Chapter 296 - Conceptualized (Patreon)

With the success of figuring out the Transcendent Ability of his Ice Mana, Reivyn had another Affinity that was almost the polar opposite in its construction. It only took a little mental tweaking to his mindset to figure out the direction he wanted to go with his next Affinity.

It wasn’t a sudden epiphany like with his Ice Affinity, though. Epiphanies worked in strange ways, allowing people to bypass a lot of effort to arrive at an end goal much quicker. He was still taking a short cut with the understanding he gained from the breakthrough, but he still had to put in the work.

He spent the next hour incinerating the targets with variations of Plasma Mana over and over. The training dummies were made of Tier 5 materials, and they were enchanted by Tier 5 Classers. The dummies he destroyed would spend a little time in their destroyed state to allow one to examine the effectiveness of their Skills and Magic, but after a short window, they would repair themselves with a brief pull of ambient Mana.

Higher-Tier dummies existed, but they required much more Mana than a simple increased pull of ambient Mana could provide. These were either infused directly by those using the training dummies, or they were supplied with Mana Crystals.

Reivyn didn’t need the higher-end training dummies. He wasn’t trying to make his Spells as potent as possible. He was trying to imbue a concept in them. It might make it considerably more powerful, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. His Ice Spells would be considered much more powerful now, but that was due to their effect and not any increase in destructive power.

After an hour of tweaking his Spells and mindset, he felt something click, mentally, and his next searing Beam of Plasma shot out and temporarily destroyed another target. The beam made contact, and almost immediately, a bright flash flared with a small explosion. Reivyn’s vision was blinded for a moment, but he could still see perfectly fine with his Divine Sense.

The training dummy had popped after a fraction of a second of making contact with the Plasma Beam. The Beam had absorbed the Mana imbuing the enchantments and destroyed them, leading to a cascading effect which caused the flash and minor explosion.

The training dummy was thoroughly destroyed.

So much for Transcendent Spells not necessarily being more destructive, Reivyn snorted. Then again it just happened to be the set of circumstances and the Ability I unlocked intersecting. Ironically if the training dummy didn’t have a self-repair enchantment, it wouldn’t have been as thoroughly destroyed.

Reivyn shook his head at the realization he was going to have to compensate for the destruction, but he wasn’t too upset about it. He was happy that he had achieved his goal and had another breakthrough.

[Affinity Leveled Up!]
[Tier 2:]
[Plasma (100 ->101)]
[Transcendence: Energy Steal]
[Ability: Plasma Mana absorbs energy around it to empower itself]

Reivyn had realized that if Ice Affinity was draining energy to make it colder, than Plasma was the opposite, adding more and more energy to make it hotter. Instead of draining the energy away, it siphoned it to empower itself.

Several of the others training their Spells in the yard gawked at the smoking ruin of Reivyn’s training dummy. They glanced back and forth between Reivyn and the dummy, perplexed. They had been present the whole time, and there hadn’t been any significant fluctuation of the amount of Mana Reivyn had used in his Spells, so they were trying to figure out how he had destroyed the dummy.

Several of them seemed to have an “ah-ha” moment and nodded in silent congratulations to Reivyn. Others whispered to them to find out the inside details, and soon everyone gave Reivyn a gesture of respect. Everyone here in the Tier 5 Region understood Transcendence and what it took. Many of them were working toward it themselves, though it appeared to still be an uncommon event.

Reivyn turned and headed to the nearby guard post. The training yards were maintained by the volunteer Adventurer guards. He knocked on the open door and stepped inside. One of the guards motioned him over to a desk he was sitting at.

“What’s the issue?” He asked, not impolitely.

“I achieved a breakthrough in an Affinity and destroyed one of the training dummies,” Reivyn admitted.

“Ahh, I see,” the guard nodded his head like this was a common-enough event that he wasn’t surprised. Just because it didn’t happen all the time didn’t mean it didn’t happen at all. “We keep spares in a warehouse. The cost to replace the dummy is one Skill Shard.”

Reivyn nearly balked at the price. He understood the local economy more after watching trades and participating in the open market. A whole Skill Shard was entirely too much for a simple training dummy. The guard saw the look on his face and cracked a smile, chuckling.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “That’s actually the price of four training dummies; however, we can’t commission just one training dummy to be enchanted at a time, so we have to always get them in batches of four. We’re not a for-profit organization, so you can take this missive,” the guard handed him a stamped sheet of paper with a bit of Mana swirling about it to Reivyn, “and you can pocket three training dummies to take with you.”

