The mana struck Oliver almost like a physical force.

Far too much power instantly flooded into his soul and body, overwhelming his feeble attempts to resist it and causing him to fall to his knees, his staff clattering out of his hand as he did so.

With a great deal of exertion, he clawed himself out of the main pillar of mana, now coalescing into something that he couldn't really make out. Maybe it was nothing, but he wasn't about to take that chance. Even standing outside the main circle was only doing a bit to protect him, there was just so much mana. The fact he could actually see the mana itself was incredibly concerning, though less than it might be given how much it was basically just an overloaded ritual... probably, anyway.

Still, he needed to turn it off. His fingers scrabbled for the Staff of the New World, and he used it to push himself up to his feet.

[Scrollcast]

"I stand at the Gate and close it. I am Oliver Smith, the [Erudite Enchanter] and gatekeeper to the power below. Henceforth I bar entry of the might, as it is a well-ordered thing and is to only be called as it is required and desired."

It was a quick and simple spell, because all he needed to do was control the existing enchantment. Trying to actually cast it was incredibly hard thanks to the major storm of mana he was dealing with, but he'd grown used to the absolute chaos of the background Tapestry, and even the most unruly pieces of Technology still inherently bent itself to any kind of order, much like a supersaturated solution trying to make crystals. That was what the staff was for, though.

The ritual didn't so much as flicker.

Oliver gritted his teeth. He could sense exactly what was going on, his arcanoception readily able to sense past the gushing vent of mana to tell how his spell activated the glyph... but the glyph itself proved unable to actually stem the tide of mana flooding out, even with the light reinforcement provided from his staff.

That thought made him also double-check the glyphs responsible for 'chaining' the enchantment. They were, fortunately, still functional. His work hadn't entirely failed, but it wasn't the most robust thing he'd ever made, and with this much mana, he didn't know...

Oliver froze.

Damnit.

Had he imagined that? He really, really hoped he'd imagined...

And there it was again.

Gods damn it.

Dragon mana.

There was enough power, and it had firmly wrenched itself out of his grasp... the lack of control had coalesced and spawned what was practically every mage's worst nightmare.

Okay, not their worst nightmare, he had to admit. But still very bad.

He had to get it under control, because if he didn't... images of the entire tower burning like a candle of Dragonfire flashed through his mind. Even in the best-case scenario, weeks of progress would be lost in moments, and it would certainly poison the mana here so firmly that he might never be able to build a tower here again. In the worst case scenario... they could all die. The Dragonfire could explode out, incinerating them all or burning down the forest in its implacable whitish-violet flames. And if the tower started burning, the odds of that happening were high. Far, far too high.

No. He couldn't let that happen. If he ruined the entire enchantment and needed to redo the last several days of work, that was an acceptable cost to prevent the Dragon from waking. Fortunately for Oliver, that meant he suddenly had a plethora of tools available to him.

The chains of the soul. The bindings of civilization. A bulwark against the entire world. A spear aimed towards the heavens. A legacy of looking the impossible in the eye and spitting on it.

"I chain you!" he [Scrollcast]. "I, Oliver Smith the [Erudite Enchanter] chain you with word and knowledge!"

The bands of mana that had been stretched tight around the crystals flared up as his mana began to work. Coils of energy, chains of pure mana began to cycle rapidly, pulling on his soul uncomfortably but bearably. Each loop they made renewed their connection to him, which was important here and now. It wasn't why he'd created the binding chains, but that didn't really matter to [Scrollcast].

"I stand atop my tower, the foundation of civilization, and I deny you any place! This is a realm of order and..." the Tapestry began to swell uncontrollably again. Oliver resisted the urge to grit his teeth. He'd dealt with this before, mostly at Shelter, and he just needed to let it pass. He couldn't release his grip as much as he had found worked, but oncoming Dragon or not, he couldn't risk the influx of power only making things worse. It subsided... slowly, and he was able to forge onwards. "This is to be a fountain of growth! A wellspring of advancement and perfection, a tool for control and mastery, you have no room here. Leave, or be bound and follow the laws I decree!"

Oliver paused, and looked to the side. Henrietta flew on her wings of ink, looking at him and shielding her face.

"How can I help?" She called out, her voice almost carried away on the wind both natural and magical, but audible nonetheless.

Oliver could barely spare the thought to think about what he needed help with, let alone how to communicate it. For all that he wasn't speaking now, that was deliberate, and his entire body was involved in the present casting. His fingers danced an intricate web of motion, and his limbs twisted and contorted alongside them. This was the most complicated spell he'd yet worked since the Jump, and it was every bit as hard as it seemed.

