Mana 4 Chapter 29 (Patreon)

It didn’t take long to reach the first foothill and clear our way to the top. But I had a feeling it would take a bit to set up all the enchantment.

I wasn’t a master at enchantments, but I had dabbled enough to get the idea. For this one, I was going to do something I’d never heard of before, but the idea made sense in my mind.

Rather than summon lightning and push the world, I was going to steal the space of the world I was in at that moment.

Similar to how I had pushed the world to move myself in the mortal world, I was going to push this reality into my own. Lumi had said to steal a piece of the heavens, well I wanted one of the world too.

“Master?” Aurora flapped around as I lay out the mana crystals in the enchantment design I’d modified from the one in the scroll. “That doesn’t look right.”

“That’s because there is no right answer for this. I’m doing what I think will work best for me.” I caught Aurora giving Lumi a questioning glance out of the corner of my eye. She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t want to second guess me.

I realized what all the teachings didn’t include was how much of a strain on my soul this would be. I had a feeling this technique would require more than technique and training. It would also require mindfulness and preparation of the soul. That was what often made the difference in a fight between skilled warriors.

Here on the mountain, arranging the enchantment pattern to fit myself was just that, a meditative focus to center myself in preparation.

How long it took wasn’t important, but doing it correctly was.

The daylight slipped down from the sky until it was slipping through the trees, spilling out onto the foothill in small streams of light.

It was then that I looked up from my work and saw I was done.

There were still a large quantity of crystals in my spatial ring, but I just dumped them into the center to add extra power. I knew that this was going to be a massive drain on my resources; I would just have to hope it was enough. It was several times what Wenxi’s technique required.

“Alright, time for you guys to stand back.” I told my mana beasts.

“We are a part of you. As long as we don’t directly interfere, I don’t think we’ll bring the heavens down on us as well.” Lumi answered. “We’ll stay right here outside the enchantment you laid.”

Not wanting to let anything disturb my focus, I just accepted what Lumi said at face value and focused on activating the enchantment.

The mana crystals pulsed with power as they released enough mana to glow. The light ran the course of the enchantment, looping, swirling and dashing across the open space.

I stood in the center next to the mound of mana crystals watching, mesmerized but making sure that all of them were activated.

The process kept progressing till the entire enchantment was aglow with power.

Then…

Nothing.

Everything seemed oddly quiet as the enchantment was fully powered and drawing on the power of a million mana crystals. I’d been waiting for a big display, quaking earth, something to tell me that a large power was being offset, but nothing happened.

Instead, it was a quiet glow that pulsed in the fading sunlight.

Focusing inward, I closed my eyes and drew the connection with the enchantment inward. I wanted to give the enchantment a focus for where to put that slice of reality I was trying to embed into my soul palace.

As I did that, the energy changed and became more real. A sound like glass shattering resounded around me as the world surrounding me cracked and tore. A twenty meter dome surrounded me and the enchantment. And at the same time, a massive pressure built within my soul.

“Aaah.” I yelled, giving an outlet for the pain that was coursing through my body. I felt like I was trying to pull something too thick through a small pipe as the cracks in reality pushed their way into my soul palace.

For a brief moment, my vision was split. One eye was focused on the immortal world; the other was seeing the scene from my soul palace. My mind felt like it was fracturing, trying to keep the two different spaces cohesive within my body. I wouldn’t let the world defeat me.

Grabbing tight to the enchantment, I honed the output, smoothing it and wrenching it from the world’s grip, taking this piece of reality for my own.

Distantly, I could hear Mei screaming something trying to help me. I wished I could understand her; she was an expert with void magic. But in my attempt to take a piece of reality, the space surrounding the enchantment had become flawed.

Her voice came in a garbled, halting pace.

I realized that I was only getting the sound that was able to come through the fractures in space, but they were opening and closing rapidly, like the mouths in a hungry koi pond, rapidly trying to gobble up the next morsel that passed near them.

“I’m fine, Mei!” I shouted back, hoping to reassure her. “This is what’s supposed to happen.”

It wasn’t exactly how I thought it would happen, but I didn’t want to let her know that this had become something greater than what I was expecting.

It was already underway, so I needed to figure out how to push through it. No matter how connected my mana beasts were to me, this was my fight and mine alone.

Pushing my mana into the enchantment, I tried to get metaphorical hands around the situation and finish pulling the piece of reality into myself. Wrapping my mana around the enchantment effect, I pulled.

The modifications I’d made seemed to be working, though it was hard to identify exactly how I knew that. The concept had been simple. I needed to move something from point A to point B, but as I had pockets of shattering void to manage, the complexity was harder to control.

The fragments of void filled my soul palace, and it was through those that the piece of the immortal world bled into my soul palace. As the first pieces came through, I got the first taste of just what that would mean.

The sky boomed overhead in warning, not unlike the first guards at the auction house, when they finally realized I was there to rob them. Blue lightning flashed down around the dome, but it danced along the side, unable to find purchase.