“Huh, that’s not that bad a deal,” Reivyn nodded. “I mean, I have to take the deal, but at least I’m not being screwed over.”

“That’s the spirit,” the guard said, pumping his fist slightly. “Anything else I can help you with?”

“Nope, that was all,” Reivyn shook his head. “Thanks.”

Reivyn handed over a Skill Shard. The guard took it, opened a drawer and deposited it in a little lockbox located inside.

“You’re welcome.”

Reivyn exited the guardpost and glanced at the training yard. His friends and parents were still engaged in their training and sparring, and he was technically spending the day on a practical application style training, but he decided to go with his gut and return to his inn room. He had a feeling that his present mindset and momentum would allow him to achieve a breakthrough while Meditating, and he was going to find out if he was right.

It didn’t take long for him to arrive at his room. He took his boots off and got comfortable sitting on his bed. He delved into his inner thoughts, entering a state of relaxed Meditation almost immediately.

He sat and contemplated how he wanted to tackle this before getting started. He reviewed what he had done with his most recent breakthroughs and tried to apply the same logic as he grabbed his next Affinity: Wood.

I’ve dealt with energy transference, both positive and negative, already, his thoughts flickered on the outskirts of his consciousness. The next best thing I can think of that’s similar is Wood. It's not energy transference I’m looking for, though. It’s energy manipulation.

How does Wood equal energy manipulation? Through growth. That’s what I’ll focus on.

He cycled his Mana through his Channels, imbuing it with his Wood Affinity. He thought about what he wanted the Mana to do, and he formed the concept in his mind much like he would when visualizing a tapestry to empower a Spell. Instead of building the picture with the Mana weaves, though, he was trying to push that concept into the Mana threads themselves.

He pictured a sapling budding from the ground. The sapling grew up while its roots burrowed down. Stems branched out, and leaves and flowers opened up. Sunlight and water rained down, and the little tree grew up. Light and oxygen entered from the top, percolating down. Water and nutrients entered from the bottom, rising up.

Reivyn didn’t try and control how the sapling grew. It wasn’t his place to dictate its life to itself. He was simply watching and facilitating the growth. He let his Mana flow according to the imagery he had in his head.

The little sapling continued to expand in all directions. Its trunk grew in height, its roots in depths, and its limbs spread to cover the ground all around. Sometimes the branches grew in unpredictable ways. He let it. He was fascinated to see where it would go.

The imaginary tree wasn’t any specific kind of tree, either. A wide variety of different flowers exploded all along its stems as it continued to ascend. Different fruits formed from the flowers, some he had no actual context for in real life.

He let the tree grow. He felt his Mana, little by little, take on the same aspect.

He felt that familiar click, and he came out of his Meditation.

There before him, a shining tree made of his Wood Mana was floating before him. It perfectly mirrored the tree had imagined, but he had done nothing to consciously shape the construct before him. He stared at the intricate Mana tree for several moments before slowly pulling the weaves apart and reabsorbing the Mana into his Channels.

He opened his flashing Notification Window.

[Affinity Leveled Up!]
[Tier 2:]
[Wood (100 ->101)]
[Transcendence: Facsimile]
[Ability: Wood Mana allows its weaves to grow and evolve]

[Achievement!]
[Reach Transcendence with Three Tier 2 Affinities]
[Minor Increased Effectiveness of Affinity Transcendent Abilities]

Facsimile. I gave my Wood Mana the properties of life. And an Achievement, too. I got an Achievement for getting all four Tier 1 Affinities to Level 101. I guess the System believes it’s harder to break through with Tier 2 Affinities, thus requiring only three of them. Will Tier 3 only need two?

Reivyn’s attention focused on the wording of the Ability: “allows its weaves…” I wonder…?

He closed his eyes again and gathered his Wood Mana. Instead of letting it run rampant on its own like before, though, he brought another thread into the weave. This one was a random Affinity that he just plucked from his subconscious.

A thread of Air Mana interwove with the Wood Mana. At first nothing really happened. He just had two different threads weaving around each other, traveling through his Mana Channels. Suddenly the two threads were no longer two separate threads. It became one weave.

Reivyn pulled the weave out of his body and let it hover in front of him. He loosened his control over the weave while keeping the bindings of the threads tight. As soon as he let go, the weave started twisting and turning all on its own. It created knots in unexpected places and formed a shape he had no intention of.

He fed more Mana to his construct, and additional weaves sprung out of him on their own. Soon a tangled web of Mana floated in front of him. Looking at it, he got the sense of a powerful gale blowing across the open plains.

