257, 1/2

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 34%, 33%, 33%

Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]

Body: 207

Mind: 304

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+376, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+128, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: ??? [???]

– – – –

Erick stood on the balcony of his house in Margleknot, under a sun-filled sky.

One more sun held in that sky today, as compared to yesterday. That was Erick’s Benevolence Sun… or at least that’s what he was calling it in his mind. Anyway.

Message stars continued to pile up by the gate to his house like explosions of fireworks.

He would get to the starscape of messages soon enough, and all the rest of all the tasks he had set for himself, but first he wanted to do a few things to make the rest of this time easier.

Resons were the uber-currency of Margleknot, as far as Erick knew, though he was rather certain that many places took many other currencies. For the average person, 1 reson was 1/1000th a resurrection, and that seemed way more important than buying bread for the day, especially if people only made 1 reson a day, or something like that. Erick honestly did not know. ‘How many resons does a person make per day?’ was among the many, many questions that he simply didn’t know, and hadn’t really thought to ask anyone when had been asking those questions. Whatever the case, resons could be ‘used up’, and ‘go dry’, like Erick had been back there at the final casts of [Reson Gathering] up there on that sun, which meant they were limited.

And therefore smaller currencies must exist, because bartering ‘this’ for ‘that’ simply wasn’t viable… as far as Erick knew. Maybe smaller economies in Margleknot did bartering? Large economies did not barter, for sure… right?

Erick truly didn’t know.

He needed some experience with the economy, but first he needed a ‘wallet’.

He already had a ‘wallet’, technically. Resons naturally existed inside people, where they naturally accrued based on personal drive and desire and ‘reasons for being’, sticking alongside everything else that made a person a person.

He also had a way to force production of resons, through [Reson Gathering], and throwing [Renew] at the gatherer.

Now, to make all the rest of this easier, Erick needed his mana-to-reson generator to be an internal system that slipped more resons into his very being and which allowed him to ‘open the tap’ and pour out crystallized resons on command from, like, his aura? Erick wasn’t sure about that. But. Yeah. That sounded good.

Okay! Basic logic solved for.

Now to make it happen…

“I think I know what sort of gift I want to give Lionshard for his help, too.”

Erick went inside of his house to sit on a pillow in his mage tower. The Malevolence Beast was still alive on the first floor down there, but it wasn’t doing anything. It remained locked down, and that was good enough for now. Maybe Erick would do something with it later? Maybe not.

Anyway.

Erick sat down on the third floor of his mage tower and peered inside of his soul.

The entirety of his Status, in Benevolence crystal form, floated before him. It was made with Book-shaped Benevolence and other Elemental crystals, and it was a lot more complicated than an Escher painting. Still understandable, though. [Reson Gathering], his new spell which he had made, floated right over there. It was a multidimensional button he could press which did many things, all at once, all of them completely unlike most of Erick’s other spells.

Ignoring the complexity of the spell itself, and frameshifting to make that vision so, Erick saw the spell shift into a simple Renew-symbol that was not simple at all. It became a web-like construction made of many filaments that coalesced into most-of-a-circle, with stretched-out tendrils going everywhere. All of that central construction was focused on the break between the ends of the symbol. The spellwork would take in mana from the space around it, and make resons in that crack.

All of that looked good.

Erick frameshifted again, looking inward to himself, and to the symbol, and he saw more filaments connecting the two. Erick had frameshifted to see how his body connected to the spellwork, to see how mana got from inside to outside, and into proper shapes. This, then, was some of the way in which Erick used his own resources to cast this spell.

[Reson Gathering] was not a spell that was cast using mana, though. Or at least not fully. It was a spell made of Benevolence, and Erick saw where his mana fit into the spell, but there were only 9 bits of Benevolence in there. [Reson Gathering] was primarily a spell cast using resons.

Tracing those reson lines…

Oh.

Erick saw a forgotten memory that he had heard about a long time ago, but which never really came up, for various reasons.

Inside of his soul, inside of his physical body, and inside of his mind, were shadowy lines of power that connected to the space that used to hold the core in his chest. Those shadowy lines were his mana channels, and yet, they were not.

In his ascension, Erick had become a fully crystallized being and also a person of flesh and mind. His original core was gone. The mana channels that his body used to have running alongside his veins and nerves, in a shadowy duplication of his circulatory and nerve system, were gone.

He had never used them anyway. The Script and basic physical biology did that better.