As I watched, it seemed to be trying to find another path. The lightning’s tendrils reached through the pockets of void into my soul palace. Lashing out, I grabbed the tendrils and focused on Lumi’s power, drawing them inside of me.

With terrifying electric power, I felt the raw strength of lightning bleed into my very being.

Both my body and my soul looked up at the heavens and roared in defiance. “Is that all you have?!” I let the power rush through me, cleansing my body of weakness.

It hurt, but I defied my body and the heavens. It wasn’t damaging me, but instead, it felt like it was scouring out weakness from me.

Laughing in the face of such terrifying power, I took in the next bolt of lightning that came crashing down, followed by a flurry of others. It was like a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum that I wasn’t playing his game.

Up above, the clouds swirled, and power danced along the growing storm as the tribulation formed, gathering more and more steam this time. Its warning hadn’t scared me off, but I could tell it wasn’t playing around this time.

Wenxi’s scroll had mentioned ranks to the tribulation. Up above me, blue lightning threatened the weakest of tribulations. I was partially insulted.

Grabbing hold of the enchantment yet again, I pulled hard, drawing in more of the immortal world from around me and stuffing it into my soul palace, creating a bigger imbalance.

The first bit had been interesting. The will of my soul, where in my soul palace was limited only by my own understanding, became a little more real.

With that came power of my soul that could not only affect what happened in the shared soul space, but reach out and influence reality.

I smirked as I greedily tried to drink down more of that power and stuff it into my soul, making it more real.

“If you aren’t going to even challenge me, heavens, then don’t mind if I get back to work.” I taunted it, wanting it to challenge me harder.

More lightning rained down, crashing around me, chasing the enchantment and sinking into my soul. There in my soul palace, I summoned pillars of metal and ran lines of metal through the cracks of my tile floor and up into my throne.

Basking in the power as it hit me, my soul leaned back. Not only did I weather the lightning with ease, I absorbed it as Lumi had said. I focused then on trying to take that piece of power from the heavens.

A tiny… something… bloomed in my soul. It was like the first spark of a fire. It gave a bright flash before disappearing into the pile of tinder.

Turning to spread my focus beyond pulling the piece of the immortal world into my soul palace, I turned upward and focused on the growing tribulation.

Could I draw that power into my soul? Or was I getting too greedy?

I knew it might be too bold, but I threw caution to the wind. If I was going to ascend to the fifth ring, I was going to do it right, with all the power I could get behind me.

The top of the enchantment split, and the dome opened up as I focused it into a pillar of power instead of a dome. The pillar raced up to meet the tribulation itself.

Lightning hammered down onto the pillar of my enchantment as a soft glow pervaded the air. Tens of thousands of cracks in space covered the pillar of soft light, and when the tribulation sent down another barrage of lightning, I absorbed it far better. This time, I lost little of it to the rest of the world. Instead, I captured it and channeled it into my soul.

And with that, the spark caught. I watched as the power blossomed inside of me, power and control like I’d never imagined. It was at that moment that I realized how big a difference the fourth and fifth ranks were.

The power to shape and understand reality in my soul would translate to control in the outer world. In the past and even now, my soul pushed the spell into being and the world’s own mana would come compliment to create the full power of the spell.

Now, I could force it into being. I didn’t have to cooperate with the world’s mana. I commanded it.

That small trace of power blossomed in me, and I pulled on the world’s mana, drawing it into the enchantment. More and more, till a swirl appeared around me as the mana became so dense, it was visible. It pooling in through the existing mana crystals, making them burn bright with power and solidifying the pillar that went to the heavens as I tried to draw in the tribulation itself.

The sky crackled angrily and red lightning that looked like it was the boiled down blood essence of raging mana beasts, replaced the cool blue lightning that had been there before.

Both the world and my soul palace shook as the first bolt came crashing down. A warning shot that the tribulation wasn’t going to tolerate what I was doing. But having tasted just a little of the 5th ring’s power, I ignored it and greedily continued to suck down as much as I could.

That small spark had become faintly glowing tinder, but I wanted a bonfire. I wanted power that raged through my soul and out into the world with devastation at my fingertips.

The bolt of red lighting pierced me and, like before, the metal rods around the throne in my soul palace functioned as lightning rods, drawing the power into me. A larger spark to the fire that caught the dormant bonfire of power within me.

I wasn’t going to give up till it was a raging inferno of my potential.

Red lightning boomed, and I held firm, drawing ever more strength into me and using it against the tribulation.

Of course it wasn’t done yet. Red lightning was replaced by bright gold as the heavens challenged me further.

Time slipped by. I knew that the sun had set by now and realized that this display was no doubt seen from the city. The bright and powerful display of someone ascending to the 5th rank would no doubt garner attention of the city. It might even be the biggest piece of news since Guo Ying’s death.

But I didn’t have time to worry about that. It would be something to worry about later.

Because the gold lightning was darkening and changing above me.

Massive purple lightning began coiling in the sky like large purple dragons flying about the clouds. As if the heavens had given birth to a monstrosity just for me.