He was basically using the tower itself as a focus, and it was not designed for that purpose. Well, he supposed it was in a way. Just not as a focus for this.

Fortunately, Henrietta seemed to find something to do, and she alighted on the platform opposite him. A moment later, her wings folded away and she began to draw something on the floor with her finger. Not long after that, the pressure that Oliver was feeling sharply decreased as a large amount of power began being siphoned away, vented out the side in the form of a gout of flame. Just regular fire, not Dragonfire, and Oliver would have breathed a sigh of relief if he could spare it.

He gripped his staff tightly as he chanted his smoothing spell over and over again, maneuvering his staff to try and draw the chains around the geyser of wild magic, taking note as the Technology present began to entwine with his spell, naturally forming prison bands around the entire thing. It followed the crystal mana-barrier and worked to slowly entrap the magic, ideally forcing it to find a different way to vent than through the enchantment. He just needed to get it somewhat under control, and then...

It didn't like what he was doing. The bands were blown open and then blown apart, the Order falling to the Wild mana like a dragon breaking loose of ropes trying to hold it down. Oliver would have grit his teeth if doing so wouldn't have interrupted his casting.

He released the Staff of the New World from one hand and began twisting his fingers through what motions he could get to help, pulling on the mana coursing through the enchantment. The chains he had bound to cycle through the tower's runes were his best tool for getting control over the raging storm of mana, but he needed more than what they were currently providing. There was, by necessity, a sort of 'gap' in the tensioning effect as the mana approached his Body and Magic glyphs, and he directed the chains running through those points closer to the Myself in the center. His tongue slipped mid-chant and he nearly lost control over the threads and forcing him to fight back a jolt of panic before it could impact his working, but he was able to compensate for the fumbled word with a nearly-instinctive hand gesture. One chain, then the next attached to the Myself successfully, and the turbulent mana around him stabilized slightly.

Then, he cast a new spell to duplicate the chains and sent them around each quarter of the overall circle, but this time on the inside of the outer 'tension' crystals, giving him far more ability to bind the wild magic than he could manage with the threads dedicated to simply running the System node.

That gave him four more chains, two 'attached' to each end of his staff, which he immediately allowed to slip the binds of the tension crystals and tried to pull 'inwards.' It caught against the billowing clouds of mana, as he'd hoped, but it then just got stuck there. He wasn't strong enough to overcome the force of the raw mana, and instead of pulling the storm of mana inwards, pulling on them just started pulling his soul in different directions... metaphorically, anyway.

Now there's an idea.

Was it a bad idea? Probably. Did he have any better ones? Not in the slightest.

He was currently hamstrung by being level zero. And he was absolutely confident that he'd gotten at least a few levels in the months he'd been here. Being on a new world was great for accumulating Significance, after all. He needed, absolutely needed to get his System working, that was true. But that was easier to do with a working enchantment and a couple of misspent skill points than waiting for an 'optimal' build and needing to rebuild the tower somewhere else.

And if he could direct just a couple of points into Aura, that might well suffice anyway.

He became peripherally aware of the rest of his team being present, though he didn't know what they might be able to do to help. This was his machine that had gone haywire, but maybe they could find ways to vent some power like Henrietta had? Jacob was on the corner to his left, and Alyssa and Clark were sharing the corner to his right. Neither had much space outside the tri-circle setup, but they were each doing... something. He couldn't spare the brainpower to figure it out.

Instead, he steeled himself, and stepped into the storm of magic.

The current had strengthened. Flickers of Dragon mana were all around him, little blips to his mana sense so brief that he could hardly be certain he wasn't imagining them. Every step was heavy, each passing moment made his soul nearly overload with power, and the eight chains of mana exuding from his soul and passing through the Staff of the New World ironically made it bearable as their 'friction' allowed the excess mana to escape alongside them.

But for all that each step was a struggle, he made it to the center of the circles in just a few strides punctuated by the clacking of his staff. He swept his staff and thrust it towards the sky to accentuate his words, as he continued his work with a commanding voice.

"I Strike you down, o Dragon of the Tapestry! This Spear which I stand upon has been made as a weapon against the heavens and you stand alongside it! You are naught but an unruly child, with your temper seeking to usurp those who have come to surpass you! May your blood be shed, may your strength be felled, and may your fire be the pyre upon which I build an empire of steel and order! For you stand in the way of progress and home, of safety and surety, and for that I do denounce you and call you to heel!"

