B3-09 - Purified Mana (Patreon)

“So what is experience points,” Maya asked as Bell, Yosi, Tender, Veskari, and she sat around a dinner table. The others glanced at her and then one another, pondering the question. “I don’t mean, the simple answer. I mean, what exactly is it made of. Is it mana?

“There’s essence mana, the thing that’s killing reality, then there’s ambient mana, generic mana, mana mana used by SIL, and then experience points. The System rewards bonus experience points when you gain Titles, Achievements, or when you’re not in the RSH and kill something.” Maya looked at the others. “So is experience points just mana, but more refined?”

“No one really knows,” Veskari said. “Many have tried to find out. We know that when you use Skills or Abilities, all the mana needed to activate those Skills isn’t used by what you are doing. Some of it escapes into the Aether.”

“Aether?”

“It’s the name SIL have given to where the excess mana or experience points goes.”

“Excess mana is just waste mana,” Bell said. “We use it, but not one hundred percent efficiently, therefore there is some waste that occurs. That mana does nothing, it just vanishes or returns to being ambient mana.”

“So you can measure how much actual mana you use to do something and how much mana ‘escapes’ into the Aether?” Maya asked.

“Somewhat,” Vesakri responded. “There is a lot of mystery and hearsay about it. No one really knows what or where the System Tithe does or goes. The excess mana that escapes.“ Veskari explained at Maya’s confused look.

“Waste mana,” Bell corrected.

“The current theory is that the System redistributes the excess mana to other SIL in the form of bonus experience points,” Veskari continued.

“Then what happens to the ninety-eight percent of experience points that don’t drop?” Maya asked. “Where does that go?”

“Nowhere,” Bell said. “The ninety-eight percent doesn’t exist. The two percent you gain is all there is.”

Veskari smirked slightly. “Even in my time and among the Nerigana, this was still a hotly debated topic,” he said. “No one really knows if the ninety-eight percent of the total experience points a SIL, mana mutation, or rogue AI have exist or not. Many have tried to find that remainder and harness it.”

Yosi said. “My people believed that when you are killed or die, that the experience points you have, the amount that does not drop, is the soul.”

Bell scoffed. “Religious nonsense, We all know that souls exist; we have a soul stat, and that soul is not experience points. It is its own thing.”

“Do I have a soul?” Tender asked.

“Maybe if you make it to Tier 3,” Veskari said. “Physical, Mental, and Soul, in that order. That’s how rogue and system tech AIs evolve, each Tier adding a new one.”

“If I make it to Tier 4?” Tender asked.

“Then you’ll be able to control essence mana like all Tier 4 beings, but by then you wouldn’t be considered a rogue AI anymore, you’d be a SIL.”

“Anyone ever heard of Purified Mana?” Maya asked.

“That’s another inane belief,” Bell said. “People claim that purified mana is a special mana that SIL have processed. Not the waste mana, System Tithe, or the ninety-eight percent of experience points that doesn’t drop, but that there is a different kind of mana that we as SIL produce that is considered… ‘holy’.”

“It is said that those who can lay claim to purified mana will be able to warp reality itself,” Veskari added. “That it is the end goal of the System, to warp reality enough that reality can be saved by the encroaching essence mana.”

“It’s all foolishness,” Bell said. “Mana is a fuel, one that we process from ambient mana and then use, once it’s been used, it’s gone.”

“I thought once one could channel essence mana, they could warp reality?” Maya asked. “I remember hearing that somewhere.”

“In localized areas,” Veskari said. “Star systems, sectors, that kind of things. Not entire universes or multiverses.”

“So… with purified mana I could alter the universe?” Maya grinned.

“No. It’s just a theory,” Veskari said.

“A belief, as in religious nonsense,” Bell clarified.

“What is this all about anyway?” Yosi asked.

Maya summoned an experience shard and set it down on the table. “Well, I was digging around the Cage…”

***

“I wish you the best of luck,” Maya said, shaking the hands of each of Anisa’s council members. They nodded politely. “We are still allies and friends; If you ever require my assistance, then I shall come as fast as I can.”

“You have done much for us, Maya,” Anisa said.

Maya grinned at the woman. She was dressed fully in one of the Shen zombie armor. It had been refitted for her, a black mid-grade battle armor that suited the Level 54 [Defender]. She was decked out in some weapons that they had dug out of the dimensional storage containers and carried a railgun across her back. The other members of her council weren’t as outfitted, but their armor was new and their weapons are a lot better than what they had before.

Anisa extended her hand, but Maya instead gripped her in a powerful hug. The armored woman grunted in surprise at Maya’s strength.

“Be careful, save people, if you need anything, just ask,” Maya said. “As long as Maya’s Emporium exists, then we’ll be here to help.”

“With low margins,” Yosi added.

Ilyas scoffed, but nodded. He and the others marched out of the Cage and back into Beirut, the last to leave.

Maya sighed, watching them. There was no hard feelings for Anisa and her people going their own way. Maya understood it and although she had felt a bit miffed by their refusal, she had gotten over it. People would form their own governments, she just needed to make sure that there were people to do so.

