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CH 98: Lightning
🕑 Added 2025-02-28 15:00:05 +0000 UTC./\.+ Lycra +./\.
The device in his hand let out the rhythmic, nearly imperceptible vibration that let him know it was ready to be activated. He'd once imagined mana reactor technology as solely belonging to ships, but that was so very incorrect. Nyx dissuaded him of that notion, and made him realize a reactor was anything where an engraved crystal was used for function and power. His skill, Mana Lattice Engineer, was active the entire time he worked and played and experimented with his crystals. The book - that wonderful source of knowledge, had also come with a basic set of engraving tools tucked into the back cover. They were small, for children - but Lycra was not large, and his dexterous fingers were capable of wielding the miniature tools as deftly as a real apprentice engineer. His piles of flashlights and warming tools and cooling ones had grown prodigiously. His truly advanced attempts were just beginning.
Nyx's teachings, layered on top of those from the book, had given him such a strong foundation to jump off from - but the more he worked, the more he questioned why she had focused so much attention and description and warning where she did. Making the shaky egg portion of the engine engraving went beyond a simple mistake - Lycra would need to try to make his hand tremble to have enough of an effect to potentially cause the crystal to explode. And - making four intersecting lines wasn't even the best way to siphon off and de-escalate the reaction. The simpler and more foolproof method was to create a loop on overload that led to a partitioned, drained section of the crystal where the reverberations could be contained or interrupted.
The light crystal was where he realized what may have really been going on. Nyx warned about flaring the connecting lines and the eye, but both of those had to be messed up in a perfectly wrong way to have the slightest chance of causing an issue - he knew because he'd tried it. Despite the potential danger, Lycra felt the possibility hiding behind the warning. The device in his hand was his 183rd attempt at making the 'perfect' mistaken version of both the flared connection and the eyeball at once. Early versions were disproportionate to each other, and then later ones had to have certain outlying engravings changed to facilitate the different function of the design. Each failure had one thing in common - the vibration was wrong. He knew before trying to activate any.
Then he'd finally changed his notion of the engraving he was working to encompass the entirety of the crystal, instead of a single face. It required more preparation time - shaving down each face to be equal wasn't a simple task - but had yielded better and better results along the way.
What he held in his hand now was the breakthrough. He could feel it. The flared lines on one side that lined up perfectly with the eye on the other. Copper wiring separated two forms of charged energy near the start and only reunited them at the tail end of the reaction. Dead ends prevented everything but the eye from getting the energy's output focus. He held it in his hand, and let the crystal cycle. The wonderful creation did its magic. He felt the charge interact with his engravings, sliding and following and leaping off each glyph. It built with a high pitched whirr over a full second, then released.
It crackled through the air and reflected off Lycra's wide eyes and beaming smile. The lightning formed at the engraved eye and shot ten feet out, dancing through the cavern air. Win reacted with concern - Reid was too deep in sleep to notice.
As the lightning and the crystal both faded, Lycra whipped around to grab the journal from his backpack. He already had ideas on how to make things more efficient, or to shoot farther. He furiously scribbled as Win charged over to see if he was okay. He was better than okay. His life was fully changed, like a quest and a fairy tale. He had true friends, wonderful possessions, strength and levels, and best of all - a path to experiment and grow.
New notes filled page after page. Nyx's teachings were never warnings.
They were instructions.
(---) Jim (---)
He swore internally, and slowly backed himself out of the tunnel. The last time he'd gone in there, it had been entirely empty. This time, a mass of chitinous forms crawled over each other on top of the spot where he'd allowed himself to fall asleep. There was nothing big enough to be trouble in that pile by itself - but the numbers were an issue.
Jim would never call himself a fighter, but he did have enough power and experience - even with the suppression collar - to win a brawl. Down here, that translated to being able to kill the lower G-grade young bugs, and almost certain death if he tried to fight anything larger. More than one at a time would've also been an issue, going by how difficult it had been to kill the single, pillow-sized beetle he'd managed to defeat. It tasted as awful as he'd expected, but at least it stopped his stomach from rumbling.
He slunk back along the rocky shelf, and spared a glance down below. The underground cavern here was so massive it defied logic. It wasn't the only thing that made him question his sanity.
The behemoth was still there, at the center of the churning, overpopulated mass. As tall as a mountain, even it didn't rise to the full height of this place. To one side, a seemingly-endless waterfall fell down from near the top of the space and splashed over everything. The water was acidic enough that it ate into the carapaces of some insects below. Bits of rock cracked off the surface above where it ran, and plummeted into the deep. This was a space out of mind, a mixed colony surviving on poisoned water, even as it sent chunks of stone raining down onto their heads.
He closed his eyes, and continued on. Dallying would just see him waste more mana fueling invisibility - and he was already low.
The walls were a safe place, so long as he kept moving. Only the small bugs nested there - and Jim was a small bug. Buzzing came from below, and he pressed himself hard into the wall. The flying insects were an issue. He'd nearly died when a two-pronged stinger surprised him. He'd nearly died a lot. They flew up and over him, to the source of the falling rock - to investigate.
