THEOS

Sitting cross legged on the ground, Luke closed his eyes, and focused entirely on the ring in the palm of his hands. Visualizing his mana, he thinned the strand as much as he could. It wasn’t possible to see it with the naked eye, but he was confident that it was still too thick, and yet, he also couldn’t make it thinner.

He had tried dozens of times already, and after failing so many times, he was beginning to get used to the numb feeling of electricity flowing latching onto his mana, and the violent spasms that followed.

It wasn’t something that he wanted to get used to, but he wouldn’t give up.

As his Constitution and Agility both ticked up once again, he found that he didn’t mind pain quite as much as he should have. He was safe, he was learning, and he was getting stronger at the same time.

It was painful, but strength often came at a cost. Whether that was freedom, risk, or pain, that had always been consistent, and something he had long become used to.

Even so, he had a limit to his patience. Pulling the mana back into his body, he raked his eyes across the cavernous workshop, and the uncountable objects within it for Cyzicus. The Emperor had wandered off after a few minutes of watching him fail, and began to rummage through his stuff.

As if he was drawn by his gaze, the Hero wandered back.

“It’s not working.” He said suddenly. “I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong”

“You must use less mana, there is no other solution. If you’re subtle, the ring will be unable to detect the presence of foreign mana, and it will allow you access to the controls.”

“How do I use less mana then? …Is it possible that my Arcana is just too low?”

“I wouldn’t assign you a task that’s out of your ability.” He chided. “This is a question of control, not strength, quantity, or power. While improving your Arcana will no doubt aid you in this, it’s not needed. More than that, even if you increase your Arcana to the limits of the Warrior-tier, the process and the difficulty would remain roughly the same. Consider it this way…” He tilted his head to the side, carefully picking his words. “If I asked you to lift a glass, grab a jug, and pour water in it, being stronger, faster, and more nimble will aid you in the task. And yet, you are able to do so already, with your current abilities.”

Yeah, but putting water into a jug doesn’t hurt me. He grumbled internally. Still, if Nel can do this, there isn’t a reason I can’t.

Gritting his teeth, he once again took control of the energy within him, and brought it close to the ring. Then stretching it out as much as he could, he narrowed it down to the thinnest strand he could manage, and brought it into contact with the ring.

Bracing himself, he made the plunge. Like every time before, electric shocks ran through his body, and every muscle he had seized and spasmed.

Gasping for breath, Luke dropped the ring and forcibly broke the connection.

I’m missing something, but what?

Taking a minute to let the jitters pass, he once again inspected the ring. Over the course of the next hour, he tried every idea that came to him. From trying to pour mana in at different points, to putting more than one strand in at a time.

None of his ideas worked.

All the while Cyzicus milled about his workshop, and slowly over the course of an hour fashioned what could be best described as a contraption.

Luke beheld the finished product with curiosity. It had multiple hammers, arrayed in a circle around an anvil. Each had their shaft affixed to a hinge which was in turn attached to the bench. A cable made of braided gold and silver wire was tied around their heads, and joined into one thick cable that ran through a pulley, which spit out the other end of the cable a dozen feet from the workbench.

Frowning slightly, Cyzicus tugged at the end of the cable, and at once, all six of the hammers anchored to the table slammed into the anvil. A clunking noise reverberated through the room, one so loud, it made Luke’s ears hurt. Something he hadn’t even known was possible.

Cyzicus grinned, as Luke winced in pain.

The ring on his finger flashed, and three shields appeared in the air, and surrounded the anvil-hammer-pulley assembly in a triangular formation.

“Okay, that should be everything I need.” He said, crossing his hands over his chest, the Hero raked his eyes over Luke’s miserable figure. “Any progress?”

“No.”

“Are you just doing the same thing over and over again?”

“No.”

“Well, keep at it. The Rebel’s ring will take a while yet.”

“How is all this going to help anyway?” Luke asked, rising to his feet, he walked in a slow circle around the anvil.

“Unlike the ring you’ve been working with, this one is in the Saint-tier, which means the defenses will incinerate me if I even make a small mistake once I send my own mana within it. Before I forget, I should mention that you shouldn’t attempt what you're doing with that ring with any other one you find, until you can do that one with ease. Since I’m the person that created it, I was able to reduce the potency of the defense to tolerable levels. Most people keep theirs at an intensity that would kill the average warrior. A single mistake with someone else’s ring will have consequences that are not so forgiving.”

“... That’s good to know.”

“Right.” He nodded. “Now, since the Rebel is dead, and the ring is ownerless and unbound, it will slowly lose its mana, and the lethality of its defenses will decrease over time. Perhaps in a few millennia, it would be safe enough to give it a try, but obviously, we don’t have that much time.”

“So you’re going to hit it with hammers until it–”

“Until it loses most of its mana, yes.” He walked forward, and placed the golden ring in the middle of the anvil, and then stepped back. Closing his eyes in concentration, he made a vague gesture, and immediately light emerged from each of the shields, and solidified into a translucent, red barrier around the anvil.

He tugged the cable, Luke shielded his eyes, the ground beneath his feet rattled, and a bright flash of light illuminated the workshop.

