AA-106

Mia followed Nikki's instructions as best as she could, though even with the few tips for how to do it, she only managed it by the third try.

She allowed herself a satisfied grin as small embers of mana streamed out of her fingertips in a steady outflow. Instead of just grabbing a glob of mana from her core and rolling it down her mana channel all at once like she had done with spells prior to this, she now had a steady stream of mana cascading down her channels all the way from her core down to the tips of her fingers.

Sweat beaded down her brows as her hand threatened to tremble, but she kept it firmly locked in place. Her mana was now Order Aspected, which made it much easier to control — and apparently made it a much better fuel for the ritual — but it still strained her to keep it under control.

It was like trying to tame a river. If she tried to forcefully keep it on track with an iron-like grip, it would just swerve away and away from her touch, but if she let it do as it wished, it would still start curving and twisting all around the place.

With this 'river' of mana being inside her rather fragile mana channels, letting it twist and bend would send it crashing into the walls of her ethereal veins. Which hurt. A lot.

Keeping her mind on the task, Mia watched as the glittering pink light of her mana swelled in the circle she had placed her palm in. As the wisps of mana continued streaming out of her fingers, a gentle but firm grasp tugged at them and somewhat reluctantly, Mia let her lingering control of them dissipate.

Whenever she did, the wisps flowed down, joining the circle growing brighter and brighter by the second. For now, they stayed stuck within the small battery-circle Mia was charging.

"Excellent," Nikki said encouragingly. "You're doing magnificently. Just a few more seconds and it'll be enoug- Oh, there it is!"

The circle shone a bright hot pink to Mia's eyes, then pulsed and sent waves of its collected mana out through carefully carved channels all across the room's floor. Mia watched in awe as collections of runes lit up along the larger ritual circle encircling the whole room.

There were many, many more other shapes and runes not connected to that circle though, most of them located somewhere inside the larger 'mana serenity' ritual circle, and none of those glowed yet. In all, by the time the two racing lines of pink mana connected on the other side, only about a tenth of all the etchings glowed with power.

"You can release it now," Nikki said, poking at a small cluster of runes a few metres away from Mia. "I got it locked, thanks. That'll keep this powered for at least an hour, that should be more than enough for us."

Mia did just that and after a moment, the whole ritual circle pulsed once more, sending out a ripple of mana through the air. The room stiffened, falling into a dead silence that was almost unnerving. Except Mia could still hear noises, Nikki's heart racing, Camie shuffling and even the distant sound of a pair of soldiers messing around in a room one floor down reached her ears as clear as day.

No, the silence was not an absence of sound, but of the constant thrum of roiling mana all around her that she didn't even notice until it was all but gone. It was like a constant background noise she'd gotten so used to that her subconscious mind had filtered it out.

"Wow," Mia muttered, eyes wide as she brushed her awareness across the room with her Spirit Sense. Just beyond the spherical barrier the ritual had put up, the world was the same as it always had been. "That's … so weird."

"What?" Nikki looked up in confusion, her fingers already trailing the lines of a dim rune that was probably a part of the second ritual of the queue. "Oh! You can feel mana! I … forgot elves could do that for a second."

"Yeah," Mia said, blinking as she tried to push the noise back into the background where it didn't bother her. "You say that like humans can't, I mean, I know you don't get it as a Trait, but can't you just get a skill for it or something?"

"No," Nikki answered after a long second, shaking her head. "There are some ways, with some rare Natural Treasures and dangerous rituals. But most human mages will only ever have a sense for the mana under the space blanketed by their Spirit. Not the outrageous ranges your kind had. That's why contracts with Spirits are so valuable, they can share their own senses with their Bonded partner. Anyway, let's get started. I don't need help with the next two rituals, but the last one will need some work from both of you."

Mia nodded, adding another few questions to her mental list. For one, more than once she had caught mentions of Natural Treasures that did stuff far more impressive than giving you a bunch of stat points and she was dying to know what exactly differentiated the boring stat NTs from the ones giving free Traits like Mana Sense.

