Chapter 656: Temperature control

Chapter 656: Temperature control

POV Nathaniel

When I'm finally done with yet another round of examination with Doc, I use [Ley Line] to teleport to my room. It took over ten days to create one that would work within the defensive arrays of this building. But at some point, I started to take it as a challenge. A game of cat and mouse.

Then the voice of said cat echoes in my room.

(I’m asking once again, no, I’m begging you, please no more teleportation inside the main building. I had to call off the guards again, turn off three alarms, and modify four different arrays.) That voice belongs to the security lady. A particularly rude vyssari woman.

"Sure, sure, I’ll just modify [Ley Line] so I can teleport again. It's not my fault your defensive array sucks."

The voice sounds again. (If you said something, I didn't hear it because of privacy rules, and you know that. Still, I'm pretty sure it was something rude.)

"I’ve already started modifying my [Ley Line] to counter the changes you just made."

(It was so calm here after all the lunatics were moved to the lower floors and... wait a second... are you messing with the defensive array again, right now, as we speak?)

"Oops."

I use [Eclipse] and disrupt whatever sound transfer array she’s been using, and the voice cuts off. Then I start stacking defensive arrays around the door, along with a number of additional locks.

Next, I use [Focus] to filter out outside noise and begin going over the results of today’s experimentations. This time, we were observing my sealed Ignition Heart. Even though it proved difficult, there is a thing or two I managed to take from the process, and a few more I still need to think about for a while longer.

The past two weeks here have been annoying at times because of lessons, certifications, and all that guild stuff, but Doc has proven himself useful, as time with him has helped a lot. I only wish we had Lily with us. She would have loved it here.

And Biscuit. I miss that corgi. I wonder how he’s doing. Not even being able to use Community to talk to my ESC doesn’t help either.

I had hoped I would have learned a bit more about black mana by now, but it’s nearly impossible to observe properly, at least between me and the Doc.

We more or less confirmed my previous suspicions. It is extremely densely compressed mana, but also something else. If it were just compression, every other Champion would have it. It dominates all mana in the area, and it grows the more it absorbs.

The more mana I use for its creation, the more it can absorb before it destabilizes. The destabilization, if allowed to continue, always ends in an explosion. Interestingly, if the same amount of mana is used to create a tricolored orb and a black mana orb, the explosion from the tricolored one is bigger. The black mana orb, however, causes a wide-range disruption that lingers for a while. The more mana, the bigger the range and the longer the disruption lasts.

Part of that disruption is similar to the field [Empyrean Lance] leaves in its wake, so we thought there might be a connection at first. But the difference is that the lance destroys, while the black orb disrupts. It is like a last attempt to dominate, to take control, or absorb everything around it. Black mana is also really difficult to observe, which makes things harder.

As a side effect, it is difficult to estimate how much mana was used to make it as an outside observer. That means it’s hard to grasp how dangerous it is. That could explain why some powerful but less perceptive people I met immediately tried to get rid of it and perceived it as a great danger, even though I probably couldn’t cause much trouble for anyone truly powerful. For now.

And oh, how many times we tested using black mana for body strengthening, mind strengthening, and empowering my skills. Up until now, I’ve mostly gone by feeling, but that crazy catboy came up with some numbers and a few more efficient methods.

Black mana isn’t really that effective for powering my mind, but it is far more efficient for my body. And even there, it’s better at increasing my durability rather than strength.

As for my skills, [Redistribution] and [Eclipse] work best with it. But even though we don’t really have any proof yet, I think once my mastery increases, [Focus] and [Manifestation] will become very scary.

I throw the mana stones and a few papers on the table and start taking off my clothes while heading into the shower, these thoughts still running through my mind. I keep thinking about the tests we could continue. Plenty of them have already helped me improve my constructs, some of them significantly.

As unpleasant as it is, I also know, from the tests I’ve run with Doc, where my body is most damaged. I know what parts to improve and modify further, and I know how to push things further if I choose to. And so I continue speeding up, running downhill, because stumbling and falling means nothing good.

Even if I hadn’t gained anything else by being here over the past two weeks, I think it was worth it. Just for one piece of information, I got from the Doc in exchange for three left arms. Ȑαℕó𝐁Е𝒮

I heard about someone who's rumored to have something similar to my black mana, or maybe even the exact same thing. One of the four people known to have had it in the past millennia.

The Ruler of Kindness.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Later that evening, I venture into my mental space where I find myself facing mini Sophie. She is, as always, in the same room I left her in, and even now I refuse to ask. I'm waiting for her to tell me, and she knows it.

And she’s clearly annoyed by it.

At first, I had wondered if there was going to be a big difference between this version of her and the real Sophie. After all, she herself said this is just an amalgamation of some memories she disliked. But the longer I talk to her, the more I think she may be wrong. Even though this one remembers almost nothing from before the tutorial, she knows everything since the start of the 1st floor.

