Chapter 62

The next day, Michael was back in the dungeon. Real life felt hazy at times, compared to here, where everything was more vibrant and real. Only around the dungeon, where mana was spreading, and inside of it did reality feel solid. Michael pondered over these questions as he walked around the valley. Soon he would have to explore deeper, he knew, and he couldn’t delay it much longer.

Because, even though they felt less solid due to their lack of mana, the problems in the real world were very much real. The workers were still reporting about a strange blur in the shape of a man lurking at the edge of perception, approaching the cave and then leaving ten minutes later. Travis was banging his head against a wall to try and make sense of the intelligence he was getting from his spies, not to mention the fact that he still hadn’t gotten over the bureaucrat managing to escape his grasp. By now it was clear that Carmela had gotten to the man, which increased the likely number of powered individuals under her control to two.

Potentially more, now that Michael had proved that he could give his dungeon rewards to other people and turn them into powered individuals as well. What if she had an army of them? They would be individually weaker, but…

“It is very much possible,” said Johanne as he expressed his worries to her, “you should have told me earlier, my lord. I shall leave immediately to deal with the situation. It cannot be allowed to fester.”

“Don’t be hasty,” replied Michael, “do you not remember that time doesn’t pass while we are in here?” besides, what was she going to do about it?

Johanne flushed red for a moment, “I had forgotten about it in my rage, forgive me.”

“It’s alright,” he said.

Sitting on a boulder, he considered the situation. In the end, all he could do was move forward. Train, grow powerful. They had tried to catch the strange man lurking in his property, but not even he could do more than grasp at empty air while the blur streaked far away, never getting close enough to even see who it was. Travis had tried to disrupt Carmela’s network, but she had become a seemingly impregnable fortress now. He still had covert agents in her organization, and one of them was trying to infiltrate himself into a position from where he could be made privy of her plans, but it was slow work that couldn’t be done in only a week.

Short of assassinating her, there was nothing to do but wait. And Michael hated being powerless before a challenge.

Perhaps I should assassinate her, after all. Travis’ power would be perfect for the task.

Michael had killed before, but it had only been in self-defense, and it had made him feel sick afterwards to the point he still sometimes had nightmares about it. Besides, assassinating someone like her wouldn’t be so simple as to have Travis teleport where she was and shoot her in the head.

First, would Travis really do it? Would me asking him to kill her change our relationship? Is it worth it?

And then, what if she doesn’t die? What if she got some powers of her own that allow her to escape with her life? What if she has plans in case of her death? What if…

His thoughts drifted for a long time, and eventually he found himself thinking about things that were not at all related to the Carmela situation.

For instance, even though no sound could make it into the dungeon, Michael still felt like he could hear the roar of the chainsaws and the ground shaking as the bulldozers and crews tore down centennial trees and flattened the terrain for the gravel road. Unfortunately, even with billions of dollars and powerful backing, moving gigantic trees to make way for the road wasn’t really possible. He had never expected the scene of deforestation to have such an impact on his mind before seeing it with his own eyes, but now he couldn’t help but feel a knot in his throat.

Much to the crew’s chagrin—which was mitigated when they realized that they would be paid a handsome extra—he had asked them to keep as many big trees alive as possible. Those directly in the path of the road were to be taken down, but they would be keeping the older and larger trees around the cave where they were flattening the ground in preparation for the construction of his house. They would have to plan around such trees, but money wasn’t an issue and Michael was all for sustainability anyway. It still didn’t feel like enough, but it was all he could do in such a short amount of time. Later on, he would replant and buy land to make nature reserves, because if he couldn’t even do that with all the power he was amassing, then was good was it? The Candle Light division would be the perfect means to that end, a sort of black box where all the random endeavors of the Unity corporation could be put without people asking too many questions.

Johanne approached him again as he was making [Distortion Field]s appear and disappear in quick succession, trying to glimpse at the deeper magic and elemental energies involved in the uncommon-ranked skill. Why was it called field when it only manifested as a sphere, for instance?

“You use mana in a strange way” She said, a conflicted expression on her face.

“I do?”

“I can’t see past your shroud but… from what I see what your mana never leaves your shroud,” she said.

The shroud must be my aura.

“Should it?” he asked.

