Chapter 66 - A Glimpse (Patreon)

“Excellent,” The Aahmra’s voice echoed through the dojo as Jiran danced before him.

“You are ready. Expand your aura,” He commanded.

Jiran looked at the mouseman blankly, waiting for him to release his manabody from the chokehold it had existed under since his training began.

“Well? What are you waiting for?!” The Aahmra’s aura cracked as a whip of energy smacked into Jiran’s thigh.

“Ow! I’m waiting for you! You’re still pushing my aura in. As soon as you let go, I’ll expand it.”

”I released your manabody a week ago, Jiran of Feylon. Now it is you who must let go.”

What?! Seriously? I’ve been holding my manabody in for over a week and didn’t notice?

Jiran flexed as he pushed on the stubborn energy that, all of a sudden, refused to cooperate. Sweat sprung from his forehead as he continued to push with a loud groan of effort. Another whip of aura cracked the air, eliciting another exclamation of pain.

“Are you trying to shit in my dojo? I said let go, not push like a constipated drunkard!”

Jiran withheld the snarky comment that he so desperately wanted to unleash. With a deep breath, he relaxed and slowly released the tight grip that was now second nature. His aura fell away from his skin as he exhaled. After three more breaths, it was fully extended.

Pervasive feelings of emptiness and lightness spread through his body as the world within an eleven-meter radius came to life. His body felt clean, enriched, and strong while smells and sounds from outside the dojo filtered into his aura. He discovered that if he focused, he could see beyond its maximum range, though the impressions he received were muted and dull.

The dreaded giant hands of aura reached out and grabbed hold of Jiran’s aura. They squished, pulled, and kneaded his manabody. Jiran braced for the pain that never came as his aura bent and flowed around the pressure like water moving around a rock.

“Much better, it now moves properly without resistance. The next phase of your training is learning how to push back.”

“Form your aura into a line!” His voice held the threat of imminent pain if Jiran delayed even a second.

Jiran did as commanded with a wide smile, luxuriating in the weightless and healthy feelings suffusing his body. His aura stretched much farther than ever before in a straight line in front and behind him, easily piercing the walls of the dojo and stretching into the streets beyond.

“A square, good. A circle. Now a bird, water, laugh,” Jiran stopped at the last one while scratching his head.

“That doesn't make any sense! How can you form an aura into a laugh?”

“You have enough wisdom now to know your body and aura are one. Your body can laugh, so why can an aura not do the same?” Suddenly the air around Jiran began to vibrate to the cadence of a great guffaw and Jiran found himself laughing along with it.

He just made me laugh with his aura!

“Do not place false limitations on your thoughts. For the next week, you will leave your body behind. All actions will be done with your manabody. Walking, eating, talking, even shitting. This task should be simple for you. Even a child could do this easily. Now go!”

Liar! Lenton said the exact same thing when he gave me that cube. There is no way a child could do this. He’s so full of it. Here’s something impossible that you will fail at and when you’re all depressed I’ll show you the way forward.

I hope I’m not as predictable when I get as old as them.

I’m taking a break. I’m going on strike! I’m on a magical fantasy island paradise and I’ve barely seen any of it. I’m also going to do exactly what he said and prove him wrong!

Jiran sat back on a layer of aura and floated himself outside of the dojo and into the fresh, tropical air.

He thinks it’s impossible, well he doesn’t know me very well then does he. Lenton underestimated me too and I broke that cube open in a week. Bring it on!

Jiran wandered the town of Azurlight with his eyes closed, relying solely on the sensations of his manabody. He peeked through walls into shops, restaurants, and crafters.

He discovered they didn’t use currency and that their economy was solely based on trade. He also found a couple huge contraptions that looked like fantasy ray guns that were heavily guarded and hidden under tarps.

Is that how they protect the town from alphas?

Between the two weapons was a set of metal doors with a big, spoked wheel that screamed bomb shelter. Unable to resist his curiosity, Jiran moved toward the doors. His aura easily penetrated the metal and found a long set of stairs that led underground. As he got closer, an underground laboratory was revealed. Standing at a table within was a familiar mousegirl.

The moment his aura detected her, she spun around and looked through several meters of solid rock and metal directly toward him. She then jogged up the stairs and opened the double doors.

She was wearing overalls with a smithy apron. There were smudges of grease on her cheeks and arms. Jiran tried to form words with his aura to say hello but ended up smacking himself in the face instead. Mayalyn closed her eyes and facepalmed, adding another smudge of grease to her ensemble.

“At least your training seems to be progressing well. Your aura has already changed so much.”

“Really? How can you tell?”

She ignored his question, her words flowed out in a speedy jumble.

“I see he’s got you doing that ridiculous training. Good luck! Did you need something from me? I’m pretty busy right now.”

“I just saw this bunker and was curious.” Her eyes widened.