Quilatalap had spoken a few times about how mana channels in the Old Cosmology were useful for keeping the body intact, and for exploring one’s aura, but they were an obsolete system from the Old Cosmology. Those old channels were what one used to balance oneself and rid oneself of unwanted mana. Now there were blood and nerves and a digestive system that emptied out concentrated mana from the body in order to prevent monsterization. The Script did aura exploration a whole lot better, too.

The old mana channels still existed, though, because they were a very important part of how things used to be in the Old Cosmology. Inertia that large could not be denied.

Erick had completely ignored his mana channels when he ascended, though.

But since he had desired to keep the same sort of body, here were some mana channels that he never used, reappearing again in an unexpected way.

His actual body did not have mana channels. Erick checked himself out in the real world for a good four minutes to make sure of that. And yeah; he had no mana channels.

But his spellwork thought he had mana channels.

The reson ‘wallet’ of his body was all throughout his soul, mind, and body, but [Reson Gathering] seemed to be attached to the lines of his former mana channels just a little bit more than all the rest of his crystallization. Even as he watched the spell inside of him, as he gazed upon its connection to his resources, he watched those possible connection lines of his soul and his spell shift a little, like the moving of a target. Those movement lines flowed alongside the spaces that would have contained his mana channels just a little bit more than they flowed everywhere else.

Honestly, if Erick hadn’t checked out this whole reson-wallet problem, looking for a way to stuff more resons into himself, then he probably never would have noticed this about himself. Or at least he wouldn’t have noticed until some unknown time down the road.

… The memory of mana channels inside of his crystallized self were… something.

Erick wasn’t sure if they were a weakness or not.

They were a foible; a way of being and doing that didn’t need to be that way, but which simply was.

They were how his spells activated; where the resources for them came from, when Erick wasn’t directing that power himself, through his aura. When he had his aura out he could make magic happen anywhere inside his aura, because his aura was him. Otherwise his Mana, Health, and Psyche, remained inside of his body, growing denser and denser over time. His mana channels were…

“Not really important now, actually.”

Erick considered why he started this exploration of himself in the first place.

He wanted to make a system to hold extra resons in his body. Did he need to figure out his obsolete mana channels? No, he did not. Might be something fun to learn eventually, but he didn’t really care about them, and his Lightning Path was telling him that whatever he was observing right now wasn’t important at all.

So Erick ignored his ‘not-mana-channels’, and went back to his [Reson Gathering] spellwork.

He copied the spell inside of his body. That took some doing, but he got it done, and now he had two of the same spell.

The second one automatically hooked into his everything exactly as the other one had, sending filaments out into his Soul, Body, and Mind. The basic form of the spell was exactly the same as the other one, and would produce a reson-Renew outside of his body, wherever he wanted it to be.

Erick came back to himself, breathed for a moment, taking some time to let time pass, because if he fucked up this next part he wanted to be able to easily return to this time period, and a larger break meant easier targeting for [Return].

And then he delved back into his Status.

Taking the second [Reson Gathering] into his control, Erick plucked at the ‘logistical’ filaments that would have created an exterior gatherer, drawing all mana inside of the gatherer and making resons, clipping all of them off. Now he was left with a [Reson Gathering] that only took from his own body.

It only took in 9 Benevolence and a bunch of resons, though.

Erick restrung the spell, adding logistical filaments to the reson production, and then stringing those ‘exit points’ all throughout his entire body. Those exit points for resons weren’t really there, and Erick wasn’t really doing what he seemed to be doing. This was all conceptual, frameshifting soulwork, but it should work exactly as he intended it to work.

And now he had a spell that was inside of him, that took his resources and made resons and put those resons into his own Status.

Erick already had a part of his Status which could measure those resons, too, and which could keep track of some of those resons.

All the plumbing was there inside of him to let him just… hook up this new part and see what happened! But that seemed like a dangerous step.

So Erick came back to himself and took another break, giving himself another ‘save point’ to come back to if he messed up…

Erick considered.

His Status had Book Magic in order to allow him to classify stuff inside of himself. Did this mutation of [Reson Gathering] work right, in that classification, Book Magic sort of way? Erick called up his Status box for this new spell, to see if that part of his Status worked like he imagined it would.

Words appeared in the air.

Reson Wallet, permanent self-enchantment, ?????

Make a reson gatherer inside of your soul and turn on the money. 9 mana to 1 reson.

Unintended side effects? Probably.

Erick grinned at that, and then he laughed.

“It worked! … Probably.”

Erick had a think.

“… It’s fine? It’s fine.”

And then he went back inside his soul.

With careful touches, Erick made a ‘tube’ of resources from his Darkness, which went to his Status, and then he hooked up a connection from his Status to [Reson Wallet], and then back again. The tap was not turned on. This was just getting the starting stuff ready.

