Chapter 39: Bring the Light

  “Pace yourself,” Mr. Yu instructed as I struggled with the rumble stick. “Slow and steady wins this race.”

  Sweat rolled down my neck as I fought to slow the mana flow.

  “It looks like you still have some things to learn after all,” Mr. Yu continued the lesson while I worked. “The key to proper infusion is to restrict your flow to a pace your natural regeneration can accommodate.”

  “Is there a way to increase my regeneration?” I asked, gritting my teeth while focusing on two things simultaneously.

  “Sure,” he replied with a chuckle. “Level up.”

  The mention of a level made me wonder what level the old Tinkerer was.

  Chen Yu

  Class: Tinkerer

  Level: 57

  Age: 63

  Weight: 153 Lbs

  Height 5’6

  “I’d like to try something,” I said, taking one hand off the Rumble stick and offering it to him. “Please take my hand.”

  He reached out hesitantly and touched my finger as though he thought it would be hot or something. Unfortunately for him, that was all I needed. A wave of mana washed over me and into the Rumble Stick. It was already done by the time I realized I needed to regulate the flow. Mr. Yu pulled his hand back, holding it as though I’d shocked him.

  “How did you do that?” He asked, slightly out of breath. “You drained my mana.”

  “I used your mana to charge your stick,” I explained. “It’s one of my skills, Mana Link.”

  He folded his arms and glared at me. “That negates the purpose of this exercise. Also, you should ask before doing that. It’s rude to use a skill on someone without their permission.”

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I wanted to see if I could use your mana to work on flow control. Unfortunately, yours is much faster than mine.”

  “It should be,” he laughed. “I have ten times the mana you do.”

  “That much?” I asked, gaping at him.

  “You get an increase of one hundred mana per level,” Mr. Yu explained. “The same goes for health and stamina. You can prove it to yourself with your skill by inspecting me. At my level, I have five thousand seven hundred mana. That’s more than ten times your five hundred. The regeneration and output go up at an equal speed. Powering something like this Rumble Stick only takes a few seconds if I don’t mind giving it all of my mana.”

  “I wonder if it works the same if I link fifty level one people,” I mumbled, thinking of the orphans and the things we could power as a team.

  Mr. Yu chuckled. “Only if you want to knock them all out. This would drain them all completely in an instant. Mana is like blood. You need it to function. Expending it all at once puts the system into a sort of shock. You need to learn flow control before you use that link skill again. Otherwise, you’ll risk damaging the people you recruit to help you.”

  “I understand,” I replied, remembering the effect the skill had on Leslie when I used it on her. “I’ll be careful.”

  Mr. Yu nodded and rummaged through a crate. He returned carrying a coil.

  Simple Light (Tinkered)

  Grade: F

  Condition: 28

  Owner: Yu

  Charge: ~

  “What do I do with that?” I asked, wondering why there wasn’t a number in the charge column.

  “Practice,” Mr. Yu announced. “Since you cheated on the Rumble Stick, you’re going to have to work on something more boring. This is a simple light that doesn’t hold a charge. The only way to keep it lit is to provide a constant flow of mana. Your job is to keep it lit as long as possible.”

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  “How long is that?” I asked, looking at the thing in disgust.

  “Well, it requires around one hundred mana per minute to stay lit, and you regenerate fifty in that same period. If you don’t overdo it, you should manage to keep it lit for ten minutes. That’s your goal for now. If you run out before ten minutes, regen to full and try again.”

  “What do I do once I do it in ten minutes?” I asked, eager to get back to more fun tinkering.

  He chuckled, already walking away. “You can go home when you finish. If you don’t finish, you can take that with you to practice at home. Oh, and don’t bother returning until you master it. That is your lesson until you perfect your control.”

  I thought it was going to be easy when I started. The Simple Light was hungry, though. It siphoned mana out of me the same way the infuser had. The only difference was that I had to initiate the process. The light felt like a bottomless pit, glowing brighter the more mana it managed to get from me. Sweat formed on my brow as I fought to hold back the flow. The minutes felt like hours during my game of tug-of-war with the light. Finally, when I was sure I was about to collapse, I let go, and the light winked out.

  “Whew,” I said, heaving a sigh of relief as my mana slowly trickled back up. “That had to be ten minutes.”

  Mr. Yu was back, and he was laughing.

  “Fifty-three seconds, give or take,” he said with a chuckle, setting a timer down in front of me. “Not a bad start.”

  I glared at him, sure he was lying to me. That was okay. I’d show him on the second try when I timed myself. After impatiently waiting ten minutes for it to recharge, I bit my lip and started the timer. Then, after cheating for a few seconds, I set to work charging the light again.

