The Path of Ascension Chapter 357

Chapter 357

 

Demarcus Jackson, professor of ancient world histories at Ciliradi Provence University, was not crazy. All of his past students probably assumed he was, many of his colleagues surely thought he was, most of his ex-girlfriends probably suspected he was, and some of his friends were sure that he was. But he wasn’t.

He just wasn’t blind.

At worst, he was passionate.

As a 32 years old tenured professor, he had proven he was intelligent beyond his peers, but instead of recognizing his brilliance and trusting that his more eccentric theories held weight, his colleagues and the dean just kept trying to refocus him.

Demarcus wasn’t crazy, but he also wasn’t stupid. Which is why he had allowed them to herd him into the more traditional academic path, until he decoded the Talfuna hidden language used by their ancient upper echelons and earned his tenure.

With his tenure secure, he had thought, had hoped, they would give him a little more leeway to explore the obvious gaps and flaws in their people’s, their world’s histories.

… and explore the alien artifacts they had sitting in museums.

Demarcus understood that Soerilia wasn’t ready to accept that there were aliens watching over them, guiding and protecting them. But sticking one’s head under the pillow didn’t stop the monster under the bed from nibbling on one’s toes. Still, he had expected better of his academic fellows after he proved his intellect. Even if they didn’t believe him, they should have trusted him and given him at least nominal assistance.

Maybe his office was a little messy and he hadn’t shaved in a few days. Weeks, maybe. But it was summer, and there weren’t any students so he was elbow deep in clay.

Whipping the sweat off his head and leaving a healthy smear of clay in its place, he looked at his project and studied it.

The configuration before him had been seen in dozens of cultures spread far across Soerilia before natural disasters culminating in a debilitating global winter had killed most of the planet’s ecological life, including most human life. All but those that lived near Arilanding and its active volcano, who had been able to huddle in its warm, nitrogen rich soil for close to a hundred years before Soerilia started to warm itself back up.

But in the remains of the past, archaeologists had found things that made no sense.

Configurations of strange symbols that held great importance to the local cultures. Local cultures that should have had no contact with each other but had striking similarities to each other that shouldn’t have been possible with their tech levels. Unless there had been something, or someone with technology greater than their ancestors had.

Demarcus knew aliens of great power lingering and watching their ancestors wasn’t a comforting thought, but what else made sense?

It was the only answer that didn’t leave more questions, but his colleagues couldn’t see that.

So, Demarcus went looking and he found things. Oddities that were seemingly unexplainable. How many cultures could independently create the same arrangement of stone or metal slabs that had nigh identical characters on them?

That made no sense, but because each culture’s remains only seemed to have a part of the greater whole, people dismissed it as some form of carcinisation. Crabs were awesome, but he was pretty sure the aliens were more lizard-like based on some clues he and others had found.

Demarcus had tried to get university approval for this test, but they insisted that using so many radioactives in a test was irresponsible and dangerous.

Which it was. Dangerous, not irresponsible. He had protective layers ready for when he was prepped to lay the iridium wires out. And to limit the dangers, he had even hiked out to the middle of the woods with nearly a ton of building supplies to perform his tests.

Once he had proof this array of stones, once properly powered, was able to communicate with aliens, the university would be more than happy to fund a better experiment. But he needed a proof of concept.

Originally, he had thought that the summer would be more than enough time, but he had underestimated just how hard this would be. Before he had trekked out here, he had recreated the known parts of the array with concrete and hoped that using clay in the rest would make iterating the design easy. But he had underestimated just how convoluted the aliens’ system of writing was.

Or how it was powered.

He still had no idea how they managed that, but from all the examples the archaeologist had found, these arrays were self-contained and seemingly self-sustaining.

Personally, he thought they might harvest momentum from the rotation of the planet or the like, but that was pure speculation.

It was, however, why he was going to use iridium for the wiring. The energy rich metal might be enough to make up for any shortfalls in the recorded evidence.

Carefully washing and drying his hands, he flipped through his notebook and compared the array to what he had speculated in his drawings.

Seeing things in person, he found that a few of the strange word characters seemed wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but his gut told him that what he had filled in wasn’t correct.

Using the long stick he had carefully placed next to him, he delicately smoothed the clay and changed the shape.

That small adjustment seemed to change the cohesive whole, and he had to make a few more tweaks to other parts of the arrangement until he felt things were more cohesive. It was speculation based on a tiny amount of information, but Demarcus was good at making inferences. It was just how his mind worked.

