Mage Tank-Chapter 246: Dungeons and… (2)

After two stone-shattering bounces, I managed to control my trajectory with Gracorvus, using its flight ability to bleed momentum as rapidly as I could. I’d lost about a third of the speed while using my entire body as an emergency brake, so a few seconds of deceleration with the shield let me hit the ground running and come to a stop on my own.

I glanced at my health. I’d taken about fifty damage from the impact, which wasn’t bad at all. There hadn’t been any magic behind it, so the damage was mostly mitigated by Fortitude. My armor was also durable enough to take that kind of a hit without trouble.

I took a moment to feel quite good about myself. A few years ago, hitting a tree at twenty miles per hour had killed me. Today, I could eat the road at a thousand miles per hour and all I’d get was a bit of muscle tenderness. I glanced back at the tunnel behind me, seeing sections that my body had absolutely destroyed.

“Arlo doesn’t get road rash,” I said. “The road gets Arlo-rash.” I scratched at my beard, plucking some gravel away. “No, that sounds like I gave the road herpes.” I cleared my throat. “Sticks and stones don’t break my bones? That’s complete shit. Uh, let’s see, something about how I don’t bleed? The road bleeds instead? That’s a stretch.” I took a power pose and lowered my voice. “Arlo’s terminal velocity is only terminal for the ground.” I let that one settle, then nodded. “That’s not bad. Not quite on point, but we’ll stick with it.”

Satisfied with my workshopped one-liner, I peered up and down the tunnel, trying to decide what I was even supposed to do. The spatial anomalies were gone, as were the micro portals. This tunnel was also very long, but for real this time. It lacked any non-Euclidean weirdness.

I checked my notifications, seeing that my brief teleport battle had earned me another level in Dimensional Magic, taking me up to 47. The returns in here really were quite good. Dimensional Magic was taking a heavy lead over my other skills, though. My next highest was Physical Magic at 32, with Mystical a close third at 30.

None of my martial skills had made it above 29. I needed to find one or three Heavy Armor Dungeons next.

I reached out with my senses, but the space beyond the tunnel was still a diamond-cut dimensional shredder. I scanned out to my max distance with Shortcut, finding more tunnel for at least seven miles in either direction. Maybe this was a speed test? Run the endless halls before you die of old age? Dimensional magicks were pretty good at making people go fast, but it wasn’t my specialty.

That thought led me to realize that my specialty was turning out to be portals. I had the Closet, Checkpoints, Shortcut, all of them Deific. Summoning Shog made a portal as well. The description of that one only said “Summon the c’thon Shog’tuatha” so I wasn’t sure if it had picked up the Deific tag. Shog wasn’t a portal, so I doubted he’d be a god once he came through. Or, if he was, it was entirely because of whatever he’d done while he was away.

Oblivion Orb was a Planar spell, which was the same magic sub-type as my portals. Did that make Oblivion Orb a portal, technically? I checked the skill’s description, but it hadn’t been upgraded by the Dread Star. I’d known that already, but sometimes I’d look at something five times, only to find what I was looking for on the sixth. Maybe I could reforge it into a portal skill. Ideas for later.

Pure speed boosts were usually Spatial magic. Explosion, Homing Weapon, and Gravity Anchor used Spatial concepts, but were hybrids with Physical Magic. I also didn’t have any evolutions for spatial, so as far as Dimensional Magic went, I figured I now fell firmly into the category of portal specialist.

While I couldn’t use Dimensional Magic to speed myself up, I could run pretty good and use Shortcut to add a little extra speed on top. That wasn’t a long-haul idea, since I’d run out of mana, but I decided to start jogging while I thought it over.

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I casually skipped along at a speed that most sports cars could only ever dream about, using Shortcut here and there for a boost. Ambient Absorption had my mana regen running real hot as I soaked up the thick, juicy Dimensional energy. It was kicking around in the 400 range, meaning I could Shortcut a hundred times an hour without my totals dropping. It didn’t add much to my overall travel speed, but it was something to do.

After a few minutes, I noticed that the tunnel had taken on a slight gradient, moving downward. A few minutes after that, it was turning slightly to the left. I was descending pretty rapidly, despite the shallow angle, but the way out of Delves was always down. Why not Dungeons as well?

As I continued on my journey, I began wondering what had happened to everyone else. Had they been carried away to their own Dungeons? If so, what kind? Were they safe?

The party interface was greyed out and my auras couldn’t find them, but that was normal if we were all in self-contained dimensional spaces. Grotto could check in with them, but I didn’t want to be all paternal. If there was a problem, he’d let me know. I could trust my party members to handle themselves.

I was sure they were fine, and probably having just as much fun as I was.

***

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SYSTEM ADDENDUM ADDED BY: USER NAME [Ruler 1]

ADDENDUM NOTE: Ruler 2 has requested that it be clarified that Ruler 1 is no longer “in first place” and that Ruler 2 is now first among Rulers. Ruler 2 has been temporarily banned from amending their User Name due to repeated abuses.

***

Etja floated in a lake of pure mana, with strands of potent magic flowing around her. They teased her skin with their tendrils, plucked at her mind like empty thoughts, promised her the heavens, to be her shield, to take her anywhere she’d like to go.