“Why do you call it a bunker?”

“Because that's what it is…”

“That’s what great grandfather always called it too, but everyone insisted it was just his smithy. Who told you to call it a bunker?”

Now that he was closer to the doors, Jiran allowed his aura to comb the inside of the lab where he saw things that made his eyes snap open for the first time since leaving the dojo.

What the hell? That’s a full chemistry set, tubes, beakers, tools, machines, and is that a microscope?!

“What are you working on? You’ve got some amazing stuff in there! Is that really a microscope?! Can I please see it for a minute?” Jiran’s body began vibrating so fast that his layer of aura destabilized and he dropped to the ground.

Maybe I can see what mana is with that thing!

Mayalyn bit her lip and looked around to see who was watching before sighing and making room for Jiran to walk past her and into the laboratory.

“Sure, I guess. Just don’t touch anything! These are all priceless relics left from the Maker.”

“That one, there!” Jiran made a beeline for the microscope and pointed to it while bouncing on his toes.

It’s crude but it looks exactly like what you would find at a university. How the hell is this here? Was Mayalyn’s Great Grandfather from Earth?

"The Maker had many notes for that device. They’re around here somewhere, hold on." She pulled books off a nearby shelf one at a time.

Unable to hold back his burning curiosity, Jiran created an ultra-thin layer of Coating and laid it down where the slide would go before looking through the two long eyepiece tubes.  A lever attached to both tubes adjusted the zoom and he slowly moved them back and forth. However, every time the mana started to come into focus, it would blur as if it were moving and he would be forced to adjust the lenses again. He kept trying over and over, growing more frustrated with each failure.

This thing doesn’t work at all. What kind of gag microscope is this?

“Here it is!” Mayalyn shouted as she brought over a book and gingerly placed it on the table next to him.

Jiran took a break and watched as she flipped through several pages until she landed on what she was looking for.

Hoping the text would provide an answer to what he was doing wrong, Jiran scanned through dozens of lines of dry data and read the summary on the next page.

“Test #71143 - microscopic analysis -

“Final results; Failure. All tested substances display an obfuscation when subjected to in-depth observation and analysis. Molecular structure of all known materials remains unconfirmed.”

Jiran jumped to his feet after reading the short summary and began pacing around the room while rubbing his temples.

“Unbelievable. So it’s not just my mana, it’s everything?

“The density! Of course! It’s in everything, and if it’s somehow distorting the image, then no wonder the thousands-of-years-old empire never figured out molecular physics. They literally can’t see it no matter how hard they look!

“Y-y-you can read that?” Mayalyn’s voice was a gentle whisper in his ears that tickled a warning in his chest.

“Well yeah, it's in… English," Mayalyn’s large eyes opened far wider than any humans could and her pupils dilated, lending her face an alien quality.

She hesitated for only a second before leaping to her feet and scrambling to open a nearby drawer where she pulled out a picture with shaky hands. She stalked toward him like a woman on a mission before shoving it in his face.

“Do you know what this is?!” Her tone was demanding and overbearing and it made Jiran’s heart skip a beat.

Well, I already spilled the beans all over the floor. No going back now.

“That’s a picture of the Eiffel Tower.”

The strength left her body in an instant and her ass plopped to the floor. Hollow laughter filtered out while tears created little tracks through the grime on her cheeks. She clutched the picture to her chest as Jiran watched her mental breakdown, feeling awkward as hell.

She spoke so softly that the only reason he heard her was due to his aura.

“They still call him crazy. Even though his inventions are the only reason they can enjoy such a lavish lifestyle.”

“Privilege is invisible to those who have it,” Jiran mumbled one of Brandon’s favorite quotes.

Suddenly Mayalyn leaped to her feet and rushed to another book on a nearby table. She wiped her tears before motioning Jiran to her side.

“Read this one to me, please!”

“Sure. Current must flow through both receptors simultaneously and at the proper voltage.”

“That last word, what does it mean?” Her voice took on a pleading edge as she leaned so close he could feel her breath on his face.

“Voltage is a measurement of the strength of a current.” Her mouth fell open before snapping shut as her brows furrowed.

“That’s it? No, that can’t be right. You must have misread it.”

“Show me what you’re working on, maybe I can help.”

Mayalyn nodded vigorously before moving to a device on the far wall. It was an upright-tub, full of liquid. Two handholds wrapped with wires stood out of the basin. Sitting deep in the liquid was a metal container that looked like a propane tank.

“When I try to push my mana through the coils, nothing happens. It’s supposed to empower the voltree but nobody’s been able to get it to work since grandmother passed.”

Jiran ran his aura all over the strange contraption. The first thing that stuck out to him were two tiny holes in the sides that looked like wires were supposed to be plugged into. He closed his eyes to concentrate and examined the entire room from top to bottom searching for something that might fit the holes. It wasn’t long before he found the wires in an old bin tucked behind one of the tables.