The lightning dragon poked its head from the center of the swirling tribulation and opened its maw, sending a roar of lightning down on me. The top half of my robe blasted apart and the mountain range light up in a bright flash for miles.

This was the first real challenge I’d faced. Inside my soul palace, the lightning coiled through the pillars and tore at my soul, trying to pick me apart and unmake me.

Gritting my teeth, I maintained control of the enchantment. Like hell I was giving up now.

According to Wenxi’s technique, there were five colors to the tribulation. This was just the 4th. If I wanted the power to confront my mother’s family, then I needed to push myself all the way to the fifth and what Wenxi said was the final stage of the tribulation.

Then I needed to push farther. Challenge the heavens and see if there was a 6th color to the tribulation that Wenxi’s technique didn’t mention.

This wasn’t enough. I needed more.

Turning my head up, I laughed at the heavens. “Is this all you got?! Pathetic.” Taking the power I’d accumulated so far, I tried something new. Gathering lighting in my soul palace where I had complete control, I formed a massive burst of electricity and threw it out from my soul palace up through my arm in the real world and blasted my own lightning back into the tribulation cloud.

It struck the purple lightning dragon head on and it exploded in a cascade of thunder and lighting that spilled out of my enchantment and blew the tops off of the surrounding foothills.

Lightning continued to rain down from the defeated beast and I saw the world outside the enchantment for the first time.

Immortals gathered everywhere, watching me like a spectacle. That spill over of lightning had crashed out and injured or killed a number of them that had been too close.

Smirking, I decided that if they wanted a show, then I’d give them a show.

Gathering more power, I lashed out at the tribulation again, but not to destroy it. No, I fed the tribulation cloud in hopes of making it grow.

“You aren’t challenging me enough. Bring out more!” I shot another bolt of lightning into the angry, swirling clouds.

They suddenly grew dark, like the world was brooding. The light that the watchers had been using to see in the dark faded.

“Master, is it over?” I heard Aurora, unsure if it was coming from my soul or in the real world. The two visions of what was happening at some point had blurred as I took things into my soul palace and threw attacks out of it while in the enchantment trying to take a piece of reality.

“No. Now comes the fun part.”

Dark black lighting raced across the sky. It was so dark it was only visible in the night because it seemed to swallow the light of the world. Darker even than midnight somehow. It raced across the tribulation clouds as they crackled with energy like the snickering laugh of someone who thought they had won.

Ha! Bring it on.

Boom.

The world shook. My enchantment shuddered under the strain and I screamed as the mountaintop exploded, raining fragments of the mountain onto the onlookers. But I couldn’t care about them in the moment.

I had enough control over reality that I strained, grabbing the enchantment and myself, holding them together under the assault of the terrifying black lighting.

For a moment, I felt fear. Only for it to be replaced by giddy joy.

THIS was power. Opening myself up, I ignored the mind searing pain, the kind that would make most weep and beg for death. Instead, I thought of it differently and that made the difference.

This pain would become my power. For a brief moment, I understood some of Kat’s twisted joy in pain.

I opened my mouth and tried to swallow a massive bolt of black lightning as it tore me apart. It was too much for me to absorb at once and electricity crackled around my physical body and my soul as I struggled to refine the lightning into my own personal power.

More gathered in the storm above me, crackling like a victorious laugher as more raced down, slamming into me and filling me with more and more till I threatened to burst with the raw power of the black lightning.

This wasn’t working. I needed to think. But the pain was all-consuming of my focus.

The lightning needed refining and I could only think of one thing. I started to cycle seven hell’s meridians, drawing the power of the lightning through my body and into each of my mana beasts’ rings.

I winced as I heard their screams of pain.

Maybe this had been a terrible idea, but you can’t get off a bucking horse. Gritting my teeth and swearing I’d make it up to them ten fold I doubled down drawing the terrifying black lightning into myself and cycling it through my body.

It had become a race. The tribulation trying to flood me, overflow me with power. Yet me and my four mana beasts were all in a race to refine as much of it as we could and turn the power into our own.

“Don’t stop.” Came the harsh voice of Mei. “We can handle it.”

“More.” Quinn grunted. “This isn’t just your tribulation anymore. We are trying to ascend to the 5th rank as well.”

That news was like a bucket of water to the face. “You are using my tribulation?”

“Ha!” Aurora barked in laughter. “Your tribulation. Since when are you ever alone, Master. This is all of our tribulation. Even Lumi is trying to expand her cultivation. More, Master! More!”

Their words were the encouragement I needed to guzzle down all that the tribulation had to throw at me. As endless black lighting tore through everything I was and I channeled it into my soul as it grew more and more powerful.

“Is that all you got?! I screamed at the sky.”

And abruptly, as if in stunned response, the lighting stopped. In the center of the tribulation cloud, a bright light peeked through, almost as if I’d gotten the attention of something… bigger.

Mana rushed out of my formation as it was abruptly shattered and for miles around, every speck of immortal mana gathered into that speck of light.

Cold sweat ran down my back. I wanted bigger, but this seemed… like too much.