(6) Always Present

Nephthys stood at the top of Nemesis, the peak of the Crashstone pyramid that enclosed the entire mountain. Her hands were held out to her sides, angled away from her body in a sort of upside-down ‘Y’ shape. Though she was focused on her spell, she could not help but notice that Akhenaton’s equipment was gone. Even the altar she had been brought to this world on, anchored to the pyramid’s peak with strong nails, had vanished

She let the thought exit her mind and refocused on circulating her mana. She had spent most of the night going over her spellbook and made several key realizations. First, mana circulation patterns were not strictly necessary. Or, rather, they maximized efficiency, not enabled the spell.

She had compared spells in her book thoroughly and found similarities between circulation patterns and spell effects. She surmised that circulation was universal, but different methods were optimized for different effects. Fire spells, for example, all shared nearly the same circulation pattern, with only minor differences depending on spell power and complexity.

Her second realization was that circulation only primed the mana for manipulation. It had nothing to do with creating the spell itself. Granted, circulation was also crucial to spells that affected one’s own body, but as a Djinn, most of those were moot anyway.

Mana seemed to require a sort of ‘inertia’ or ‘velocity’ to use. Spells could be cast with stagnant mana, but it would create strange, unintended artifacts in the spell and, in the worst case, backlash the caster. It was almost like circulating the mana ‘convinced’ it to cooperate with the spell.

Nephthys also discovered that her Djinn body had unbelievable benefits that were not present in Prelude. This entire process of ‘convincing’ mana was largely irrelevant to her. She still circulated it, but her body itself was mana-made flesh. She could manifest the circulation patterns instantly, the mana ready to use.

She currently attributed this to being a Djinn, but truthfully, she had no idea if that was the case. It could just as easily be the void engine within her chest, constantly pulsing out obscene amounts of mana. Perhaps it simply attributed the mana to her or something? It was part of her, so the mana it produced might be attuned to her already.

It could be neither of those. She had no idea how this world and its magic worked. Any explanation could be equally viable.

Whatever the case, the pattern formed within the body primed the mana for use in a spell, but the spell itself was no simpler. The mana seemed to require a sort of consent to be released, and that instant of consent was the only opportunity one had to define the parameters of its release. In other words, a spell had to be formed at the speed of thought.

Her body seemed to have some instinctive memory of spells, as they largely cast themselves without her direction. In fact, just like the light spell she tried first, when she tried to interfere in the process and give direction, it did not go well.

It took hours of constant practice, but she had sussed out the reason. Spells were not simply instructions conveyed mentally to mana; they were a subtle art form. Looking beneath the hood, so to speak, she discovered that during circulation, as the spell began to activate, it passed through her head and a sigil of intricate runes.

This sigil was made of wild patterns of swoops and whirls, all circling and intertwining each other in dizzying arrangements. They varied vastly in complexity depending on the spell, and Nephthys had only begun to understand them. These whorls corresponded to effect duration, those runes signified the exact effect, and other mysteries were becoming clearer, but there were so many pieces to this puzzle that she had only identified the corner pieces.

The spellbook was functionally a recipe book for spells, which aligned with how spells were learned in Prelude, so she should not be surprised. In the game, one had to delve into ancient Praxic ruins. These were ruins left by the high-magic empire of Praxia, the precursor to all modern peoples.

The game’s backstory, told largely through item descriptions and NPC chatter, saw Praxia unite the entire world under its banner, ushering in an era of ‘peace’ in which magic flourished. Their ruins were the primary source of spellcraft in Prelude, with the looted spellbooks providing players with a veritable arsenal of magic, from simple utilitarian spells like Light, all the way up to spells of army-scale destruction.

Nephthys was unsure if it was the spellbooks themselves that somehow came with prescribed instructions for spell effects or her own memory of how spells in the game behaved, but if she did not consciously interfere with the magic, she could cast spells from the game flawlessly. She could even cut the casting time down to being near-instantaneous with her hyper-efficient mana circulation.

This was not good enough, however. In her mind, wielding cataclysmic destruction without understanding it fully was beyond foolish. Constantly shooting a gun without understanding how it worked was a great way to shoot yourself by accident, and the more powerful the gun, the more powerful the backlash.

It was also true that one could only smash her face against a task for so long before a mental reset was necessary. She had already pondered over magic for the entire night. She was likely to see diminishing returns for any further time and thought, so she had resolved to take a break by shifting gears.

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

She had always thought it peculiar that her Celestial path was locked, mostly. As soon as she escorted Akhenaton back to Nemesis, the skill tree had unlocked, yet only a few abilities became available. Akhenaton, then an NPC, had merely stated that the full range of the Primarch’s abilities would reveal themselves ‘after her ascension.’

Nephthys had written this strangeness off at the time as unfinished content. Perhaps these special trees were not fully developed and would be expanded in future updates. Their acquisition was already incredibly obscure, so perhaps the devs simply thought they could implement and update them before players actually found them.

Now, though she could not see her path as a UI element in the game anymore, she somehow felt there was more to discover. Maybe it was some instinctual itch built into this body, or perhaps it was her memory of Akhenaton calling her arrival in this world an ascension, but there was a certainty deep in the back of her mind: her Primarch path was finally complete.

A torrent of mana gushed from her body, swirling about her and rocketing into the sky like a purple geyser. She lifted her head, staring at the dull red sky above. It was strange, despite the rising sun and the sulfurous clouds obscuring it, she could feel the starry void—waiting, watching—just beyond reach.

Of course, a product of her stats and skills transferring from Prelude was vastly increased perception, so she was fully aware that she was being watched.

“Something I can help you with, Ramose?” she asked without turning.