For two, Spirits and Bonds sounded like something she should know more about as a mage from what Nikki's words implied. Especially since a Spirit King might or might not want to do … I don't even know. Camie said that Anachreon guy was like at most my great-grandfather if my Bloodline is still this pure. Would he care? Would he even want to bother with me even? Or would he think me some travesty on his honour for having human blood?

The description of her Halvyr race certainly implied that neither humans nor the Fae looked too kindly upon the Halvyr. Which gave her much to worry about, even if she knew that logically, she had much more immediate concerns to worry about. Like getting her runic-model to function properly.

Mia and Camie retreated to a corner clear of runes and glowing geometric shapes and let Nikki work without interruptions.

The purification ritual came next, and it was over in a minute. Nikki just placed the conduits Mia had brought her in their prepared bowls at the tips of a triangular ritual circle and then placed the two Rank 1 monster cores in a smaller circle at the centre.

Dotted around the triangle in smaller circles and bowls burrowed out of the floor were regular monster cores. The moment Nikki stepped away, hands on her hips as she surveyed her work and nodded, those Rank 0 cores serving as batteries all turned to dust.

The mana contained in them was shackled and put to work, surging through runes and carved lines, drawing geometric shapes in a vaguely bluish light.

The three conduits, the bridal dress, the swan feather and the freshly harvested lily flower glowed with an ethereal light. The same ethereal light that then flowed to the centre and encased the two Rank 1 cores in a cocoon of light.

Mia squinted at it, looking for what she was missing. Nikki had said that purifying energy would come from a dimension deep within the Spirit Realm, and while she could feel the rip to the Astral Sea whenever she summoned an elemental for her Familiar, she couldn't feel anything of the sort now.

The Spirit Realm must be different. Mia thought just as the light started to die down, only a faint echo of it lingering on the two cores.

They too dimmed after a few more seconds, leaving behind a pair of roughly spherical gems with no outward change to them.

"Did it work?" Mia spoke up, trying to suss out whether there was any lingering miasma in the monster core but she didn't have much luck finding any even when she knew there was.

"Yeah," Nikki said, snatching up the smaller of the pair of purified cores. "Feels fine to me. Alright. Next comes compression, then we can get on with the attunement ritual."

The ritual circle for that one was the simplest of the four, barely a metre across with repeating patterns of some runic script along its circumference. This one too had a smaller bowl filled with regular Rank 0 monster cores linked to it with a simple channel for fuel, and like before, all of them turned to dust as the mana that made them up got funneled into the ritual.

Nikki placed one of the Rank 1 monster cores at the centre, activated the ritual and that was it. A soft thrum of power and a flash, accompanied with a crunch Mia felt more than heard and before she knew it, Nikki was taking out a perfectly spherical bluish marble from where the Rank 1 core had been.

"Why are you using monster cores to power these and not my mana?" Mia asked curiously, unable to stop herself as she watched Nikki place a handful of new cores into the now empty bowl.

"These don't need the power boost that would come from being powered by your mana, they also wouldn't benefit from it as much and you'd be too exhausted to do what you have to do during the attunement if I had you power all these," Nikki answered absently, face pulled into a thoughtful frown as she seemed to consider whether to place the sixth monster core into the bowl or not. Shrugging to herself, she dropped it in and placed the second Rank 1 core into the middle.

As Nikki went about activating the ritual again, compressing the second purified monster core into a marble the size of Mia's fingernails, she noted another curious thing for herself. She knew monster cores had mana, and that they were useful for powering artifice, enchantments and apparently, rituals, but also that using them like a mana battery for herself was impossible. Monster meat was nasty because of all the broken mana and this 'miasma' stuff, according to the books, and the monster cores were where both were most concentrated.

But that purification ritual cleared them out didn't it? Mia mused, eying the second marble as it was born with a resounding crunch of its own. It had shrunk to be maybe a smidge smaller than the other one and was also perfectly spherical, like an immense gravitational pull at its centre had forced it into the proper shape. Could I use that thing as a mana battery? Or like a mana potion?

"Think they use those things to make mana potions?" Mia whispered to Camie, not wanting to interrupt the furious work Nikki had launched herself into with her chattering.

"I don't think so," Camie whispered back, her ruby eyes following the blue-haired woman's every move. "I think they have some simpler ways to purify their monster cores, but those are probably far inferior to this. Feels like our Alchemists are going for 'good enough' while she is aiming for perfection."

