The Third Step: Chapter Forty-Five (Patreon)

After arriving back on the boat and showing them what I’d gotten, life quickly fell into a somewhat familiar routine. Orykson analyzed the spear ghostgift I’d gotten, and stated that while it wasn’t a replacement for the true Bone Spear spell, it should expand the combat power of Pinpoint Boneshard spell substantially. 

He’d also explained what the enchantments on the spear were, and why they felt so weird – they were a true channeling enchantment. Plenty of enchantments were channels, allowing a person to fuel them with mana in order to power the effect rather than being reliant on powerful mana cores to power them. Most channels ran into problems when power of a higher density than they were built to handle was ran through them, though. Modern spell design meant that most of the time that problem was just that it ran at peak efficiency, and the excess power was wasted, but in some older enchantments they could do things like explode. 

A true channel, on the other hand, would scale up the effect of the enchantment to the density of the power moving through it. It was almost like what Ivy’s dad had done to overclock my old defensive pin, but fundamentally built into the enchantment from the beginning. 

Of course, it was far from perfect. A true channel wasn’t a growth item that could be upgraded to handle more power, it was burning mana to increase the throughput, which meant a lot of the excess power was still wasted. They were also absurdly expensive to produce, as they usually required specialized materials, gold, and months of work. The efficiency, even when operating within their mana tolerances, was only about thirty percent to half of a normal channel. And they were notoriously unreliable, often burning out after two or three fights. 

For this spear, though, the crafting expense wasn’t an issue. The mana inefficiencies in powering and upgrading the enchantments were acceptable as well. It wasn’t some revolutionary, perfect conversion, but it fell within acceptable parameters, and it would allow me to keep using the ghostgift essentially indefinitely. 

The burning out problem, on the other hand…

“You’re going to need to learn the upkeep for these enchantments, so that it doesn’t break,” Orykson told me. “Congratulations. I’d been planning to get to this for some time now…” 

I suppressed a groan, but accepted it with as much grace as I could, trying to beat the repair and upkeep for the enchantment into my head. Once it had been deemed acceptable, we moved onto the strange potential spark, which actually seemed to impress Orykson. He offered to buy it off me in exchange for a massive decrease in my monetary debt to him and an ancient ghost and shade fusion that should, theoretically, work as a basis as well, but I refused. As tempting as it was, I wanted to give Kene the best shot possible. 

Jinwei had left to go do something, so I wasn’t able to train with her, but I was able to train with Ivy and Ikki still, as well as work on carving my gates. I had gotten to the point I could successfully carve all of my first gates with the spiritual chisel, and move onto the second gate, before I was forced to fuse my gates back to normal and start again from scratch. 

It was slow, painfully tedious work, and I was beginning to see why it had gotten so out of fashion for lower gates. Common people’s mana manipulation skills had reached the point where advancing to third gate was far from impossible, and the benefits were more akin to ingraining an extra spell than anything revolutionary. Much like organizing flows through the garden, it required a massive time investment, but offered little in terms of power. 

But I’d gotten to the point I needed to do it, so I kept chipping away at the task slowly but surely. I was in the middle of working on my second gate time mana when I felt… it. 

A pressure washed over me, a spiritual power entirely unlike anything I had felt before. It was ancient and deep, a reservoir of pure tempest power that made my entire mana-garden feel like nothing more than a frog in a well. 

“Primes, what was THAT?” 

I staggered back into my body, and extended my senses out around me, feeling my resonance snap into place and extended them out across the entire boat and beyond. The captain pushed back, and I could sense their irritation, but I was so off-guard that it barely registered.

It was as if someone had taken direct control of the area with the power of a spell or dominion or something, and was holding it, personally. More than that, every single little swirl of the air, every brush of the currents, was forming into energetic arrays. Like the arrays of power in the ground in the Delitone dragon sanctuary, every bit of the air here was dancing into a beautiful, perfect, impossible pattern, wielded by power ancient in a way that I had no reference for. 

I drew my senses back in and staggered to find Meadow, but she was already outside of the door, and took me by the arm, holding me as firmly as her older body could. I looked at her and tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. 

