Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 30

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Once Father’s mana was spinning as fast as he could get it to go, I started pulling mana through my own core and releasing it into the air. A basic storage crystal would have been better here since I could have shunted the mana directly into a cloud around Father, but it wasn’t worth breaking my mana crystal to replicate that effect now. Besides, Father was much slower at gathering ambient mana than I was anyway, and if I’d dumped the entire amount all at once, too much of it would have been lost.

Instead, I let it out in a controlled stream while constantly refilling my own core from my mana crystal. I was paying careful attention to release it only as fast as Father could pull it into his own core, and instead of the immense cloud I’d sat in for my own ignition, he had more of a thin vapor constantly disappearing into him.

About forty feet away, Mother sat with her back against the stone wall out of our temporary home with Senica on her lap. My big sister started to ask her a question, but Mother shushed her. Near them, Nermet stood with a blank expression on his face. I wasn’t sure what he thought of the whole ritual, if anything at all. Did he understand that we were in the process of empowering my father so that he could take over as the one holding Nermet’s leash? Even if he did, I wasn’t sure he had the capabilities to get why this needed to happen.

The mana in Father’s core was compressed as much as he could get it, but he only had about three times his normal maximum contained inside. There was a small hollow spot in the center where the force of the spin had pulled all the mana away, and he was directing the new mana he pulled from the air around him into there.

That wasn’t ideal, but I could see why he’d make that mistake. It was easier to direct mana into a spot it wasn’t already filling, and we hadn’t had the resources to practice this part. I’d told him not to do this, that the effort to get that still mana to start spinning with everything else was more work than adding it to the mana that was already moving.

Father was rapidly approaching his limit. If he managed to get up to four times his normal maximum, I’d be surprised. I’d also be impressed that he got that far on his first try. Most apprentices topped out between two and three times what they could normally hold. Then again, most apprentices were between ten and sixteen years old when their cores were ignited and had to deal with various impurities that had built up into their core. Father had a full-sized adult core that had never been exposed to raw ambient mana.

Regardless of how he’d achieved it, four times his core size wasn’t going to be enough. Fortunately for him, I was here to help. Normally, a master’s job was to help his apprentice prepare for the ignition by giving him the training and tools to manage it on his own. But this was far from a normal situation, and a man’s life hung in the balance of a successful ignition here. We were already compromising between Father’s future as a mage and saving Nermet’s life now.

We could have used an easier method that would result in a dimmer ignition if Nermet’s life had been the sole focus, but that would have left Father a crippled mage for the rest of his life. My technique would result in the strongest possible core, and if I had to cheat a little to help Father now, so be it. I could give him remedial lessons later to help him strengthen his control and focus, but I couldn’t fix a dim ignition after the fact, at least not to the point where his core would ever be as strong as it was going to be using the spin method.

Manipulating mana inside another person’s core was a delicate process. There were a lot of things that could go wrong, resulting in anything from a mild nosebleed due to mana backlash to—in exceptionally rare cases—total core rupture leading to death. What I was about to do was dangerous, but, well, I was an expert and my father trusted me. We’d practiced this as well so that he would understand what he was feeling and not fight me on it.

Admittedly, we’d practiced it with half a core of mana, not one overstuffed four times over with even more coming in. It would be the same sensation from his perspective, just more intense. He would need to keep absorbing more mana on his own, but tendrils of my own mana, hardened to survive amidst a pool of his, snaked into his core. I saw Father wince at the touch, but he kept the spin going.

I pushed the mana inside his core using my own mana like a paddle, or rather, I shaped my mana into four separate blades and spun them. At first, each section had slits and vents to reduce their effectiveness so that Father would have time to adapt to the increased speed, but as we approached five and then six times maximum mana, I reformed them into solid paddles.

“I… can’t,” Father gasped out, now leaning forward with his elbows braced against his legs and his head in his hands. Sweat poured off his face and dotted the stone beneath him.

“Don’t you dare quit on me now. We’re almost there,” I said. “A little more. Just focus on keeping the spin going and pulling in the mana. I’ll handle speed.”

Seven times normal maximum. I could see the reaction starting, the mana starting to seep into the walls of the core to reinforce it. More mana came in, and Father’s core… rippled, for lack of a better word. It couldn’t tolerate my presence any longer, not when it was ready to ignite.

“That’s all the mana. Focus everything you’ve got left on keeping the speed going. You just need to last a few more seconds,” I said, pulling my own mana back out. It broke down almost immediately, disappearing into a mist too fine to be detected, like a drop of water lost to the sands of the desert.

The ignition started, and Father let out a gasp that was one part wonder, one part exhaustion. In a flash, his core became something solid, several times the size of my own, and though it was now empty, it would fill soon enough. Father was officially the first villager of his generation to become a mage.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Like a wrung-out dishrag.”

