Chapter 297 - Experimentation (Patreon)

Reivyn had just enough time to round out his Tier 2 Affinities. He still had two more Affinities to work on, though, his Tier 3 Affinities. Darkness and Light had grown faster than any of his other Affinities, regardless of Tier, so he knew he had an unusual connection to the two. In his mind it was similar to how he had both Abyss and Veridical Affinities, but he didn’t know how the Tier 5 Affinities affected them, or if they even did at all.

It makes sense, at least, Reivyn thought. It’s more about the concepts, though, I think. I wonder if I unlock more Affinities related to the same concepts as Light and Dark have in an abstract way if they will also receive a boost?

It was worth experimenting but later. For now he would finish reaching Transcendence on his two Tier 3 Affinities and bolster the ones he already had. He could always work to unlock more later.

That being said, I did just unlock Heavenly. If I could think of a Tier 4 counterpart to that, I could start with those two. I wonder if I need them both to receive the boost, like they have a feedback loop, or if that doesn’t matter? Another thing to try.

Everytime he made progress in one thing, it always led to more questions than answers. He was in an endless cycle of figuring things out only to have more experiments to run. He didn’t mind, though. It kept life interesting. He couldn’t even imagine what life was like for the vast majority of people who just accepted everything for how it is and didn’t strive to be the very best they could be.

Then again the world would be a much more complicated place if everyone was striving for the top. One of the reasons real war is so unheard of is the abundance of resources each empire and kingdom has access to. If everyone started burning through those resources and created a shortage, war might be more common.

The entire reason I was conscripted to begin with was over the discovery of a new resource in a contested location. That conflict had been pretty tepid. The only reason it had been dangerous was because of the cult influence. They had people trying to kill me, and I’m sure they were the masterminds behind the plan to use a beast wave to weaken us.

Reivyn put thoughts of his Affinities and philosophy on war aside. It was morning again, so it was time for calisthenics. Even though he hadn’t slept, his Meditation ensured he was fully rested. His mind wasn’t fully refreshed, but it was close to it. It was like he had only been awake for the morning already instead of more than a full day.

After the morning training and sparring, Reivyn pulled Kefira aside.

“I want to perform some experiments with my new Abilities, if you wouldn’t mind,” he asked with a smile.

“Sure,” Kefira replied. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking you could Cast a Mana barrier and I would launch my Spells at it to see the results. Nothing fancy like a Magical sparring match or anything.

“I used one of my new Abilities on a training dummy yesterday and destroyed it. Casting at one of your barriers will allow me to gauge the effects on something with more Mana sustaining it, and it won’t invoke further charges by destroying all the training gear.”

“Yeah, I can help you with that. Do you want me to use just a Mana barrier, or do you want one with Space Mana?”

The question caused Reivyn to pause for a second. He hadn’t even considered that.

“We’ll go with regular Mana, first, then Space Mana. It would be good to see the effect on both.”

“Sure thing.”

They chose a spot slightly away from the training dummies but still in the relative location. Instead of using one of the dummies, though, Kefira erected two barriers in front of a wall. The first barrier was for the experiments, and the second was to catch anything before it could do any damage to the wall. Reivyn wasn’t planning on using anything powerful enough to hurt the wall made of Tier 5 stone, but it was better to prepare just in case.

“For this first bit, I want you to maintain a channel on the barrier,” Reivyn directed. Kefira nodded.

Reivyn summoned his Mana and formed an Ice Bolt Spell. He didn’t infuse a lot of Mana into or empower it in any way. He also actively withheld the Transcendent Ability from taking hold. He needed a baseline, after all.

He launched the Spell, and it shattered harmlessly against the Mana Barrier.

“How did that feel on your Mana drain?” He asked.

“It was only a slight uptick,” Kefira responded. “Nothing extravagant. I could hold out against Spells like that all day.”

Reivyn nodded and prepared another Ice Bolt. This time he imbued his Ability into the Mana. All it took was a mental shift in his focus to disable the effect. Just relaxing that focus applied the Ability to his Spell. It actually took special concentration to not affect his Mana as Transcendent Abilities changed the fundamental nature of the Affinity.

He once more tossed the Spell out. It harmlessly shattered against the Mana Barrier once more, but Reivyn noticed a bit of a flare up in the surrounding Mana. Kefira frowned for a moment before returning to her regular expression.

“How was that?” He asked.

