Published at 24th of February 2024 10:33 am

Chapter 62

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When I was a young man, full of a burning hatred for the rich and powerful, I killed some nobleman’s son. I remembered it, not because of how important the man was, but because it was the first time I’d ever seen a pocket watch. I never did quite manage to put it back together correctly, but in my defense, I had bludgeoned him to death using several telekinetically propelled rocks and damaged the pocket watch in the process.

Putting my lattice together once I finished forming the last piece sometime just before pre-dawn light started brightening the sky was a similar process to playing with that watch. The pieces were tiny and required a great degree of delicacy and precision to handle. They also required a significant understanding of how things fit together, as so many of the pieces looked similar but did not function properly if switched around.

I might not have been able to repair that watch, no matter how many different fabrication spells I’d utilized, but I was an expert at constructing lattices. I’d seen all kinds and spent considerable time researching them. I knew the benefits and drawbacks to basic lattices; I knew how to adapt and modify designs for individuals.

And I’d given over endless hours to researching my own particular path back to power prior to my reincarnation. I could put this lattice together in my sleep, which was good because I couldn’t use the mana in my core for anything else while I was integrating the lattice. Three-year-olds were not built to pull all-nighters, and without mana to keep my energy levels up, I was beyond exhausted.

I finished putting the last piece of the lattice into place and felt a rush of mana cycle through it as it activated. Immediately, new mana started pouring into my core off the lattice. I spent the first minute of my lattice being active calculating my new rate of mana generation, then the next five minutes going over it and confirming it repeatedly.

I’d expected to boost my mana generation from twenty times normal to fifty, with some slight accommodations made for a minute loss in maximum core capacity. My lattice was extremely thin and fragile, thus why it was so time consuming to make and put together, so the capacity loss was barely a single percent of my total.

My output, confirmed by quadruple checking, was closer to seventy times normal generation, even accounting for the slightly smaller core space. I wasn’t inclined to complain about it, but it shouldn’t have happened. I was immediately concerned that what seemed like a boon now would come back around as a problem down the road.

My lattice’s modular design was a compromise forced on me by my accelerated timeline, and I was concerned that in my sleep-deprived state, I’d done irreparable harm to my potential by incorrectly slotting all the pieces together. If I couldn’t disassemble the lattice to make modifications to it later, I might find myself stalled out at stage nine again, just like in my previous life.

As many times as I went through it, everything looked perfect. I redid my calculations for the hundredth time since being reborn and confirmed they were correct. By everything I knew, I should be generating fifty times my unignited rate, not seventy. Either I’d made some serious mistake that I’d never caught in all the years I’d spent working on my reincarnation plan, or being born here in a mana desert had introduced an unanticipated variable.

The level of ambient mana should not have made a difference. It certainly hadn’t mattered when I was igniting my core. My mana core functioned precisely as planned at that step. The only difference I could see was at that point, I’d been entirely dependent on my own mana, barring a sliver I’d taken from Senica. Now, I was using mana accumulated by the village that had been at least partially filtered through draw stones. There was no reason that should matter, but I couldn’t think of anything else that had changed.

Perhaps it was something on a global scale that had thrown off my calculations. I did have a missing moon and a missing written language as of yet unaccounted for. I couldn’t see how that would affect my mana lattice, not at this stage. It wasn’t until stage six that a mage needed to link to a genius loci, and I was years away from that point. Prior to that, celestial anomalies would be irrelevant.

I was strongly tempted to tear the lattice back down so I could go over it piece by piece, but given the situation I was in with an unknown number of hostile mages potentially trying to kill or enslave me, reducing my own power right now was a terrible idea. I would just have to accept that I’d miscalculated something, move forward as best I could, and research it later when time permitted.

At least the error was in my favor for the moment. I officially had a stage two core, strong enough to refill from empty to full in a bit over two hours. It wouldn’t be all that helpful in a combat situation—that was where stage three shone—since those kind of fights tended to end in seconds or minutes at most, but it would greatly accelerate my prep work, which included keeping the reserves in my mana crystal close to full in addition to having the resources needed to produce enchanted items.

Before any of that, I wanted a nap. I’d be relying heavily on body reinforcement invocations to function today, but at least an hour of sleep wouldn’t go amiss. I’d be lucky to get that before people started showing up, but I’d do what I could. The mystery of my mana lattice would keep for another day.

***

I ended up getting two hours of sleep, thanks to my sympathetic guard. He’d known I’d been up all night and had turned away my students when they’d arrived. Instead of insisting, they’d set up nearby and begun practicing without my oversight.

Bless that man.

I dragged myself back to consciousness through gritty eyes and a head stuffed with fuzzy cotton, took a few moments to sort myself out and get upright, then sent a burst of mana through my body to chase off my fatigue. Another quick check of my lattice confirmed that everything was working properly, if not to my specifications. There was no sign of any degradation or imbalance. My core was just sitting there, full and starting to leak mana into the atmosphere.

