Chapter 77

“I have to ask,” Trevor said as they walked their way through the icy tunnels of the glacier. “Why don’t you just hoard all the skills? All the useful ones, at least.”

“A fair question,” Michael said. He was using Fire energy to subtly keep the cold of the glacier at bay, countering its Ice element and understanding more about it in the process. “Do you know why Travis does not absorb all the cards he sees?”

“Because he has a limit?” asked the man. “I recall him mentioning a limit of ten cards. Or was it eight?”

Michael nodded, “not just that. He doesn’t even go around with two full Hands even though he theoretically could. He says it distracts him.”

Trevor hummed. “Is it like a soft limit?”

“I think that magic abilities of any kind take a toll on your mind. Whether they deplete some sort of energy I don’t yet know is to be seen, and Johanne is quite frustrated about my lack of insight, but I guarantee it’s not because I’m not trying. It’s not Intent, not just Intent, at least, I don’t know. What I do know is that the more magic you have, the bigger the strain on your mind. At first, it’s just a delay in cast time, perhaps in accuracy. Then you begin to see the lapses in concentration. While it would be nice to hoard all the skills, you need to cultivate the mental power to control them first.”

“So they go to Candle Light in the meantime.”

“Yep,” said Michael, “that’s also why Travis is coming up with protocols to make sure we only permanently bond skills to people after careful consideration. All the others are temporary assignments, meaning I could take them back whenever I wanted. Ah, we are here.”

Suddenly the temperature dropped as the Throne of the Ice King came into view after a bend in the tunnel. The duo entered the room, casting dark shadows that danced as the icy torches lit up the room with light but no heat. Trevor shivered, but said nothing while Michael took in the majestic sight of the throne and the dancing show of the elements around it.

“Ice, Snow, Water and many more complex and conceptual elements I can’t even name,” said Michael as sort of narration for Trevor, “I can see them all with my sight. Today, I want to try and tame one of them.”

“Which one?”

“Ice. I already have Fire, and Ice is one of the more abundant elements around the Throne. It will take a while. Do you want to leave or will you stay?”

“I can’t see magic,” said Trevor, “but I would like to stay anyway. Perhaps I can even develop the ability if I focus hard enough.”

As Michael went to sit on the throne, it was like the outside world disappeared. He slipped into some sort of meditative trance, [Healing Aura] flaring to life as the cold elements sought to freeze him to death. Within him, he felt the Fire element of his aura surge according to his will, countering the effects of the cold and protecting him from a slow and agonizing death. He was Silver-rank now, and even though the Throne was powerful, it could not overpower the current him.

But the more I shield myself, the less I feel in tune with the Ice.

Michael ordered the Fire within himself to stillness. It tried to rebel, stillness was against its very nature, as it refused to submit to the assault of Ice trying to take over its master, but in the end the Fire yielded and retreated back into the Skill Sanctum from where it had come.

Now it was only Michael and the cold. His healing kept him alive, the Qi generated by the skill overpowering the elemental energy thanks to its higher standing in the magical hierarchy, and he felt the skill fractal fill up with thrumming energy. He ignored it for the time being. It wasn’t his goal for this trip.

Instead, he cast his attention out towards the Ice. He could manipulate it through sheer brute force, a far cry from the gentle guidance he could offer to the only element he truly knew. But like he did with Fire, he knew that brute force could help him achieve success if applied the right way. Brute force was, after all, just a tool. Perhaps it was the tool of the stupid, at least according to some, but it would be stupider still to just ignore it because it had a bad name. Michael had studied the cold in what little free time he had, he had pondered about its workings and mysteries while resting in the frozen time of the Valley, but in the end he did not know nearly enough about magic to truly know how things are supposed to be done.

He had tried to ask Theobond, but the king only laughed and sent Michael away, claiming that he had spoken too much about the matter already.

In the end, brute force would be the catalyst to spark new insight. Michael seized control of as much Ice energy as he could, trying to purge and separate the other elements before caging the ball of pure frost within a net of solid crystal mana. Unlike the Fire, however, it was as if the cage was barely necessary. The Ice, once compressed enough, simply settled. Still. Unmoving.

It waited for something to come to it, ready to rob it of all its heat and energy.

Michael drew the Ice towards himself. The energy was not a tangible thing, and even though its effects were tangible enough, Trevor who lacked a way to see magic could only see its effects on the world. He saw Michael draw what looked like an empty structure of translucent crystal towards him, a cage upon which a thick layer of frost was quickly building despite the dry air of the cave, and around which the air grew so cold as to immediately shed its water in the form of tiny ice crystals.

Michael instead saw the Ice energy itself enter his body. It went beyond the physical, towards… somewhere. This time, unlike with the fire, he knew where to direct it towards. He focused on his Skill Sanctum and pushed the Ice with all the might his six levels of [Magic Manipulation] offered him. It refused to move, instead choosing to ravage his body, but here was the realm where Michael was strongest, inside his aura itself. The Fire that made up the strange red veins of his aura flared, it Silver-ranked might making the Ice quiver and tremble in a way much unlike the eerie stillness that was its natural state.

The Ice surrendered. Michael for a moment got the impression that it wasn’t due to the Fire’s rank, however, but for another—more elusive—reason, but the enigmatic insight remained out of his grasp as the transition ended quickly, and with a system message Michael finally saw a mass of conceptual frost appear in his Skill Sanctum.

