Chapter 115- The Plan (Patreon)

As the partygoers celebrated the advent of new, powerful allies in the People, Jiran ate. He sampled every dish while exchanging verbal barbs with Niya and Cameron. The three of them fully embraced the fleeting hour of peace before the looming threat of tomorrow's battles.

The tier six food was long gone, but a plethora of tier five dishes had been served, which did the job of recharging his mana. He stoically weathered a considerable number of odd looks as he packed away enough food for ten people. Each morsel converted to either mana or growth shortly after being swallowed. The increase in his growth spread a surge of pleasurable tingles through his muscles and bones as they were reinforced. He had killed so many beasts and even a couple people since ascending, leaving an unknown amount of attributes on standby. With each bite, he became faster and stronger, his senses more acute, and his control over mana more instantaneous.

STRENGTH: + 1.8

AGILITY: + 1.8

ENDURANCE : + 1.8

DURABILITY: + 1.8

WISDOM: + 1.8

INTELLIGENCE: + 1.8

Further upgrades delayed due to lack of density

I wonder if anyone else capped their EXP in a tier before gaining a single percent of growth. I’m doing things so backward. Crazy I’m almost done growing. Somewhere in this tier, I’ll reach my optimal physique and never change again. After that, my muscles will only compress with each new attribute gain without ever growing larger. Well, that’s how it's supposed to work. With my challenger ascensions, anything is possible.

Jiran chuckled, amused by how ridiculous his life had become. Three random noblewomen got the wrong idea and giggled his way while shooting him less-than-subtle looks. He ignored them, and everyone else who tried to catch his attention in favor of finishing his food. Thankfully, none of the long looks and dainty waves advanced to an actual conversation. For whatever reason, the nobles seemed wary of approaching him.

Full to bursting with both sustenance and mana, Jiran led Niya and Cameron on a hunt for Olive who was bearing the brunt of the socializing. She excused herself from a conversation when they approached and motioned toward a corner of the room. "I've spoken with several individuals who would be overjoyed to make your acquaintance, Mortemer. Perhaps we should come up with a plan for the next few days so you have time for them."

"I doubt that’s going to be possible, we're going to be way too busy for any socializing.”

"The attack you displayed earlier only took a few minutes, and with Mayalyn needing to rest between uses, what do you have in mind that's going to keep you so occupied?"

"Not me, us. As in you and Cameron too."

Olive scrunched her face cutely with a tilt to her head, "Can you please explain yourself properly?"

Jiran turned a predatory smile on the two as he deepened his voice menacingly. "Sure, I’ll explain. While we have such an abundance of targets available, I plan to get everyone in the party ascended. It should take about two weeks if we go all out, and I don’t plan to give you any breaks."

"Everyone here? That would certainly cement you in the good graces of the nobility for decades to come.” Olive bounced on the balls of her feet, clapping excitedly with a wide smile. After a calming breath, she pressed on, “If your plan is to accrue merit, I don’t believe that is necessary. There are other avenues to do so that would be far simpler for you.”

"What? No, I meant the four of us and Mayalyn. That’s five, a full party. We might as well make it official. And why would I care about helping these people ascend when they aren't even willing to fight the Graymin banging on their walls?"

Niya, Olive, and Cameron all wore the same slack-jawed expression. Niya was the first to recover, a fire lit in her eyes as she clenched her fist with an audible creak. Cameron was next, little tremors of excitement swept him away as his far-off look snapped back to Jiran.

"You would let us be in your party?" Cameron sounded uncertain, as if he expected Jiran to withdraw the offer at any second.

"Of course, I trust you all to watch my back and keep each other safe. Besides, you already know most of my secrets and haven’t betrayed me. Why wouldn't I want to help you ascend?"

"Because you don't need them, idiot. At least try to see it from their perspective." Niya huffed.

"Don’t need? That's ridiculous. I'm awful on my own. If you knew all the trouble I get myself into when it's just me, you'd probably even follow me to the privy to make sure I don’t fall in! I'd much rather be part of a team I can trust and you saps are it."

Cameron raised his hand, signaling for a round of drinks but Jiran grabbed his wrist and gently lowered it. "Let's wait for Mayalyn. When we're all together, we can make an announcement and have a round, or whatever forming a party entails. It doesn’t feel right to exclude her in our first celebration."

"Right, right. Sorry, I got a little carried away. We've been in two parties so far and they… didn't work out."

Olive finally came back to her senses and stomped on Cameron's foot with a scowl. "Way to make us sound like a couple of murderers, Cammy!"

"Cammy?" Jiran threw his head back and howled with laughter.