  “Forty-four seconds?” I asked out loud, even though Mr. Yu had wandered off again. “How is that possible? And I even padded a few seconds at the beginning. I’m getting worse, not better.”

  “Not true,” Dolores said, making me jump when she suddenly appeared behind me. “You’re getting tired, not worse. It’s difficult to concentrate when you’re drained. Constant mana use takes its toll. I’m sure that’s part of the lesson.”

  “But I want to make stuff,” I whined. “Is this mana stuff really necessary?”

  “That depends,” Dolores said with a wink. “Do you want to be merely adequate, or do you want to excel?”

  “I want to excel!” I jumped at the obvious right answer. “Is this really going to make me better?”

  She laughed. “This is necessary training for the path you’ve chosen. Most crafting classes get skills that do basic tasks for them. Your class came with a handicap, where you have to learn it manually. The easy route would be focusing on the skills you do have and making the best of them. The path you’ve chosen is both the hardest and most rewarding. You may end up being the greatest Craftsman of us all. This very hunger of yours to learn everything intrigued me. The question is, do you have the mental fortitude to fight for it?”

  “I do!” I barked, feeling a rush of energy to try again.

  “Then good luck with your training,” Dolores said, heading in the direction I’d seen Mr. Yu go. “I have faith in you.”

  Three hours and many tries later, I threw my hands in the air and cheered. Mr. Yu rounded the corner and stared at me. “Did you succeed?”

  “Yes!” I exclaimed, holding the timer up to him.

  “This says two minutes, forty-seven seconds,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me.

  “I got better!” I announced. “This is my best try all day.”

  “Well, congratulations then,” he said. He was smiling, though, and that made me happy.

  I made a customary stop at Miss Spencer’s shop to work off my clothes. While there, I thought about Leslie and how to make her better armor. The plan had been so simple but none of it worked out the way I planned.

  When I went home, I fed my sister and hung out with Sam for a while. He told me about his day delivering packages, and that Miss Havasu got him a job at the newspaper as a journalist’s assistant.

  When I asked him about it, he said, “I dig up stories and pitch them to him. If he likes it, he writes about it. If I find enough good ones, then someday I’ll be a journalist and write my own stories. It all starts here.”

  It made sense. With his love of talking, digging up newsworthy stories was right up his alley. After a while, I told him I was tired and snuck off to bed. Once I was under the covers, I took out the Simple Light and got to work. The first couple of tries were agonizing, the light blinding my eyes while I struggled to hold back my mana. After that, I took a long break and closed my eyes before the next attempt.

  With my eyes shut, I focused on the internal process. It all started with my breathing. I had been gasping for breath while trying to stifle the flow of mana. My heart raced, and as a result, I heard the steady pounding of blood rushing in my ears. Renewing my efforts, I focused on my breathing, forcing myself to take steady deep breaths. Gradually, my heart began to settle down. Once the rest of my body was at peace, I was finally able to feel the flow of mana directly. It felt like air hissing out of a balloon. I was wrong to try to slow the flow directly. What I needed to do was pinch it off where it left my body, and that was the point where I touched the Simple Light.

  All too soon, I felt I was getting low on mana, so I released the light. How long had that been? I forgot to time myself. It felt like an improvement. Ten minutes later, I tried again. Mana flowed from me like sand through an hourglass. My breathing slowed to a crawl, and my heart was so calm I couldn’t feel it. I watched my core with my mind’s eye as it slowly depleted of mana like sand through an hourglass. The light felt warm in my hands.

  By the time my mana depleted, I was fast asleep. While I wasn’t awake to see it, the timer ticked past ten minutes only moments after the light winked out. I’d done it.

  It was still dark outside when I woke up. My stomach growled, and I decided to tiptoe down to the kitchen. One of the bright sides of my deal with Mishun was that the fridge was never empty. Plenty of leftovers from the day before sat in the fridge just waiting for me. I’d just made a plate when a noise made me jump. I turned to find a very tired-looking Beth sitting at the table with a meal of her own.

  “What are you doing up?” I asked as she yawned.

  “I haven’t slept yet,” she admitted. “I took a job as a maid and we work nights. I told you I’m not going to let you do all the hard work.”

  “But I can make more than you can,” I argued, sitting next to her.

  She glared at me. “So? Do you want me to sit back and let you take care of me? I’m going to do what I can regardless of what you do.”

  “Don’t overdo it,” I sighed, not sure what else to say to her.

  She smirked. “Isn’t that my line?”

  After breakfast, I made my way up to the roof for a little more practice. I needed to master mana flow, or Mr. Yu would never teach me anything else. I crossed my legs and made myself comfortable, cradling the Simple Light in my lap. Setting the timer on the wall, I began.

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