Chapter 116- Light Within The Dark (Patreon)

Jiran took the slate and they left the manor, setting out toward the weakened section of the formations. Olive pointed the way, leading them to the nearest access point while badgering him for more information about what he'd discovered from the slate. Jiran explained about the discrepancy he noticed, causing Olive to frown and fall quiet, giving him a moment of silence to consider his newest application of mana.

The coating is slowly fading. Looks like it's not as simple as merely willing mana to do something for an extended period. How have these formations not leaked massive amounts of mana after so long? What's keeping it contained? Contained… contained.

That's it! The grooves are inside a metal casing! Just like my manapool is inside my body. Because it's contained, it's not leaking. Are some materials capable of housing mana while some aren't? Is that why the tablet is made of metal? Is it a special metal or will any do?

Jiran wasn't given time to examine the metal more closely as they arrived at the designated street. Olive hopped out of his aura and landed heavily upon the cobblestones. She approached a circular plate made of a familiar metal that rested flat inside the center of the street.

"Can you lift this? It's designed to only be accessible to auras. Since you have a tablet, the locks should open without issue."

Jiran's manabody had no issues piercing into the dark tunnel that ran under the street. Just beneath the metal cover, he found three latches that needed to be released simultaneously. A flicker of will sent through his aura unlatched the mechanisms, sending a dull thud reverberating beneath their feet. A quick lift later and the heavy door slammed to the ground, revealing a hatchway leading into absolute darkness.

The light from a nearby street lamp failed to illuminate the obscuring gloom, causing Olive to hesitate. Without an aura, she might as well have been peering into an egress that led directly to the abyss. Jiran tried a flash of Light Manipulation but even that failed. With a shared nod, he and Niya hopped in. A girlish squeak fled Olive’s mouth as his aura grabbed her around the waist, dragging her in behind them.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of the dark, little princess.” Niya snickered.

“This is not merely the dark! With the Graymin beating at the walls and somehow affecting the formations in these very tunnels, of course I’m on edge. But it’s nothing more than a completely normal, healthy amount of concern.”

“Don’t worry, it's safe. No Graymin nearby, at least for now.” Jiran chuckled at Olive’s ramrod straight posture and jerky movements as they padded forward through the rectangular tunnel.

“I have to admit, this isn’t nearly as exciting as what I had in mind.” Niya grumped, while ‘accidentally’ bumping into Olive who released an alarmed squeal.

The tunnel stretched far beyond the range of Jiran’s aura in both directions while being just over two meters tall and wide. The walls were made of stone that fit so closely together, a razor wouldn’t fit into the cracks. He had to crouch slightly as he walked, but with his attributes, he could have duck-walked up a mountain without breaking a sweat.

In the center of the floor and both walls, solid metal blocks ran the length of the tunnel; reminiscent of concrete parking blocks but without any gaps, variances, or blemishes of any kind. His aura failed to penetrate the metal so he used a spike of Coating to peek inside, finding thousands of grooves in complex patterns flooded with flowing mana.

These casings house the formations and must have been made with forming. How else could a pre-industrial civilization create such perfectly seamless metal? They probably wrap around the entire inner city, matching the walls in a giant rectangle. So these are what power the wards outside the walls. I bet whatever is wrong with them also caused Ravenna’s teleportation to fail.

It was a short walk to the damaged portion of the formations which was easy to find now that he knew how to read the tablet. Olive walked with her hand tracing along the wall but still managed to trip twice on the floor casing. Both times, Niya’s laughter echoed dully down the tunnel.

When they arrived, Jiran sent a sliver of Coating into the weakened section. A minute of probing revealed nothing obviously wrong. He kept at it, splitting his coating into a hundred threads that probed each of the grooves within the casing. He even absorbed some of the mana and ‘tasting’ it, before replacing it with his own.

“I can’t find anything wrong with it. Niya, you picking up anything different about this section?”

There has to be something here. This is definitely the right spot.

After a few seconds Niya pointed excitedly, talking far too loudly in the confined space. “My aura can almost see inside it!” Jiran confirmed her statement as he pressed his manabody against the hard surface, finding it pliant like dried mud.