“I… think so, my lord. My understanding of magic might be incomplete, but how are you manipulating the world if mana does not leave your body?”

“I use magic through skills,” he explained. “Remember the skill stones the dungeon drops? That’s how I learned how to do magic. There’s other systems too. Travis has cards, for instance.”

“Interesting…” Johanne muttered. “I truly was but an ignorant bumpkin, thinking I knew about magic.”

“It’s not your fault. I think yours is the proper way. I would never have learned skills without the dungeon.”

“But you can create them, my lord, can you not?”

Michael nodded, “I can, yes.”

“What about cards, can they also be created?”

“I don’t know, we need to test that.”

“We shall, once we have a science division. I will talk to David about hastening the process, or perhaps Mister Tyrell.”

“Anyway,” Michael said, “I want to see if I can learn your way of casting. Show me a spell, please.”

She did, and he immediately noticed that unlike him, she expelled mana outside of her aura and weaved it in a pattern.

“I see. Spells are fixed patterns of mana manipulation to produce effect.”

He tried to manipulate ambient and coin mana, but nothing happened even when he managed to copy the spell weave.

“You are correct, but only partially,” Johanne said, “the mana needs to be yours for the effect to happen.”

“Ah, I see. You’re also using a sliver of intent to fuel the spell. But…” he struggled extracting Intent from a gold-rank coin to no avail. It seemed that truly he needed to use his own, but like with mana he failed to make it leave his aura. “Forget intent, I can’t even make mana leave my body.”

“I don’t understand why you are encountering such difficulty,” she said, and her tone was like she was blaming herself for his failures, “however, your skills follow a completely different system. It could be due to a limitation of such system. Mana leaves my aura just fine, after all, and yours doesn’t look any different.”

Michael hummed to himself, deep in thought. “At this point, I think you might be correct. But if I find a way to learn a skill to project mana outside of my body… Mana projection perhaps? Then I will be able to cast all sorts of spells!”

“They are not easy to learn, my lord,” Johanne warned.

“Then I only need to train more. My mind stats are unlocked, after all. There’s no limit to how much I can grow if I find the right way to train.”

Nodding to himself, he was almost satisfied when he noticed something else. He only saw it because he was looking at Johanne with his magic sense, trained on her like the eyes of a hawk to see her magic and aura.

“I see you are using some mana all the time Johanne. More spells? It’s not structured, though, so it can’t be spells.”

“Indeed you are very observant, my lord. I use mana in its unbound form to alleviate some discomforts, like keeping away insects, or avoiding getting muck on my shoes.”

Michael’s jaw dropped as a fire was lit in his eyes.

“Unbound mana? Can you teach me?”

“Of course. But first you need to learn how to project mana outside of your shroud.”

“Damn.”

***

Michael got up and stretched. “Are you sure you want to do this? The third floor could be deadly, and you look distracted.”

Johanne nodded, “I shall school my thoughts before battle, do not worry.”

“Alright, and the others?”

“Drullkrin is waiting for you at the stairs together with a stone golem who volunteered.”

Michael was pleasantly surprised to see that the stone golem in question was the same one who had accompanied him in his expedition into the glacier.

“Hey big guy, you’re back!”

The golem rumbled something akin to a verbal nod.

“Indeed he is, my liege,” said Drullkrin, “too bad the chimera and flying fox were too coward to accompany us. Do they fear true death?”

“Is it a possibility?” Michael asked, surprised.

“That’s the feeling we get from even just looking at the stairs, my lord. At least until we clear the third floor, I think it will be a risk that we face.”

“Are you sure you want to come?” Michael asked, addressing his whole party. “You don’t have to risk your life for this.”

“We are sure,” responded the goblin, “we are not so cowardly as to turn our backs to you at the first sight of danger.”

“Indeed my lord,” said Johanne, “of all of us, you are the centerpiece, not us. In fact, I wonder if perhaps you could be convinced to stay here and let us explore the third floor on your behalf.”

“Hard no,” said Michael. “If this is enough to make me quit, then I might as well just never delve again. No, this is what I’m meant to do. Overcome impossible odds through strength born of my hard work.”

The others nodded, galvanized and motivated by his impromptu speech.

“Let’s go.” He said, and without much hesitation stepped through the threshold leading down to the third floor of the dungeon.