“That’ll pass.”

He started laughing. “That’ll pass,” he echoed. “Yeah. It’s… It’s incredible. I don’t even know how to describe it. I can feel the mana.”

It would take a little bit to confirm, but by my rough guess, we’d achieved somewhere between sixteen and seventeen times his previous generation speed. Not perfect, but acceptable. Once he’d had an hour or so to start generating mana, I’d measure again, but I was confident in my estimates.

“It should take about nine hours to completely fill your mana core,” I told him. Even at the lower relative speed, being an adult with a full-sized core had its perks. Adults naturally generated mana about three to four times faster than children to begin with, and could hold a proportionate amount more total mana. All other factors aside, size mattered. That was why so many huge creatures like dragons had enormous advantages in terms of absolute power.

That was also why they were often lazy and relied on brute strength without even a modicum of skill to back their mana up, incidentally. More than a few of them had fallen in duels against archmages of the smaller races precisely for that reason.

As far as Father was concerned, his mana generation would be heavily tied up in maintaining the usurpation of Nermet’s subjugation spell. He’d still be generating a net positive, of course, probably even more than I made without the handicap. Hopefully he’d be willing to keep taking direction from me because I’d all but exhausted my mana crystal. It had maybe enough mana left to refill my core another five times, which meant no big, expensive spells and no prolonged fights. My plan was to take a few days to recover some resources while we hid here, then sneak back into the village at night to take out Noctra. Even if I couldn’t get any mana from Father, three days would be enough for me to double my current mana reserves.

“For now, you should just rest,” I told him. “I’m going to keep an eye out for any monsters like that mana sniffer that showed up when I ignited my core. I don’t think we’ll have any problems with us being this far up, but we should be cautious anyway. Once you’ve got your core filled up, we’ll start the next step.”

“The part with Nermet, you mean?” Father asked.

“Yes, that part,” I said, trying not to grimace. That kind of magic was dirty work, and even just cleaning up after it made me feel like I had a layer of sewer sludge coating my soul. No good person should know anything about how mind subjugation magic worked, and Nermet was an ugly reminder that I was all too familiar with it.

Memories flashed through my mind, old ones I’d done my best to put behind me. Katirin discovering my workshop. Goshin confronting me after she told him what she’d found. Stabbing him in the back, literally. The battle with Avry, the fire that burned everything down. The dozens of bodies, black charred skeletons.

Lessons painted in the blood of others, innocent people who didn’t deserve their fates. Resolving to be better, to atone for my sins, hadn’t brought any of those people back. Nothing would. Even if I hadn’t broken that oath, it wouldn’t have changed anything for my victims.

“You alright there?” Father asked.

I gave him a smile and said, “I’m fine. Do me a favor and keep Senica distracted while I play look out? She looks like she’s got about a thousand questions.”

Father started laughing as he stood up. “Oh! Wow, that feels… weird. I should be sore, but I’m not?”

“You’ll get used to that,” I said. “You’ve been using weak, unstructured invocations your entire life to reinforce your body. Now they’ve got a lot more mana to work with.”

“Amazing. I need to convince your mother to do this. The things we could- er, that is, the health benefits…”

I looked my father straight in the eye and said, “You have no idea how many ways magic can be used to enhance your sex life. The things I could teach you would make your head spin.”

“Okay. Well. Now I’m just uncomfortable. I’m leaving this conversation.”

I laughed softly to myself as Father ran away from me. My family retreated into the shade of the crevice we were camped out in, leaving me alone with Nermet’s silent presence. I could feel him, like an itch in the back of my mind, just waiting for me to give him a new order. That was going to drive Father mad once I transferred the patch I’d applied to the control nodule to him.

It would only be temporary, but even with Father’s mana production, we’d lose so much in transference. We wouldn’t even have access to his excess unless I built a new storage crystal for him, and those were awful for efficiency. I would need a day or two to gather enough mana to make it though, and there just wasn’t enough time. I would have to use mana draining spells for the time being to take advantage of his surplus.

Movement caught my eye in the wasteland below me. Something big and yellow, covered with shaggy fur and dirt, was making its way toward us. It had a long nose that hung off its face like a twitchy banana as it swayed back and forth. I assumed it was what the locals called a mana sniffer, though that was about as generic a name as it could possibly get. There were thousands of different creatures that hunted down mana to consume, and I was sure hundreds of those did it by smell.

I’d let it get a bit closer, and if it turned out it could climb, I’d blast it right off the rocks. There was no point in letting anyone else know yet, not when it would accomplish nothing but make them worry. I settled down to watch and to wait as the mana sniffer got closer.

***

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