He smiled in satisfaction before regaining control of the weaves and bringing the Mana back into himself.

Interesting, he thought. What is the fundamental difference between a Transcendent Ability with my Mana and weaves, knots, and tapestries? The weaves, knots, and tapestries affect the Spell construct while the Transcendent Ability affects the foundations of the Mana itself! I can infuse different Affinity threads into my weaves to give them the same properties.

It’s not perfect. I noticed there was a significant decline in the wild-growth, or evolution, of the Mana weave with air added to the mix instead of pure Wood. Adding more and more Affinities could impart additional effects, but at the cost of effectiveness. I’ll just have to see what alleviates that cost. It might be something as simple as increasing the Affinity Levels. It might be something else… We’ll see eventually.

Reivyn felt his stomach growl and he glanced out the window. He was surprised at the shift in lighting, so he pulled up his System clock. It had taken him an hour and a half to unlock his latest Transcendent Ability. It felt like five minutes.

It’s still too early to go grab something to eat, and the others aren’t back, yet. Another hour and a half to two hours shouldn’t be too much to miss having a meal with the others. I’ll go ahead and pull up the next one.

With yet another success, Reivyn’s momentum was only building. He was confident he would be able to get the next one done before dinner time.

After entering his Meditation again, Reivyn focused on his next Affinity: Mist. With the understanding that he could affect entire weaves with the Transcendent Ability of one thread, the first thing that popped into his mind was a heavy fog.

Mist could obscure. It could confuse. It could block one’s sight and not let them know what was hidden inside. He let his Mist Affinity traverse his Mana Channels, imbuing the thought of being lost within the clouds, unable to determine the way out.

Every direction he looked, it was just a wall of gray. Anything could be out there. He could be getting further and further away from his goal, on the precipice of disaster, or he could be one step away from safety. He didn’t know, and neither did his Mana.

After an indeterminate amount of time, that familiar click echoed in his brain. He slowly opened his eyes to an empty room. There was no explosion of Mana floating about him like an obscuring Mist as he had imagined. That wasn’t the property of his concept. There was no wild, uncontrolled growth. His Mana still sat safely in his Mana Channels.

He opened his Notification Window.

[Affinity Leveled Up!]
[Tier 2:]
[Mist (100 ->101)]
[Transcendence: Opacity]
[Ability: Mist Mana obscures the Mana weave]

He nodded his head and immediately experimented with the Mana. He chose an Affinity that had an obvious color to it: Fire. Different types of Affinities had different identifying features. One didn’t necessarily see the Mana, unless one had Mana Sight, but even just sensing it, one could tell. Fire had a red-orange tinge to it, whether it was simply Sensed or Saw.

He interwove his Fire Mana thread with a Mist thread, once more combining them from two separate threads into one weave. The properties that identified the weave as containing Fire - the color, feel, even taste - snuffed out and all that was left was the feeling of a blank, gray wall. If he didn’t already know the weave contained Fire, he would never be able to tell.

Nice. That’ll make counter-spells all the more difficult for any of my opponents. I could be heavily focused on one Affinity, and as soon as they get used to it and come up with countermeasures, BAM! Completely different Affinity.

He checked his System clock and saw that only another forty-five minutes had transpired. Nobody had come into his room to bother him, but he would bet he would find at least one other of his Party out in the tavern area.

He got up and exited his room. He sauntered over to Kefira’s room just in case she was in there. He had his Divine Sense turned off so he didn’t accidentally intrude on anyone’s privacy, so he truly didn’t know if she was in there or not. He knocked a couple times, but after no answer, he shrugged and made his way to the common room.

At one of the larger tables, the rest of the Party, including Kefira and her ever-present shadow Serilla, were seated and just about to place an order. He walked up, and everyone turned to welcome him with a wave or a smile.

“We didn’t want to bother you while you were training,” Kefira said as he sat down next to her.

“It’s no problem,” he waved her concerns away. “I got lucky and just finished up with a bout.”

Kefira’s expression brightened.

“Did you succeed?” She asked with excitement.

Reivyn nodded his head.

“I’ve actually unlocked four Abilities since this morning,” he confirmed. “I’m on a roll.”

“I would say so. Maybe you should skip dinner and get back to it. I wouldn’t want you to lose your momentum.”

“Nah, I have one more thing I want to experiment with, anyway.” He gave her a significant look. She quirked an eyebrow, waiting for him to elaborate. “I want to see if our dual-Meditation affects the ability to breakthrough, either positively or negatively. I have a feeling it won’t matter, but I want to check.”