That was an interesting thought. If true, it would mean they were consuming some of the dangerous broken mana every time they chugged down one of those potions. That probably had something to do with why it strained the spirit so much to use them, and why the better quality ones allowed for more uses before the person's spirit started feeling miserable.

Alternatively, would that mean a mana potion made from perfectly purified mana would not strain the spirit at all? Probably not. It was still like getting a magical blood infusion for your magical anemia and even if it was free of miasma; it was still foreign mana that the spirit had to work to make its own. Now that she thought of it that way, potions were probably made to facilitate that better, while a condensed marble of mana would likely be a bitch to integrate into her mana pool without any of that help.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I'm done with the preparations," Nikki said with a sigh, stepping away from the last, and most complicated of all four ritual circles. Her hands were on her hips as she turned towards the two onlookers, weariness clear on her angular features. "Come on over. I'll tell you what to do and you can then explain it to your friend. Not that it's all that complicated so she might be able to replicate it just by watching you do it."

"Okay," Mia said, adrenaline surging through her and washing away whatever lingering boredom and sleepiness she had. "I'm ready."

"Sit inside there and get comfortable," Nikki said, pointing at one of the holes in the ritual circle. The whole thing looked like the number '8' but with disproportionate top and bottom circles. One had enough space in the middle left empty of runes and other geometric shapes for Mia to comfortably sit in, but the other only had enough space in it for the tiny marble. When Mia hesitated, just watching the whole thing for a moment and appreciating the intricate weaves and finely carved runes, Nikki frowned. "It's not dangerous. I know most people are reluctant to step into ritual circle they don't fully understand or one made by someone they don't trust, but I promise it'll be fine. "We have only known each other for a few days, so trust would not be something I'll ask for, but at least trust that I'm smart enough to know your friend there will likely violently object to any untoward action I take."

"Uhm, that's not- I didn't mean to doubt you or anything," Mia said with a start.

"It's alright," Nikki said. "This is the sort of thing trusted mentors, teachers or family would do for you. Not a stranger like me. I won't take offence to your hesitance … but we should get started. We will both need sleep if tomorrow is just as eventful as today has been."

"Alright," Mia said, deciding she really didn't know what to say to not make the situation worse or more awkward. Instead, she hopped into the circle and plopped down with her legs crossed in a fashion quick enough that hopefully showed she 'trusted' Nikki.

"This ritual, much like the first, will be powered by your own mana," Nikki started. "Its purpose is to attune the dense, Rank 1 mana inside that core to you. Meaning, we will be branding your spiritual signature on it, making it indistinguishable from the mana in your reservoir in any way beyond the fact its much denser and of a higher quality. Any questions so far?"

"Uhm, how does a condensed clump of mana help with my Skill?" Mia asked the main question that had been bugging her about this. "I mean, I gathered the Skills were in my spirit as some sort of spiritual structures?"

"Oh … I confess I wasn't exactly what you'd call a model student when it came to the theoretical side of magic," Nikki said with an apologetic look on her face. "So I don't really know the intricacies of how and why these rituals work, just that they do. I think this one only works because your runic-model is actually in your mana pool, not the skill itself or the spiritual structure of it, but the mana construct. Sorry, do you have other questions?"

"Yeah, but they can wait," Mia said. "What do I have to do exactly, beyond powering the ritual like with the first one I mean?"

"You'll need to set up some resonance between your runic-model and the mana," Nikki said. "Which you'll do by using some of the mana you have to activate singular runes one after the other. The ritual will help you with this, while also keeping you from accidentally casting the runes and causing a backlash. Look."

Nikki held up her palm and Mia felt the telltale feeling of mana surging in her body, up to the tips of her fingers and then out of it. The wispy energy looked a soft, icy blue and gathered into a symbol that felt cold in a primal way that was not any of the five senses. After a second, it flickered and died, puffing into a small cloud of misty mana and then fully disappearing.