“Significantly more taxing,” Kefira said. “Not only the impact, but even a fraction of a second before the impact, I could feel more drain on the barrier. That’s not all. There was a lingering effect that caused Mana to continue to drain, and I had to over compensate to cut it off. I think if I hadn’t overpowered the effect, it would have lasted a lot longer.” She glanced at Reivyn with a sheepish expression. “Sorry, I did it on instinct. I know you want to test these things out, so if you Cast another one, I’ll reign myself in and let it go for however long it lasts.”

“No worries,” Reivyn smiled. He Cast another Spell.

This time, initially, it had the exact same effect once more; however, instead of a simple flare of Mana and being done, Kefira let the lingering effect eat at the Mana barrier while maintaining a steady stream of Mana to not overpower the effect.

To his Sight, the Mana barrier had a small divot where he had struck with his Spell. He hadn’t really noticed last time because it had been fixed so quickly. The divot slowly expanded as Kefira failed to increase the Mana she was funneling into the barrier.

The two stood and watched for over a minute. The effect of increasing the burden to maintain the barrier didn’t change. It didn’t accelerate or decelerate. The shift was absolute, and it stayed that way for as long as nothing changed. The rate of the divot increasing was also steady.

“Give it a bit more, but not enough to fully recover,” Reivyn said.

Kefira nodded in acknowledgement and fed enough Mana to bring the divot back to its initial size. She didn’t top up the barrier or go beyond, though, and the rate of decline continued. The divot began to expand once more.

“Interesting. Okay, one more experiment with this one. I’m going to cast another, identical Ict Bolt, and let’s see if that changes anything with the lingering effect.”

He Cast the Spell and the divot immediately expanded exactly as much as the Spell would have initially caused. They watched the barrier for a moment, and the rate of increase in the divot was exactly double. Reivyn nodded his head.

“It seems like the Ability adds an additive effect of Mana drain, or as the Ability describes, “energy,” and it will continue until it is overcome. Tie off the barrier and let’s watch what happens.”

Kefira once more nodded her head. She tied the barrier off in place and quit funneling more Mana into it. The Mana barrier wasn’t anything special, so the divot quickly expanded until it completely consumed the Mana comprising the barrier. It expanded in a perfect circle from the center, and the Mana barrier simply disintegrated away. They watched to see if the Ability would affect anything else, but it became inert once it had no more Mana to siphon from the barrier.

“Alright, last experiment with this Affinity. Give this barrier a bit more oomph, and I’m going to rapid-Cast a dozen Ice Bolts at it to verify that it is actually additive and not exponential or has diminishing returns. Then, I want you to overlap a simple string of Mana to the other barrier in front of the wall without combining them and see if the Ability will latch onto that string and travel to the other barrier.”

“Ok,” Kefira nodded.

She created a much more robust shield in front of the other one, tying it off after imbuing it with far more Mana. The shield didn’t look any different to the naked eye, but Reivyn could tell with his Sight that it was far “thicker.” That wasn’t exactly the right word for it, as it didn’t take up any additional space, and it wasn’t even technically more dense. Iti just had a far stronger Mana imprint and shined brighter to his Senses.

Once the Mana barrier was in place, Reivyn cast a dozen rapid-fire Ice Bolts at the construct. As they expected, the divot was exactly a dozen times larger, and its rate of consumption was a dozen times more. It was purely additive.

The couple watched the Mana disintegrate in the Mana shield before it reached the tether connecting it to the other one. Just as Reivyn suspected, the Ability latched onto the tether, followed it to the other shield, and shortly, there were no more Mana constructs.

“That… seems overpowered, honestly,” Reivyn finally said.

Kefira nodded.

“Yeah, so far, it seems that as long as something doesn’t actively overpower the effect, it will eat up an infinite amount of Mana. If there are wards not channeled by anyone, you could just casually create a hole in the Mana, walk through it, and eventually, the whole thing would disappear. All with just a little bitty Ice Bolt.”

“That can’t be right,” Reivyn shook his head. “There’s got to be more to it. How much Mana did you imbue your shield with?”

“I started with a base of 100 Mana,” Kefira explained. “Tying it off causes degradation over time, but not enough to impact our experiment that quickly. For that last one, I used 1,200 Mana. How much did you use for your Ice Bolt Spell?”

“50.”

“Hmm… One more round? I’ll use a thousand Mana, and you just use one Ice Bolt Spell, and we’ll see if 50 Mana is enough to eat through an entire thousand.”

Reivyn nodded, and the two set up their experiment once more. With the two shields in place, the tether once more securing them, Reivyn tossed a simple Ice Bolt Spell at the shield. It once more shattered against the Spell, and the two watched the aftereffects eat away at the shield.

