Chapter 456 - Like in the movies (Patreon)

“Nat, please put on your shirt,” Dennis complains.

Unfazed, I continue to mimic the stances Lissandra taught me.

“It would get dirty,” I answer simply.

“There might be dangerous predators in the area,” Aaron says with a serious tone.

“Huh? There is not, I would sense it.”

“Is he making fun of us?” Aaron asks, turning to his brother.

“He can’t be like that, right? He must be trolling us.”

I ignore the twins and continue. The intention of the movements isn’t to teach martial arts or anything close to it. The intention is to move my body and, while doing so, send kinetic energy through, practicing moving it in bursts at the right time.

With Burden Enhancement Inscriptions drawn all over my skin, I wouldn’t be able to move without kinetic energy, even if I wanted to. But fighting against the inscriptions burdening me and practicing moving kinetic energy puts a lot of strain on me, and I can feel sweat running down my forehead and the rest of my body.

One slow movement after another, each requiring so much of my attention and effort. Just a single slip-up and I will crumble back to the ground and will have to stand up again while fighting against the inscriptions.

As of late, I often either do this or activate the Restrictive Training Emblem, which is even now visible as lines on the skin over where my heart is. Between these two, my body is getting annihilated, but my control over kinetic energy is vastly improving, and my body is getting stronger.

Of course, making my body stronger is with the intention of preparing it as a vessel for more mana, but I can’t say I do not enjoy it.

Back on Earth, I liked to train, fight, or just move my body. That feeling after finishing difficult training is very addictive, and this is the same.

I watch as my muscles twitch and stretch, fighting against the inscriptions holding them. I sense kinetic energy moving through, supporting them, and trying to synchronize both movements.

Lissandra wasn’t someone who could use kinetic energy. Most likely because she couldn’t be bothered, so by far, the best user of kinetic energy I’ve seen is Whitey.

The field he created, halting everything around him in the air, be it people, debris, attacks, or items, was amazing, but what I keep coming back to is his movement. It’s not just about its raw power. Within that field, he tailored the energy for each specific task. A different amount was directed to holding stone, another to holding large pieces of debris, and each of the Beyonders required a unique allocation. All of this was done to maximize efficiency.

Then there were his quick, twitchy movements. His steps shooting him far ahead without even lifting a grain of dust from the kickstart. His insane maneuverability without even sending a vibration through the air.

Whitey is… was a Champion candidate. It’s something I felt the moment I saw him. The same feeling I had with a few people on the Entrance floor. The man with the fire crown, a beautiful woman with an even more beautiful mantle moving around her as if it had its own mind.

Neither of them bothered to hide their title, unlike me. There is an option to do that, and I’m doing it. But not them, they all showed their title proudly, chest sticking out.

Dumbasses.

Unlike them, I will move sneakily. Like a true hypocrite, I'll do the very thing I always complain about. Maybe that's why people find my pride so strange.

As for my control over kinetic energy, it grows each day. Soon, I think I'll be able to take on someone at my level using only kinetic energy. Hopefully.

For that, I need to see Whitey.

And then, with my stats growing for free, arcane passive, body modifications I get soon, healing marks, and a few arcane items I hold, it should be quite possible. Well, not like I have that many of them on me currently.

My Flamebearer is back, and with it the Echo Gauntlet that allows me to replicate spells or abilities. Something I totally want to play with.

Maya has Bloodthirst; I rented her for now in promise of some reasonable payback later. Golem Heart is still with Sophie, with the same deal I made with Maya.

Lastly, the cursed phantom something ring stayed with Tess. I would probably sell it anyway, and it will most likely help them more than these few shards would do for me.

Of course, I have been promised later payment.

Good, but don’t I have most of group 4 firmly in my grasp? If I wanted, I bet I could overthrow mighty Tess, it being simple with how much trouble she’s made. But well, it’s something that will solve itself.

I also have plenty of other items—mana stones with information, mana stones from Veil stations, from other people, from the Bastion, materials from the bones of powerful monsters, plenty of metals I collected, arcane alloy from Nevan.

I don’t have a hoarding problem.

I’m sure I can use every one of these items.

It’s a shame there is no inventory or spatial storage stuff in the system shop. I would have expected things like that to pop up, especially after I got that vial that allows me to compress and store a swimming pool's worth of water in there.

At some point, I stop thinking and delve deeper into my training.

Movement after movement, the kinetic energy within me surges, battling against the inscriptions. The need to actively breathe, making my chest move with kinetic energy because I didn’t know how to exclude it from Burden Enhancement Inscriptions.

A quick step, kinetic energy shooting from the bottom of my feet through my legs, waist, joining with another burst of kinetic energy shooting from the twist of my waist. Both of them molding, connecting, fighting against each other but forced by my will to cooperate.

The wave shoots past my shoulder, a slight twist of my elbow, forcing my forearm to contract, and then nothing.

Instead of kinetic energy shooting from the palm of my hand, it bounces back, flowing inside my body, mixing with another wave coming, then once again connecting.

Step back, a wave of energy shoots down through my legs, building from the bottom of my feet, strengthening my stance, a wave spreads through my back, flowing around my waist and meeting it.

A slight tear of some unimportant organ. A stretched muscle because of excessive energy. A too-slow reaction from my side, and my shoulder dislocates under the strain. A lightheadedness as I forgot to breathe for a few minutes already.