"Like that," Nikki said, taking a slow breath. "It's straining to keep it just on the precipice where you resonate the rune in your runic-model enough for it to materialise, but don't push it enough to actually cast it. The ritual will help with that though, so you'll only have to juggle channeling your mana to power it while doing what I just did. Both should be made easier by the ritual, so even with your level of control, I don't think you'll have much trouble."

"Okay?" Mia said, then when she received a questioning look from Camie at her uncertain tone, she quickly translated everything for her benefit. "I'll give it a try. Shouldn't get much backlash even if I mess up from solitary arcane runes."

"Go slow and be careful," Camie said, sitting down just beyond the ritual circle's confines and gave Mia what she probably thought was an encouraging smile. Alas, her worry shone through.

"I will be," Mia promised, then took a deep breath and looked up at Nikki. "Can I start whenever?"

"Yes, you can start powering it up," Nikki said. "Once everything is powered, the attunement process will start. You shouldn't start with the runes until that's over. Don't worry about that though, just keep channeling slowly and steadily at the rate you'd done with the previous ritual. I'll tell you when that's done and you can start with the runes, but I think you'll know anyway."

Mia nodded, calmed her racing heart then placed her palm into a prepared charging circle right next to her. She established the mana flow in just under ten seconds, made sure the flow rate was down to what it should be — her channels could have handled going a lot faster, but she would have ran out of mana rather quickly that way — and then let the ritual take it.

Just like before, Mia channeled as calmly and steadily as she could, guiding her mana to stay on track. The seconds flowed by quickly as Mia's mana spread through the channels, giving life to the dim runes and making them shine with otherworldly light one after the other. Slowly, the mana converged on the final few runes surrounding the last empty circle: the one around the core-turned-marble.

Mia held her breath as those final runes lit up, expecting a ripple of mana, a thrum of power, hell, even for the whole thing to blow up in her face. Nothing happened though, and that was somehow worse. Still, she kept channeling, focusing on that monotonous act to keep herself from worrying too much as she waited for the other shoe to drop.

As the seconds crept by without anything horrible happening, Mia calmed down. Her mana was draining steadily, but she was still 80% full even after a day's fighting and charging the previous ritual. At the rate she was going, she could keep this up for a long while. Maybe even an hour.

With her mind calmer now, and her subconscious mostly handling guiding her mana, Mia began to feel something. Not a physical sensation, but similar to how her own mana felt, just distant and vague. When she focused in the feeling, it evaporated, sliding between the fingers of her mental grasp like water and yet with every try, it kept getting stronger and stronger. It became easier to feel, but not much changed in the way it kept slipping through her fingers.

"Halfway there." Mia barely heard the whisper, instead keeping her focus on her task at hand.

The strange feeling grew stronger and stronger, and yet she still couldn't actually grasp it. That left Mia thinking it wasn't just because she sucked at mana control, but something else. If she was right, that feeling was her sense of the dense clump of mana in the small marble she was on her way to getting attuned to. It almost felt like her very own mana, just outside of her body and partially detached from her control.

That 'almost' went away a few seconds later, and the mana became indistinguishable from her own by feel. The strange barrier that kept her from touching it also begun to dissipate, though it was slow enough that Mia heard Nikki's words before she did anything stupid she might have regretted later.

"Good, that's the first phase done," Nikki said, heaving a sigh of relief. "Time is of the essence with the next part. You should start feeling the core about now, I want you to grasp it with your control and keep it wound up tight as it is. It will want to break apart, even with the thin film of mana keeping it all locked together and you can't allow it to or you'll fail. Keep it all wound up tight and then gently pull it towards you. You will want to pull it into your mana pool just as it is and don't stop powering the ritual while you're at it."

"Won't it hurt to pull that much mana through my energy channels?" Mia asked breathlessly, her mental fingers already clamping down around the marble of mana in a vice grip.

"It will hurt," Nikki admitted with an apologetic tone. "It might even rupture your channels, but all that's temporary. Upgrading your runic-model will grant you permanent benefits and the ruptures should be minimised by the veil around the mana anyway. It's a lot of very dense mana, but it's still, static. It won't rampage like your regular mana would."

"Okay," Mia said. "I'm doing it."