Erick wondered if he had created a New Stat. ‘Reson Wallet’. An odd name for a Stat, for sure.

Erick pulled out of himself and checked his Status.

– –

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 34%, 33%, 33%

Reson allocation rate: 0%

Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]

Body: 207

Mind: 304

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+376, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+128, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: ??? [+???]

– –

Erick smiled wide. “OKAY! Wow. That worked. Okay. Good.” And then he chuckled nervously. “Now to turn on the tap—” He paused.

He thought.

“… does this count as a New Stat anyway? Can I… quantify this? Find out how many resons I have baseline?”

… He thought.

“No. Resons are simply not quantifiable; not really. That little bottom readout isn’t ever going to be right, either, just like how the Darkness level is incorrect. I have no idea how to measure Darkness, and no clue at all how to measure resons. Darkness is only estimated based on the initial start I had when I ascended, and just to know how far I have come, or if anyone tries to steal my Darkness. Resons are similarly unknowable, but I can certainly count out how many I might create from here on out… Probably.”

… Probably.

Erick nodded.

And then he went back inside of himself and turned on the tap.

Just a little bit!

Erick watched as mana flowed from his Darkness, through his foundational Stats, forming the basis of his crystallized self, and then to his Status, forming the simultaneous layer of his entirety. That’s where it struck his [Reson Wallet], and changed. White became gold and then flowed back into Erick’s Status, and into his everything.

… It seemed to be working. Nothing was breaking.

His little reson-creation system system could be recognized, removed, and remade at a moment’s notice, though. This set up… seemed okay? It seemed okay; yes.

Erick watched the reson system for a little while, watching Benevolence flow out from his everything, into a part of his everything that made goldish-resons, and then flow back into his everything, the resons fitting in smoothly with everything else. The resons were slightly gold colored, but when they slipped into Erick’s soul, mind, and body, they became nothing once again. They were there, for sure, but they weren’t knowable.

Which was exactly what Erick had wanted.

Okay! Good.

Erick came back to himse—

Well this is not ideal.

Erick was crusted over with golden crystal. It was 5 centimeters thick in some places.

Erick checked parts of his status again.

– –

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 33%, 31%, 31%

Reson allocation rate: 5%

Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+361, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+116, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+116, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 1 [+19 = +2] Warning! Improper storage.

– –

Erick moved like an unstoppable force covered in ice. Resons broke to the ground like so much amber, shredding Erick’s already-mangled clothes even further. As he moved, gold crystals broke away from uncomfortable places, and fell in sheets from his thighs and chest and back. Resons continued to fall from his skin, pushed out of his body like manifested honey that rapidly hardened, even as he moved around, like a continual rain of golden sand.

Erick mentally flicked off all reson allocation and the gold dust stopped. He shook out his hair and rubbed the resons from his eyes and other places, and then he put his hands on his hips.

He though—

“Ah! Maybe the mana channels can have a use after all?”

Erick went back into his soul and mucked around for a while, first figuring out how to add mana channels back to his body, or at least something like mana channels, and then actually doing that. Surprisingly, as soon as he started moving intent around, forming paths within his body to create what had been uncreated, the filaments from his [Reson Wallet] began to shift to those mana channels. By the time Erick was 10% of the way done with his channels, having only really started on the cavity in his chest where his core used to be and a few main channels down his torso and to his extremities, the channels began to reappear on their own.

Mana flexed inside of Erick.

Darkness twisted, filling his body with shadows of power.

Resons trapped in his flesh like gold dust between cells spilled out of his everything, filtering into pathways that did not exist anymore, but which sprang into existence when they realized that’s what Erick wanted.

Erick’s mana channels regrew all the easier for it—

[Reson Wallet] snapped to his mana channels, directly placing its main generative body in the space of his body and soul where his core used to be, and Erick allowed it. It was all conceptual, anyway. His body, soul, and mind hadn’t changed at all.

But his paradoxically existent and non-existent mana channels did reappear, and when the channels to his brain truly regrew, that was when Erick let the whole thing take over on its own.

Erick watched as a forgotten part of himself regrew from Darkness and gold, and then the Darkness faded and the gold filed into place, vanishing from sight once again.

Erick checked himself out in the real world, and mentally turned on the tap.

White gold flowed into the shadows of his core space, rebuilding a part of himself that Erick had lost in the ascension. But also not. That white gold flickered and faded inward, becoming one with his Body, Mind, and Soul, turning invisible once again. His actual core never regrew. The process of reson creation was like a continual glittering that reflected within all of his new mana channels, like some sort of fiber optic light show.

