My first use of the Catalyst skill had been a little fifty-fifty in terms of effectiveness. It was arguably my strongest ability, able to turn the undeniably lethal attack from a Grade One monster into a caustic concoction of its more base mana and Spirit. Without any tools to manipulate that, I was left in a bad state with little options. The poisonous magic was already inside my mana channels when Catalyst activated, so I was stuck in more ways than one.

  Unable to move my body, and unable to truly control anything but a tiny portion of mana within the channels, I had to make a choice. I could chisel away at the damage for an in perpetuity, slowly clearing the damage away. My guess was that such a process could take years of real time, but it was an option. The other alternative was… more drastic. Requiring me to relinquish control of my core and my own mana entirely, it was not something I would attempt to do again quickly. However, it worked, so I didn’t have a true complaint.

  With my mana channels blocked by the substance in which I was trapped, I chose to burn much of the structure away from my mana channels so I could reconnect with the Aspect of the Dragon. By casting myself into the waiting pools of poisonous mana, I was able to focus the damage - on my own mana channels. These bundles of mana were simply the remnants of aggression left in the wake of Reysault’s last attack, repurposed for my own use. Nearly a thousand drills of alien mana had been required, but I did it. By tunnelling directly through my magical body, I had finally been able to touch the Aspect connected to my core.

  By the way the void around me was shaking as I asked the Aspect for help fixing and freeing ourselves, this was inadvisable.

  I waited for an answer despite the quickly growing instability of the darkness. Ripples of grey energy shook my platform but without the dragon’s assistance, I could do nothing. This was a choice the Aspect had to make. Important moments continued to pass as the scrutiny of the violet continued to bear down on me. There was no point complaining. The Aspect had some valid criticisms. Using outside mana and Spirit to drill into it had been painful for us both.

  Sometimes we are not the pinnacle, the dragon’s powerful voice whispered. Sometimes we must face a loss and survive the cost for victory in the future. Hearing the dragon make an admission of anything close to weakness was a surprise. The arrival of strength from the Dragon was less of a shock, its decision made. The shadow shifted, and a straight view to my core in the far distance was opened up. With a push, the Aspect let me pass.

  “Thank you,” I told the Aspect as gratefully as I could while the momentum continued to increase. “I’ll make sure we come out of this stronger,” I promised. The dragon just grunted, giving me one final shove to return the lost lynchpin of my psyche back to my own core. When I arrived within my own body once more, I immediately remembered why it had been such an easy decision to cast my mind elsewhere.

  Fuckingshitbagballsbastard, I cursed, indulging in the pain and almost revelling in the pure physicality of it. It hurt like a bitch, but at least it wasn’t a pain which tried to erode my very soul. I was quite sure I had been messing with levels of magic I had no business playing with, and the price was fortunately just a mind breaking level of pain and regret. I could move past those. Death was a little more final.

  While the initial moments of pain had a silver lining, it quickly got old, so I set about my work. Using mana from within the Aspect of the Dragon, I began the process of scouring my mana channels. The debris was still there, but most of it had been somewhat dislodged by my actions in the mental desert. With a blast of magical force, the draconic mana did the rest. Cycling the mana through the circuitry of my channels, it was difficult to calm my own distress.

  So much damage.

  I had not recovered enough to see any System prompts, but I had a feeling there were a few waiting. As the mana passed through the remnants of my skills, I winced. Perhaps Catalyst and Mana Savant survived due to their existence within the Aspect of the Dragon, but what I had done had shredded the foundations of each and every other skill, except for one. I grit my teeth.

  Such was the cost of weakness.

  If I had been strong enough to fight Reysault without tricks, or been able to create a shield in time, I would not be in this situation. I cursed her name with each pass of my mana through the destruction left in its wake. The process of cleaning the channels was a form of penance. I had memorised every turn and twist in the invisible pattern within myself, but the paths I remembered had been fractured. The Aspect was right.

  We were broken.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  And I will fix it… somehow.

  The first step was quickly completed. The pure mana of the Aspect made short work of the blockages, leaving me with a chaotic mess of stretched and tweaked channels. Still, my memorisation hadn’t been for nothing. I cautiously sent mana to the second source of my power and gently pressed against the skill. It groaned under the touch of my magic, and the soul pain returned for a second.

