Chapter 130—Managing the Curse

He departed from his divine championship trial for his usual isolation room practice and when he got back, Vturalta took over the supervision, but he didn’t really care who was in that role. He needed a diversion and so he threw himself into the detailed Living Wood carving to distract himself. “Concentrate,” she snapped, breaking his trancelike state.

Tom stared at the disk in his hand sadly. He didn’t have to ask. He knew this was going in the bin. “Do I need to?” he began to ask but one look at his teacher made it clear that there was only one allowable path forward. Reluctantly, he dropped it into the discard pile. “Sorry, there’s lots happening in real life, so I might be a bit slow today. I can’t see what I did wrong. Can you give me a hint?”

“Your main connecting lines were too thin.”

“Oh,” he said dumbly, studying what he had created. The timing of the interaction didn’t make sense. This was an error that he had introduced right at the start of the build, so why had she interrupted now?. He glanced at her, but she had that teaching moment expression in how she held her tentacles. “May I ask why you didn’t raise this issue earlier?”

“You are very distracted,” she observed. “The reason is that when you made the mistake, you still had three opportunities to fix it up when you went through and reinforced the core ritual structure. I wasn’t sure if you were planning on fixing it later or if it was a genuine error, so I left it until it was clear you weren’t going to address the problem.”

Looking at the thickness fault he had made, he understood exactly what she was saying. It was obvious in hindsight. “Oh, I see that now. But I’m not sure how I could have possibly worked that out on the fly?”

“Was this the first time you’ve made this mistake.”

He nodded.

She shifted from her water basin and patted him with one of her tentacles. “My mistake then. This is the problem with having multiple supervisors I don’t know you’ve learnt and what you haven’t. Now don’t stop, don’t get discouraged, keep going. You’re very close to finishing.”

He returned to his crafting, grabbed another wooden disk and lost himself in the rhythm of using Living Wood in tandem to his runic knowledge. Everything flowed, and he stopped abruptly. He was done. The entire ritual was encoded in the wooden disk. He could hardly believe it.

He looked up at Vturalta in shock. She hadn’t interrupted and made him start again, and now he had completed it. “Um… I.”

She held out two tentacles and gestured with a come here motion. He passed the disk to her, and she fiddled with it for a moment before looking up.

“What do you think?”

“That I finished it.”

“What else?”

He knew how this went from his time with April. “That you’re going to declare it shoddy work and make me do it again.”

She splashed him playfully with some water. “You’re right it’s got too many imperfections for you to sell it for coins.”

“Imperfections. But why didn’t you stop me?” he started to ask but Vturalta raised her hand.

“Why didn’t I stop you when you made the errors? Why? Because they’re not critical mistakes. Three, four even ten wouldn’t matter, but you’ve made about thirty and that combined mass gets you below the required accuracy threshold.” She splashed water in excitement. “This means you’re almost there. You’ll be able to sell stuff soon.”

“Soon? You’ve been saying that for weeks.”

“There was nothing wrong with my estimates. It’s hardly my fault that you’re a slow learner.”

He knew she was joking. She and Throm had regularly praised how quickly he absorbed the details. “I guess your solution is more practice.”

She laughed by splashing more water. “Indeed, it is. Swim, Swim”

The next day, early in the morning, he waited with Corrine for their latest duel to start. His friend looked distracted. “Corrine, what’s up.”

She smiled wanly. “It’s not important.”

“If you’re worried about something you should tell me. Is this about Beijing.”

“The attack?” she asked incredulously. “Why the fuck would I care about that. Yes, it’s fucking unfortunate, but it’s months of travel away. There’s not anything I can fucking do to help them.”

“Then what?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’ll become clear after the fucking fight.” She snapped at him.

There was a lilt in the way she delivered her response, which made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. It was the, ‘It’ll become clear’ bit rather than her saying ‘I’ll tell you after the duel’ that worried him. “Are you about to do something stupid.” He asked bluntly.

She looked at him in disbelief. “Fuck no. What’s bothering me isn’t even something I can fucking change, so I don’t know why I give a shit. But I clearly do.” She kicked the ground hard to express her frustration.

“What is it?”

“After the fight Tom.”

“She doesn’t want to tell you,” Vturalta called out, using magic, so that Tom was the only one to hear. “I’ll explain everything to you after the duel. Until then, stay silent, please.”

Tom wanted to continue to grill Corrine, but Vturalta’s tone put an end to that desire. He shut up and listened.

“These sessions are fun, right.” Corrine asked.

He glanced sideways at her.

“I’ve really enjoyed the time we’ve spent together.”

