With my surroundings covered with an indescribable flux of energy that defied every rule of nature, I didn’t have a hope of finding my way back — and even if I did, I wasn’t confident in breaching the dimensional barrier.
Another long round of experimentation awaited me. But before I could start that, I had two things to achieve.
First, I ignored the constant pain dancing on my skin. While my Divine Spark was successful in pushing back the Primordial Energy for a short while, it was a close call to permanent death, and left its mark, leaving my skin burned horribly.
And, without system-provided HP to automatically cure it, it stayed without being healed, painful. I wanted to cure it, but not at the cost of my shield suddenly shattering.
I focused on my shield first, creating a three-layered shield, the first layer soft and porous enough to allow some Primordial Aether to pass, while the second and third ones had access points that worked like taps, but they didn’t overlap to make sure a sudden flare directly broke them down.
It was a simple yet effective layout, only made frustrating by the fact that it took almost an hour to set up successfully, with several spectacular failures that would have turned into a deadly disaster without the backup mana I was keeping in the storage.
Without the boost of my stats and skills, my ability to come up with genius structures was simply gone. What a horrible loss, and particularly frustrating that, all along the crafting, I had to force myself trying to ignore the constant pain filling my body.
“Now, to healing,” I murmured even as I pulled some mana from the storage, trying to cast a healing spell.
Trying, and failing horribly.
“Fuck,” I gasped in shock at the extent of my failure. I didn’t fail to shape the spell, or cast the spell appropriately. No, I had failed at the simplest stage, transforming the mana into life energy, the raw state that was required to cast that spell.
It seemed that, even while blocking the assistance of the system, I had misunderstood the amount of assistance that the system had been providing. I closed my eyes, using my Tantric to look inward.
Luckily, with Tantric still working, I didn’t lose the ability to look inward, but the clarity of vision I had been enjoying was gone. I could see the skill and stat nodes sitting in my soul space, immobile, but with no reaction.
Even Tantric was immobile, without any improvement, but unlike the other skills, I could still use the abilities granted by it.
Other than Tantric, however, everything was immobile. The same applied to achievements, perks, everything… There was not even a spark in my soul space, just like the fake soul space I had maintained to trick the headmistress.
Fake soul space, including the fake companion node that hid a small Light Divine Spark, yet to be absorbed. “Let’s see if you work,” I murmured as I channeled just a couple points of mana, the purest I could manage, and watched it transform.
I nodded in satisfaction, even though despite transformation was far from being usable. The light spells were always unyielding and harsh, but with the assistance of the system, they were easily formed into various shapes, even integrated into wards, making it an excellent offensive option.
Without the elemental control to assist, it was like trying a red-hot sword as a weapon. Damaging, certainly, but more damaging to the wielder than the opponent.
“Still, better than nothing,” I murmured. Arcana magic had its limitations when it came to dealing damage, a factor that was compounded by my limitations of shaping mana, and having the ability to add some Light Elemental would give me the edge.
And, luckily, light elements didn’t just summon true elementals as basic elements did. Remembering the carnage the elementals were dealing with during my disappearance, I didn’t dare experiment even with the weakest pure element spell.
“Maybe I need to try something else,” I murmured even as I transformed another point of mana into Light energy, but this time, I immediately used Tantric on it, softening its structure.
The first attempt was a failure. Under the effect of the Tantric, the mana lost all of its quality, turning back to pure mana, which was hardly the greatest effect. The second and third attempts weren’t any better, one not affecting it at all, the other once again completely purifying it.
“It’s hard,” I murmured as I continued repeating. Technically, it would have been easier to find the correct ratio if I was willing to convert more than a single point of mana with each repeat, but that would mean risking self-damage in case of an accident.
And, without HP, I was not willing to suffer any Light damage. It would have been humorously tragic if I died to my own spell after managing to find a way to survive in Primordial Aether.
Patience was the key, which only got truer the more challenging the situation got. And, my own situation was as challenging as it could get.
It took a long while for me to get even elementary control over light magic. Something between half a day and a day, but that was my best guess — I had no idea how the time worked in Primordial Aether, it might as easily have been a few hours or a couple days as well.
It was hard to keep track when the only thing I saw was a swirling mess of colors that were not colored.
“Still, it’s time to go back to healing spells,” I murmured, hoping the discoveries I had made while playing with the Light mana would still benefit me. Another half a day had passed, mostly fruitless as I tried to force mana to transform, just like how I once transformed the ordinary mana into heat, before I gained my first Elemental Magic skill.
Unfortunately, life energy was something much more complicated than the simplicity of heat, cold, or other fundamental elements. In comparison, healthy energy required a much more careful balance. Miss, and only pain awaited...
“It’s not working,” I groaned as I looked outside, catching a sudden solid presence outside, at the distance, but it was gone before I could react.
Still, it was a sign that I wasn’t destined to float in emptiness hopelessly. I just needed the luck that the next one had drifted nearer.
Meanwhile, I continued experimenting, trying to create healing energy, but I failed to achieve what I had been searching for despite the endless repeats, leaving me hopeless. Still, I wasn’t bored because…
“Shit, not again,” I murmured as I suddenly found myself in a chaotic tribulation of energy as the outer layer of my shield shattered, and the second layer cracked threateningly, forcing me to reinforce, even then the weak patch I was using as a tap shattered.
I recreated the shield in a hurry while I considered the merits of creating a fourth layer. The more I stayed in the Primordial Aether, the more I understood why it was treated as such a life-threatening environment.
I lost count of how much mana I had spent, but by the measurements of the system, I wouldn’t be surprised if it eclipsed a hundred thousand. It was still not as impressive as the reckless rain of spells I had experienced while under siege, but it was close.
“Maybe I could approach it in a different manner,” I thought with a sudden stroke of inspiration. I pulled some of my Divine Spark from my body — and immediately felt my body weakening despite the relatively little I had pulled — and channeled some of the mana through it.
The mana lost its pure state, transforming into something that was hard to describe. Soft as clay, and equally as useful. But, it allowed me to play around with it, and after sufficient enough attempts, it turned into something approximately close to HP.
“Let’s try,” I murmured as I let some of it touch my body, watching anxiously as my body slowly absorbed it.
“Success!” I gasped in excitement. Well, in a way, I corrected myself as I let my body absorb it, my burn wounds slowly fading away. My technique simply had a horrible conversion rate, almost requiring a thousand mana points to gain enough energy that could function as one point of HP.
It took hours to gather about a hundred HP equivalent that was required to cure my wounds, and it forced me to spend another hundred thousand mana points.
Luckily, neither time nor mana was things I was in short supply. Having some kind of method of recovery was more important than anything else, with the sole exception of a method to find my way, but even that was less urgent.
But, with my protection and recovery handled, that was my next objective…
[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]
