Book 2, Chapter 13

Total agony went through the arm. This was what someone had to be feeling when their arm was being torn right off. Pillow in his mouth stifling the screams.

Keep it in.

People were sleeping around. People who feared the Lucu. It was 2am in the morning if they heard him there would be panic. Hopefully, no one had registered his partially muffled scream.

Lay of hands, pushing all of his mana into it to try to fix the arm. It was too sore to move, so he tried to hold it as still as possible. Mana pool bottomed out, but the rush of healing was enough as the pain stopped.

Screwed it up again.

There was no noise outside. He had half been expecting a rapid response group to rush to his room, but apparently they trusted the security of this place. Such an idiot. How could the pathway have backfired on him twice in a row? Even the shat sheet rubbed in his incompetence. There was a 0.04 penalty to his strength statistic being applied. For an unknown period, he was four percent weaker.

Thoughts turning back to the lecture series. The blonde woman giving it was superb looking. Cheeks reddening. Fancy being attracted to a computer-generated image,it was so juvenile. Not necessary a betrayal of Emily, but not kosher for a forty-year-old to be suffering such ridiculous thoughts. How was Emily? Shaking his head. Liking a computer image would just amuse her. He wondered what her story would be like when they caught up? What her skills would be like.

Re-Experiencing the lecture again. There! Right there! “It is important to channel as little mana as possible initially.” If those words had registered in his thick skull, he would have avoided a lot of pain. Channel as little as possible till he had gained some level of mastery.

Mana was depleted, so practice would have to wait. A tiny spark shot from his fingers to light one candle, which he then used on the rest. The massive book of artwork was pulled out of the bag of holding and opened to his favourite spot. Fingers traced the smooth stone embedded in the middle of the page. It reminded him a little of the touch and feel books, but this stone was a multiple use memory stone. It allowed him to experience the grandeur that occurred when waves smashed into a beach on some distant planet.

This time there were only gentle swells coming into shore. There was not enough energy for anything fancy and as each wave broke they briefly formed the image of a host of snakes swimming in the water. It was hypotonic and calming. The waves coming in like normal, breaking and then watching the snakes desperately swimming like they were going to be drowned if they stayed still. Then they would dissolve and just fade away to nothing, and then the water would rush back out to sea. Eventually he looked away and reverentially flipped to the next page.

What time is it?

3:48

Over an hour watching a simple movie, yet it humbled him. To think that a physical process created each of those waves. Waves breaking over rocks creating such majesty. Sure, the rocks were magically shaped to drive the creation of images, but once the wave broke, it was just physics. The best parallel was a row of dominos, where you could knock one done and that one would then knock another till thirty thousand domino's had fallen. A cascading beautiful response and just driven by simple newtonian mechanics. Each domino, knocking over one other, till everyone had been knocked over. But the water art. It was oh so much more complicated.

The next page was like the wave page, but without the memory stone in the center.

A small blurb in the top left describing how the art was created. The waves were magic rock, infused by a dying sapient’s core for processing power. Then there was an array formed underneath to gather information and energy. Beauty permanently created by every wave hitting the shore. The Rock would alter its form to create a new piece of art driven by each wave that came in.

The new page talked about a race that used magic to generate art out of wood, stone and metal. Shaping magic applied to create a finer product than what hammer and chisel could manage.

Then there were images of the artwork. None of them were larger than a post it note, in total there were dozens over the two pages. The images were all of technology. Futuristic in nature to be sure and with a more spherical vibe than he was used to from Earth designs, but the basics were all there. A spherical satellite with a lot of solar panels arcing out, cars, an aeroplane with smooth aerodynamic features and something that could only have been a helicopter, hovercraft mix. The art showed a species fondly remembering the technology that they had once mastered.

The next page had other images of the same race, they were labelled generation zero, generation one generation two and all the way down to generation forty. There was no doubt it meant a generation of the Sapient species so twenty years for humans. The book was showing him eight hundred years of art progress after the Alpha event.

By the fortieth generation, new non technology artwork had been Incorporated but not a great deal of it. Most of the fine work being produced was still of cars, spacecrafts and hovercrafts even though the creators had never experienced technology they still yearned for it. Forty generations later and the species was still fixated on what they had and their quest knowledge had taken from them.

Mana had regenerated, so he went back to his strength exercises. This time he only trickled one or two mana points into each iteration. Focusing on an individual muscle, using finger muscles instead of the bigger arm and leg muscles. Watching the tiny muscle grow the flood of mana caused before it faded away to nothing. The stat sheet never changed. There was too little mana, and what he was doing was too inefficient to have an effect. Progress of the strength buff shut up to 22%. Trying the inefficient internal release. This time he kept the energy output to just ten mana. Rather than a bucket being poured over him, it was more like a bottle of water. The front of his top still got drenched, but significantly more of the liquid got down his throat. And no choking. All in all, it was an unpleasant but better experience.

This time the wave of energy only made the muscles tingle. Strength increased by 0.02 which was a start but not enough to help change a battle. The magic still faded away too quickly, lasting less than twenty seconds. Keeping up the practice till his mana bottomed out.

Self Buff - Strength    - 28% (+22%)

Amazing progression and no pain. Another four or five more sessions, and he could buff himself. Maybe if he was fighting something immune to magic, it could help him win.

Next steps. While he wanted to focus on group buffs, the pathway in his head was clear. Vitality then growth then self buffs then other spells he knew. There was no way around that. Vitality would be similar to strength, obtainable after just four to seven sessions, Growth would take longer. Getting bigger requires lengthening and thickening bones, changing muscles, tendons, ligaments and doing it in the right proportions. It would be immensely complicated.

Concerns for another day.

Everyone was still asleep, so he pulled out the meditation technique. Understanding the cursed book was still a requirement for his intelligence boost. Preparing for a headache, he read through the ridiculous instructions of the first seven meditation techniques. Not one of them was for something resembling a bipedal organism. Nothing described two legs, two arms and a head. There were lots of body parts, but besides the human ones, the techniques referenced; trunks, pointers, eight legs, thorax, antenna, singular lung, multiple lungs and a three of them complex multiple brain meditation flows.

Whatever the creatures were, it felt like after they mastered basic technology; the race wanted to understand the beginnings of the universe. A common theme linking pointers, thorax, and multiple brains. Just like humans. Curiosity got the better of them. A particle collider creating exotic particles peering back through time and then the complete failure of their knowledge. Accidentally creating one that did not just disappear and allow them to measure. Instead, the particle hijacked everything around it. A single particle that once created a self-propagating wave of destruction so extreme that all the species could do was hang on tight and bob along like a bottle in the ocean, hoping to one day reach land.

Putting the book back into his bag. It was breakfast time. Not only was light peeking through the thick curtains, sounds of movement had been increasing for the last hour.

There was an unpleasant edge to the dining room. Everyone was sitting down, focusing on their breakfast. There was no mirth anywhere. Something had happened.

Steve was at the door, sword drawn and ready for a fight.

Shit