The bugs investigated a lot of things. Every noise, shift, and fallen item was treated like a breach into their space. It almost seemed like things were falling more frequently now.
He made his way up another ledge, and crawled into a tunnel just wide enough to fit him. Jim shoved his backpack, covered in a scavenged shell, into the opening to shut it to outside entities, and let himself rest.
The search for a path back could continue tomorrow.
+ Reid +
With Nyx still asleep, Reid spared himself a glance at the resistances section of his status screen. The information there confirmed most of what he already felt to be true.
RESISTANCES:
Substances - Sedatives
Active Skills - (Negative)
Identify - (Partial + Falsification)
His work on the regular thread's string had changed his active skill resistance from a nebulous 'all' to a much more satisfactory 'negative'. If he was still thinking of it correctly, Reid had managed to bundle all the things that weren't enhancements or information together in a way that should see them even more effectively resisted than before.
But Identify was his true achievement. After hundreds of attempts at different kinds of loops, knots, and shapes, Reid had stumbled on a combination that did almost everything he wanted. The thread's final state had it tied in six places and looped back in on itself in two perpendicular planes. It made the whole thing look a bit like a balloon with a ribbon tied to it.
It wasn't perfect - he hadn't been able to figure out how to falsify nor hide his grade, and that aspect felt very much out of reach. He was able to completely hide his affiliation and his level - which would keep anyone from seeing just how far into G grade he was, and would keep his connection to Earth a secret. He knew a bit of how he might be able to falsify them, but they were both really hard to control. Hiding was easier.
The area he'd had the most luck falsifying information in had been his race. Instead of hiding it entirely, he now happily displayed the false tag of "Vuxarinan" where human should have gone. That one was difficult, but it wasn't the hardest.
His name had been the biggest issue. After countless tiny adjustments and tests, Reid had managed to falsify his name information.
It had finally come time to test it with the both of them, and he grinned when their faces contorted in confusion.
There was one, tiny drawback to the way Reid had managed to make the name falsification work. Not a bad thing at all, really. His honorary knight title made him a 'Ser', and he couldn't get rid of it, no matter what he did. So instead, he just sort of... smushed together what he'd been trying to set as his name and the un-removable title piece. To his great enthusiasm, it had worked - and he kept having to go back to that solution, because nothing else fixed the problem.
It took a few tries, but Win managed to get her message visible to Reid. He beamed at his success.
Identify Successful!
Name: Serroc
Race: Vuxarinan
Grade: G
Win broke the silence with a snort that progressed into a full laugh. Lycra smiled and joined in.
Reid smiled, and defended himself. "Hey - look, I got the race and the other stuff down really well, and I think the name turned out fine."
Win wiped away a tear. "I'm sorry, but - Serroc. Ser - Roc? You have, hands down, the worst naming sense of almost anyone I've met. It's so bad, it overshadows that you've managed to accomplish yet another self-affixing impossibility down in the damn mole den. I've only read about identity shuffling in fiction."
He felt something catch in his throat. "You - you know that I can - that I've been-"
She donned a warm smile, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Reid, it's pretty obvious what Nyx has had you doing. You haven't exactly been hiding it. We can go back to pretending I'm oblivious if you want, but- "
"No, I - thank you. For not judging me. Nyx made it sound like it would be pretty bad if anyone found out."
Win chuckled. "Oh, she's right - most people are propaganda-gulping idiots. But I'm not an idiot, Reid. You'll still need to keep things secret - just not from me. Besides, I already know you're weird as fuck. What's a little more of that?" She gave him a tap on the arm, and went back over to her chair to continue her meal. Lycra joined her, and Reid sat himself down. Lycra complimented him on getting the details to where they falsified his race, and Win slowly came around to the name sounding slightly okay.
They ate and talked, until the food was gone. Then, the three of them sat in contented silence for a while. Reid felt... good. He'd made the progress he needed - and another worry had melted away in the presence of his friends.
Nyx's voice was so unexpected when it broke the silence, Reid nearly fell out of his chair.
"Reid! Good, you're together with everyone."
Her voice sounded even worse than before, but her tone was excited.
"Okay - that took more out of me than expected, but I've still got plenty left to see you three through to the end here. Good work on the threads - you did just about everything I would've wanted you to. Keep playing around with things, cataloguing them, and figuring stuff out. It'll see you forward in Intelligence. And don't try to make strands - even if you think you can do it, it's too advanced. Only manipulate the ones you already have."
"What do you mean took more out? Nyx you sound worse than before - what the hell happened to resting?"
"No more questions - this is the lightning round. You need to be quicker than before. Tell Winnie and Lycra to stick close to you. Once you get to the finish line, I'll do a final check on their progress."
He passed the instruction on to the two of them, and moved himself from the chair to the floor of the shelf.
"Good, now Reid, you've done well with everything else so far - but let me give you some extra motivation. Go fast, then pass my final exam, and we'll get to talk about something you might want even more than stat growth."
Reid's pulse quickened. There was only one other thing Nyx had offered to him. A single option that could rival his desire for growing his stats and skills.
"Sara's writing."
Nyx let out a self-satisfied hum.
"How perceptive."