“Sure, sounds good to me,” Kefira agreed.

The meal was pleasant and uneventful. Reivyn was happy that things were so stable and didn’t have to worry about interruptions to his training schedule.

He and Kefira made their way to his room. He shared a room with Teilon, but he was off with Kimberly. The pair decided to let Serilla have some time to herself, alone in their room while taking advantage of Teilon’s absence.

They both got comfortable and entered their dual-Meditative Mana Channeling. Reivyn focused on the properties of the Mana and contemplated how to affect it. An idea popped into his head, and he shifted his mentality to chase that thought.

The Mana flowing through their Channels wasn’t particularly turbulent. It was sedate, controlled. It didn’t move too fast or too slow. He knew it was optimized between the two of them, and relatively, it wasn’t that slow. They each had a fairly high underlying Mana Channeling Skill. Even though his Skill had been subsumed into Magic Prodigy, it was still there.

Each of them had major control of the Mana within their own body, and it was mostly an awareness while in the body of their partner. Reivyn’s idea had him lay down a sort of line, for want of a better word. He didn’t maintain control of it, and it wasn’t stationary, but it was there.

His line tracked all the way through his own Mana Channels, and they looped through Kefira’s Channels, as well. He completed the circuit with his mental hold on the idea, slowly altering the Mana coursing along the line. Kefira didn’t seem to notice anything. There was no physical, or metaphysical for that matter, manifestation. Not yet, at least. It was all in Reivyn’s head, though it would come thundering into existence shortly.

Another mental click, and Kefira gasped. Reivyn could feel her warring with her instinct to pull away, but she fought it and maintained the connection as the Mana blazed through the lines, completing the circuit many times faster than the original speed.

Reivyn mentally pumped his fist but kept a stoic facade. The duo let the Mana course through them at the new speed for some time before they both instinctively broke the connection and opened their eyes.

“What was that?!” Kefira asked, hand to her chest, breathing hard.

“That,” Reivyn answered, “was a breakthrough.”

“What Affinity was it?” Kefira frowned. “I couldn’t tell. It didn’t seem to take on any specific Affinity.”

“Well yeah,” Reivyn nodded. “That wasn’t me imbuing the Mana with the entire Affinity. I was just applying the one concept. I used Lightning Affinity, and the Transcendent Ability is for the Mana to conduct a lightning speed.”

Reivyn brought up his Notification to check it real quick.

[Affinity Leveled Up!]
[Tier 2:]
[Lightning (100 ->101)]
[Transcendence: Conduit]
[Ability: Lightning Mana Weaves conduct Mana lightning-quick]

“It seems I was correct,” Reivyn smiled. “Dual-Meditation doesn’t prevent us from advancing our Affinities.”

“I’d say,” Kefira chuckled. “That was definitely something else.”

She stared off into space for a moment, obviously checking something with her System.

“It’s getting late, and we’ve actually gone over our usual time,” she said with a small frown. “I don’t want to, but I should really be getting back to get a full night’s rest.”

“Alright, I won’t keep you.”

The two shared a quick kiss before Kefira exited the room.

Reivyn got comfortable once more and dived right back in. He was motivated and full of energy despite the full day. He wasn’t tired and there was no reason to stop now that he was really getting going.

He spent the rest of the evening sifting through different ideas and putting himself in different mindsets. He experimented with different concepts until he felt like one was just right. Some concepts for some of the Affinities could sort of, kind of make sense, but they just didn’t work in practice. He imagined he would have to increase his Affinity Levels before he could apply some of the more out-there concepts.

Things that were more basic, more intrinsic, to the underlying Affinity had better chances of leading to a breakthrough.

By the end of his all-night session, he had several other Notifications waiting for him when he came out of his deep dive Meditation.

[Affinity Leveled Up!]
[Tier 2:]
[Magma (100 ->101)]
[Transcendence: Fury]
[Ability: Magma Mana weaves erupt with fury when Cast]

[Affinity Leveled Up!][Tier 2:]
[Metal (100 ->101)]
[Transcendence: Ductility]
[Ability: Visualized Tapestries hold their shapes when woven with Metal Mana]

[Achievement!]
[Reach Transcendence with Seven Tier 2 Affinities]
[Upgrade: Increased Effectiveness of Affinity Transcendent Abilities]

[Affinity Leveled Up!]
[Tier 2:]
[Mud (100 ->101)]
[Transcendence: Mental Exhaustion]
[Ability: Mud Mana puts an opponent’s mind into a mental slog]