The desert, thirsty beast that it was, soaked up the ambient mana instantly. I couldn’t even begin to guess how much mana it would take to heal the scar on this land, but it would probably be the work of generations to fix it if it was left to heal naturally. Someday, when I’d recovered the full breadth of my powers, I might come study the problem in detail and see if I could devise a solution.

It turned out that reincarnating in a new, young body had rejuvenated my decayed motivation to go out into the world and have an effect on it. I wanted to change things, to make them better, to see new places and meet new people. For most of the last three centuries of my life, I’d remained cloistered in the Night Vale and rarely accepted visitors. I couldn’t imagine spending so many decades of my new life just sitting still, watching the world pass me by.

I shook myself out of my thoughts, got dressed, and opened the door. I already knew what my students were up to, having felt the mana moving around as soon as I woke up. Not wanting to interrupt them, I settled into my seat to observe while occasionally glancing around for any feathered spies that might be nearby.

“Everything okay?” Shel asked when she noticed me a few minutes later. I couldn’t blame her for her inattentiveness considering how engrossed they all were in the training. “You seem… different.”

Did I? Damn, I was leaking. It wasn’t a secret among my trainees that I could hide my mana core from their senses, but I hadn’t properly accounted for just how much more mana I was producing now than I’d been a few hours ago. I adjusted my mana shroud to compensate, but it was likely too late.

“I was making modifications to my mana core last night,” I said. “It was a long process. I’m fine, just tired now.”

I ignored the worry I saw in their faces. For all that I was their teacher here, and I’d demonstrated my capabilities in that arena quite thoroughly, I was still a child. Sometimes that fact overwrote that I was ‘blessed by the spirits’ or whatever. Shel was probably the best about treating me like an adult, if only because she knew that I was mentally much, much older than her. I hadn’t told the council exactly how many years I’d been practicing the art of magic, but they got the point.

To the rest of the village, I was a miracle child blessed by all of their ancestors and then some, sent to free them from Noctra’s predations and guide them to an age of prosperity. Or something like that. I should have paid closer attention to Karad’s speech. I hadn’t realized he was going to go that far off-script like that.

“Now then, as to the four of you, I think you’ve gotten the hang of this particular exercise,” I said. “So let’s make it harder.”

The four exchanged glances while I once again lamented my lack of training tools. I couldn’t justify the frivolous waste of mana on various transmutation spells to manufacture what I needed, but I could and had asked my guard from last night to fetch me a set of blindfolds.

“Tinzo, did you get them?” I asked.

“Sure did,” he said, opening a pouch on his belt and pulling them out. He handed them over to Ayaka, who distributed them to everyone else. “Even switched to have back-to-back shifts just so I could watch this.”

“And… what are we doing with these?” Talik asked, a trace of nervousness in his voice.

“This exercise has three components,” I explained. “You’ll take positions across from each other, put on the blindfolds, and then use your mana sense to keep track of each other. Whenever you feel that you are ready, you may throw a ball of mana at your opponent. Your task will be to not only track each other, but the mana being sent at you, while simultaneously forming your own ammunition and sending it at your target.”

“Why do we need to be blindfolded?” Shel asked.

“Because it’s a lot funnier that way,” I said, which earned me glares from everyone except the Garrison guard. “Okay, fine. It’s because it’s easier to sense mana when you can block out other distractions, but it can be more difficult to move when you can’t see what you’re doing. The blindfolds will help you see an attack coming while making it harder for you to dodge it. The earlier you sense it, the more time you’ll have to adjust your own position.”

“This training is necessary in order to receive a blessing from the spirits?” Vhan asked. It was easy to see just from his expression that he didn’t believe me.

“If by ‘spirits’ you mean ‘me,’ then yes, it’s necessary,” I told him. “I don’t know what any spirits might want, but I want you to do this. Anything and everything you can do to increase your ability to sense fine amounts of mana and control it is going to be useful when it comes time to complete the ignition ritual.

“Now, go ahead and get into positions. Two people over here, two over there. And blindfolds on… Ready? Begin.”

I shared a smirk with Tinzo and my students flailed around, stumbling over uneven patches of ground where I subtly altered things with elemental manipulation. Sometimes, training was good for the teacher as well as the student.

The smirk fell from my face when I glanced over and saw a familiar hawk watching us from high up in one of the trees. It reminded me that, tired as I was, I needed to use these next few hours to start constructing that shield ward. Hopefully my own work wouldn’t distract my students, but if so, I’d just call it an extra challenge to keep them on their toes.

I had a feeling they were going to need to be able to defend themselves sooner rather than later. The enemy might not even wait for me to ignite their cores. Or maybe that’s exactly what he was waiting to see. Just how much did they know already anyway?

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