[NR] Using A Globe Knot - Chapter 612

As with most things, the way an immovable rod works was simpler than most would assume. Jason had spent hours following the theorized changes that each step of the crafting process caused. This process was, of course, nowhere near optimized. In fact, the default pattern was wasteful.

What it had going for it, was the fact it used techniques that had a low failure rate and materials that were accessible. So while one step might do something only for it to be undone later. It all added up into an immovable rod that was in the right ballpark as far as price goes.

How did the actual effect worked? The entire point to Jason spending so much time figuring out a magical item he isn’t going to buy and likely couldn’t make? Velcro, the answer was velcro. Oh, and velvet. Two ‘V’ words to make it all work.

Every step until the spell is cast is to allow you to treat the Mana bundle that is levitation like velvet and to flock the rod with it. So, levitation is reduced to a pile of superfine filaments, the rod is covered in Mana treated to act like glue, and the levitation filaments are blown onto the rod.

Then comes the velcro part. Those levitation filaments are treated in a way that makes them curl up and go rigid while the rod is activated. That curling action hooks the filaments into Space itself. As for why it uses the levitation spell specifically? Jason doesn’t have a clue and thankfully doesn’t need to.

After all, Jason is using Energy and not Mana. While Mana naturally takes on the form of shapes and seems to need a lot of processing to create thread analogs, Energy natively is threads. And of course since Qi is just dots, it likely is incapable of creating an effect through this method.

At this point, it would normally be the time for Jason to experiment with a way to copy this effect, except in his research he has already figured out the answer. Not that he had realized it at first. His lines were simply too big. Velcro doesn’t work if the hoops are smaller than the hooks after all.

The solution? Well, his lines already started to fray when left loose and so all needs to do is leave the edge of the line loose. The trick would be a knot that didn’t come apart from that. Which he also has a solution for now.

It all seems to come down to paying attention to the minor details. His current knots are made of lines and form crystalline shapes as the Energy flows into itself. The reason they break up is because what is fraying isn’t the lines, but the threads. If the lines are left loose, they fray into threads, but the knots still stop the progress.

As for how the System manages to stop the threads from fraying, Jason doesn’t have a clue. In fact, most of his lines don’t fray into threads which don’t fray either. A quick look at his exterior layer would reveal a ton of threads just floating around within his aura freely. The problem was specific to those lines that come from his core. Well, come through his core. After all, the System’s lines are sourced from the world’s Energy.

Though Jason admitted that the System lines might have a self destruct in them and unrelated to his current situation. Yes, situation and not problem. All that time researching and now the puzzle pieces were falling into place. If the threads frayed and didn’t stop at a line based knot, knot the thread.

He hadn’t tried that before now because it didn’t have much purpose. As far as Jason had known, knots didn’t stop fraying. Now, though, it was the obvious solution and even better? It worked.

That all brought it back to knots, and Jason was going to stack them. The System knots tended to form irregular crystal shapes out of triangles, specialized for their position. So if a line needed to split, it would end up vaguely ‘Y’ish. This caused an irregular mess of vertices pointing every which way, including at the knot itself.

Well, Jason wasn’t going to be fancy and try to specialize each knot. In fact, he was going to standardize them with a 20 facet globe knot. Yes, he was making his knots into a bunch of d20s.

Though really they could have had any number of faces from a simple monkey fist knot up to something silly like a 74 face globe knot. What was important was the method used to shape them in most cases. That of a ball of some sort in the middle. Jason was going to use a bunch of threads pulled off of the lines and balled up.

Well, not a bunch, but rather exactly as many threads as vertices minus however many lines could be coming off of the knot. Because the end of each thread would be poking out of a vertex that didn’t have a line and then a small knot tying itself to the globe knot. Then the end of the thread that was hanging out would be allowed to fray.

This was where the last problem lay. The thread was the smallest Energy could get and yet it frayed into something smaller. That “something” being the important part because it wasn’t Energy at that point. However, to make it work as a velcro style spatial anchor required whatever that was to curl and hook.

The answer to this was built into how he knotted the thread to the globe knot. At the vertex, three lines crossed and Jason had the thread form a sharp spiral over the area, tied down to those lines. Why? For the same reason that if you roll up a pile of papers, the inner piece will end up sticking out more.

The threads being rolled up with attention being paid to the same side always facing inward was enough to cause a similar effect. Except since the thread was connected to itself, this causes a curl. Not much of one, but it just needed to be enough.