  I hissed, but nudged the skill again. Like pressing a bruise, I forced myself to get used to the pain and move past it. I wouldn’t need to ravage the skill or overuse it, but I did need its power for a moment. Unlike the patterns of skills like Heavy Blow, Mana Bolt or Stealth, this one was a little more special. With a feeling like opening an aged and damaged book, Spirit Well creaked into use. Softly, slowly, I removed as much Spirit as I could without doing further damage.

  With the draconic mana and a healthy amount of Spirit in hand, I moved onto the next step. I needed to smash my way out of the shell I was trapped within, and my solution to that rested in a skill pattern on my right temple. As my attention and the gathered power which followed it reached the charred site of the Mana Shield skill, I grimaced. Okay, I told myself, time for some more hard work.

  As with the shape and structure of the mana channels themselves, I had spent an inordinate amount of time analysing the way skills worked. Mana channels themselves were complex, and simply pushing mana through the body was a valid way of increasing strength. If you used enough, some would be lost over time with this passive buff, but it wasn’t particularly effective. It was only when the mana was sent into a skill bundle that true magic began to happen.

  With bends and twists, overlaps and more, a skill was more than just a pattern in the weaving of the mana channels. When the mana was sent to a skill, it immediately filled the entire shape. Unlike the channels which the mana needed to travel through first, this process was instantaneous. More energy could be sent into the skill, and if there was a threshold to be met for activation, then the mana would stay there until the target amount was reached.

  There were nuances in the patterns which I had only just begun pulling apart which influenced such as whether the skill was an internal or external effect. With the pattern of Mana Shield genuinely ruined, I was a little at a loss for where to start. The Spirit in control buzzed like a bee, nudging me towards the skill as though to say “you can do it.”

  With the encouragement of my own magic behind me, I set to the task of repairing the skill. What I had in mind couldn’t be done any other way. While I spent some time planning, what was left of my mana channels tingled as my passive mana regeneration filled the empty spaces. Although my first cycles had been tentative, the new framework held firm against the weight of my entire mana pool. My focus sharpened once more and I began the work in earnest. Spinning up the solid draconic mana and fueling it with my own, I pressed into the skill.

  For a bizarre moment, I was grateful to the trial by fire in my mental desert as the soul-rending pain of altering my mana channels intentionally returned in full. If I had been attempting this before the mental strain of that endless torment, I might have slipped. As it was, my control remained firm over the energy. While I had a firm image of the pattern in my mind, I had no true way of shifting the channels beyond brute force. Gouging the shape back into the correct form was an act of brutality, but a necessary one.

  With nothing else to do but enact my plan, I was able to retain the patience I had learned in the desert. Agonisingly slowly, I traced the divots and lines again and again. The skill had to interact with mana in an intricate way, so it was more complex in certain aspects. A few of the straight lines were not as simple as they looked, the seemingly thick channel actually consisting of twelves thin, interwoven bands. All of these odd facets were placed exactly where I remembered them.

  Yet, as the finishing touches were being placed, the Spirit once again reacted. The feeling of a hand on my back, pushing me further, was even more prevalent. True to my thinking, the telltale sign of Mana Savant was present in the sensation. The skill had survived the devastation of my mana channels within the Aspect, and it activated now. Was there more I could do?

  I looked at the nearly-finished product. Despite the complexity of certain portions, it was not a grand skill on the level of Spirit Well. It was still a starter ability, and from the rumbling inside my Aspect, that was no longer acceptable. I acquiesced to the demands of my Aspect and Spirit Well easily, analysing the pattern before me once more before I began making changes.

  Instead of overthinking, I acted on instinct. Within moments of adding flourishes to the design, the pain faded to nothing. For a moment, I wondered if the next form of the skill would still be common. Laughing, I stripped the skill down to its bare components once more and added true complexity. No, not common, I chuckled. I took from other skills, amalgamating a chimeric composition which first hummed with satisfaction, and then sang as mana flowed greedily through its finished pathways.

  With a loud thrum, a sound I could finally hear with my actual ears, I pressed mana into the new skill and freed myself with an explosion of shrapnel and sound. Crouching on one knee, panting heavily as I sucked in the fresh air, I felt like a tank had run me over with its treads. Yet, with each passing breath, strength returned to my limbs. I was able to blink away the pain of sunlight quickly. I sucked in my largest inhale yet before roaring out my return towards the dungeon around me.

  “I LIVED, BITCH!”