Chapter 204 - Choices (Patreon)

The more Jiran struggled, the harder the guardian squeezed. The chakram of Elemental Castigation he formed and was summarily snuffed out, the mana pulled apart and sucked into nothing. Jiran’s eyes bulged as the tingling energy he had felt around the beast now pressed on him from every direction, crushing the breath from his lungs. The challenger density crammed inside his body felt ready to ooze from his pores. In that moment of desperation, he froze stiff, unwilling to further his torment by fighting against a creature so much more powerful than himself. The seconds ticked by and the flipping panels counted down to a sure death.

“Let…go!” Jiran drew in a shaky breath. Unsurprisingly, his plea was ignored. Though the moment he ceased his useless flailing, the pressure on him stopped getting worse. He attempted to touch the guardian with a sliver of the aura inside him, but the portion of Manabody that made the attempt was instantly shredded upon exiting his body.

While his instincts fought to control the very natural fear coursing through him, his minds churned for a solution. A hundred thoughts were examined, each and every one discarded. Against such an overwhelming foe there was nothing in his arsenal that could prevail without also killing himself. There was only one conclusion that stayed his hand from unsealing the gate in his soul and unleashing a torrent of Madra’s mana into the hallway: The guardian didn’t kill him immediately.

Either I’m supposed to figure out how to get it to release me, or it's only here to slow me down and will let me go on its own. This place is all about the aura, and it's clearly immune to mine so I’m betting it's only impeding my progress for a specific amount of time. If it doesn’t let go in a few more seconds though, I’ll be forced to try something a little more extreme.

Jiran slammed his eyes shut, determined to use the time wisely. Right now, he needed a solution to getting out of this hallway and staring into the darkness wasn’t helping. The answer came to him quickly and he growled, annoyed it had taken the beast holding him still to figure it out. Before it grabbed him, Jiran had pulled ahead of the encroaching abyss by roughly thirty seconds. When the guardian released him, his lead had shrunk to twenty. With little effort, the beast grabbed him by the arm in a painful grip and tossed him toward the darkness at a stomach-heaving speed.

Jiran’s aura slammed outward, ripping at the threads of the framework to stop his momentum. His Manabody reached the walls just in time to warn him of the incoming attacks. He dove parallel to the floor and spun sideways, narrowly avoiding the lightning-fast slivers of metal. A thought formed a layer of mana around his skin that would prevent any additional stray drops of blood from eliciting another of the worst hugs in history. Jiran realigned himself with the far end of the hall, turning a baleful eye on his captor who had returned to its previous position blocking his way forward. 

Since it wasn’t coming after him again, Jiran lifted one arm straight up to enact his plan. Two key observations played into Jiran’s solution. First, the guardians were only spawning from the walls far ahead of him, not nearby enough that he would accidentally touch one with his aura the moment it appeared. Second, every single part of them moved except the liquid-metal puddle they emerged from. Since the needles came from the walls as well, he had no choice but to keep his aura spread out across the slick surfaces. As for all the space between the walls, it was actually a huge burden on him to constantly adjust where his aura could and couldn’t be as the monsters moved about.

With those factors in mind, Jiran pushed ninety-five percent of his aura out and spread it to completely coat the four walls. Only a single wrist-thick strand of the soul-stuff remained, connecting his lifted arm to the portion of his aura on the ceiling. Now, all he had to do was take note of the puddles and avoid them while swinging himself forward and making sure his tether didn’t come in contact with any of their predictable movements. 

Jiran’s progress turned slow, yet inexorable. He weaved around thousands of projectiles, their trajectories obvious so long as he spotted them in time. He used the rope of aura to pull himself forward in jerking, twisting motions, often flinging himself to the side or back as the guardians thickened, flooding the passage with their silvery forms. They created ever more complex puzzles of movement he had to circumvent but their efforts only made the challenge easier as the more of them there were clogging up the space, the fewer needles he had to deal with.

He was so focused that before he realized it, only a single obstacle remained between him and the screen marking the end of the challenge. Nearly thirty guardians clogged the last four meters. Their puddles took up the entirety of the walls and their bodies left a narrow space that he would need to dive through to fit. He stared at that tiny gap created by hundreds of grasping, tier ten hands and recalled the Aahmra teaching him to hold his aura inside him. It had been a painful lesson, one that forced him to face the demons of his personality and accept them. Many of those flaws still existed, but they certainly didn’t bother him as he simply swung into the hole, sucking his aura from the walls and pulling it into his body behind him. Jiran imagined the guardians grumbling in annoyance when they failed to catch him again and his smile grew to a cheshire grin.

I’ve gotten too used to filling the entire space around me with aura to block sound, detect attacks, and protect myself. After this, I’ll definitely start thinking outside the box… or bubble, I’ve made for myself.

He didn’t look back after coming out the other end and immediately touched the screen which promptly revealed the expected doorway. Through it, was yet another white-paneled room. This one was unique as well, having ten clear exits. The doors were all open, beyond each were scenes from entirely separate versions of hell.