She pulled on it, and to her surprise, it obeyed without any fuss. Her own mana always fought, in one way or another. Chaos aspected mana never wanted to stay still, while Order aspected was a pain to re-direct once it was in motion. This mana though, it was like it had no will of its own. Or maybe that was just suppressed by whatever fading veil was around it.

I have to get this done before that veil fully fades or it'll probably blow up inside me.

Mia pulled and the marble, so far having sat calmly within its bowl, flew through the air and into Mia's outstretched left hand while her right kept channeling mana into the ritual.

With only a slight resistance, the marble shimmered and sank into her hand. That moment, Mia felt like someone had just showed a lead ball into all of her veins in that hand. The walls of her channels widened as much as they could, but the marble of mana was so dense it didn't help. Already, hairline fractures spread through those supernatural veins, sending waves of white hot pain radiating across her whole body.

She just barely managed to stop herself from instinctively flinching away from the pain.

Focus. Pull it in.

Thankfully, the marble was no less resistant to being moved around inside her body than it had been outside. Quite the opposite. If Mia so wished, she could tell it would race along her channels and jump into her mana pool in a fraction of a second.

Alas, that would have most likely left the channel a mangled mess that would have required some extremely powerful healing elixirs to repair. Which she wouldn't have risked, even if she had those elixirs on hand.

Slow and steady.

After what felt like hours of carefully guiding the marble up towards her mana pool, it finally reached it and slipped inside. Mia heaved a sigh of relief. She felt horrible, like her stomach was about to burst mixed in with the feeling of carrying a lead ball the size of a watermelon in her stomach. It beat what she'd been feeling before though, this much, she could easily endure.

"It's in my mana pool," Mia said, her voice strained and lips pulled tight. "Can I start with the runes now? This is … uncomfortable."

"Yes," Nikki said, nodding quickly. "Keep powering the ritual; that's what will keep you safe from backlash and enhance your control a bit. Now, you will have to do exactly what you do when casting a spell, instead of resonating a whole spell circle though, you will only be resonating a single rune and doing so with the mana inside that marble. Keep it simple and start with the weakest, simplest rune you have first and work your way up towards the more complex ones. The System will tell you when you've done enough."

Mia just got to it, feeling far too miserable to bother with a reply.

Her choice fell on a simple rune called 'Ro' which was one of the central runes in almost all of her Arcane spells. It was responsible for keeping arcane spells cohesive, along with another two runes similar to it. It was also just a triangle with a pair of curving lines crossing each other inside it, as simple as runes got.

She activated it with a mental tug and then pushed her willpower into the marble now nestled deep within her mana pool. Her worrying proved to be needless as she easily 'cast' the rune, it took barely a thought. It lingered there, inside the marble, and Mia felt the ritual helping her in keeping it from actually going off.

"Done," Mia whispered, not opening her eyes. "What now? Do I let it go?"

"Yes," Nikki said. "Let the rune go. The ritual will handle the rest."

Doing exactly that, Mia felt the rune fade, but to her surprise, it never fully disappeared. A faint echo of it remained locked inside the marble.

Mia didn't need to be told what to do twice; she remembered the instructions and knew what to do: repeat what she'd just done with other runes until the System gave some alert.

She did just that, casting rune after rune and felt the echoes gather within the marble. Five, ten, fifty, a hundred and then two hundred. She kept going, going through the runes she was familiar with first, the ones she'd used in her little foray into spell crafting and then the ones she had used most in her most used spells. When even those ran out and the echoes had to be up in the three hundreds, she started getting into some of the nasty, complex runes, pushing the upper limits of how complex Novice runes could be.

Mia continued on with a single-minded focus, her need to get the damned marble sitting so heavily in her pool out of her pushing her on. She made mistakes; some runes failed, some that she messed up the casting of, and some that she had to gather more of her willpower to cast. Then it happened, a soft chime that echoed through her skull and one that came with a ripple washing over her spirit. Something had changed, a weight settled on her spirit, one that had been growing as she kept shoving rune after rune into the marble, but only now noticed.

It was her Class Skill, now weighing heavily on her Spirit and for good reason.

[Congratulations! You have upgraded your Novice Grade Arcane runic Model to Junior Grade!]

[Multitasking] -> [Greater Multitasking]

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.