“We all set?” Maya asked Yosi.

“We made a decent profit,” the woman replied. “This whole region is swarming with all kinds of monsters. The locals really were very wealthy, its almost like a hunting planet.”

“The variety of ingredients to use in alchemical creations is extraordinary,” Bell said, watching along side them. “The mana traces Hanna and I have uncovered aren’t seen outside of the Forbidden Lands back on my homeward. I had never been to a Tier 2 world before. If we could harvest and purchase more ingredients and samples, it could be a boon to House Domakun.”

“Hey, you work for me,” Maya said. “It would mean we’d have some awesome ingredients to sell to House Domakun.”

Bell grinned. “Of course.”

“I hear you were offering free classes,” Maya said, glancing at Bell. “I thought you weren’t supposed to do things like that in your new position of Spy Master?”

Bell scoffed. “Merchant Liaison,” he said. “Spying on you is just a given. The rules that govern my position says I can’t make any potions for you for free, but teaching is a whole different thing. Plus it was just the basics of alchemy.”

“Any bright bulbs in those classes?” Maya asked. “We could see about scholarships, get them to work in the Cage and help power level them.”

Bell frowned and glanced toward Yuri and Hanna who were approaching. “And capture their waste mana?” he asked, softly.

Maya grinned. “Of course!”

“I will admit, with the tesseracts integrated into the very structure of the Cage, it has allowed for faster than normal leveling by people. There is little to no mana exhaustion due to overextending themselves,” Bell said. “I hadn’t fully realized it until I was teaching the others, some gained more than one level in the few hours I was showing them.”

“I know right!” Hanna exclaimed. “I’m a level 5 [Novice Alchemist] now. Not to mention that I’m nearly a level 10 [Engineer] too.”

Maya sighed. She looked at her measly level 9 [Engineer] and level 9 [Merchant]. The two occupational abilities she used the most and leveling in had stalled for the last month. She had made multimillion credit deals, she had fused with the Cage, and still she had not crossed that first milestone in her occupational abilities.

“You find your Russian info?” Maya asked Yuri.

The man scowled. “No. There is no new information. We must return to the station and see if George and the others have anything new.”

“I suspect they’ll be more interested in what’s going on in the good ole USofA,” Hanna replied.

“Not if Zoya has any say,” Yuri remarked.

“Well, we’re gonna reconnect to the RSH an make sure Scotty isn’t lazying about in making black goo and tesseracts,” Maya said. “There’s a couple of things I need to check out too, so it might be a few days connected there.”

“A few days in here is just a few hours out there,” Hanna said. “I wanna see what George has been doing too.”

“I must report to my Matriarch also, and set up your potion orders,” Bell said.

“Ixnay ethay anamay,” Maya whispered and Bell nodded. “Alrighty, lets roll.”

***

Maya flipped the switch and scurried back, a grin on her face. The machine before her lit up and began flashing lights, the tablet in her hand flashed an all green signal.

“We’re in business,” Maya said, taking a cautious step toward the machine. “Well, you’ll be in business while I laze about and fan myself by the pool.”

“We don’t have a pool,” Tender said, inspecting the machine. “This will work?”

“O’ ye of little faith,” Maya said, tossing him the tablet. “The wonders and mysteries of rogue technology are opened to me, with my incredible Mental Stats and a certain rogue AI, I have unlocked the secrets of the scourge of the multiverse.”

“But these control systems were already installed in the hiveship, all we did was remove them and reroute the signal to our computers, not the hive mind,” Tender said.

“Yeah, but it took a whole standard day to do,” Maya said. Maya tapped the hiveship’s processing node, one of the many small brains that had helped the main hiveship AI core do its thing.

Tender and Maya had used the ants to strip out the processing node, then they refurbished it by clearing it of any possible remains of the old hive mind, and hooked the node to one of the rogue tech computers they had also taken from the hiveship.

Maya was drowning in wealth, she had the Cage that could go anywhere, she still had a mountain of dimensional containers to sort though, she had an entire hiveship to loot, then there were all the tesseracts she was making, the refined black goo, and the black goo mana network she had been working on for months now. So much to do, so little time, and so few hands to do it with.

The processing node was the first step into taking over the rogue AI drones. They were several thousand in number, but lacked the power and the controlling mind to get them working properly. Tender could only control dozen of the drones at once, it wasn’t due to his mid-grade AI core, but something along the lines of bandwidth. The signals to the rogue AIs were bottlenecked, but with the processing node, they could triple or even quadruple the amount of drones he could command.

“You just sit in there, hook up to it, and you’re in business,” Maya said. “Easy peasy. If there’s trouble, you can just bounce out and run. We’ll set you up next to Junior, the poor guy needs some company.”

“Not from the Cage?” Tender asked.

“Yeah, well the signal gets a little twisted when it comes to trying to control something from within the Cage,” Maya said. “I’m not sure what it is, interference of some kind, but it’s better and far easier just to do it within the RSH, you’ll have a control radius of about twenty kilometers. Plus most of the stuff will be moved into the Hanganathorie’s cargo holds, where Scotty can dismantle and we can work on the salvaging the stuff for Project O’Brien.”