Michael looked at it. According to his status, 112 was the maximum amount of elemental energy that he could currently hold. In his Skill Sanctum, the Ice appeared like an amorphous mass of energy slowly settling into a set, immobile shape. It was thing of angles and sharp spikes, like ice crystals, with impossibly thin edges creating a hyperdimensional square structure.

Good thing I am studying things like advanced geometry in my free time, thanks to my growing stats, or I wouldn’t know what I was looking at.

It was a beautiful thing, heavy and settled, yet ready to respond to his will. He knew what it could do and how to use it, but unlike his Fire the Ice felt like a borrowed tool, someone else’s weapon he barely got permission to use for a limited time.

Indeed, I only have a limited stock of Ice. Unlike with Fire. I wonder, what does unquantifiable mean?

He looked around. Unlike Ice, his Fire did not take up space in the semi-tangible world of his Skill Sanctum. If the Sanctum was like a gigantic cavern, made much more tangible by Michael’s rank-up to Silver, with the Soul and its many chains born of Oaths, then the Ice was like a great sculpture of interlinking and interlocked squared of translucent energy resting in a quiet corner of the place. The rest of the cavern was utterly empty, save for the ever-present mist of Intent. Michael could see through the mist with ease, as if it was not something that robbed him of sight but instead something that lit the way, and indeed in the distance he could easily make out the walls of the huge cavern shining with power.

The walls were where the rest of his power was located. At least, the rest of his power that he knew how to find, which was—he had to admit—less than what he was comfortable with. There were the skill fractals, glowing with power fed to them by unknown means. Then there were the strange orange-red veins that now ran all throughout the walls, like rivers of magma constantly flowing with shimmering particles.

Ah, that’s where the Fire is coming from. But… unquantifiable?

He looked closer. He hoped to find more Fire, but instead…

Is that mana? Running through the veins and being fed into the skill fractals?

The veins were now like actual veins inside a living being, not just features of the quasi-rock of the Sanctum. Taking a step back, the picture finally made sense inside Michael’s mind as he finally saw how each and every skill was surrounded by these veins, small capillaries merging into larger arteries that ran through the walls, into the floor, everywhere connecting things, forming the base tapestry upon which everything that this place was existed.

But then, where is Qi? It’s the only missing thing here, isn’t it?

Not just Qi, he realized. But right as he thought about the other missing thing, like a shy wisp it made itself visible to him. Ebbing and flowing in time with his breath, the Chi pulsed like a living heartbeat. Slow as it was due to Michael’s material body being deep in meditation, it had been easy to miss at first, but now impossible not to see. It ran alongside the veins, never mixing, like a lymphatic system. Where clouds of Intent drew close to a Chi conduit, little sparks came into being for a tiny moment before disappearing, and information was exchanged between Chi and Intent, back and forth, back and forth.

Where was Qi in all of this? The elusive energy was still missing. In the real world, Michael did some basic forms and watched in awe as within the Sanctum, the sparks roared into a golden and deep blue fire. Intent and Chi was consumed, and a short-lived burst of Jing came into being. It was channeled out of the Sanctum through special locations where the Chi conduits met, which in turn were only activated when Michael’s material body performed the right moves.

Many things began to make sense. Yet, there was more.

A little flame appeared, joining the dance of energies, then Ice followed. Michael watched how they left the Sanctum to manifest themselves in the real world, keeping an eye on both realms at the same time. That’s when he saw it happen, mana disappearing within a dimming vein only to be replaced by the fiery light of Fire. That’s when he understood.

Unquantifiable because somehow I can convert mana to Fire to replenish my stocks.

My mana pool is those strange veins on the walls of the Sanctum. The more I use magic, the wider and sturdier they become. They weren’t there when I was Copper, meaning that the transition to Silver is all about carving those channels from scratch, going from accumulating mana wherever to storing it in those veins.

At the same time, any element I manage to integrate is there too. Theobond said I need Qi to add more, but I can’t even see where Qi is yet. Once I do… another aura evolution is not off the table.

In the meantime, this is awesome news. My aura is actually converting part of the mana in my pool into Fire energy, making it a renewable resource as long as I have mana! With Ice, I only have what I gathered. Does this mean that if I manage to integrate Ice in my aura, I get to have a source of it as well? I am still far from actually understanding what my Soulfire Silverweb aura actually is, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

It seems like auras in general, even basic ones, are much more than they appear, even though there is no skill to match. Everything else is quantified or exists through skills, with my aura being the only exception.

But auras are also something that exists across all the magic systems I’ve seen. The constant amidst all this chaos of magic. Could it be that they are an existence above the magic system itself?

Michael was satisfied as he returned to camp, where he found the others in various states of rest. He told Travis and Johanne about his experience, and left to rest himself.

There is a catch though… this was my first skill rank up after almost two weeks. Healing is close, but after that I don’t have any skill that’s even remotely close. It’s like they are becoming heavy, bogged down. Perhaps I downplayed it with Trevor. It’s not just how many skills I have, but also their level that’s suffocating me. And it’s slowing my growth a lot. Am I reaching equilibrium?

If that was true, if he could only gain more skills or more levels once he gained enough mental strength to support them, then he needed to find a way to train himself on that front. Wondering if perhaps this elusive mental strength was represented by one of the many statistics of his status, Michael finally fell asleep.