9 – Experiments in the Inner Sanctum

“So what is that big crystal in the tower anyway?”

Myrl and I were laying the red and white speckled mushrooms out to dry in the sun.

“It’s a dragon orb,” Myrl said, brushing some dirt off a particularly delectable-looking cap.

“Aren’t orbs supposed to be, well… orb-shaped?” I asked. The one that hung in the hall looked much closer to an elongated quartz crystal than the sphere of energy I had seen rise out of the boar.

“Most are. Dragons, however, are special. Not only are their mana orbs shaped like crystals, but they also don’t undergo the same expansion that other monster orbs experience.”

“Expansion?”

“Yes.” Myrl’s long grey beard dragged across the assorted mushrooms as he worked. “If a monster dies and no one is around to collect its orb, it will float aimlessly around the countryside, accumulating ambient mana until it grows large enough to become a rift. At that point, the mana nucleates in the form of new monster orbs within the rift. It’s one way that monsters reproduce.”

“Do monsters die when no one’s around often?”

“Sure. Monsters can still fall off cliffs and get struck by lightning. And if they kill each other in fights, most aren’t smart enough to assimilate the orbs of their fallen opponents. Those unassimilated orbs grow to become rifts that spawn more monsters.”

“How long does it take for a stray orb to become a rift?” I asked as the early afternoon sun beat down on me. The days were getting warmer, and I could see little heat shimmers in the tower courtyard, distorting the figures of the statues.

“Good question,” Myrl said. “I assume you’re thinking you could let a monster orb go unassimilated, collecting mana on its own before absorbing it into your own orb. Free extra mana, right?”

I nodded.

“The turnaround time from deceased monster to nascent rift has been recorded as short as a single day. Once it becomes a rift, no matter how small, the mana can’t be absorbed from the outside. You have to go inside and defeat the new monsters in there because that’s where all the mana is concentrated now.”

“But not with a dragon orb.”

“Correct. Dragons only reproduce the old-fashioned way. And rarely at that. That’s why they’re so uncommon. And their orbs can be used as an external mana storage device. We all send a little of our mana to the dragon orb in Bluebell Tower every day at the urging of Senior Archmage Alynur. He says it’s an invaluable resource in the case of an emergency.”

After running low on my own mana with that fight with the boar, I could see how having an auxiliary supply would provide a substantial benefit.

“So that’s why the white wizard wanted it.”

“You mean Archwizard Siulius? Fuck that guy. He sucks. But yes. It’s probably the single largest reservoir of external mana in the entire realm.”

“If he’s so strong, why doesn’t he just go kill a dragon himself?”

Myrl chuckled. “One does not simply kill a dragon. No. The task would be nigh impossible even for an Archwizard.”

“But Senior Archmage Alynur did it, right?”

“Ahh, and now you’ve discovered the central mystery around Archmage Alynur,” Myrl said with a twinkle in his eye.

“… And that is?”

“What is his true level?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“No one does. A wizard can only see the levels of those less strong than them. Sometimes you can estimate their level based on the spells they use, but Alynur rarely uses his highest-level spells in front of others. I don’t think Siulius even knows how strong Alynur really is.”

I thought about this for a long while. Eventually, we finished laying out the mushrooms. They looked glorious, arranged in neat rows on a burlap tarp and drying in the sun like little red gems.

“Hey Myrl, can you help me with something?” I asked. Ever since my fight with the boar, I wanted to experiment with the limits of my [Void Thread] spell.

Myrl shrugged. “Sure thing.”

I took him outside the main gate of the tower’s outer wall and walked a little way around the perimeter. “I want to test my [Void Thread] spell. It pierced straight through that statue the first time I used it, and it also sliced through an entire boar.”

“Brilliant application of it, by the way,” he said. “Using a moving target to maximize the surface area of the attack. You have to be clever in the early levels. The spells aren’t going to do all the work for you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m wondering just how far the piercing power goes. Does the void thread continue on indefinitely, cutting through the universe for all of time? Or does it eventually wear out?”

“Well, the beam itself probably only lasts as long as the spell circle,” Myrl said. “But you’re right, we should test the limits of its destructive force. What did you have in mind?”

“Well, I was thinking of just firing it through the wall here and seeing if it hits the other side. I’ll do it at an angle so it doesn’t hit the main tower.”

“A secant,” Myrl said.

“Excuse me?”

“A secant is a line that intersects a circle at two points,” Myrl explained.

“Oh, right,” I said, vaguely remembering the term from high school geometry. “Is there any way for you to get on top of the wall just to make sure I’m not going to hit one of the other wizards?”

I noticed Myrl’s legs begin to glow blue with mana as he crouched down, then launched himself onto the top of the wall. “Coast is clear,” he said, giving me the thumbs up.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It must have been a jump of thirty feet or more. And he did it in a single leap like it was nothing. I was really going to have to learn that mana body augmentation trick. It was freaking sick.

I pointed at the wall in a direction that was slightly off-center. “This angle look good?”

“Perfect,” he called back.

“Okay, here I go.” I closed my eyes and retrieved the spell circle. My mana was topped off from assimilating the boar’s orb earlier, so I was in no danger of running out. When I opened my eyes, the afterimage remained, and I quickly traced the spell circle by channeling mana out of my extended index and middle fingers.

When it was complete, I incanted the spell’s name, and the pattern glowed with its signature black and purple void energy. A second later, the thread of dark energy shot through the stone masonry.

When the spell circle faded, I examined the wall up close, looking for the mark where the spell went through. It was barely perceptible, but I found it. A tiny hole burrowed cleanly through the rock. If I moved my head just right, I could make out light on the other end.

“Did you see it come out the other side?” I called up to Myrl.

“It was just a flash, but yeah. I clocked it.”

“Let’s see if we can find the corresponding hole on the other side.”

It took some searching, but Myrl had noted the general area that the spell had hit, and after about ten minutes of poring over the stone, I found it. A tiny borehole just like on the opposite side of the circular wall.

However, I couldn’t see through this one.