Chapter 111: Higher Mysteries

  Kwame uncomfortably leaned on his injured leg. Or to be precise, the makeshift peg leg that they made for him. Due to Moira’s healing, the pain was gone. He still had some phantom sensations from the missing foot. But it didn’t hurt anymore.

  And right now, bound to his stump was a piece of monster bone. Thankfully, mana allowed him to bear the pain, overcome the balancing issues, and other problems with this makeshift peg leg. It was not the preferred solution, of course. But right now, they had to make do with what they had.

  He looked at the blobs of lava that were trying their best to form together. It was a slow process. Arduously slow. But the golems were trying reform. And that couldn’t be allowed. The Knuckleball whizzed through the air, punching into the blobs of lava and scattering them apart once again. The blobs were barely half a foot tall, nowhere near completion, but it was better to thin the herd.

  Heck, it took them three days to join this much. It was quite pathetic. They don’t really have to worry about these golems anymore. So he was thankful for that.

  A shrill screech drew his attention upwards. Close to the settlement, high up in the air, he spotted a couple of teratornis flying in formation. Those bird monsters were scavengers, and allowing them to roam freely was not a good idea. Without hesitation, Kwame sent the Knuckleball hurling towards them. Every fifteen meters, it doubled its speed. He was used to the periodic jumps in speed. The exponential drain that came with each boost. But he was breathing relatively easily now. Because the drain didn’t directly affect him.

  The Knuckleball hungrily drank from his new pseudo-core and punched through the first bird. He kept it going and curved it suddenly, whiplashing back to the next one. Within seconds, the two monsters were dead. And his pseudo-core collapsed with it. The attack had fully drained it.

  Slowly, he allowed mana to drain from his reserves and pool into the spot again. Once it reached the same quantity as before, Kwame began taking deep breaths, synchronizing the pulsation of the stored mana with his breaths. Breathe out, and send the mana that wants to escape back into the flow. Breathe in, and take in the incoming mana into the cluster. It was as if a tiny mana heart was beating inside his palm, surrounding his Knuckleball tattoo, and lying underneath in wait. Once he was synced up, he was ready to move.

  The mana that he spent now, to top up the faux core, would slowly recover over half an hour, per his estimates. These past few days working exclusively on mana control had been greatly beneficial.

  Previously, they followed the simple method of mana volume and intent, giving it instructions so that it followed the tap and hose analogy. According to Vyasadatta, they were doing very basic stuff. And Kwame had to agree that this new technique was far more effective.

  This new method was difficult, though. It required active thought to maintain, at least at their current level. As the Knuckleball flew back towards him, Kwame thought back to the crazy methods his new teacher was teaching them.

  These pseudo mana cores, they acted like rechargeable batteries. These were not intrinsic; they were pretty much artificial, but they worked. The concept was to avoid burdening their primary reserves with constant usage. It was prudent to siphon mana from the reserves and solidify it into a faux core. And for immediate consumption, using the mana from the clustered spot came far more quickly than drawing from their reserves.

  Another plus side was that constantly using mana and containing it in such a manner improved their control by magnitudes. They had to constantly monitor and shape the mana, and minimize wastage.

  Of course, it was not as simple as it sounded. Mana within the body didn’t like to stay in one place. It wanted to flow throughout, like blood. That’s where the analogy to a heart came in. They had to stop the chosen amount of mana from acting like blood and instead act like the heart. So they came back to intent and volume. But this time the intent and volume were twofold. The intent was to actively maintain a cluster of mana and then to overwrite parts of the core towards their purpose when the time came.

  The close proximity to their artifact’s tether also meant that the absurd response time of their artifact’s magic was even further bolstered. In a fight, even a nanosecond mattered. In gamer terms, they were artificially boosting their ping and operating at near zero latency. As long as the pseudo core was active, of course. Once it emptied out, and he switched back to his primary reserves, the performance would go back to normal. His true source of mana was not actually inside his body, after all. All that talk of souls did teach him something.

  Kwame’s pseudo core was barely five percent of his total mana reserves. And unlike his true mana reserves, it was physically maintained within his body. So he needed to be careful in how he maintained it. A tight grip on the cluster would later cause some backlash. That’s why mana was circulated in and out of it like blood. It was supposed to imitate a heart, not a blood clot.

  Their teacher had given them notes for the future. Best possible methods to elevate this. To form seven true mana cores aligning with the seven chakras. But it took a lifetime of effort to reach such a level. Maintaining just a tiny false core took a lot of concentration. He couldn’t even keep it up in his sleep after all. The notes of his teacher would be something to explore in the future. But those were not things he could do in the short term.

  Although apart from just control and efficiency, it had another benefit as well. He was recycling the mana that he had already technically spent. So it was a way of gradually increasing his reserves through sheer usage.

