Chapter 3 | So Long, Regressor

Come on… This is the last one!

Theo sat cross-legged in the middle of the cubic room. His eyes were closed, a cold layer of moisture covering his forehead.

Inside the endless darkness of his mindscape, he was busy pulling more and more essence, coalescing it into pristine rectangular bricks. This would be the last one he needed to complete his mind palace.

A cloud of gray energy roiled into shape through his intent. As the input of energy stopped, the shape completed its transformation. Finally, another solid silver-colored block appeared in his mindscape.

[You have gained mana through a breathing technique.]

[Mana 0.999 –> 1.000]

He blinked and took a deep breath.

After spending a little bit of time practicing the Basic Breathing Technique, he had tried looking around the room, specifically to try and understand the purple-haired woman’s last words.

Sustenance in the walls…? Why did she say that?

Hopefully, mana would change something.

Closing his eyes, Theo steadied his breathing one more time. The brick he had just created flew up into the eternal darkness of his mindscape and floated away. He could make it do so by spending a little bit of mental effort. It fit snugly into the place it was meant for.

When the final brick clicked into place, a wave of power surged through him. Long hours of brick-laying finally rewarded him with a burst of energy. It pulsed through his veins, filling the emptiness in his body. He gasped, his fingers twitching as raw energy bled into the real world.

[You have completed your mental “palace”.]

[Mana 1.000 –> 3.521]

Now, whenever he went into his mind, he would have his body with him. There was also his palace, floating in the middle of the darkness.

Watching the building, he couldn’t help but frown. He had to accept, it was hard to call this thing a palace.

It was just a literal cube made of mana bricks. They exuded a silver mist ever so slowly into the darkness of his mindscape, which was starting to light up.

So this is mana…

The gray mist of flux had become a silver liquid. Its behaviour was truly different from flux.

He could see how flux was impossible to use without first changing it to something else. Because it was essentially imaginary. You could only imagine its flow and synchronize it with your imagination. He had tried, but he couldn’t find a way to bend the flux to his will in any meaningful way.

Mana, on the other hand, was different. It was like a new limb, ready to be used however he wanted it to. It was his.

He circulated a bit of mana out of his mind palace and released it out of his hand. What came out was a gust of gaseous silver energy. It dissipated quickly, as if it were merely a figment of his imagination. However, Theo’s nose did twitch in confusion.

Does it smell like metal?

Without further ado, he got up and looked around.

“Hmm…” He hummed while holding his chin. His recently completed mind palace churned out some mana for him, losing an infinitesimal amount of its luster. The mana traveled down his head, through his body, into his hand. He placed his palm on the inscription.

Once his mana extended out, he got some feedback unlike the last time. There was a set path out there, inside the inscriptions on the wall. They probably had some arcane mechanism that made him aware of his mana at every step.

They did, but it wasn’t as simple as blasting away. He had to actually pay attention and nudge his mana all the way through, a little tap there, a big slam there. If not, it would seep out the minuscule crevices of the wall and dissipate.

With painstaking effort, Theo managed to complete tracing. His mana feedback was cut off, and the inscription started shining a brilliant silver.

Bang!

“Agh!” Theo groaned, stumbling backward and falling on his ass. Something had just slammed against his face. Once his vision recovered, he shuffled up to his feet while rubbing his forehead.

A drawer? He noted. There was a drawer sticking out of the wall where he had just activated the inscriptions.

The thought of injecting it with mana had come from the purple lights he had seen around the woman while she left. But why had he gotten a drawer instead of an exit?

He eyed the inscription he had just touched, then looked at the one the woman had used to leave the room. Once he did, the answer came quickly.

Of course! These inscriptions… They are not just used to summon an exit, they are used to summon literally everything in this place! The furniture and all.

With long strides, Theo approached another part of the wall and lit up the inscriptions there. It took a little bit more mana this time, but he made sure to control it better. He didn’t want to get slammed in the face once again.

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The wall conjured a single bed in no time. It was a bizarre sight. He would have expected his mana to energy beam the bed into existence, but the furniture just popped into existence. Theo was happy with his finding. He had slept only a little in the past… however much time had passed, and really needed a good rest.

So after spending a little more time checking out the inscriptions, he found nothing useful and lay down on the bed.

Theo woke up an unknown amount of time later. He was parched, having slept unknown hours.

He dismissed the bed with a mental command. He sat down cross-legged and started pulling on flux. It entered his body from every little pore, went into his mindscape where he stamped it and turned it into mana by running it through the bricks.

After he finished refueling, Theo rose and got back to trying out the different inscriptions on the walls. One of the first few he tried turned out to be a faucet inscription or something, as the wall started leaking cold water.

Drinking a mouthful, Theo committed it to his mind and continued his search.

Why? Why would the room be designed like this? He considered attributing it to the woman being completely crazy, but that felt like glossing over the issue.

It is pretty good for saving space but isn’t it too much work just for that? I had to focus with all I had just to summon a drawer.

Then, it clicked.