Kefira maintained an active hold on the Shield, but she didn’t funnel anymore Mana into it. This way she could gauge exactly how much Mana was destroyed based on how much Mana she sensed she would need to restore the shield to full power.

After a couple of minutes, the expanding divot finally stopped and didn’t drain anymore Mana from the shield. The two let out a breath neither of them had realized they were holding.

“150 Mana,” Kefira said.

Reivyn nodded.

“I’ll hit it with 100 Mana to verify,” he said.

He cast another Spell. Exactly what they expected to happen transpired. The divot started off double in size, the rate of decay was twice as fast, and the ending degradation was twice as much.”

“300 additional Mana,” Kefira confirmed. “So your Ability siphons away three times as much Mana as is used to Cast the Spell. It looks like combining the two experiments together without giving enough Mana to fully absorb the effect threw us off.”

“Yeah, it would have been nice, but it wouldn’t have made any sense,” Reivyn said. “It would have broken everything we know about conservation of energy if it had been infinite. Too bad, huh.” Reivyn chuckled. He glanced at Kefira. “Are you willing to suffer a little bit of pain?”

“Nope, I’ll do it,” Serilla stepped between them.

Reivyn was surprised. He knew she was standing nearby, as she always was, but she was usually in the background and didn’t interject. As soon as Reivyn hinted at Casting the Spell directly at Kefira, though, Serilla intervened. Reivyn shrugged and glanced back at Kefira.

“You don’t have to,” Kefira shook her head.

“I know,” Serilla replied. “And if you’re really hell-bent on getting yourself hurt, I won’t stop you, but I should step in for something like this.”

“You know I love you, right?” Kefira smiled.

“I know,” Serilla nodded.

“Okay, I’ll tone it down to only 10 Mana, and I’ll make it go real slow so there isn’t any kinetic damage. We’re testing the Ability itself, after all.”

“Sounds good to me,” Serilla said.

She took a stance, feet shoulder-width apart, hands by her side, and waited for Reivyn to Cast his Spell. Reivyn didn’t move away, and simply Cast the Spell and lobbed it over to bounce off of her chest. Iti was almost comical how the Bolt didn’t shatter as they were used to and simply flopped onto the ground where it slowly melted away.

“That was kind of underwhelming,” Reivyn chuckled.

“Shush,” Kefira gestured for him to be quiet.

Serilla stood in place and frowned. Her eyes took on a far away look as she obviously pulled up her Status. After just a moment, the frown went away and she looked back up at the two.

“That felt weird,” she said. “It felt like I was out of breath? Like I was doing strenuous exercise standing still. The Spell drained 20 Stamina.”

“Got it,” Reivyn said. “It drains double Stamina and triple Mana. I’m not willing to increase the amount of Mana and hit you again. Despite what just happened, I don’t actually like hurting my friends.”

“We spar all the time,” Serilla pointed out.

“That’s different. Sparring, you can defend yourself and hurt me back… well, you could try to defend yourself and hurt me back.” Reivyn smirked.

Serilla rolled her eyes and punched him in the shoulder. With his higher Stats, Skills, and True Strike Transcendent Ability, it really was hard for Serilla to ever get one over on Reivyn. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a smug jerk for pointing it out in her opinion. Reivyn just chuckled.

“That does it for Ice and Energy Drain for now,” he declared. “We have the basics down. Once I Level up the Affinity, though, we should try it again and see if an increase in Affinity Level increases the Ability.

“Now onto the next Affinity: Plasma! For this one, we’ll just assume it has a similar effect on Stamina compared to Ice. I really don’t feel like incinerating anyone’s flesh just to find out.”

Kefira and Reivyn both chuckled. Serilla maintained the same stoic expression as always.

—

The two kept up the experiments for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. It was a day for Meditation instead of practical application, but Reivyn waived that to get all the experimentation done in one go.

Plasma acted incredibly similar to Ice, but instead of draining three times the Mana away into nothingness, it consumed an equal amount of Mana to empower itself. A Plasma Beam did as much damage as one Cast with double the Mana while also draining away an equal amount from the Mana Barrier. It was quite effective.

Not everything was based around Mana, though, and Reivyn was unwilling to experiment on his friends to find out the effects on Stamina and/or Health. He wasn’t sure, but he had a suspicion that it would drain either Health or a combination of Health and Stamina instead of just Stamina. The Ice Bolt wasn’t inherently damaging, but the Plasma Beam was.

Who knows, if I Cast an Ice Bolt powerful enough to break through the natural defense of something, maybe it will drain Health, too. I’ll have to see next time we fight some monsters. There should be plenty of goblins to toy with on our trip to the teleport circle in a couple weeks.