Oliver gasped for air. The last word in that chant had been seventeen syllables, and that was past his nominal limits. The uncontrolled gasp lost him some of the progress he had made, but the chains of mana he commanded were pulling ever-tighter, but if Oliver were to lean outside of the central glyph, then the outermost flickering, furious wisps of elemental Dragon would barely be beyond the tip of his staff.

He kept the chains running, but stopped trying to smother the enchantment, stopped trying to shove it back in its box. He needed the strength, and he needed to hope that this wasn't suicidally stupid. Yes, he'd designed the enchantment to be safe for people, but he hadn't tested it and it was clearly malfunctioning. He'd need to work through every bug and every issue in the enchantment and compensate for them on the fly, adjusting the ritual accordingly. At least most of the mana around him was still elemental Technology in nature, with Significance tied into it. Significance wasn't liable to harm him too badly in the worst-case, and while Technology could easily crush him within its grand cogs... he knew how to work with it.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Stop stalling, he chided himself. Do this or don't. Just make a decision.

He couldn't turn back now. Not when this was his best option. His only option. Aura and Cohesion was what he needed. Aura for his System and to strengthen his soul, Cohesion for his spells and to give him the power needed to tame the mana and shackle it to his will.

Oliver spun his staff, and the enchantment leaped into action.

"I am Oliver Smith, the [Erudite Enchanter], and hear my call. I have done much and achieved great things, and I claim my dues as I Forge my soul and my body, Binding them unto - deer sword road ocean - being a Paragon. As surely as my Magic does flow through these bindings, so unto so - so do I Crystallize Myself into something great, into something - dirt unicorn lilac reputation - grand. For as often as I work my Spells into this great Story, I shall become a Masterwork, a - star mountain swordfish game coin chair - testament to My own work."

The magic began to flow, began to circle. It wasn't as focused as it should be, and Oliver was right on the edge of how much he could improvise. His control was finite, and with his existing stats he had trouble with all the right words. The focusing crystal, meant to demarcate which stat he wanted his points assigned to, was at his feet. On the bright side, that meant he would almost certainly end up with at least a couple of points in Aura, on the downside what he needed right now was Cohesion, and trying to cast contrary what your focus wanted was really, exceptionally hard. Maybe he could like... kick it over? Or toss it?

Then again, maybe he didn't need any of that, because it was mostly meant to help stretch his soul in the right ways, and he was definitely stretching it without any help, trying to keep the chains attached to him and pulling the Dragon mana into line without it flaring into something impossibly dangerous.

He kept channeling his ritual, barely able to devise what he needed to be doing as he was actively casting the spell. And... was it his imagination, or was it becoming somewhat easier to balance everything? He hadn't expected this to be going so fast, but these were hardly normal circumstances.

Oliver spun his staff, winding the chains back and forth as he sought to pull himself and the mana into one another. They circled again and again, through his soul and out again. With a loud voice and only a few misspoken words, he was maybe, just maybe starting to pull the entire ritual into order...

New Subskill [Scrollcast] ⟨Use Artifact⟩

Yes! Yes! He'd gotten a subskill! And gotten a notification for it! His System was working again! And the subskill was one that he could actually, genuinely use. He couldn't stop his breath from hitching and a smile from forming.

That involuntary reaction meant his newest ability was instantly put to work, as he relied on it to keep the binding circle active while he turned his attention more towards fixing the parts of the spell his happiness had messed up.

Fortunately, the subskill was one he was familiar with, and while early on it basically just let him click an on/off switch for enchantments designed with similar effects in mind, a nontrivial amount of the ritual he was casting was simply meant to activate and keep active the circle he'd spent the last several days working on. That he could now simply will it to keep working while still referencing it with the main [Scrollcast] working around it...

It gave him a real chance.

As he recovered from his fumble, Oliver turned his newly-loosed focus towards taming the storm of wild magic around him. The chains tightened, and Oliver felt the flickers of Dragon struggle mightily against him, but they were few in number and barely even present to begin with, and Oliver was growing stronger with every passing minute.

Of course, the mana around him was also growing stronger, so this still wasn't going to be easy. The flickers came more and more frequently, the Dragon refusing to be chained, refusing to be tamed. But Oliver felt ready now, and he finished the leveling ritual to turn his entire attention towards the storm of mana that he'd unleashed upon his tower.

"I Bind you!" he called out once more, "I, Oliver Smith the [Erudite Enchanter], do Bind and Order you! This is not your place, for this is a place of order and-" another surge of mana built up below Oliver, and he was forced to slacken his grip once again to let it pass.

"Boy, what are you doing?"

Jacob's voice cut through the roar of mana as though the veteran was standing right next to Oliver. He nearly jumped, the involuntary shudder still registering as a signal to the mana, and the enormous surge of mana wavered.