He felt more than a little uncomfortable. Where was this going? The tone, the soapiness of the situation. Her reminiscing about the good times, it worried him.

“You’ve kept me sane.”

“Where’s this going? What the fuck’s happening?” He asked unable to help himself.

She went quiet.

“Why are you talking like that?”

“After the fight Tom,” Vturalta’s projected voice made him jump.

Corrine still said nothing.

They waited in silence.

“I’ve enjoyed it,” she whispered.

“What?” he exclaimed spinning to face her, but the timer was up and he was transported to the same ordinary room with the choice of three doors.

For a moment, he stood there trying to understand what was happening. Why she had been talking like that. It made absolutely no sense to him.

The exits beckoned, and with a frustrated curse he pulled out the disk and flipped it. It tumbled and landed, showing a head.

Screw you, he thought violently at the GODs. He picked up the coin and tossed it again fully expecting to have to do it another eight times before finding out which door was the correct one. To his surprise, it came up tails.

With a flex of his mind, a basic armoury spear appeared in his hand, as he didn’t want to risk his good one being broken and he went through the ‘full GOD’s shield’ door.

You are fighting a representative of FAMES. It has 0 confirmed incapacitations and 0 kills.

The emptiness dissolved, and he found himself standing on a stone floor inside a room built for giants. His opponent was a water-based life form held together by magic. It consisted of eleven evenly sized spherical balls and about a dozen tendrils of water with the thickness of an adult thumb. The tendrils linked the discrete body parts by weaving through them before emerging to hold one of the six swords it was using. Each weapon was supported by two tendrils, and the monster manipulated the swords with a dexterity that worried him.

The entire presentation was intimidating but protected as he was he guessed he didn’t really care. If it was better than him, it was better. The degree of its superiority didn’t change a damn thing when every fight was a winner takes all.

As the countdown started, he focused on the fury inside him.

The person, or more precisely monster was a representative of FAMES.

It was despicable and evil and it being here was unfair. The balls shifted, and he was sure that it was immune to lightning. Him having to fight it was a miscarriage of justice. It was altogether unreasonable. Being put against such an enemy rather than something he could beat was wrong. It was vile. He was supposed to be getting a beatable opponent forty percent of the time, and that wasn’t happening.

Slowly, he felt the artificial rage take notice of his thoughts.

Being here was evil. His adversary despicable. The fact he couldn’t win a travesty. The monster across from him should never have been allowed to exist. This terror creature needed to be stamped out before it could kill anyone.

The anger in the pit of his stomach seemed to start burning outside of his control. He had never hated a series of water balls as much as he detested this organism. He would stamp it into the ground and then boil it in a kettle.

The countdown hit zero and he charged forward. A burst was consumed to pump up his attributes. Between that and the boost from their original difference between his attributes and his opponent and then the rage approximately doubling his power, he was moving faster than he had ever done on earth.

A seven-year-old body or not, he moved like the wind. Shooting across the stone floor faster than Usain Bolt had ever managed. He dropped his spear so he could strike the water balls with his fists and experience the thrill of doing direct damage.

Water hit his chest. Striking harder than he had believed was possible. Bones shattered first, then skin tore, followed by muscles. He found himself hurtling backwards as the momentum of the beam of water overcame his own. The attack hadn’t stopped. The super fast water ricochetted inside him and the internal damage done was more than he could heal. His heart, stomach and lungs were all shredded.

An instant later, he was standing back in the common area with the duel complete and another loss assigned.

He grinned anyway, satisfied with the outcome.

The unwinnable duels he was being pushed into were perfect opportunities to manage his fury. The counter had been reset and so he wouldn’t have to worry about the anger boiling over in the real world. It was still early days, but the approach appeared to be working. He had been doing it for months. Providing he triggered it at least once every two weeks, the chance of the spiralling loss of control occurring when he didn’t want it too was almost nil.

As always, he checked all the participants gathered. He was happy that Corrine was safe and from what he could see, so was everyone else.

Corrine snatched up his hand. “I did it,” she squealed. “I’m through.” She grabbed him under each of his armpits and effortlessly picked him up and spun him around. “I made it. I’m in child bracket four. I did it Tom. Fuck yeah. I did it.”

Tom suddenly understood all the strange earlier comments. She had been worried about the latest fight being her last. That she wouldn’t make the cut. That their sessions of speaking crap would be finished, and she would be stuck pretending to be a thirteen-year-old. Her being ecstatic was only to be expected.

