After a night of experimenting, Synexus woke up with a bit of excitement. Learning new skills and their quirks was one of life’s greatest pleasures. At least to him. Before he could get back to his new skill, however, there were some repairs to take care of.
Most of the damage came from the snakes falling from the mountain during the fight, so most repairs were simply him using Instant Repair to fix a few holes here and there. Some repairs were a little more extensive, like a few of the roofs had completely caved in, but even those weren’t too much of a problem for his repair skill. Unfortunately, not all the damage was mitigated easily.
Two houses had completely collapsed into a pile of rubble while their occupants were out doing whatever the Mind Maidens did during their days in Silk Lake. Building houses normally wouldn’t be an easy task even with the gifts from System. Before, Synexus could edit some seeds to grow into wooden walls or have Kumo slice some planks from the local trees, but with his new skill, he now had a better option.
Both houses had been made of some brittle stone, most likely it was the cheapest material the people could find or perhaps time had just degraded the stone enough to make it completely worthless. Instead of using the same stone, Synexus went over to the base of the mountain and found a few boulders that had also fallen down the mountain during the fight and altered the composition to be much sturdier. Now that it technically counted as his creation, he used Branching Intelligence to form a mana connection and willed the stone to reform into the shape of a wall. He could feel the sturdy material refuse at first, but his will was strong and the boulder started changing before him. Using Mana Perception, he watched as his own mana poured into the boulder and held the bonds together while it molded itself into the perfect wall.
With a satisfied smile, he did the same to the other seven boulders. When they were all the right height, length, and width he stored them in his Progress Garden and walked back to town.
He used Instant Repair on the foundation before altering it to also be a bit sturdier. Then he summoned the walls for each house in the right place, even placing the bottom a few feet into the ground for more support. Then using Elemental Modification, he fused the walls together at the corners as well as at the base with the foundation included. For the roof of the buildings, he used some wood from trees he had grown himself inside his Progress Garden. They had already been water repellent, so he altered them to retain heat better and made them stronger before fusing them to the walls.
All in all, the repairs of the destruction they had caused took about two hours and the women of the town were exceptionally happy with the results. While Synexus had been on repair duty, Shell used her Water Manipulation skill to filter out the water in the lake. Apparently, the water was magical, and it was sacred to the town. Kumo, Element, and Zuls helped Shell discard everything and by the time the last house was erected, the Silk Lake was sparkling once more.
Mhlanir joined the party in looking at the finished job and was extremely pleased how quickly they had made their reparations. She was quite impressed with the houses that Synexus made and attempted to convince them to stay for a few more days to do a full rebuild of the town. Vorin politely refused even though Synexus wasn’t completely against it. Shell started asking her about the magical water, but she expertly side-stepped the questions before excusing herself to go find her mother. Synexus went with her in hopes of a demonstration of a memory skill.
In preparation for the demonstration, he had looked into memories by turning to his predecessor’s codex. It was full of mostly useful information, some of it seemed frivolous, but anytime he needed information, it was the first place he checked. From what he could tell, memories weren’t written into the foundations of a person and that would make it difficult for him to help. Apparently, the brain was even more complex than he realized, and it had the ability to store these memories by utilizing a group of neurons in a specific way. For the Mind Maiden’s lost memories, this meant that whatever skill was used more than likely damaged the neurons or somehow blocked them from being accessed. When that realization dawned on him, he was excited because he thought he could simply repair the damage and give them their memories back, but then the codex went on to talk about how repairing a brain would give it the ability to function once more without restoring one’s personality or experiences. Zunzutoxian lost a friend and he tried to clone her with his skills as a Progress Druid. All it did was create a child in his friend’s body. She never returned to her true self.
For Synexus the information almost read as a warning for him to not to mess with the brain. Instead of heeding the warning, an idea spawned in his mind. He quickly pushed it to the side as they had arrived inside the matriarch’s home.
“Mother, how are you feeling today?”
“Why do you always ask me that like I’ve lost my mind?”
“You attacked a stranger yesterday.”
“I knew what I was doing. You shouldn’t have stopped me.”
Mhlanir sighed as if this was another iteration of the same argument.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“What’s he doing here anyways? I thought I told them to leave.”
“They stayed to fix the homes and finished today with impressive speed.”
“Then why are they still here?”
Mhlanir sighed again and shot Synexus an apologetic glance.
“We will be leaving the day after tomorrow. I’m here to see a demonstration of a skill affecting one’s memories. Your daughter here told us about the tragedy that fell on your town and well I wanted to see if I can help.”
The matriarch scoffed.
“Are you a master mind class chosen now?”
