decisions on what to share with the others to make Ring Four as palatable as possible.

The real thing we got up to that day was head over to the construction company’s office, which was on Ring Three so there weren’t any issues going there. This time, we did meet the owner, who turned out to be a pudgy Rakshasa sitting behind an enormous oval desk.

Our chat was brief. The owner would be delighted to take up another commission from the esteemed Anymphea, no matter where it was.

“Even if it’s on Moonfall!” he said genially. I couldn’t find any holes in the sincerity in his voice. “Of course, you’d have to pay the requisite amount. But if you do, rest assured that we will find the right people to complete the job.”

I shook my head. What kind of a construction company had the Anymphea gotten themselves mixed up with? I might not know what Moonfall was, but the name was very telling.

The important bit was that the whole business had been rather easy. I had a feeling more complications would pop up over time, but for now, the owner gave us a date where he’d start surveying the area within Ring Four that would need the most work. Of course, I would be the one in charge of guiding them.

Something to potentially delegate, since I had taken care of the hard parts.

After informing Aqrea about all that—she was delighted to learn that none of what I had discussed with the Anymphea and the construction company was going to distress the cult’s coffers—and requesting that she take care of the survey that the company wanted, I decided to focus on myself for a bit.

I was happy to see things proceed as planned, with most of my part in it now fulfilled. All I needed now was to train and prepare for the dungeon. Over the next few days, I focused on just that.

Training with the Scarthralls was all well and good, but I wanted to prepare with something more intense, so I went back to Gutran. He wasn’t taken aback at seeing me after what felt like a decent while. I, however, was surprised at the client he was entertaining at his smithy.

In all the times I had gone to train with him, our sessions had never been interrupted with a client just walking in. This time though, I found him entertaining an armoured Plumefolk lady.

“Was an adventurer,” Gutran said after a bit. “Looking for some new spears.”

“And she came here because…?” I prodded.

“Apparently got a recommendation from that human adventurer friend of yours. “

I mimicked Gutran and grunted. Good old Cerea.

We focused on training, especially on my ability to both evade and dish out hits. Since I had found that little drop-from-a-huge-height hack to train my Vitality, all I really needed Gutran’s help with was my Power and Agility. So, we went through multiple sparring and focused training sessions to rank up the targeted Attributes.

In a couple of days, I had gotten more ranks in both of them.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Your Power and Agility Attributes have risen by one Rank.

Your Path of Burning Starlight has risen by one Rank.

Path of Burning Starlight: Silver VI ]

Gold was coming soon, which meant wondering about new Augmentations. Gutran was in a chipper mood, even if he did try to hide it, so he was more than happy to give me pointers. Not that I really needed them. The advice was the same. I would just need to look out for things that could either complement what I was already capable of or expand my powers in interesting directions.

I didn’t think too much about it, just then. There were a couple other priorities I needed to pay attention to. One thing at a time.

Still, it was fun thinking of things like an Agility Augmentation that increased my reactions when facing opponents affected by any of my Aspects, or a Power Augmentation that could punch away any Aspects my opponents flung at me.

Intriguing as those were, I needed to think about what sort of Augmentations would be ideal later. When I wasn’t too worked up thinking about what I’d be facing in the dungeon next.

When I wasn’t focusing entirely on the prospect of awakening my mana core finally.

“No need to worry,” Master Kostis said when I squeezed in another meeting before leaving. “You bought all the needed resources for the procedure. You’ve talked with me about the exact process you should try to follow. And you’ve been generally preparing for it for well over a month now. You will be alright, Ross.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. Well, I wasn’t sounding convincing to myself, much less to Kostis.

“Repeat after me on what you need to do,” Kostis said.

I took a deep breath. “Get to one of the lower chambers of the dungeon. Then crush some Runes of Barricading to prevent my exploding mana from bursting out of the dungeon. Then ingest at least three Spiritbloom Pills, more if needed. Then—”

“When might more be needed?”

“When I’m having trouble controlling the mana outflow. Although, I can’t take more than five without spontaneously turning even my cells into mana, which would be bad.”

“Quite. You will dissolve into motes of magical potential and join the stream of energy that mages around the world can then tap into.”

I gulped. “Right. Pretty bad. Anyway, then it’s just a matter of learning to direct that massive outflow of mana into the dungeon itself. I can’t do that on the regular since my body won’t be able to handle that kind of mana, not even with Threaded Reinforcement and with all the other pills and precautions and everything, but it should be just a one-time thing.”

“Correct. Once your core is awakened, you should no longer be in danger.”

A second mana implosion wouldn’t threaten me, is what Kostis meant. The fundamental process of the core would change after awakening. That was what happened to all mana cores upon awakening and after other significant transformations that might occur later.