"What?"

"Nothing, nothing. I just love that nickname for you, it’s perfect."

While Jiran laughed, the three of them shared a look before Olive spoke up. "Perhaps we should steer the conversation back to the subject of a plan? You said you would help us reach tier five, then what?"

"Tier five? No, I meant tier seven."

“Pfft!” Olive spat her drink, thoroughly splashing Cameron’s fancy shirt with dark wine. "W-what?! T-t-tier seven? In two weeks? That’s not possible!"

"Maybe it's a little ambitious, it all depends on you guys and if we can get enough food. If everything goes according to plan, then it's certainly possible."

Olive was in a daze, her voice turning soft and aloof. "What would we be hunting?"

"There's an island full of angry little birds that need to be brought down a peg. What's with those faces, why are you all looking at me like that?"

Niya chimed in with an eyeroll. "Let's assume we can ascend to tier six for now. Seven simply isn't feasible. What happens after that?" Jiran knew what she wanted to hear.

"Don’t worry, I plan to help your friend before we go to the island. We’ll fight off this Graymin horde, getting everyone to tier five and capped on EXP. Then, your friend, the island, the other Graymin hordes threatening the empire. Finally, after all that, there's a new place I want to explore. Seriously, why are you all looking at me like that?"

Niya laughed while Olive appraised him with calculating eyes. "How can you possibly trivialize even a single one of those goals to such an extent?" She held up her hand, cutting off Jiran’s retort, "Have you had your fill yet? It would be the scandal of the century if the wards collapsed while we were yapping about hypothetical impossibilities."

Jiran nodded as he rubbed his palms together in anticipation. To get a chance to see Lostrifar’s work from a hundred years ago elicited a childlike exuberance he couldn’t possibly contain. "I am so ready!"

"Fantastic, our first stop is the basement to retrieve a subform tablet which will give us access to the formation assemblies.”

“That’s my queue to get gone. You lot have fun. I'm going to stick around here and see if anyone wants to dance." Cameron had long since used forming to clear the wine from his shirt. He swept his eyes over the crowd, lingering on the same group of women from before who were staring back at him with predatory grins.

Seeing a perfect opportunity to get him back for the soap, Jiran poked him in the side. "Can you please keep an eye on Mayalyn while we're gone? After everything that happened earlier, I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving her without someone I trust nearby.”

Cameron grit his teeth while looking between Jiran and the pretty girls before he deflated with a sigh. "Yeah, sure thing boss." Jiran patted him on the shoulder before they parted ways.

Olive led them down two flights of stairs. On the way, Jiran double-layered his aura to make sure no sound could escape.

“Olive, we need to talk about Ravenna.”

“I’m surprised you know of her at all. What with her only recently arriving and your seeming distaste for the nobility. Are you going to make me pry the questions out of your mouth so I can answer them? Out with it,” She waved her hand impatiently.

“She wants to kill us,” Jiran launched into his explanation of the temple and its defenders, murdered by Markhiss. He mentioned how he killed two of them in defense of himself and Niya. The only thing he left out was the tablet describing the coming of the Enders as he wanted to cover that with the entire group later.

“I see, thank you for telling me. Hopefully, she does not awaken before we leave. After your exploits here, she will have a hard time passing any trial against you with so little proof. If she does recover and discovers you, I’ll play interference until we can escape. In the meantime, I will send a letter to my father, explaining the situation. The only thing that will stop her for good is death or a command from him. I hope you are not planning to kill her, she is a valued member of the empire.”

“I won’t kill her if I don’t have to. So far, all she’s done is chase us a bit, hardly a killable offense.”

“If anyone else said that I would laugh in their face.” Olive sighed, shaking her head lightly before opening a set of doors at the bottom of the stairs. “We’re here.”

They arrived in a wide, open space with dozens of low tables covered in various tools Jiran didn’t recognize. On a far wall, a large, flat tablet displayed dozens of numbers, words, and pictographs that rapidly changed in flickering patterns. Jiran walked toward the metal tablet, entranced by the out-of-place technology while Olive picked up a small metal slate and joined him.

Seeing his interest, she pointed, "This is—"

"Before you explain anything, can you give me a minute? An old friend always harped on and on about the importance of learning things for oneself. This feels like one of those times."

“Very well, let me know if you have any questions.” After handing Jiran the tablet, Olive led Niya to one of the low tables. Jiran blocked out their hushed whispers while he focused on the smooth metal in his hands.