  Kwame looked at the time and noticed that his cleanup duty was coming to an end. He made his way back to the hut, limping all the way. Once inside, he held on to the knuckle ball and hung on it as it slowly lowered him inside the chamber.

  The chamber was lit only by those two mana crystals that were still active. Generally, Parth would keep some fireballs afloat to light up the place. However, he wasn’t currently available to do that. They’d asked Vyasadatta whether he could tether himself to an unplugged crystal so that they could bring him outside and train in the town square. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do it because the crystals were inert. So they trained inside the chamber. And ventured outside now and then to get some sunlight, however artificial that may be inside the dungeon. Parth used to come too, but since the previous day, he had been occupied.

  Kwame looked around the chamber, noticing nothing much had changed in the hour that he had been sitting outside. Parth was sitting in a corner, meditating as Vyasadatta hovered close by, monitoring him. Moira was still taking a short nap at the other end of the chamber. He slowly limped to her and shook her awake gently.

  “What?” she asked groggily as she opened her eyes.

  “I’m done with cleanup. It’s now time,” he said.

  “Alright, just give me a minute,” she grumbled and got up.

  Vyasadatta, by now, had slowly begun floating towards Kwame, still keeping his metaphysical senses trained on Parth.

  It had already been a week since they got stranded in this hellscape. Due to their new teacher’s guidance, they were relatively in a safe zone. Which didn’t hurt. This was the third trial. Things were bound to ramp up once the other Voyagers were back in. Or if the three of them tried to go towards the gate right now. But they needed to hang back.

  To be honest, their supply problem didn’t seem like much of an issue currently. They had a good system going on right now. A few days ago, Parth had gone hunting and had found a smilodon.

  Moira, of course, was eating from the supplies because fairies were herbivores. Their bodies were not evolved to handle anything else. Kwame, on the other hand, had no such problems. He was preserving and eating the monster meat. He didn’t like the texture of it all that much, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It didn’t feel great to chew, but it was edible. And they had some seasoning in their kit to make it better. So he managed to cook it and eat it.

  Given their situation, Parth was also about to do so, because it was a matter of survival. The body needed food. So he was hyping himself up to eat it. His expression during that looked very funny to Kwame. He could never understand the concept of a vegetarian diet.

  But in the end, Parth didn’t follow through. Because their new teacher offered all three of them an option. An insane option. And Parth was the only one crazy enough to take it. And as a result, Parth wasn’t eating at all. Neither eating nor drinking water.

  Kwame’s positive thoughts about the current supply situation would have been completely opposite if they didn’t have access to water. They now went to the hot water springs, collected water, purified it, and drank it. They still had to ration it. The filtration was grossly inefficient due to several complications. There were who knows what minerals in the water. And the mana saturated into the water by the dungeon itself.

  Firstly, they had to filter it with the gizmo they had. Thank god for Tavan technology. Even then, they couldn’t consume it as it was. Mainly because of the saturated mana. Normally, any harmful substances in the water could be handled as long as their stomachs were lined with ample mana. But the mana present injected into the water through the hot springs needed to be removed, or it would counteract their own bolstering. So they had to filter it and keep it aside for a while, untouched by anything else.

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  Once it was free of that influence, it was safe enough to drink with mana enhancement protecting their internal organs. However, due to all this, the conversion ratio was pitiful. For every liter of water they put through this process, they get about ten milliliters of potable water.

  But Parth wasn’t doing any of that now. He had been eating very small amounts of food for the past couple of days from their supplies. It was just yesterday that he had gone on his extreme fast.

  The whole concept was crazy. Kwame couldn’t understand it. Asceticism to the extreme. At least in controlled bursts. Vyasadatta swore by it. He said that the mind, body, and soul, all three of them have a very intrinsic connection. Especially in Parth’s case, the balance between them was strong. If one aspect was weak, then the other two could balance it out. Right now, not partaking in food and water was gradually weakening his body. So to balance it out, his soul and his mind should pick up the slack.

  This was essentially surviving on just mana. Using magic to live was such a foreign concept for Earthlings to grasp. At least the fairies could somewhat understand, since their entire society revolved around their magical flight. Even they did not try to subsist with just magic.

  It was tough on the body. And above a certain threshold, once the body gets afflicted by hunger and thirst, it’ll start poisoning the mind as well. It had been only one day since Parth had started it. Kwame was not sure if he would be able to stick it out.

  In fact, Moira openly mocked him for being crazy. But thankfully, Moira’s healing cards played a part as well. As per Vyasadatta’s instruction, Parth was supposed to be buffed with a low-tier healing card once a day to mitigate physical damage. However, as they all knew, magical healing could only do so much. But it could hold the fort. Or so Parth hoped, and Vyasadatta preached.