“I did it. I’m officially a multi-bracket participant in the Divine Champion’s trial. I’m the first human to hold the spot and it’s all because of the dark hole trial. Thank you so much for telling me.”

They celebrated for a glorious half an hour without training, and then they went back to work. 

Days passed as he produced coins with fewer and fewer imperfections but still too many to sell and every day he checked the cupboard in the isolation room to find the promised books missing.

He kept reminding himself to be patient, and that Dimitri needed to be careful, but that didn’t stop him from feeling a stab of annoyance whenever he saw that his books weren’t in the cupboard as promised. Not for the first time, he stared at the toy boxes. The days when he had to empty them out to stack them had passed. The extra couple of inches of height and muscle mass he had put on meant that he could create his ladder without making a mess, but he was very tempted to start tipping over the boxes just to share with Dimitri some of the frustration he was experiencing.

Tom didn’t, because he really wasn’t that petty, but it was dragging on.   

Three days, he decided after a bit more thought. That’s how long he would give the other man before he took matters into his own hands and sent him a signal. Happy with his decision he finished building the series of precariously placed platforms to give him access to the high cupboard and then flipped it open.

“Yes,” he yelled and then grabbed the wooden doors tightly to stop from overbalancing and collapsing the dangerously stacked climbing tool. “Easy Tom,” he reminded himself. A fall from this height with the general fate protections of the orphanage wouldn’t kill him, but he could see broken ankles and wrists in that future. It was best not to experience it.

The books were new, with shiny leather covers each of which had a title in small type and a warning in much larger text.

Warning. These manuals are only usable by individuals with the trait: Internal Mana Manipulation. If you don’t have this ability, this book can not help your development any further.

Tom had to admit he was impressed by the warning. Rather than saying don’t do it the words made it clear that the books were there as reference material for presumably a single person who had an unusual and unique trait. It wouldn’t stop people looking at the books, but he doubted anyone would attempt to leverage them without the trait and that Tom was sure was what Dimitri had been aiming for.

“Very clever,” he said and seized all three books and then carefully retreated to ground level.

Once set up in the corner, he organised his thoughts. First, he checked the actual titles of each of the three reference tombs.

·        Results of Human Experimentation with Internal Mana Manipulation.

·        Mana Manipulation – Generic Primer.

·        Internal Mana Manipulation Pitfalls and Common Affinities.

They all looked like fascinating reads, and he could understand why Dimitri had chosen this specific selection. There was a general guide that almost certainly contained lessons that wouldn’t match human anatomy but would probably contain useful insights into different ways the internal mana manipulation techniques could be used. Then there was a book dealing with affinities which was something Tom was personally interested in and then there were the human specific case studies that were there to ensure Tom understood exactly what he was getting into.

While that was going to be the worse reading experience, he decided not to delay. The quicker he got the boring stuff out of the way the better.

The book was like a mad scientist had written up his disorganised thoughts. The information was just vomited on the pages, flowing too quickly from one concept to another and sometimes skipping to completely unrelated topics. But all of its flaws were forgiven because of the hard data the author had included. There were pages of tables, graphs and different cuts of data to breakdown exactly what each person had achieved.

The first thing that was readily apparent was that the various internal mana manipulations, at least in humans, were not a cheat code. It was not a pathway to becoming even more superhuman and if the title didn’t exist, then Tom would have walked away from the idea instantly.

It definitely looked like a time sink that would only reward mediocre prizes.

There were clear themes that could be teased out if you ignore the writing and focused on the data. The best results came from people who dedicated their time to pure mana. Every one of the fifteen people who chose that path developed some form of technique. They came in two varieties and some people managed to get both One hardened the skin, muscles and bones while the second increased the mass of a fist or foot at the point of contact.

Most of the benefits were in the single digits, but the stars successfully generated a fifty percent boost at a modest mana reservation cost. Using the technique didn’t consume mana it just made it unavailable for the period it was used on body reinforcements. That is why theoretically, it was fundamentally better than similar spell forms. Of all of those who had dabbled in pure mana, it was only those two successes who got something consistently useable in combat. For them, it was a moderately useful technique, while for everyone else it was only useful in a niche capacity rather than being robust enough to become a core part of their build.  While pure mana produced tangible results, it seemed it did not play nicely with speed. Only two people managed to internalise a speed technique with it and both of them reported a gain of less than one percent.   

The remaining cohort, those who didn’t use pure mana, was even more chaotic. In almost every facet, it was worst apart from quickness. There were two successful speed boosts. One of them from wind and the other velocity. In both cases, before developing the internal mana manipulation, the mana had to be produced independently. The wind mana test subject had used a trait purchased from the experience shop, while velocity was something that was developed after four years of continuous application.