As far as he could tell, It was completely solid without a single crack or seam. He glanced up at the tablet on the wall and noticed it was exactly the same. On the slate’s much smaller surface, numbers and symbols seemingly rose directly out of the metal. Upon closer inspection, he could sense thousands of tiny, colored shards of metal that moved as if controlled by an incredibly complex system of magnets.

After being unsuccessful in penetrating it with his aura, he delicately pushed the thinnest thread of Coating through its surface. Since the mana had not been converted to an element, it safely passed through the material without damaging it, just like it could inside his body. Jiran’s eyes lit up in recognition when his mana pushed through a tough membrane to find countless mana-filled grooves, like circuitry, that ran throughout its interior.

This is exactly like the mana-draining collar those bandits put on me! Now that I’m focused on it, it's trying to drain a small portion of my mana, too. Certainly nothing as invasive as the collar or the cage though. And these grooves inside, they remind me of the way the teleportation pads light up with circuitry when I push my mana into them, just not as intricate.

Jiran dipped his thread into the flowing mana within the grooves, knowing he could claim it if he wished. When he remembered how draining the mana-collar turned it to dust, he held himself back from taking even the smallest sample. He tracked the flowing mana, growing fascinated as it left the slate by passing through the metal exterior. The mana dispersed into gentle streams that he could only follow for a meter before they vanished. Now that he knew what to look for, he saw additional subtle streams of mana in the air that entered the slate to replace what departed.

Mana in the air? On its own? Density does that, but never mana. Not without being controlled. So who's controlling it? The Duke said he couldn’t see anything wrong with manasight, so I can assume this is how they normally function.

Jiran’s translator kicked in, allowing him to understand the ever-shifting symbols. A moment later, his eyes widened as a side panel of subtly different icons turned to notes that were clearly not meant to be understood by just anyone. They showed additional details that were left out of the regular text and images, as well as information on how to adjust the slates parameters.

Shit, did I just accidentally admin privileges? It probably takes a long time to understand the basics of Lostrifar’s formation language. I know the woman wrote the book on formations that are used all across the empire. If she ever found out I learned the hidden portions of her work in a few seconds… Yeah, I better not say anything.

With the additional sidebar details, he gained the context to decipher the rest of the rapidly shifting data. The pictographs turned out to be a breakdown of each section of the formations around the city while the numbers showed their current condition, mana reserves, and performance outputs.

So the mana inside this tablet is connected directly with the formations and they’re communicating sort of like a wireless signal. How is that possible? Especially considering it's been doing this for a hundred years. I can understand how it stays active since it’s passively draining mana from anyone who picks up one of the tablets. The issue is that my mana comes back into my manapool the second I stop telling it what to do. How is this mana following orders after so long?

Is it the circuitry-esque-grooves inside the tablet? That doesn't make sense, how can lines in metal force mana to cooperate for a hundred years? The only thing mana listens to is intent. Wait, is it that simple? The grooves are where the mana lives, and it's still just following the initial intent given to it. Have I ever tried to force my mana to do a simple task over an extended period of time?

Jiran formed a Coating across his entire body, slightly changing his intent by desiring the mana to stay there permanently, or until he deactivated it. Sure enough, the mana stayed solid, hugging him tightly without budging.

"Are you shitting me?! I could have been doing this the whole time?!” Jiran’s outburst caused Niya, Olive, and the two techs who entered the room to look up at him in alarm.

“What’s wrong?” Niya called out, taking a step toward him.

“Did you figure out what’s wrong with the formations already?” Olive asked hopefully.

“No I didn’t. I just realized something new about mana is all.” The two wore hungry expressions that soon fell to disappointment when he chose not to elucidate.

How did I not figure that out sooner? Never mind, I know exactly why. Because I’m still subconsciously afraid of losing my mana again. I’ve always had the intent for my unused mana to immediately return to my manapool, and so it did. I bet everyone figured this out when they were tier two, how embarrassing.

Wow, this is going to change everything. Right off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen ways this can improve how I use my techniques and skills. I’m getting sidetracked, I should stay focused on the formations. Who knows what else I’m going to learn from them.

Jiran carefully examined the numbers for each section of the formations simultaneously. Dual Minds spun into overdrive to keep up with the massive amount of ever-changing data. Within a few seconds, an obvious pattern emerged.

The formations all around the city were declining in output at a slow, but steady rate. The curious thing was that their mana reserves were not declining at an equal pace. Somehow, with each passing second, the formations powering the wards were becoming drastically less efficient. One section in particular, was dropping a little faster than the rest and Jiran had a sinking feeling they didn’t have long to figure out what the problem was before those wards failed completely.

“Olive, can you lead us to this part of the formation? I don’t think we have much time left.”