– –

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 33%, 31%, 31%

Reson allocation rate: 5%

Soul: 32.5m per day / 376 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.19x Ascension baseline]

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+361, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+124, -1] Basic upkeep

Hp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+116, -1] Basic upkeep

Pp: 5.7m/∞, ↑ [+116, -1] Basic upkeep

Resons: 9 [+19 = +2.1]

– –

So that seemed to be working now.

And now he had 9 resons! Or at least 9 that he knew about, plus however many he had innately, or whatever.

This was good.

… Erick turned the tap 100% to resons—

Golden crystals shattered out of his body, crashing out in every direction, breaking the third floor of his mage tower and a small part of his house.

Erick turned the flow back down to 5%.

The flow turned normal.

Erick spent the next several moments extracting himself from his crystal prison, scattering gold out and away from his house, and then he took a few minutes to rebuild the mage tower with his Authority. Nothing was truly damaged, either physically in the real world or metaphysically inside of Erick’s soul, which was great news.

Erick went outside of the castle, onto the open ground with the grasses and the moss on Yggdrasil’s root, to test out various percentages of reson conversion, going up slowly from 5%.

At 10%, Erick’s core and mana channels were filled with a continuous swirl of gold-white light, like a constant roil of lightning-fire, that escaped his mana channels and core and began to show up inside his flesh. He had millions of Health preventing actual damage to him, though, so that golden outpour only manifested when it actually escaped his skin. Or when it exited other, more easily exitable areas.

Erick didn’t think too much about that.

At 11%, the lightning-fire easily expanded past his skin, manifesting amber in sheets that fell from his chest and thighs and all the other parts of him.

Erick turned the flow down to 9%, and kept it there, because 9% seemed good. At 9% Erick’s core-space turned into an illusion of a gold-white core, and his mana channels appeared more ‘ephemeral’ than ‘firework’ or ‘lightning’. Maybe it was a slow strobe light? Yeah, that worked. No actual reson manifesting, though; all of that stuff went into his Status, exactly like it should.

He was now at 3.75 resons per second production, at a cost of 33.75 mana per second. He wasn’t sure what he could do with resons, aside from spend them and probably cast magics with them…

Hmm.

Erick waited till he had a thousand resons, which didn’t take very long at all, and then he controlled his aura to add… hmm. 6 resons? Yes. Erick added 6 resons to [Fireball] spellwork and flickered the flames upward—

A sun of fire replaced the entire sky overhead, burning, incinerating—

Erick rapidly threw dispels and siphon at the magic, drawing it back, pulling it inward, erasing the flames as best he could, and then when that didn’t fully work he slammed his Authority around the magic, condensing it from a contained nuclear fire down to Fire-aspected resons that rapidly decayed into nothing.

Erick had accidentally carved away the upper half of his mage tower. He had accidentally done a lot. He burned away a good several square kilometers of green away from Yggdrasil’s white root, and set the surface of the lake to boiling. Yggdrasil’s actual root was just a little blackened. Seemed fine? Sure. Seemed fine.

Erick looked around and said to himself, “Okay! That was a mistake. What the fuck did I just do?”

He thought.

He did it again, but this time he did a much more controlled creation of fire.

A tiny ball of pure white heat unfurled in front of Erick. It was like standing on the surface of a sun, or inside of a blast furnace. Yggdrasil’s root blackened. Erick’s Health took a huge, continuous hit, but he had millions of Health in the tank so this was nothing to be worried about. Even Yggdrasil’s damage was only surface deep. And so, Erick stared at the fire, and tried to understand it—

“Ah ha!”

It reminded Erick of something he hadn’t felt in a while.

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It was the Red Dot.

This, then, was magnitude 9 Fire Magic; the instantiation of True Fire.

Erick sent his Mana Siphon-laced tendrils of Benevolence into the ball of fire and soaked the damage, pulling out the power of the thing he had created. Embarrassingly, or maybe worriedly, Erick took a while to break down his ‘White Dot’, which showed him the power of resons.

It seemed that resons were like ritual magic.

This was singing-at-the-mana levels of power.

So.

A lot of power.

And now Erick had…

– –

Erick Flatt, [60-ish] [Current Year: 1453 (Veird, layer 789), ??? (Margleknot)] [CURRENT REALITY=Layer 0, Margleknot]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 32.9m per day / 380 per second , [Darkness Level = 2.22x Ascension baseline]

Body: 208

Mind: 306

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+345, -3] Basic upkeep

Mp: 5.8m/∞, ↑ [+118, -1] Basic upkeep