“Good job, Niya. Olive, do you know what makes this material resistant to aura?”

“It would have been imbued with Lostrifar’s aura, only an equally powerful aura would have a chance to penetrate it. No offense, but you two don’t qualify. Ouch! Which one of you just pinched me? Jiran! Was that you? It is completely unacceptable to pinch a princess on the behind! We just talked about treating the nobility more respectfully!” He hoped Niya’s howling laughter convinced the irate girl he had nothing to do with her prank.

Jiran ignored the heated bickering between the two girls as he focused on the casing. A closer examination with his aura revealed just as much as the rest of his investigation: Nothing. Unable to find any clues within the metal, he condensed his manabody to cover a single meter of space around the casing. With his energies condensed, the amount of information he was getting from the air drastically increased, which finally allowed him to see the problem.

At the edge of his awareness, he could barely perceive the density framework quivering in agony. The faint lines that spread through the air were hard enough to see as it was, detecting something wrong with them was harder still. If Jiran were to compare it to something, it would be like trying to find patterns in the little white phosphenes you see when you close your eyelids too tightly. The bickering going on behind him was not helping.

“Keep it down, will you? I’ve found something wrong but it’s hard to focus with all your flirting.” Olive and Niya both opened their mouths to retort but he promptly shushed them, bringing blissful silence to the cramped tunnel.

Jiran closed his eyes, plugged his ears with Coating, and activated Dual Minds, focusing with every ounce of his being in an effort to see the framework.

It's not enough, I can't see it. It’s still just at the edge of my perception, a ghost. I need more, I need to be able to see!

He took a deep breath, preparing for the inevitable pain. With a single, swift mental tug, he forcefully ripped down the subconscious barriers that protected his brain. An overload of information his aura usually filtered away crashed upon his brain in a tidal wave of sensations. His preparations were meaningless before the overwhelming onslaught. He fell to his knees, clutching his head as blood began to leak from his nose.

“Restoration!”

Swollen and shredded gray matter was repaired, only to be destroyed a moment later. He persevered, healing himself each time the blood began to trickle from his nostrils or ears. Waves of vertigo assaulted him repeatedly but he could feel his brain shifting, changing, and adapting. With each cycle, the pain dulled and his grasp of the crushing sensations solidified.

His sense of time vanished, his perceptions narrowing to include only his manabody and his manapool. When half of his mana was depleted, an audible crack resounded through the tunnel and his pain suddenly vanished. Jiran gasped, filling his lungs with air for the first time in several minutes. He was laying on the floor with no memory of how or when he fell. His head was resting in Olive’s lap while Niya sat nearby, biting her lip.

“About damn time, what in the Silent Mother happened to you?”

“How long was I out?”

“Nearly two hours!” Olive practically cried, “I would also like an explanation for why you kept me down here in this dreadful darkness for so long. Your aura went crazy after you fell. We tried to leave, but it wouldn't let us. Nor did it allow us to move you. It only calmed down after I put your head on my lap,” That very same aura observed her blushing furiously.

Niya grunted, opening her mouth to say something but Olive’s gaze snapped in her direction. With blazing eyes and pursed lips she snarled, “Don’t you dare say a word!” Niya flashed her a wide smile that only she and Jiran could see before resting back against the wall in silence.

Okay, clearly something happened while I was out. Whatever, more important things to deal with right now. Like what happened to me and if the formations have gotten any worse in the last two hours.

Jiran couldn’t help but take one quick verbal jab, “I’m glad you chose to stay by my side without being forced, that’s very chivalrous of you two,” While they both scoffed, he checked his notifications but they only showed a few increases to his attributes from the density he had absorbed after eating.

Moving on, It didn’t take him long to spot the changes in his status. Active Dual Minds had been replaced by Triune Minds and Linked Manabody was now Empowered Manabody. With no small amount of trepidation, he lowered his subconscious barriers again. Waves of information flowed smoothly into his brain. For half a heartbeat, Jiran existed outside of his body as though he were an outsider, looking in from another dimension. When he snapped back into himself, his mind was clearer than ever before as it categorized, sorted, and filtered the momentous quantity of details from his manabody.