“It is an ambitious project,” Tender said.

“Ambition is my middle name,” Maya said. “Plus it’s all system tech, who would have known? I was totally not expecting that. Everyone has been like, rogue AIs don’t use system tech, but I guess they’re wrong.”

“You have been proving a lot of concepts have been wrong,” Tender said.

Maya grinned. “Right! Everyone’s like purified mana is god’s tears and bathwater, but I’m like, dude, it’s just a mana dutch oven caught between the reality of the Cage and the non-existence of Void Space. Though truthfully, I have no dang idea what to do with it.”

“You created an experience shard, could you not create more?” Tender asked. “Possibly level yourself up?”

“Yeah, maybe. But that seems, I don’t know, kinda selfish. I could give it to low leveled people, daily experience bonus for newborns joining the Integration!” Maya shook her head. “Nah, if anyone figures out what I’ve got, they’re gonna kill me so fast for it, my head will be spinning.”

“It would be disruptive to the multiverse at large,” Tender said, “but currently you are ‘small time’ and not big enough to upset the balance of power throughout the multiverse.”

“Thanks,” Maya replied blandly. “Between the refined black goo netting, which is basically a mana core and battery made for cheap, the tesseracts that are a Tier 4 magical stone that we’re making thousands of, and now the purified mana that’s trapped in my little bubble of reality, I’ve been painting a giant target on my back.”

“It is good that we are keeping a low profile,” Tender said.

“Yeah, but we need to become bigger. We need access to more markets, we need more hands to work on this hiveship and our other plans, we need more money, more settlements, and more people on Earth focusing on the goal of taking back the planet.”

“You have the resources,” Tender said.

“Just not the manpower.”

“I will do the best I can,” Tender said, “while you are away.”

“I want you to come with me, but you’re the only one who can control these rogue AIs,” Maya said.

“You’ll have Bell, Roci, and Yosi there too.”

“Bell’s gonna be gone for a bit, his Matriarch is probably grilling him about everything.”

“Will he betray us?” Tender asked.

“I don’t know. There’s a lot of baggage when it comes to family. I don’t think he would, but when the choice is either friends or family, plenty of people choose family. I know I would,” Maya said.

“It is dangerous to be in contact with a Tier 3 SIL,” Tender said. “They are far more powerful than you. As it is, even Asoltolia, a high-grade, Tier 1 SIL can defeat you in combat.”

“If it comes down to it, I can control time in the Cage, I can shut it down if I have to,” she said. “The Cage will return to the RSH and anyone coming from the multiverse at large is gonna probably die trying to cross over.”

“With the others in it?” Tender asked. “Also it could potentially destroy the Cage itself, it’s been infused with your blood, your tesseracts, and rogue AI components, even the union components were created by you. Who is to say that it will remain so if the Cage ever collapses back into the RSH?”

Maya hesitated and frowned.

“I don’t know, Tender. A lot of awesome things are falling into my lap, but the more I think about them, the more it scares me. Surviving a dimensional instability, becoming a Point of Contact, fusing with the Cage, the refined black goo, the tesseracts, now the purified mana, it’s a lot of stuff. It’s more power and resources than anyone has ever received, but I feel like I’m wasting it. Diddling around, trying to sell stuff to people. What the heck is that?” Maya shook her head. “People like Anisa are the true heroes. They’re fighting everyday for humanity. People like Maria and Ezra too, they’re in the middle of this fight, with barely any support. Here I am, sitting on a literal mountain of goods, and I can’t even properly sort them to I can sell them. I’ve got millions of credits, but I still haven’t purchased another settlement deed yet.”

Maya looked at her hands.

“I haven’t even gone home yet,” she said. “All this time. All these places I’ve been. I haven’t gone back home. Only when I nearly die does it come up, when the System creates that little dream of my family home.”

“Do you want to go home?” Tender asked.

“Yes.” Maya said, then,” no. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happened to my parents and brother. I don’t know if they’re alive or not. Sometimes the comforting fantasy is better than the hard truth.”

“I think I would prefer the hard truth,” Tender said.

Maya nodded. “Yeah.” She looked up at his six red eyes and smiled “Come on, let’s rip this bandaid off.”

***

It was destroyed. There was nothing left of her neighborhood. A fire had raged possibly, but Maya could see that there were giant seared marks along some of the streets, like something massive had struck it. The familiar road was a wreck, the trees that she used as landmarks were shattered twigs, and her house… her house was gone.

In its place was a burned out shell. Blackened beams, fallen walls, and a covering of reddish moss that grew everywhere. She could see the distant shapes of massive creatures walking among the ruins of Dallas. Everything was destroyed.

Maya stared at it, a lump in her throat. She looked at the house where they had finally settled. No more moving around almost every year because the Army wanted Pops to go somewhere. No more losing friends or trying to figure out a new neighborhood, or even a new language.

This was their home. It was gone.

Maya disconnected the door.

“I’m sorry, Maya,” Tender said.

“Yeah,” she said stiffly. “Let’s get out of here.”