  Kwame and Moira didn’t have that confidence, though. And once Parth gave up on this foolish endeavor, Kwame was looking forward to seeing him hyping himself up to eat monster meat again.

  Vyasadatta was crazy for suggesting it. Parth was even crazier for trying to go through with it. Well, sanity was a topic that they discussed at length. The long period of isolation had caused deep trouble for their teacher. He was not a physical body, so he could hold on for a longer time because there was no actual brain to fry. But he has had instances where he almost went insane before his soul, and mana took charge. Moments where his sanity got pushed to the brink before forcibly snapping back to place.

  Crazy, he might be. But his methods worked. Kwame could attest to that.

  As he waited for Moira to get ready and join him, his eyes drifted towards the grave in the center of the chamber, the one connected to the mana crystals. None of them knew what to make of it. According to Vyasadatta, it had always been there. It was quite odd and completely foreign to the dungeon. They didn’t know what to make of it.

  Here lies Callum. Beloved brother, feared tactician, and brave warrior.

  It was a fancy gravestone. The engravings on its border were intricate. But it showed signs of age. There was visible wear and tear due to the natural process of time. But nothing too extreme. It just looked old. Its preservation was mainly due to the mana crystals surrounding it as well, Kwame supposed.

  The placement of the grave was an even bigger question than everything else so far. Who placed it here? Just what had happened in this settlement? Nobody in the recorded history of the Centurial Challenge knew anything about anything similar to this. Although, recorded was the keyword. Who even knew what happened before Byrone set up his system? All of that happened so long ago. Nine millennia ago.

  This tangent led him to another possibility. The doppelganger that Parth was seeing, and the other people as well, who lived here, where did they come from? Were they from another world and got sucked into the dungeon alongside their entire habitat? People and monsters regularly got dragged into the dungeon from different worlds. The entire Tavan system worked under the assumption that Earth, Funar, Yaawar, and the monster world were the four worlds that the dungeon targeted. But where did the landmass come from? It didn’t seem like the dungeon was generating it ex nihilo. Just what was the dungeon? They all thought that all this land was like the body of the dungeon. Were they wrong?

  Given the information that they were working with, they couldn’t say.

  So Kwame did his best to ignore the grave while he was here. Technically, by removing the mana crystals, they were grave robbing. But needs must. It was creepy sleeping next to a tomb. But the chamber was the safest place in this hellhole. Their teacher was correct. No monsters made their way into the chamber. At night, Kwame had noticed a small swarm of camazotz flying around the village. But none of the death bats ever came close to the tunnel. It was as if it were a natural repellent.

  Given the hot springs in close proximity as well, it was a very nice spot. Apart from the central pool that they used for filtration, they had all designated their personal smaller pools for relaxation. It was much needed. Getting the sweat, grime, and blood off of them felt nice. They did wonder why nobody had ever found this place or mentioned this in any records. But this was the very edge of the dungeon. Moreover, it was between two gates. So people wouldn’t have come here much. Everyone is on a time limit to move towards the center, after all.

  The mountain, the hot springs, the village, everything must have gone either unnoticed, especially the latter two. But even if it did get noticed, the golems pretty much explained why nobody made it out. The new teachers’ team had met a grisly fate inside this trap. They might not have been the first.

  A few minutes later, Moira returned to the chamber. “All right, let’s start.”

  “Indeed, my dear students, let’s begin. I hope you continued your exercises yesterday and didn’t slack off,” he said.

  “We didn’t slack off. You very well know it, given how you can sense everything. But is it okay to talk in this volume right now?” Moira asked, pointing at Parth, who was still deep in meditation at the other end of the chamber.

  “It’s fine. I spent the whole day yesterday guiding him through the meditation. He has entered the state that he needs to be in. As long as he maintains that focus, he wouldn’t need food and water while he meditates. His mana would take care of everything. It would keep his body alive and in working order. With a little help from your cards, of course. Obviously, when he stops, he would need to feed. So hopefully he can hold on for long enough.”

  “I still don’t get it. Quite baffled, actually. You’re saying that doing this will not only keep him alive, but it’ll increase his control over his mana as well. It’s so easy for things to go wrong,” Kwame said.

  “Answer me this, then? You’ve begun to sleep less, eat less in general, and yet perform at superhuman levels ever since you got your artifact, right? How do you think that happens?”

  “Because mana bridges the gap. It makes our bodies more efficient,” Kwame answered.

  “So, why can’t the efficiency go to the extreme? Your food gives you energy. Why can’t you just substitute it with mana?” Vyasadatta asked.