The way the process changed was something individual to each mana core, so what I would get after the awakening was anyone’s guess.

However, I did have some clues to give me an idea.

My mana core came alongside my Path of Burning Starlight. Before its evolution, it had been the Path of Newborn Star. Obviously, it was influenced by stars. Even Kostis had said that it had astral properties.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I figured it was following the life cycle of a star. Newborn Star was self-explanatory, and then Burning Starlight made me wonder if it was a fancy name for a protostar. And after that came… red giants? No, that was wrong. Next came the dwarf stars, like the sun. Then I’d need to possibly worry about a red giant phase and whatever else came afterwards.

At least, that was how far my general knowledge of stellar sequences extended. Still, that was enough to inform me that if my core essentially detonated into being, it would start the fusion process.

I had absolutely no idea what that was going to look like for mana. How did one even make mana fuse? It was energy, not particles, as far as anyone here knew.

Which wasn’t saying a lot. When I asked Kostis, he just stared blankly at me. It wasn’t really surprising that science hadn’t flourished enough on Ephemeroth for the average person to understand nuclear fusion, although I couldn’t help but feel a mite disappointed. Master Kostis was far from average, after all.

Well, I was going to find out soon enough.

The next few days went by the same way. Aqrea informed me that the construction company, Shikarthola Builders, had been shown the areas that would need work. They were going to get started soon.

Meanwhile, I trained harder, focusing mostly on Power. I could only bother Gutran so much, but I had found another little hack.

Late at night, with everyone sleeping, I performed the same jump high and fall down hard trick I used for Vitality. The difference was that instead of just landing on my feet or on my side, I landed with my fist, punching down on the ground with as much Power I could muster. The test was basically seeing just how big of a depression I could make on the temple grounds.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” Aurier asked, somehow noticing the few mottled scars on my knuckles. “Also, have you been hearing weird noises at night?”

It was immensely painful to land right on my fist from huge heights just to train an Attribute. Thankfully, the combination of my current Power and Vitality Augmentations healed me up pretty quickly. Mana Injection generated external mana upon impact, and Mana Heal immediately used that to fix up however I injured my fists.

I was still left with visible scars, though.

“The things we do for a few ranks,” I muttered.

“He’s trying to punch through the ground,” Sreketh said, taking scrumptious bites out of her bug food.

Aurier only looked more nonplussed at that, and I couldn’t blame him. I explained what was going on to the poor guy.

Some time later, my efforts resulted in yet another rank.

Your Power Attribute has risen by one Rank.

As satisfying as that should have been, I was still anticipating Silver X too much to properly appreciate another rank up in just a few days. It wasn’t a great reaction. I acknowledged that I should never take my own efforts for granted.

But a dungeon delve was prime opportunity to get another breakthrough, which would only be effective if I was in pole position to take advantage of it.

Which would be on the cusp of hitting the next rank tier—going from Silver X to Gold I.

“You’ve been looking distracted,” Cerea said as we finished purchasing the stuff we needed for the expedition from the Mage Guild.

I hefted the pack of potions, elixirs, ropes and tools, and a good chunk of runes. Oh and some shiny masks too. Apparently, they’d be necessary. “Just trying to think if I can get to Silver X on one of my Attributes before we head into the dungeon.”

She gave me a flat stare. “You sure you’re a mage?”

“I’m just trying to be balanced.”

“We’re mages! We have an entire famous stereotype of glass cannons. Balance does not make a mage!”

I knew she was mostly joking, but she did have a point. For all the mage-like powers I possessed, I still would never be taken for a typical mage.

The only thing I really regretted before heading out into the dungeon was that the academy never got around to approving my use of their Attribute Chamber. I had even taken the time to bug Professors Urhei and Izithy about it, but the latter wasn’t very responsive, and the former had said the administration was hemming and hawing still, unfortunately.

A very annoying but probably good reminder that not everything was going to happen according to my convenience.

Still, I couldn’t be too disappointed. I went all out. A couple of days later, mere hours before I was to set out for the dungeon delve, I got it. What pushed me over the edge was training as harshly with the Scarthralls as I could, after Sacrificing the reward from the Ritual of Growth to really boost my gains.

I had been forced to be careful about Sacrifice because I wanted to time things right. But it had been necessary for this.

“Wow,” Atholaine was saying as she recovered from the hits I had delivered. “I got two ranks in Bloodsalve.”

“And my Vitality’s skyrocketing!” Vandre said.

They looked at me questioningly as my breathing steadied and I brushed away some sweat before it dripped into my eyes.

Your Power Attribute has risen by one Rank.

Your Ritual Aspect has risen by one Rank.

I grinned. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

There. Now the dungeon was going to be extra effective. My first Gold wasn’t going to take long now.