He pulled out the wires and the wooden blocks they were wound through. They fit perfectly into the holes, so he stuck them in before nodding to Mayalyn.

“Try it now.”

She placed her hands on the gems and Jiran watched as hundreds of tiny needles sticking up from the gems pierced her skin. She held the gems for a few seconds before shaking her head.

“No, that didn't work.”

“Hmm. Okay, let me think for a second.”

Based on the current and voltage passage, this device is supposed to convert mana to electricity. When I hit that tiger guy with lightning, he just got more powerful, which might mean there is a connection between beastmen mana and electricity. Their bodies are different from humans with that core instead of a heart.

Jiran examined the machine again and noticed that the coiled wires ran all the way down into the bottom of the tub. They connected to the bottom of the tank inside the liquid and then ran back up the outside, forming a complete circuit with the handles.

If beastmen mana supplies the electricity and it’s not working because it requires a specific voltage, then the wooden blocks must be used to absorb some of the charge as it passes through the wires.

Jiran removed one of the blocks and had her try again. He repeatedly removed and added blocks until on the twelfth try, blue lights flickered to life all across the device.

“I-It worked? It actually worked. It really works!” Mayalyn began jumping around and throwing her fists into the air.

Jiran held out one of his hands and they high-fived.

“I can’t believe it has nothing to do with aura! Grandmother told me it needed aura to function. Why would she lie about that?”

“The Maker was your Great Grandfather, right? Maybe he set it to his daughter's specifications and said it would only work if she practiced her aura every day. Who knows? Point is, it works now.

Mayalyn’s exuberance vanished in a blink as she nodded before she placed her hands back on the pedestals. Jiran watched her face for a minute as she focused with a quiet, unblinking intensity.

Damn, this girl just keeps hitting my buttons. What kind of girl gets this into ancient technology? The best kind!

With a shake of his head, he came back to himself.

Book!

He sat on his aura and lifted the book full of experiment summaries into the air before slowly flipping through its pages.

Jiran learned that anything beyond a certain threshold of technological advancement failed to function. Basic steam engines were fine but internal combustion failed to ignite no matter what fuel was used. However, just putting gas inside a container exploded just fine.

Then there should be no reason that an engine wouldn't function.

There were several other experiments the Maker ran which confirmed density obfuscated all attempts to detect its molecular structure.

Laws of physics like thermodynamics, motion, and gravitation all function as they did on Earth. However, not when used to create technology. As soon as an attempt was made, the laws broke down.

On the final page, he found the Makers hypothesis after years of study and experiments.

“Density is sentient and passively blocks the advancement of technology and the observation of itself.”

What. The. Fuck.

Goosebumps covered Jiran’s body as his brain tried to wrap around the idea of his body being packed full of sentient magic that had some purposeful design which inhibited the advancement of society.

The system, its quests, and even Daughter are one giant sentient entity? This is way too much for me to wrap my head around right now.

Jiran looked around for the first time in a while and found Mayalyn slumped over on the floor by the voltree device. He hopped to his feet and checked on her. Her pulse was weak but steady and a trail of drool was dribbling down her chin.

Did she use too much mana? Like the tigerman I drained?

He sent a thread of Coating into her arm and snaked it through her veins and into her core. Sure enough, it was nearly empty. He crammed some tier three berries he had saved from breakfast into her mouth and held her jaw closed until they dissolved.

As her body slowly converted the density, he sat next to her on the floor and waited for her to wake up.

A minute later, she weakly raised her hand up to rap on her forehead.

"Stupid Maymay." Her mumble was a pitiful thing devoid of emotion.

"You think using too much mana is stupid? Right after I reached tier two, I lit my whole hand on fire." Jiran held up his hand and lit it on fire to demonstrate.

"It gets worse. I was so excited to do it, my hand was this far from my face! I burnt off all my hair, even my eyebrows. Ahh, that was easily one of the best days of my life," Jiran sighed with a smile while Mayalyn released a tiny giggle.

"You are an idiot," Her chuckles intensified and showed no signs of stopping.

“You wound me, fair maiden!” Jiran clutched his chest.

“Great Grandpa wrote us stories of the place called Earth. My grandmother used to read them to me when I was little. Will you tell me about it?"

"Sure, if you really want to know. but that place kinda sucks compared to Madra."

She nodded and Jiran weaved tales of movies, food, school, and endless hours working for a corporate overlord that would sell you to the devil for a dime. Eventually, her head drooped to his shoulder and soft snores escaped her lips. He used his manabody to gently move her to the well-used bed in the bunker before leaving with his thoughts swirling out of control.

I stop thinking about that electrical circuit. That whole device doesn’t make any sense. Neither do the weapons they use to fend off the alphas. How do those function if technology doesn't work?