The rest of the other Affinities didn’t have such obvious effects on the Spells themselves. Instead they affected the Mana itself more than the Spell, though that didn’t mean there was nothing.

Using the Earth ability and letting it run wild caused strange, random mutations to any Spell Reivyn formed with it. As long as he maintained the actual Spell form and didn’t let the wild growth of the Affinity alter the fundamental Spell, it still worked. Sometimes, though, in some of his experiments where he let it do what it wanted, it just fizzled out into nothing or caused a backlash. Total, unrestrained growth of his Mana constructs wasn’t always beneficial.

Lightning Mana caused the Spells to form almost instantaneously. Even creating ridiculously large, convoluted constructs with a lot of knots and intricate visualization was formed in an instant. He actually failed to control the Mana on various occasions and fizzled the Spells or suffered a backlash the same as the wild growth. It took immense control and foresight into exactly what he wanted to construct to get it to work on anything more complicated than the basic Spell forms.

Mist proved quite handy in concealing his intentions. In order to test it, he played a game with Kefira where she wouldn’t form the Mana barrier until after Reivyn held the Bolt Spell, ready to go, in his hand. She would have to try and figure out the Affinity and counter it the best she could. Her Mana Sight was pretty advanced, so she was able to glean some clues some of the time, but she never got a perfect counter, even by accident.

Metal was pretty straightforward. Reivyn would conceive of a tapestry he wanted to visualize, and it would almost snap into place with no effort on his part once he got to that point of the Mana construct.

Mud was Kefira’s least favorite. When she defended against the Affinity while channeling Mana actively into her shield, she described the sensation of cold wariness, like she had to trudge through an unending field of mud in the cold rain. It didn’t actually drain any Stamina from her, but it mentally taxed her. If she just tied the barrier off, though, it did nothing.

Magma was straightforward. It added some oomph to the kinetic power of the Bolt, far beyond what Reivyn intended when he Cast the Spell. Not only did it accelerate incredibly quickly, but it seemed like it hammered the shield harder than it should have.

Happy with the results of the experiments, Reivyn bid goodbye to the two girls and headed back to the inn. He grabbed a quick lunch before getting comfortable on his bed, ready to dive into breaking through with his last two Affinities ready to Transcend.

He had used both Darkness and Light Affinity for their base purposes before, notably in the tests at the Academy, but he remembered his previous thoughts about their connection to the Abyss and Veridical. Leaning into that connection, he focused on the more esoteric definitions of the two Affinities.

To work on his Darkness Affinity, he focused on the cult he recalled earlier in the day. They had laid dormant for thousands of years, pulling the strings in the darkness, evading the Light. They had caused unknown amounts of damage over the years, and they festered like a disease.

He dove into the feeling and almost immediately felt the familiar click in his mind. He glanced out the window and didn’t notice any change in the sun or ambient lighting. He pulled up his System clock and noted that only twenty minutes had gone by.

That was quick, Reivyn was surprised. Maybe focusing on the Abyssal connection was the right choice. Let’s see what we got here.

He pulled up his Notification.

[Affinity Leveled Up!]
[Tier 3:]
[Darkness (100 ->101)]
[Transcendence: Insidious]
[Ability: Darkness Mana lingers, hidden from easy exposure]

Hmm, that’s exactly what I was going for. It looks like another one of those Abilities that will work best in combination with others. I’ll have to check it out tomorrow.

With that done, and a ton of time still on his hands, Reivyn dove back into his Meditation. This time he focused on the esoteric meaning of Light. Veridical meant truth, not exactly a perfect duality to the Abyss, but it could be with a certain frame of mind.

That didn’t matter, though, as he didn’t draw on Veridical the same way he had Abyss. Instead he pulled from his Hero Class. Specifically when he had the showdown with the cloaked Archer in Vairo and his Hero Skills activated and advanced. Standing up to the darkness.

That wasn’t all, though. He had been an inspiration to his men. He had always acted in a manner to inspire others. He was a guiding light to bring them together to ward off the enemy, whether that was a horde from a Dungeon Break, a beast wave, or simply ferocious beasts in the wild. He stood in the front and commanded discipline and teamwork, inspiring morale.

The familiar click once more resonated in his mind. He opened his eyes and pulled up his Notifications.

[Affinity Leveled Up!]
[Tier 3:]
[Light (100 ->101)]
[Transcendence: Beacon]
[Ability: Light Mana guides the weaves, binding the threads together]

[Achievement!]
[Reach Transcendence with Two Tier Three Affinities]
[Minor Increases Synergy with Transcendent Affinity Abilities]

Reivyn smiled.