Every cell of his body, every mote of dust, every grain of material that comprised the walls and floor, he saw it all at once. And not just from a distance like looking through a microscope, he was inside all of it—a part of everything around him. He saw, felt, and was inside of the hairs all across his body as they stood up straight. He thrummed with barely repressed excitement at the new world around him.

Even more enticing was the framework snapping into focus around him—solid and clear under his newfound scrutiny. He reached out a hand, a giddy smile on his face as he ran his fingers along one of the web-like wires. The passing of his flesh did nothing to disturb the thread, but when he willed his aura to wrap around it and tug, it quivered, clearly affected by his desires in some way.

“So, what happened already? Why are you grinning at the wall like that? Hey, are you listening?” Niya’s continued attempts to get his attention went unanswered as Jiran lost himself in the simple joy of strumming the threads of the framework.

His fun only lasted a few seconds before he focused on the framework around the weakened casing once more. This time he could clearly perceive a sticky, purple sludge that clung to the wires. Incredibly tiny motes of something he couldn’t perceive with aura alone were impacting with the sludge, causing it to warble and form minuscule prickles all along its length.

A filament of Coating revealed the truth; the mana that constantly flowed in and out of the tablet on the floor beside him was the culprit for the strange phenomenon. When that mana passed over the sludge on the framework, nearly imperceptible motes of the goop were being picked up and carried into the casing. He tracked the infection, watching the ever-moving mana within the formations carry it out of sight.

“I got two acclamations and now I can see the framework much more clearly. There is some kind of poison on the threads around this section and as mana is entering the formation casings, it’s picking up motes of that poison and carrying it inside where it’s being spread around to infect all the circuitry,” Jiran spoke idly, more focused on his thoughts than what he was conveying to them.

Incredible! I was more right than I knew about the framework. It’s clearly connected to the formations, mana, aura, everything! And whatever is attacking the wards is using it like a virus. This is huge! There’s so much to learn but now isn’t the time.

I think I can clean off these threads. That should keep things from getting worse, at least until we figure out where the real problem is coming from. Hmm, if I clean them, and whatever is causing this detects that it’s been found out, it might run before we can track it. This is the part where I would usually pick the more reckless option and just go for it but I’m in a party now and I should act like it.

Niya and Olive broke the stunned silence when they spoke the exact same words at the exact same time “What are you talking about?” Their synchronicity surprised Olive while Niya just squinted in annoyance.

Olive recovered first, clearing her throat and speaking into the darkness. “What is this framework and what do you mean mana is traveling along it?”

Ahh, I’m probably using the wrong word for it. Is this really the first time I’ve talked about the framework to anyone?

“Just something I noticed recently. Framework is the word I came up with, it’s probably called something different.” Jiran chuckled as Niya rolled her finger in the air when he paused. “So, you know how your aura latches onto the air to pull you around?” They both nodded. “Well, your aura is connecting to the framework to do that. I see it as a bunch of strings like a crisscrossing spider web of… density or something, that exists everywhere and within everything.”

Seemingly uncaring of the implications, Niya jumped in while Olive blinked in stunned silence. “If this framework is poisoning the formations, can we blow it up? Does punching work? I’m good at punching.”

“No, punching does not work. We can either follow the poison back to its source, or I could cleanse it so the wards stop deteriorating. If I do that, then whatever is causing the poison might notice I’m on to it and flee. If it can undo whatever it’s doing faster than I can chase it…” Jiran trailed off, their expressions making it clear they understood.

Jiran could only remember a single time when Olive sounded so serious; the night she had forced Cameron to swear he would protect him and Mayalyn with his life. Her voice was rife with mana and the authority of an imperial princess. "We must find the source. If we can discover it, we can counter it. Nine fortresses and cities have already fallen to the Gray while seven more are under siege. The fates of every man, woman, and child within the empire are depending upon those walls, these walls, to hold! We will not fail them. We will not lose more ground. This is where their invasion stops!"