67.5 On The Road Again (Part 2)

Alex sat in the small clearing, legs crossed and eyes closed. The sounds of quiet chatter and cracking fires drifted through the early evening air.

One clone sat in silence nearby, watching his back. Luis had joined the clone after they’d been separated from the group for some time. The quiet duelist didn’t seem bothered by the long silence and Alex’s total focus on his project.

[Mana Infusion] worked at its maximum output. He pushed mana into the ritual beneath him as quickly as he could. The sooner his core was close to emptying, the sooner he could dip into the Rift and siphon more mana.

The process was repetitive, and during the setup, while there was no intent to hold or finesse to powering the ritual, he entertained himself by turning the routine into a game. He would challenge himself to push the mana into the ritual as quickly as possible, before siphoning mana and returning, timing the entire loop. Then, he would do it again, trying to beat his time. He’d continue the loop, beating his previous loop’s time, until he failed. Once he failed to beat the previous time, he’d take a five-minute break to stretch before resetting.

He’d learned the trick from Mark. His friend swore it was a perfect technique for a video game with lots of grinding required, but Alex had always found himself applying it to his work. Henderson often liked to assign tedious tasks, and this had always been an easy way to lose himself in the process.

Thinking of his time in the ad agency with Mark and Henderson took him back to a different time. A different life.

In an effort to maintain focus and beat his previous time, Alex pushed the nostalgic thoughts away and reviewed his next steps. The recreation of the elven ritual was almost charged. All that would be left afterward would be to set the runes with both intent and mana.

It was the most difficult part of the entire process, but he had more advantages now than he ever did before.

To start, when he’d called a halt to their travel for the day, he’d started by preparing his space around the ritual. To give himself a further advantage, he’d spoken at length with Shael’quir and her two best singers.

After preparing the base of the ritual around the Rift portal, he’d called them over to use their magic. It only took a few minutes of their combined harmonics to solidify his frame of Mana Stone dust. While he’d no doubt wasted a small fortune in stones to grind them up and get them in place, he now had a large, solidified frame of mana conductive rock.

There would eventually be many more types of material to try, but for now, he hoped it would help emulate the white metallic alloy that the elves used.

More time passed as he competed with himself, the temperature gradually falling. He didn’t want to risk any other magic interfering with his test, so he decided not to create a heating ritual to warm the air around him. Instead, he leaned on his Constitution to fend off the chill.

When it came time to slot the runes into the proper nodes, he called both constructed clones, Mage and Warrior, to come assist. With the increase in Intelligence and the setting of runes being completely unstructured magic, he decided to assign them each a set of runes to focus on.

The fractured bodies settled down on the ground at 45-degree angles from where he sat, the three of them surrounding the swirling blue portal.

Alex had long since dismissed Scout, giving him access to a second mind. The handoff with the HA going as smoothly as he expected— that is to say, lots of waiting, undertones of hostility, and an attempt to rope him into the bureaucracy of the process.

Once the information was passed on about local Hunter corruption, and he was sure that the medical personnel understood what the escapees had been through, he had Scout leave the sewers and catch up.

This left him with the two most important jobs.

He took a deep breath to center himself. There was no need to discuss with his clones; they all knew the plan and shared the same excitement for the process.

Placing both hands on his knees, he let mana threads begin to spill from his fingers and form the Portal Rune. Its concept was difficult for him to understand, but he applied his personal experiences as Maelis had taught him.

For months, he’d been crossing through and living in the Rifts. He had the strong belief that his intent and understanding of portals coming directly from the Rift portals would aid him in the ritual.

While his second consciousness focused on the portal runes’ intent, his main mind focused on his trump card. The Cadence Stone. It rested in his lap, patiently waiting for his mind’s activation.

As soon as he mentally reached out to the stone, the world around him changed. The normal vision in his left eye shifted subtly, but just as before, it was the mana-sight in his left eye that was enhanced multiplicatively.

He could see the vast flows of mana around the Rift, the ground beneath him lit up like a beacon from the power he’d stored there.

It was with this mind that he planned to direct the power of the ritual as best he could. The ritual, by its nature, used the lines of power to conduct much of the magic. However, he’d noticed that using the runes, rather than reagents, left a nexus of power at the center of the ritual where he could poke and prod.

The center of power became visible to him after the rank advancement, and only when holding the active Cadence Stone. The rhythm of the mana became just clear enough that he could see different routes of execution.

It was then, with three of his minds working in concert to set the runes in place, that Alex was certain he could complete the ritual successfully.

His heart hammered in his chest with excitement.

The only obstacle standing in his way was choosing the right path.

In the swirling nexus of power, coalescing at the base of the portal, Alex could feel different paths he could take. They seemed to be focused on similar concepts to the runes themselves. One felt like freedom, another like power, a third like certain death. Each of these paths had branching paths, leading in directions he couldn’t see.

Without the Cadence Stone, they seemed to shift and move in time with the swirling vortex of the Rift portal. However, with the item, he started to see a pattern. A predictable shifting of streams.

Carefully, oh, so carefully, Alex started down the path of Empower.

He made sure to keep his distance from anything that made his hair stand on end, as he knew that pulling on the wrong thread of power could lead to death.

Losing himself in the task, he took one mental step at a time. No more mana was required on his part, just a test of his will and magical control. It was that thought, that realization, that gave him the confidence to continue.

There.

At the end of the mental path, Alex could see a small button of power. It was a coil so tight that his mind seemed to shy away. Despite the intensity of it, he knew that it was the goal he’d been searching for.

Carefully, he reached out and touched it, pulsing just a small bit of mana into the Ritual beneath him to send it over the edge.

Preparations complete, runes in place, and path of power discovered, Alex activated the ritual.

His eyes were closed, but he could feel the air around him become further saturated in mana, spiking to an all-time high. His skin went from the constant tingle to an uncomfortable prickling sensation before it vanished completely.

The world around him felt still. Calm. Empty.

He couldn’t hear anything but his heart and his heavy breathing.

While he hadn’t moved from his seated position, he realized all of his muscles were clenched and he’d slowly hunched forward in his concentration.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw the clearing as it had been. The only change he could see with his mundane vision was that the area had fallen into the darkness of night.

To his left eye, still activating the Cadence Stone, the area around the Rift had lost much of its luster. The ambient mana is being absorbed and utilized in the ritual.

Carefully, he let go of his mental hold on the stone, his normal Spectral Eye’s mana sight returning. The ebb and flow of power around the Rift returned to what he’d become accustomed to seeing over the last few months, and he braced himself.

Scanning the Rift, his breath caught in his throat.

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***

His eyes went wide, and he sat there in silence for several long moments, staring.

The quiet of the night was broken by one of his clones.

To his left, Warrior started laughing. A chuckle at first, before bursting into a full-bellied laugh.

“Holy shit,” Alex whispered, ignoring his other self. “It worked.” He looked around the forest, feeling a sudden sense of paranoia.

Warrior's laughter quickly cut off, and then all exchanged their feelings and thoughts in a matter of heartbeats. Swiftly, Warrior and Mage stood, spreading out in opposite directions to make sure they were still alone.

Alex looked up at the sky, holding his breath.

Nothing came. No System notification. Not lightning from the sky or holy retribution for tampering with the Rift. More than a minute passed with him frozen in place, tense and waiting for a punishment that never came.

When he felt he was in the clear, he let out an explosive breath before falling down onto his back in the grass.

“Fuck.”