“No, but I possess a fairly rare class that could be beneficial. I also have gathered an in-depth understanding into the human mind. My theory is that this might be something physical and that I could fix to an extent.”
Mylidara, the matriarch, grinned slightly as if an idea had just sprung to her mind at Synexus’ words.
“Very well. What do you need to see?”
“Mhlanir here said she came here to use some mind healing magic on you since it’s shown some promise in healing your memories. I’d simply like to observe.”
She nodded and then nodded to her daughter.
Synexus sat next to them and activated Mana Perception. He saw a mana thread form between the two women and Mhlanir’s soul flashed as she activated her skill. More mana flowed outward into the mind of her mother. He watched as the mana started to trace intricate patterns through the elder woman’s brain. It was like it was searching through the synapses and almost calming the brain. More mana started to move through the mind maze until there were lights of bright mana everywhere. Well everywhere except for a few spots.
One of the spots looked as if the mana started to swirl around it. The two other spots looked dim, and the mana simply dissipated when it ran into them. These were the anomalies he was looking for. The Mind Maidens were experts on the mind, but they didn’t have the ability to see mana. None of them were quite high enough in levels to have gotten Mana Perception the natural way. Now the question remained; what did these spots mean?
After some thought he determined that the dim spots were more than likely the areas of brain degradation that Mhlanir had talked about which left the strange swirling spot. It was in the right area of the brain where memories formed, and it looked as if no mana could enter those synapses. That meant it really only could be one thing and that was the memory the skill blocked. Synexus thought he was done working with walls for the day, but he was clearly wrong. When the skill stopped and the daughter’s mana dissipated, he could still see the spot. A thin mana wall had formed around the memory. It wasn’t lost, just trapped.
“I found the problem. Your husband somehow inserted his mana into your mind, and it formed what looks to be a mana wall in the shape of a sphere around the part of the brain holding the memory.”
Both women gasped.
“How can you see this when we can’t?”
Mylidara sounded skeptical.
“I have an ability to see mana and even now without your daughter’s mana running through your head, the spot is visible. It looks weak though. Perhaps even mana degrades over time?”
Mhlanir shrugged. “So how do we get rid of it?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I’d like to try some things though.”
“Having you mess with my mind doesn’t feel safe.”
“Well, that would be the last thing I tried. If you could, attempt to remember your husband and focus on trying to regain your memories.”
She nodded and did as he requested. As she thought, the mana wall flared to life and became a bit brighter before getting darker than it was before.
“It’s no use. Everything felt cloudy.”
“Interesting. I believe this matter will be resolved on its own. When you attempt to remember the mana flares up to fend off your attempts, but it costs the skill some of the mana which in turn weakens the defense. From the looks of it, there isn’t much mana left.”
“You’re saying that if I keep trying to remember, it will eventually crumble? Will that damage my mind?”
“I don’t believe so but let me get Gene in here for a second opinion.”
Ten minutes later both Synexus and the owl were sitting there watching the woman before them desperately trying to remember the person she loved more than anything. Afterwards the owl nodded and agreed that the spell may be on its last legs and that they had no reason to believe it would damage her mind. However, Gene was worried about the dim spots since those showed that the elderly woman was suffering from serious mind degradation. Mhlanir grew worried with the owl’s explanation of the mind ailments that could come from such degradation, but the matriarch waved them out of the tent.
As they walked back to Mhlanir’s house, Synexus took the time to run his idea by Gene to get the owl’s thoughts.
“Today I was looking over the codex and had an idea for a possible skill that might work to help the matriarch.”
Gene hooted in piqued curiosity.
“With what is in there about the brain and how memories work, I was wondering if it was possible to use mana in a skill to map out the synapses and neurons of a brain? Mhlanir’s skill kind of did it while I was watching.”
“Hm. Mana can do anything as long as your will has clear intent, so it’s possible, but I’m sure you saw my creator’s warning in there as well?”
“I did. I’m not looking to clone someone or recreate someone’s brain. Just make a map to rebuild the pathways properly. Using Genome Perfecting, Instant Growth, or Instant Repair without understanding the brain’s pathways could result in disaster. It only worked with the seamstress’ daughter because she hadn’t created any pathways at all for the parts I was working with.”
“Synexus you know I won’t give you a definite answer. Just like your skill choices and your class advancement. This regards your path and it’s your decision to make alone. Now from a purely theoretical and scientific perspective, do I believe it could work? Yes, I do.”
Synexus smiled as the owl flew over to Yu. That was the closest thing to an affirmation he would get from his friend who didn’t want to get involved. That was also all he needed to start making plans for another new skill. He was going to learn how to map a brain.