She hadn’t even known there was such a thing as ‘pure’ mana, before she’d been dunked into a pool of the stuff. The different types could all be converted into any other with only a little work, and no one’s attunement let them work with all five types, so she wasn’t sure what pure mana would be useful for.

Even the Delves all stored mana as Mystical, since it was the easiest to shift around. Chances were that if she told someone she was using ‘pure’ mana, they’d assume she meant Mystical, which was wrong but would have been a good guess. It would have been her guess, until she’d found out that wasn’t right, which was about three minutes ago.

The lake had shown her a new truth, which she appreciated. The tendrils were curious and playful, and her Mystical skill had gone up twice just from the insights she was gathering by listening to their secrets.

It would have been quite nice, if the stuff hadn’t also been trying to eat her mana matrix.

It was a war of attrition, and there was a lot less mana in Etja than there was in the lake. The pure mana pulled from her with every taste it took. A point here and a point there. She was down more than a hundred, and she knew instinctively that once she’d been sucked dry, the pure mana would stop being gentle with her. It didn’t want her mana pool, that was just a buffer. It wanted the things inside her that made that mana work. Her veins, her matrix, her skill imprints, the little bits and pieces of avatars locked away inside her.

Ejta had gentle with the mana at first. When she was bitten, a gentle puff of Nullify sent the tendrils away. Once they started spinning themselves into invisible threads and sneaking under her skin, she surrounded herself with countermagic. That was unsustainable. Now, she’d learn to copy their style.

The mana wove itself through her like a song, and Nullify danced to its rhythm. She wove the counterspell into little threads she used to cut the tendrils apart. They came at predictable intervals, coerced by a strict conductor. She’d adapted to the mana, but the mana didn’t seem to know how to adapt to her.

This was much more efficient, but she was still losing the race.

The mana told her as much. It spoke to her with soothing tones, assuring her that it wanted what was best for her, but she knew it was cold and ravenous. It was familiar to the other woman who she’d once been. The one locked inside her memories, an echo in the cavern of her mind that never faded. She knew this type, and she knew how to satisfy it.

But the Mirtasian priestess was too nice. Her method of placating was too self-destructive. Etja didn’t mind making sacrifices and she didn’t mind sharing, but this mana wasn’t her friend. She had no reason to give it more than it had earned by speaking to her. And all that earned it was a conversation. Right now, it was stealing.

That wasn’t a nice thing to do, so she decided to stop being nice in return.

Deep in Etja’s soul was a door she kept shut and locked, barred and buried. Behind it was a place her father had made for her, and endless nothing that would take everything for itself. It was Etja’s place now, though, ever since her father’s soul had been forced out of her.

Everything that empty place had belonged to her, so everything it took became hers as well. It didn’t care who it took from, it didn’t care where the stuff it wanted came from, and that made it a very difficult thing to discipline.

Each time Etja gained a Level, she got a bit better at containing that empty place. Each time she gained a Level, the empty place grew more difficult to contain. She took evolutions to give her more control, and it used those evolutions to control the world. But so long as that door stayed shut, it couldn’t act. It could only wait, and plan.

Etja wasn’t very worried about the empty place today. Her friends were somewhere else, far enough away that she couldn’t feel them anymore. Even the comforting presence of Arlo’s auras were gone, which made her a bit sad. She knew they’d return though. Everyone just needed to kill their own Dungeon, and they could get back to what they were doing.

And what they were doing was talking to dragons, maybe?

If Etja were being honest, she wasn’t totally sure why they were there. Arlo wanted to recruit some allies, but he didn’t know who they were or how they might help. He mostly seemed excited to meet new and interesting characters, which she knew he enjoyed. Everyone else went along with it for… reasons.

It didn’t matter much. It seemed neat, and she was happy to come along. She was hoping that Arlo won the bet, because she had several different silly hats she wanted to wear. Her newest hat was incredible, but one needed different hats for different occasions. If it turned out there really were dragons here, then she’d have an excuse to have a different hat for every occasion.

Now, however, Etja was alone in this place the System called the Lake of the Pansophical Ruler. No friends. Only one hat, her own. But if she was alone, there was no one to hurt. No one other than the thing trying to hurt her.

So she dug, pried, unlocked, and then opened that door inside her. The lake was vast, but the empty place was more.

She coaxed her tendrils of Nullify out to surround her as she did a slow pirouette in the pure mana sea. They spun around her, picking up her cadence and following along, hardly needing her to lead at all. She used Disintegrate to encourage Nullify into dissolving the attacking filaments, rather than annihilate them. Once they were broken down, she introduced Incorporate as a new partner. She and her three spells whirled about in pairs, trading off with one another to accomplish their task.

She seized the mana. She dissolved it. She made it ready for harvest, and Incorporate pulled it inward toward the empty.

The door was only so wide, meaning that this might take a while, but she wasn’t worried. The moment the pure mana started draining into the emptiness, her own mana started filling back up. The tendrils could pinch and stab all they wanted.

They couldn't drain her dry once they were a part of her.