Both of them thought the effort invested into internal mana boosting was a waste of time even if they were the biggest successes in the study.

Tom only skimmed the information and then took a mental step back to understand the implications of what he had read.

The best success came with pure mana, but it could only be used to increase the effective weight of a limb and or reinforce the users’ density and toughness. Both outcomes were valuable uses, but given the number of individuals who failed in the attempts it probably wasn’t worth the effort. 

Then there were the people who used affinity mana of different types. Their results were more chaotic and overall weaker but Tom could see value. That was where he was going to choose to focus. He already had precognition affinity mana, and he hadn’t been planning on stopping with just one unique mana type either.

He had done this before, but he stated the words out loud again. “It is beneficial for me to develop lightning, earth and healing mana generation and storage.” Like the first time he had made the declaration, the sentence felt right on a fundamental level. He liked to think that this knack of recognising the truth was why DEUS had paid attention to him, but he knew better. It wasn’t just him alone. It was a human ability, though obviously rare. Kang could do the same and he suspected it was the criteria DEUS used to select reincarnators more generally. An innate capacity to achieve a moment of brilliance to create theories and actionable plans that should have been beyond their intellect. He couldn’t prove it, but it was his suspicion, and it felt true.

And his conviction wasn’t based on nothing. From the tutorial and the oracle questions he had asked to confirm his moments of inspiration, he had learnt to trust himself. After all, that was the only reason he had come up with the plan, which had upgraded the human trait. The singular most effective thing humanity had achieved in this competition, even if he had died before he could see it through to the end was the proof he was on the right track.

As for affinities developing in that direction had always made sense. If he could get thirty of each mana type, then while he was a child, it was increasing his mana reserves by five times and, given he had access to the divine champion’s trial that was an advantage that he couldn’t pass up. It also helped the precognition had been so useful in other applications. It made his lightning spells stronger and had led to the development of his Danger Sense ritual bracelets and disks. If the first mana type was so valuable then it made sense to him that the others would be too.

He was excited to see what extra advantages the different mana types might convey. Would lightning affinity mana double the effectiveness of Lightning Javelin? Or would the effects be more muted. He didn’t know, but was eager to find out. 

Them potentially being advantageous in internal mana manipulation was the cherry on top. 

There wasn’t time in the current session, but his eyes turned to the Mana Manipulation Pitfalls and Common Affinities book. He wanted to grab it and shove it into his storage space so he could study it in more detail off line.

He swallowed.

Nope, as alluring as the thought was he couldn’t do it. Removing them from the isolation room was too dangerous. Even considering taking the book sent a chill through him. It was more than possible that there was still a hidden assassin in the orphanage that might be going around, checking to see which child took what out of the rooms.

Tom shuddered just thinking about it so instead of borrowing the reference tome he took care to place all three of them back precisely how he had found them.

He would bide his time even if curiosity was consuming him.

But it was safe to theorise even if he was less than confident that his guesses would be accurate.

Earth affinity would be powerful defensively. Living Rock in his past life had shown its advantages and its limitations, but the benefit would be there. Then there was the question of how a combination of Lightning, Precognition and Healing would synergise. It would take experimentation, but he could see them doing some amazing stuff in a haste context. Lightning for speed, healing to keep his body together and precognition to help with the minutiae balancing he wouldn’t otherwise be able to manage.

To centre himself and to stop his brain running away into fairy land imagining all the incredible combinations out there, Tom focused on the warnings. Dimitri and other scholars had included them and having seen the data Tom understood exactly why they had reached that conclusion. Geniuses who had acquired multiple spells and skills from first principles had tried Internal Mana Manipulation and had failed.

He licked his lips. For title reasons, he was still going to try, but he recognised that on a fundamental level that he was gambling. Success, even partial, would make it worthwhile, but he couldn’t obsess over this path to power. No matter how shiny the lure was it had to be done in his downtime. This was stuff to practice when there was nothing else for him to do. If it interfered with any of his other training, he had lost…

But a fifty or even a twenty percent speed boost above and beyond what his raw attributes in strength and agility could give him would be massive.

If he had time.

If it worked.

If daydreams could become reality, then this was going to be awesome.

In practice, he knew it was going to be a slog, but one that might give an incremental advantage, so that was what he was going to do. No matter what focusing on this was better than subjecting himself to the incessant self-absorbed chatter of seven-year-olds.

Tom shut the cupboard and started packing up. There was a lot to think about and he was definitely going to consult with Vturalta and Mr. Cricket about this.