That, and the fact that this was his third attempt and the summer was nearing its end, so he needed to get a move on. He simply couldn’t worry about small imperfections anymore. The nights were starting to get cold, even with the blankets he had brought out here, which meant this was going to be his last attempt, no matter success or failure. And with how long the clean up procedures took, he was already going to be cutting it close.

After another round of inspections and modifications, Demarcus donned his heavy lead suit and started spooling out the iridium wire.

It took nine hours to carefully lay the brittle metal out, and he was drenched in sweat even as the sun was setting and frost was already forming around the edges of his boot prints.

Just as the last of the sun’s rays were dancing along the horizon and Demarcus laid out the final piece of wire, a flash of light appeared that rivaled the sun in midday.

Demarcus ripped his helmet off and jumped into the air.

He had done it!

***

Al’ta was filing a report on the continuing progress one of the smaller nations was making, or rather not making, towards meeting the benchmarks set by the integration plan when the planetary AI sent an alert. It was picking up some unexpected mana fluctuations outside a city a few countries away.

Al’ta groaned.

The place the AI was pointing at had no official magic usage, which meant one of three things. First, and definitely the most likely these days was that someone had smuggled some Empire gear home and was now playing around with it. Second was that a delver had decided to mess around with their magic in an unapproved way. Or third, and definitely the most inconvenient, was that a rift was forming.

Well, there was nothing to it.

She tried stretching her spiritual perception out to get an initial look, but long-range sensing had never been one of her strengths, and she didn’t get anything for the attempt. Instead, she physically got up, logging her investigation as such, and flew to the area the AI had reported on.

It was, apparently, just one guy.

While he was frozen in time from her perspective, it was fairly apparent that he was jumping wildly for joy outside of a tiny cabin, looking at a crude metal-and-clay formation on a picnic table that was on proper inspection, obviously the cause of her alert.

Her AI, after eating an annoying amount of mana for the calculation, identified the man as one Professor Demarcus Jackson, an anthropological professor in the employ of a local university. He had a reputation among his students as being eccentric but brilliant, and his coworkers thought of him as unreliable and possibly manic, far too enamored with fringe theories for a member of academia.

All in all, he was not the sort of person that Al’ta would have expected to be able to make a crude runic array, yet here he was. For some reason, he’d chosen iridium as his metal of choice, and the formation was suffering for it, the incredibly non-ductile metal never meant to be literally bent so far out of shape.

But for her incredulity, the man had successfully created a magical formation with very basic tools, and if the innumerable diagrams and pictures strewn about were any indication, simple archeological records interspersed with a number of what could be generously described as ‘magazines for the paranoid.’

Really now, reptilian bloodlines were no more deceptive than any other. That was just being racist.

Regardless, she had a job to do. She cast [Consult Documentation], making sure she approached this situation in the right way.

As part of its founding as a Veil world, Soerellia had a full charter written up regarding what exactly the purpose of the Veil was, appropriate interference for the Republic, and most relevantly for the moment, what constituted a parting of the Veil.

For Soerellia in particular, knowledge of mana was considered past the Veil, and anyone who discovered mana was, in pursuant to Subsection 83, Clause G an official Veil Parter, and thereby supposed to be brought past the Veil and given full information regarding the nature of the Veil, the Republic, and to be sponsored via an awakening.

There was more information regarding what should happen if someone discovered mana scientifically, accidentally creating a device that incidentally created or used mana, and how to correspond with the inventor to create a new way in which subsequent individuals could uncover mana. But that didn’t apply here.

It was part of the Republic’s whole ‘test’ thing for getting past the Veil, which Al’ta personally found a bit silly. Most means for parting the Veil had absolutely nothing to do with one’s comfort with and capacity for violence, which was really the only thing that mattered to a delver. But it wasn’t her job to argue for or against the system. What mattered now was that one of the seeds the Republic had planted had come to fruition, and now she had a far too enthusiastic man who had put together a working Daedalus Formation and consequently discovered the existence of mana.

It left her in a bit of an awkward position. Most of the normal ingresses for the Veil had been redirected and repurposed during the Empire integration, the active holes having been discontinued, and most people likely to discover the truth of the were Veil already brought past it. But they hadn’t gone through and closed every way one could part the Veil. This particular route, following instructions embedded deep within the planet’s history as a way to create a functioning rune array with literally any level of tools, was emblematic of that.