“A few thousand of those should do it,” Cyzicus said out loud. His ring flashed, and a clay plate appeared in the air in front of Luke. “If you could channel some mana into that, I would appreciate it.”

The second Luke did, a gray bubble appeared around him and the Hero, silencing the majority of the sound and dimming nearly all the light coming from the anvil-hammer assembly.

Luke watched for a few minutes as the Emperor beat away at the Rebel’s ring, before he turned his attention to his own.

So he dialed it down enough that this thing doesn’t kill me, but he couldn't have done more?

Opening his mouth to raise the question, only to see the man with his hand extended and wearing a knowing look on his face.

“What?”

“You aren’t going to ask me to weaken the defenses even more?”

This f–

“No.” Luke turned on his heel, and sat back down. It was stupid, and perhaps his ego had gotten the better of him, but he wasn’t going to say that he was too weak willed to handle a little pain.

Besides, I’m improving two stats at once without having to go out and kill things. That’s worth a little bit of pain. Right?

Mind made, he closed his eyes, and once again began his attempts to sneak mana into the rings.

Cyzicus watched him with clear, and perhaps sadistic, amusement dancing across his eyes, before turning his own attention to the Saint-tier ring with uncharacteristic focus.

Thirty minutes later, Luke picked the ring up from the ground with shaking hands, and just stared at it. He had lost count how many times he had been electrocuted, and he was beginning to fear that if he went on, he might even do some permanent damage to himself.

Warrior-tier with high constitution or not, getting buzzed so often in a short amount of time, could not be healthy.

Alright, let’s just think about this for a moment. I’ve made my mana as thin as I can, and I’ve tried putting it into the ring as many times as I know how. Going in fast. Going in and out. Trying from different spots. Trying to move through the pain. None of that works. Clearly, I’m missing something.

All I need to do is put such a small amount of mana in here, that the ring doesn’t even …

Fuck me.

The solutions snapped into his mind, with all the grace of a train hitting a bird. It was obvious in hindsight.

He had been going about it wrong the entire time.

Thinking back to the Cyzicus’s analogy, if he was trying to pour water into the cup, the thickness or the thinness of the stream played a role in how much of the liquid went in, but the real determinator was the actual quantity of mana.

The energy, despite how he thought of it, wasn’t a physical substance. Narrowing it into a thin line, while useful tools for picturing what exactly he was doing with it, wasn’t what the task was about.

Closing his eyes, he felt his mana rippling along with his heart beat through his entire body. With an effort of will he stilled it.

For a moment, his attention went to the two pebble-like anomalies in the back of his eyes– filling mana into them would activate the Eyes of Insight. Of that he was sure, but this wasn’t the time or the place. The first time he delved into the secrets of his ancestry, he wanted to be alone.

He trusted Cyzicus, but he wasn’t ready to confess all of his secrets to the man. He doubted he ever would.

Focusing on his breath, he pulled a small blob of mana free from the rest of his body, and let it hang in the air in front of him, and then stretched out as much as he could. It ballooned to the size of his head, before he recalled the majority of it back into his body.

Watching the reduced orb, he inflated it once again to the size of his head, and called the excess back into his body.

Repeating the process a few more times, until only the smallest fetters of his mana existed in the air in front of him, he grinned in satisfaction. Considering the miniscule amount of the energy he had started with, what he was left with was a tiny fraction of a fraction of a single point.

This might actually be too little, but if it is too little, I won’t get singed.

Mentally preparing himself to be shocked once again, in spite of the progress he had made, he physically moved the ring to the part of the air where he kept his mana, and then slowly, inched it forward.

To his relief, it entered the ring, without shocking him.

“I’m in, what do I do now?” He asked Cyzicus with urgency.

“Look around, but don’t try to take anything out of the ring. You should find the runes quickly.” He said, not turning away from where the hammers were relentlessly striking the ring.

Nodding carefully, Luke did just that. The inside of the ring was a box, and not one that was particularly big, only the size of a closet. Big enough to hold a few changes of clothes, as many talismans someone could want, and an assortment of weapons.

Ignoring the objects currently in there, none of which were of particular interest to him in the first place, Luke used the perception granted by his mana to scout out the place.

Quickly finding what a smattering of runes seemingly floating around what looked like a tiny red gem.

“I found them, now what?”

“Good, now without touching any of the runes, you need to remove the drop of blood that they are orbiting.”

“How do I do that?”

“If you suffuse the blood with your mana, you will be able to control it the way you fly. The energy in the blood will try to rebuff you, but if you’ve been diligent with the manasink, it’s well within your abilities.”

Nodding carefully Luke attempted to do just that. His mana spread evenly through the droplet without any trouble, but the second he tried to move it towards the walls of the ring, and out, it suddenly became heavy.

Straining against the resistance, he slowly eased it out from within the encasement of the runes, but just when it was about to touch the walls, his hold in it slipped, and it shot back towards the runes.

Luke blinked as his perception within the ring fizzled out of existence. He had expended the mana he had within the ring.

Even so, he grinned. He was close.