One revealed a cavern full to bursting with a bubbling lake of magma. The air was clogged with smoke and bursts of spontaneous flame puffed as the heat reached ignition temperature for the gasses trapped within. The two doorways on either side of it showed a vast open sky with no end, and the deep darkness one finds at the bottom of an ocean. The scenes were similar through the rest of the doors, covering every element Jiran had devised with Shaping when he was still a human.

There’s even acid, and that fluctuating darkness has to be gravity. There’s no way these specific elements being represented is a coincidence. If there were ever any doubts that each arena is made specifically for the individual, they've been laid to rest.

With the clicking panels approaching as motivation, Jiran hovered into the new room. Experimentally, his feet landed on the floor and when they actually found purchase, he breathed a sigh of relief that was instantly wiped away as a flashing notification appeared.

Choose quintessence infusion to begin phase one

Phase one? Does that mean the real arena hasn’t even started yet?! Last time, there were three phases. Will there be four this time? Calm down, Jiran. Can’t get impatient or I’ll end up making more mistakes. 

It wants me to choose an infusion for my aura? Considering the theme so far, and the implications of each room holding a separate element, it must be referring to an aspect. Glad I asked Olive to tell me everything she knew about them a while ago. Dokkuun told me it's only possible to choose a single element for an aspect and these separate rooms, each with their own element, backs that up.

Which do I choose? I’ve been percolating on a specific path for my aspect since I first heard about it but is the idea I came up with the best? I haven’t tried messing with it yet because I didn’t want to get locked into the wrong choice. Why is it only giving me the elements I unlocked previously? There are tons more I never experimented with. Is that why? Because they were unimportant enough to me that I never bothered with them? Olive did say aspects require a personal connection with the element that goes deeper than the understanding required to form a technique. If that’s the case, not giving me the options I never played with makes sense.

A deeper connection… That narrows down my decision to light, fire, ice, lightning, gas, metal, and gravity. Each has parts about them that excite and inspire me. Light is fast and always packs a bigger punch than I expect. It has so many uses outside a fight. Not to mention, the idea of using mana to eventually unlock all of its mysteries is so thrilling it's sometimes impossible to fall asleep. Then again, the same can be said for every element.

Fire and ice are two very different sides of the same friction-based coin. One personifies speed and movement, the other, cessation. Definitely my two strongest and most efficient elements as the mental image of molecules speeding up or slowing down is so easy to picture. But would I say I have a real connection to either?

Lightning is straight-up awesome. If Mayalyn were here, she wouldn’t hesitate for a second before walking into the storm beyond that door. If I took that route, how much more powerful could we become together? Lightning was the element that came close to killing me for the first time. Actually, now that I think about it, nearly every time I’ve almost killed myself, it was lightning…

Gas is easily one of my favorites, but also one I barely understand. There are so many types of gases and I don’t know much about most of them. That would change in time though, assuming my insane life ever gives me a chance to sit down and study.

Metal is strong, durable, and powerful. I wouldn’t mind having an aspect based on those qualities. Would it make my aura more permeable? Would it become heavier, like the Aahmra’s?

And finally, gravity. I discovered Big Bang accidentally and it saved my life repeatedly. It’s also proven useful in so many ways, especially when combined into complex formations. Similar to light, my Earth knowledge has only given me a few clues regarding its true nature.

A skin-crawling click sounded behind Jiran and he flipped around, nearly choking with shock when he saw the panels of his new room turning in place, “You’re not even going to give me the time to think?!” With mere seconds before his room was consumed, Jiran closed his eyes and blocked sound, focusing with every ounce of his effort while shutting out the noise.

The rankers and, well, everyone I’ve met above tier eight, have aspects that go beyond the elements. Choosing one is only the first step. What’s most important right now is picking a direction that will eventually lead me to a concept. It’s that concept that will empower my Manabody enough to contend with existences like those guardians. Emperor Dagris’s concept allowed him to teleport me to him over a vast distance without triggering the Remalon’s trap. Empress Meselay’s allowed her to create illusions so real they had a physical form. Lostrifar’s turned her into a child. Agh! The potentials seem endless, and they all come back to the choice I have to make right now.

I want to design my aspect around fighting higher-tier beasts and my biggest weakness against them is speed. Oneness has bridged that gap repeatedly, but it doesn't work in every situation since it requires my aura to be inside me. Obviously, I have elements I favor over the others, and I’m positive choosing one of them will give me an advantage toward reaching a concept. But is rushing to a concept before I even understand aspects best? Doubtful.

The abyss pulled on the edges of Jiran’s aura and he knew his time was up. With no room to doubt himself, he chose the element that he always relied on in an emergency. When Oneness brought him close to his animalistic and instinctive nature, he almost always pulled on the same element. It was the element he understood more than all the rest, merely because it was so simple. Yet in its simplicity, there was potential as vast as the gaping chasm attempting to swallow him at that very moment. That potential was why he relied on it so heavily in the past, why he would continue to rely on it in the future, and why it had never let him down.

His gaze was drawn to the only doorway that mattered. Looking into the space beyond, he could barely see a few meters. His aura failed to pass through, giving him no further clues as to what he would be facing in the first real challenge of the tier four arena. With a last look over his shoulder at the nearly collapsed room, he stepped forward, and was swallowed in the element that called to his soul.