I don’t think it was just a few memories, I think her mind fractured into many parts, and each part had the current Sophie as a base, with some of her Earth memories mixed in.

Or something like that. Who knows. All that mindblendering stuff is weird.

“I think that spine implant he showed you could help you improve your Thermal Cycling construct,” she says.

“How the fu… how the hell.”

“You know you can swear in front of me.”

“You look ten. I’m not going to swear in front of a child.”

“Don't bullshit me. I’ve heard Vega speak.”

“She learned all of that long before she met me. You know, growing up on the street kind of…”

“Sure.”

“Anyway, so how the hell do you think that weird spine implant can help me with cycling?”

“Isn’t it simple? That implant was made from the body of some monster he got his hands on. That monster didn’t channel thermal energy, but it did move fire through its bones.”

“Yes, but they were mostly hollow. And are you asking me to fix my construct by messing with my body more? I mean, I’m not against it, but…”

“No,” she energetically shakes her head and moves closer to me.

A bit of pale blue mana glows on the tip of her finger as she starts drawing into the air.

“Your thermal threads don’t handle the flow of your energy very well. They’re static and built to hold their shape. That’s fine for weapons, but not for something like your Thermal Cycling.”

I raise an eyebrow. “So?”

She redraws the bone and threads again. This time, taking a moment to adjust the shape, instead of focusing on layering or hollowing things out. The thread starts folding into itself, spiraling along the inside of the hollow. Like veins wrapped around a spine.

“You’ve woven multiple threads together,” she says, “but you don’t let them interact. You bundled them. That’s not a structure, it’s just a bundle of rope.”

I grunt. “I’m not stupid. I know where this is going. You want me to let the threads support each other.”

“No.” She looks annoyed again.

I stay quiet and listen.

“Right now,” she continues, “your pathways heat up evenly. All at once. That’s why they heat up so much, and probably part of the reason you feel so much pain. But what if one thread runs hotter, faster than the others? What if you let some threads rise while others fall?”

“That’d destabilize everything, and make channeling slower.”

“It’d accelerate everything,” she disagrees. “One thread surges, forces the weaker ones to collapse, while feeding the stronger ones. You don’t get simultaneous heat, but it cascades instead. You get spikes and surges. Instant, localized small explosions inside of your construct, that would force thermal energy into narrower paths and cause them to move faster.”

I blink, slower this time. "And to do that, you want me to alter the pathways so they feel more like proper parts of my body and use my subdermal combustion to heal them at the same time as they combust in cascading explosions?"

She watches me, then finishes, “Something like that. You and I saw the implants that maniac created, right? And you heard him blabber about the ways he makes sure the body doesn't reject the implants he creates. Your natural regeneration and passive heal those constructs, but it’s not all that quick."

"Yes, yes, my constructs aren’t like system-given traits, so they don’t work as well with my body’s upgrades, natural healing, passives, and stuff, and so they tend to mess things up," I say, giving it a moment of thought.

Then I continue, "So instead of just thinking in lines, or as you so nicely put it, bundles or ropes, I’ll think of them more like layers. Of course, it’s going to be a shitload of work again, just to modify what I already made. There’ll need to be segmentation, multiple layers, sacrificial threads, the main one... and fuck, creating nodes at the places where all the paths meet will be a pain in the ass. But like you said, I can use my bones and run a few paths through them as well."

"That should make it easier to force your body to accept them as a proper part of you."

"Or mess it up so badly that I won’t be able to heal my bones with my passive."

"Or that," Mini Sophie nods.

"I can do that."

"It’s always scarier when you say it."

"Mini Sophie-"

"Please don’t call me that ever again."

"Do you realize how much thermal energy I’ll be able to channel if this all works out?"

"A shitload?"

"Language. You’re too young to swear."

"Fuck you."

"A lot of thermal energy. And maybe, in just a few months, I’ll be able to keep the second seal on Ignition Heart lifted for more than just a few seconds. Anyway, you know what’s so nice about all this, Mini Sophie?"

"What?"

"As I apply these changes, I can start working on a prototype construct to allow me to turn all that thermal energy into mana."

"Not another construct. You just barely patched the ones you’ve already made."

"Mini Sophie-"

"Don't. Call. Me. That."

"More mana."

She glares. "You're going to set yourself on fire and die from mana radiation one day. You're actually proud of that, aren't you?"

"It was your idea. You should make a spreadsheet."

"You can’t blame it all on me. And no, I’m not making your damn spreadsheets."

"Something color-coded by likelihood of organ failure, heart explosion, that kind of stuff."

"Fantastic. Can’t wait to watch you combust."

“Thanks for the support.”

"You're welcome, you absolute maniac. I fucking swear, the longer I spend talking to you, the more I'm inclined to the idea of returning to my body."

She then tries to kick me out of my mental space, but she can't. Instead, she just stands there, awkwardly staring at me.

To make it easier for her, I leave.

It's all statistics in the end. Sooner or later, someone who enters my mental space will actually be kind to me.