  For that, Kwame had no answer apart from that, it was what he was told in Tava. The research by their scientists and the notes left behind by his predecessors told him so.

  “We fairies do live on minimal food. Maybe it was the side effect of subconsciously using the minimal mana we had back in our home worlds. But we still have to eat. Even after bonding with artifacts and fiercely boosting our natural reserves. Yet, I haven’t heard of such a harebrained scheme. Wouldn’t someone have tried and succeeded with this approach after all these years?”

  “Context matters. It always boils down to the synergy between your three aspects. Where do your mana reserves exist? They sure aren’t stored in your bodies. Yet it comes from somewhere and bolsters your body, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Kwame replied.

  “Your body is just a vessel for the mana to flow through. Why do I still have mana when I no longer have my body? And believe me, balance affects me as well,” as he said that, he reached out and touched Kwame’s forehead with his index finger.

  Kwame yelped in shock at the cold touch and leaned backwards. The soul state caused by the Unbound Phantom was supposed to be a toggle. The soul wasn’t supposed to interact with the physical world in such a state.

  “Without a body, I’m not in balance. But I’m tethered to this plane via magic. And if I want to, I can use my magic to imitate my body. It is quite taxing, though. And has never been enough to remove this tether forcibly. Trust me, I’ve tried,” he said, glancing at the gravestone.

  “It’s all metaphysical. It transcends the realm of your physical self. Your mind is deeply entwined with your body, and so is your soul. But they do not solely exist within your body. There are realms beyond our reach, beyond our understanding.

  “The goal of such extreme training is to detach oneself from the body and peek into the beyond. And how would you stay detached if you kept moving around, indulging in food and whatnot?” The rishi asked.

  Kwame and Moira had nothing to say in the face of this. It was currently beyond their level of understanding. Sure, they got what he meant. But truly understanding it was a different manner.

  “There’s a risk, yes. And it is tough. Especially for someone who is not used to it. But he has determination. I believe he will succeed. Either way, this experience would teach him a lot.”

  “You couldn’t pay me to do that,” Moira said.

  “Me neither,” Kwame agreed.

  “And I still believe that you are overreacting.”

  “We’re not. I mean, Parth could have bit the bullet and eaten monster meat. He could have continued with us, improving his pseudo core technique. Instead, he is torturing himself for no guaranteed success.”

  “Ah, but therein lies the distinction. Parth does not benefit from a pseudo core as much as you two do. Sure, your control is improving, but so is his. And he has already grasped the concept. He could improve on that later. With the amount of mana that he has at his disposal, he doesn’t really need it at this moment. What he needs is better control, better efficiency. And this method is the best way for him to attain maximum control.”

  “If he succeeds,” Moira pointed out.

  “Yes, if he succeeds, he’ll have a lot to gain. But failure will also teach him a lot. Mana control doesn’t just disappear into thin air. What’s gained is gained. And you can heal his body from any backlash. Which should be manageable with a high-ranking heart card of yours. If there’s any backlash at all. The lower cards should keep his body fine.”

  “You’re not really inspiring confidence in me,” she said.

  “But my methods do work. You are a testament to that, aren’t you? I do wish I had the time to pen all this down. It would have helped the voyagers after me. Alas, life has plans of its own.”

  Kwame and Moira looked at each other, the decision still weighing on them. Vyasadatta did not demand that they spread his knowledge. But they were hesitant. If at all they shared it with people beyond their immediate circle, it should be all or nothing, after the trials.

  Because there was no telling how the people in the future would use it. Someone like Blackbog, with access to this technique, would be even worse of a nightmare than he already was. So, either everyone needed to learn it, or nobody should. Hoarding such knowledge would lead to leaks. That would lead to a greater inequality in combat for some parties alone.

  Not that it was easy to do with just instructions. They’ve had success so far because of Vyasadatta’s sensory capabilities and knowledge. It was very easy for him to monitor their progress and guide them through the process. Some amount of harmony of mind, body, and soul was needed to reach this point. Concentration, breathing, and control mana. All three in tandem.

  They were forming clusters of mana, storing and maintaining it. Then they were injecting mana from that core into their artifacts.

  Mana liked to follow the path of least resistance. That’s why the tap and hose method had been so effective. That was the simple approach. That was the subconscious approach. It was easier to do, didn’t require much thought, and it worked. This approach had lots of potential points of failure.

  A mistake could lead to the mana clusters bursting apart and causing great pain. They’d only suffered minimal effects due to the prowess of their teacher. They weren’t good enough to form these cores or try to improve them on their own.

  “Now come on. Close your eyes, focus on your mana and your breath. We’ll be aiming to expand the size of the pseudo core you can form. Let’s get started.”

  Kwame closed his eyes, hoping that Parth would succeed from this mad scheme.