When I stop and the inscriptions dissolve with a mana wave I send through, I feel my arms shaking and take a deep breath in.

My skin burns, and I feel like falling to the ground.

“Pulling” on one thread, my aqua arcanum vial flies to my hand, and I dump a bathtub’s worth of water on my head. The feeling is extremely refreshing.

I comb my wet hair with my fingers and move them from my forehead, catching Lily’s gaze. For a moment, she looks almost scared I caught her and follow her gaze to somewhere around my chest where I hold the water bottle item.

“You look thirsty, Lily,” I say, holding the item in a questioning gesture.

Lily, looking scared, turns entirely around and plops down on the ground, continuing with her dark experiments.

“There is no fucking way that wasn’t on purpose.” Dennis wildly shakes his head.

In reaction, I pop all the evil orbs that float around them, “I will be modifying them a little bit.”

For the next few hours, both of them have to go back to a single orb, failing to keep it up for longer than twenty seconds.

***

The next day, I use my mana and form it into the shape of a sword. The material is the same as the manabloc chairs. The difference from using my normal mana is that this kind of mana is specially made to last as long as possible.

It’s more difficult to restore, it’s also a bit more “brittle,” and I can’t make it as sharp. But I know the sword I just made will be able to stay materialized for weeks without losing its shape.

There is some mana leakage, yes, and it will dissolve gradually, but such problems are always there when I experiment with something new.

My goal is to make this “manabloc” material as flexible, as sharp, as mana-conductive, and as repairable as my normal mana. All while keeping its property of being able to stay materialized for a long time.

And who knows, in a few years I might be able to make items like this that will last for years. Then another goal would be to make them mana-conductive to other mana than mine.

Another goal after that would be to inscribe them so some sorts of effects would activate while accepting foreign mana.

I’m imagining not needing to use arcanadium, endurium, voidsteel, or any other materials. Just my materialized mana and the epic, maybe even arcane weapons made of it. If they will be able to last a few decades, I would be happy with that.

To reach that goal, I experiment with manabloc material. Instead of just materializing my mana, I try to weave threads of much thinner mana through it. This could solve the brittleness and increase durability. The added difficulty is extreme, not to mention that I’m not sure how I will make parts like the blade.

Maybe I could combine it with a different type of mana; some weapons are made like that. Multiple types of metals mixed together, each fitting different parts. It’s something I got from notes Miwa left for me, so it could be worth trying.

It’s possible I’m doing something extremely dumb and making things much more difficult than they should be, but I also use it as a training method for my future use of materialized Ley Lines. That might even be the main reason.

I’ve spent plenty of time already experimenting with those pale blue threads that feel so different from the pale blue of mana.

I don’t even think I would be able to materialize much more than finger long without my new passive. Well, without partially melting my brain.

My mana reserves are quite big, I would say, and I think most people would agree, but even I was surprised how much of my body mana it took just for that short thread, not to mention how much my eyes had to help.

It must mean it’s something I shouldn’t be doing and that I’m going against the nature of the skill, I think.

As if something like that ever stopped me.

Maybe I should try black mana. I’m curious how well I can handle it now, now with all the level-ups and passives. I’m curious how it would react to [Ley Line], materialized or not, and I’m curious what would happen if I shot a black mana orb into the Mana Desert.

I must try at least one of these things, or I won’t be able to sleep.

As for black mana, I’ve already made up my mind that I’ll try to avoid using it before I reach level 60 in [Focus] and [Mana Manipulation]. It’s also something Lady Lissandra recommended. To get my basics to an adequate level before messing around with things like that.

Yet another thing to be excited for in the future.

***

POV Maya Jones

Now that it is night and our small group went to sleep, Tess changes her bearing. Her shoulders slump a bit, her eyes lose some of their shine, and her movements don’t feel so domineering.

It’s something she shows only to me and Kim, now that our group is split. In front of Famir, Kallus, Heryd, and others, she is acting the same as before.

Maybe not exactly the same; she is a bit less controlling.

It’s a good thing.

I sit down next to her, and with a sigh, she leans against me, her blonde hair tickling my nose. Sometimes, I get a little jealous of how tall she is. I’m not the shortest, but having a girl eight or so years younger be a bit taller than me is quite a funny experience.

It’s also amusing to see her like this. Even I thought she was pushing it too far, and that guy noticed it as well. He is truly annoyingly smart at times.

Tess is young, 20 years old. What she’s going through is probably something she feels for the first time, and for her, it seems like the worst thing ever.

In a few years, it will be only a distant memory. In a hundred, she might not even remember the details, only the feelings she had.

I can’t help but feel a bit scared at the thought of living so long. How will I befriend normal people knowing they will live much shorter than I do? How would I love someone and watch them grow older while I stay as I am now?

I won’t lie; there are things I love about all of this, and I wouldn’t want to give it up, but other things terrify me. That’s why I also love what Tess is trying to do. To make us all companions, fiends who survived the same experience, who are equal and can understand the troubles others might have. Not just friends for a few years, but someone we could still call a friend tens or even hundreds of years later.

“Did you think it would be like in the movies you told me you liked to watch?” I smile and flick her nose when her hair tickles me once more.

That young blonde doesn’t react to it, that being enough of an answer.

“Silly girl.” Sometimes I forget how young everyone is.

Me included, of course.

***

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