"Stop standing there," Jacob continued, "And cast your spirits-damned spell!"

What spell? He couldn't truly ask it, but Jacob answered him anyway.

"Stop being bloody paralyzed the moment things start going well for you. Take what you can get, the world is rarely kind enough to just give you what you need."

Oliver's instincts warred with one another. He couldn't cast when this giant swell of mana was present. Who knew what the local Tapestry was trying to do? Trying to cast when you didn't even know what was happening was a terrible idea. arcanoception was the base skill for spellcasting for that very reason, if you didn't know what was happening, you couldn't control it.

Casting was methodical and careful. You could adjust and make mistakes and then correct for them, because you knew what was supposed to happen. Just winging it and continuing to cast even if you didn't know what was happening... no. No! That wasn't how this worked. You only cast when you had control of the situation, when you knew exactly what you were doing, when things were right.

You most certainly didn't cast when in the middle of a magic storm, surrounded by some unknown magical phenomenon which you couldn't predict and therefore couldn't control. That was how you lost control. That was how you unleashed Dragons. That was how you died and killed everyone around you.

"Do it, Smith!"

A flare of Dragon mana burst up all around him, burning his soul and his chains. He felt the uncontrollable mana fight against the swell he likewise couldn't predict, and they certainly didn't like one another.

Gods take me.

Oliver let loose a wordless shout and raised his staff above his head.

"Behold me! Behold my might! You are bound and chained, feeble Dragon. This is not your place, but this is a location of order and growth." The swell magnified. "You are rejected and banished, may you never come here save to grow us and to empower us. The mana of this place will not accept you, the people of this place forbid you. Tremble before the wake of the First Empire of Humanity. Nothing shall stop the power I bring with me, the legacy of those I walk in my wake. For we have slain or chained the Tyrants themselves, what is but a mere echoing ghost, a mirage in the Tapestry? We will not kneel to you."

He was fully winging it now, effectively divining the words he should say as he said them. If it felt like it would diminish the future of the Dragon, he took it. His staff spun wildly, and it had begun to trail blue lines alongside its chains.

"Be crushed, be slain, know you are but mere ants. For mankind is here. The forests shall be cleared, the mountains will fall, our machines shall crush and burn and run, the world will burn before us. I decree you bygone, and with my authority, I enforce my order. Heed me now!"

The power around him swelled. Power flowed through him, barely directed but undeniably working alongside him. It took nearly all of Oliver's willpower to not crush it under heel or allow it to simply pass him by. Instead, he sent out a pulse of Technology, lines of power infiltrating and being swept along like cobwebs in the wind.

And the net landed.

New Skill [Order Mana] 1

That's new, Oliver noted. He could surmise a bit about what the skill would do between what he was casting, its name, and the vague sense of the magic he could sense in his soul. And while it was objectively an awful idea to try out something wholly new while casting...

[Order Mana], he commanded. Inside the skill's range, which seemed to be the mana he was actively controlling, he felt the Technology twist to his will, turning as hard as steel and aligning itself with his spell. The chains redoubled in strength, eating away at the flickers of Dragon and pulling it in tighter and tighter to himself.

Like an engine of war, the mana turned slowly, but it certainly turned. The might of the tower was at his beck and call, the geyser of mana turning to a solid block of pure Order, aligned to his will in its utmost. That block was the full might of civilization, and no beast, no matter how mighty, no matter how powerful, no matter how divine, nothing could withstand the full might of human progress.

His soul ached as his mana plummeted, but Oliver was an archmage, and he would let no unruly enchantment of clay and grass be his undoing. He was a human, and that meant something. It meant endurance and persistence, stubbornness, and it meant victory.

When the end of the Dragon came, it was sudden. The chains of mana tightened and cut through the column with a powerful crunch, and Oliver experienced major vertigo as he pulled all of the tower's wild mana directly into himself. It was washed out mere moments later by the Technology rushing in, but he had slain the Dragon.

Oliver opened his eyes. Golden smoke still billowed around him, far too much mana still being channeled through the enchantment, but it was wholly free from the subversive might of Dragon.

He barely felt connected to his body. It was as though he could see himself from above, a tiny figure glowing with the power of Order against the full might of the natural world, in the middle of a tower of his own making, a beacon of progress and creation among a sea of Nature. The sensation was overwhelming, and Oliver's mind began to grow unfocused. He didn't have much longer, he could tell. But there was still one thing he could do.

Be Still, Oliver commanded.

First, there was warmth.

Then, there was darkness.

And it was so.

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