Except now she had to deal with the consequences of that.

With a sigh, she sent a report to her boss. If what she heard on the grapevine about the Duke and Duchess looking for people to sponsor was true, the message would probably be forwarded to them.

Slowing her perception down to unawakened levels again, the man finally finished his leap of joy and immediately started enthusiastically talking about aliens and how he knew he was right the moment he saw her.

This was going to be a long conversation.

***

Yosef took a deep breath and exhaled.

He felt odd.

Or he felt amazing actually.

He was pushing fifty years old, but he looked younger than when he was awakened just ten years ago.

He also felt better than any fifty year old had any right to.

He was not only feeling younger, he was stronger than any unawakened by what felt like a mile. He could run faster than even the best athletes without breaking a sweat, and his personal records in the gym would blow the old world records out of the water.

Even after leaving the military two years ago and joining the new settlement on the other side of the Palatine mountain range, Gates Rest, he was feeling good.

From his time in the military and the incursions they had made into the continent, he had reached Tier 2, but had chosen to leave when his extended contract was up to be closer to the Tier 3 rifts. They were the only thing that noticeably advanced his magic powers, his cultivation, if he were to use the term, being bandied around at any reasonable speed.

As he and everyone advanced, they quickly noticed that the weaker monster’s essence felt airy and light compared to monsters at their level or stronger, and few willingly took it in if they could help it.

No, this awakening business was undeniably good.

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

What wasn’t so good was his memory issues since reaching Tier 4.

He wasn’t losing any old memories, fortunately, but there were times when… when nothing seemed to stick. It felt like he’d lose a full day in the blink of an eye at times, or he might come back to himself after a fight with no recollection of the fight itself. According to the people around him, he was anything but incompetent during his amnesiac times, but the amount of time he was losing to it was worrying.

He had in fact had a doctor— a magical one even, which had cost him an arm and a leg— perform both a magical scan and a mundane scan on his brain just to make sure he wasn’t having mental issues. Except, they had found nothing, and there had been no abnormalities on each of the scans.

Despite the results, Yosef just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was… wrong.

It was getting worse, too. These days, he could hardly even let his mind wander without losing some time, whether just a few minutes or full hours.

As a former professional soldier and now professional monster fighter, his mind was his greatest asset, which was he had started taking a more reserved approach to this magic stuff. The last thing he wanted was to be in battle with a group of monsters and have one of those memory fluctuations. Even weaker monsters could still kill you if you weren’t careful.

Yosef instead had taken up meditating. It wasn’t perfect, and he’d sometimes lose all memory of the meditation itself, but he tried to cling to what tiny scraps of control he could muster.

It also helped with the other odd mental thing. The one that felt more benign. The strange feeling of connection to…something.

He had had those feelings since he first got the magic powers, and had assumed they were just a part of the larger package of magic. But when he talked to his men and others awakened, he had found none of them felt that.

Erring on the side of caution, he decided to keep that oddity to himself going forward, and made sure to keep an ear out for anyone feeling anything similar. But he had never heard even a rumor of it.

Armed with a glass of whisky, he sat on his balcony and watched the stars start to appear in the night sky.

It was beautiful. Stunning really.

The night sky seemed full of possibilities if one could just reach out and grasp it.

When had his life become so chaotic? It seemed like he was bouncing around from place to place, swirling and crashing unexpectedly on monsters, on politicians, on magic.

What the hell had happened to his home? What was he supposed to do? Was there anything he could do? He felt like the entire planet was just a speck of dust, caught in the immense turbulence of something so much larger, and he was nothing but dust compared to that.

What was there to do, beyond putting one foot in front of the next, always moving with the currents and hoping it all turned out alright?

Yosef swirled his drink, feeling the liquid inside sloshing around. What did it think of all this?

Well, the answer was nothing. Fluids didn’t feel anything. They just acted. He of all people knew that. Yet here he was, his life practically fluid itself as it flowed from one place to another.

Maybe if he thought that hard enough, he’d figure out what was up with his own life. Maybe then he’d understand. Maybe then he could see his own future, the way he could sort-of-kinda see the future of fluids near him.

A deep part of himself swirled to the surface, some half-forgotten feeling arising as he stared at the stars.

None of this made sense. He didn’t know what would happen next, and he never could. He’d never be ready for anything ever again, but maybe that was alright.

So what, if his memory was getting worse? So what, if godlike people were taking over the planet? So what? He could adapt, he could survive.