“What… what is this?” 

“You’ve never experienced the power of a magi unveiling their full power before,” Meadow said gently, guiding me back into the room and pouring me a glass of water. “And the Storm King is far from ordinary. He’s a Mana King, which is… Well. As if feeling the full, unveiled spirit of the oldest living power on the planet wasn’t enough, the Storm King has created a formation spanning an impossibly vast area as insurance. We’re in the outermost ring, and the innermost alone covers more than four million square miles. Take a breath, relax.”

“How do ordinary people this live like? Like this live. Whatever. You get what I mean.” 

“Well, he’s not concentrating his power on any one person in particular, merely allowing his unveiled power to radiate out. Keeping your power veiled is generally seen as rude in most of Greater Daocheng. He never does. Then there’s the fact that if you’re born within it, you’ll be used to it from the day your mana senses awaken. And if that wasn’t enough, remember that your senses are far stronger than pretty much any non-knowledge mage at your gate. You feel what he’s done to the air far more than most. Truthfully, I didn’t expect you to have this strong of a reaction.” 

I shuddered and shook my head, then closed my eyes and gently extended my mana senses out around me. There was still disorientation, but I’d be able to adapt. Like Meadow said, this wasn’t the concentrated power of his spirit focused on me, not in the same way that Orykson had trained me to deal with. But it was still intense from the sheer volume, and I infused resonance into my senses again, shoving the power of the Storm King’s passive presence away from me. 

It took me several long moments, but I took a long, slow breath and opened my eyes. 

“I’m okay.” 

“Good,” Meadow said. “I can brew you something to help dull your senses while we travel, if you’d like?” 

“Don’t bother,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll need to get used to it. I’ll need my senses at their sharpest for the tournament.” 

Meadow didn’t respond, just giving me a sad smile as she took one hand in hers and squeezed gently. 

After crossing over the border between the rest of the world and the Storm King’s massive wind formation, it didn’t take us long to reach Tianzhu, and so Meadow held a meeting within Dusk with everyone to try and hammer out some details and bring everyone up to speed. 

We would be at port for about two weeks, which was a good bit of time, but also wasn’t much at all. The Sekhem Court were all immortal, and thus, acted slowly. Getting them to make a decision, while still getting back to the boat in time could be difficult. As such, making sure we were all on the same page was crucial, so Meadow had gathered us up in front of a local map, with a few locations marked.

Buuutttttt… I did have a question that had been nagging at me. 

“Before we begin,” I said, holding up a hand. “What did you mean that the wind formation was the Storm King’s insurance? Insurance against what?” 

“Death,” Meadow said. “The formations are linked directly to his spirit, and if he dies, they’ll all collapse. At the very least, that will cause weather patterns to change on a scale rarely seen in history, climates to shift, and storms to ravage coastlines the world over. Perhaps worse – nobody alive has analyzed the full formation to my knowledge.” 

I sat there for a moment, unsure how to even take that in. I understood the general idea, but the practicalities of managing such a thing were enormous. 

“Right,” Kene said. “Tianzhu?” 

“Indeed. That’s the name people from Mossford use, and what Central Daocheng calls it, but there are a dozen different names for the country being translated for you. It has a  long, complex history with the Storm King – at times, it had been totally independent, while at others it had been occupied by the powers of Greater Daocheng. Its current status was somewhere between a tributary nation, a close political ally, and horrible enemies that would gladly destroy one another if not for the fact that there are multiple other massive territories in between them.” 

I blinked, caught off guard by the seemingly contradictory information, but Kene just nodded as if that was expected. 

“While they don’t currently have a Titled Occultist, the power of the Storm King acts to prevent the formation of slaughter spirits. That doesn’t mean you should underestimate them, though. We’re landing in the south-east coastal province, which is one of their forty-four provinces. Every province has at least one false Occultist leading an organization.” 

“I know the Sekhem Court, obviously, but Kene’s grandmother bartered with the Shining Spirits. I’m guessing they’re one?” I asked, mentally saluting the nation for how many false Occultists it had managed to produce. I was guessing it had modeled its success after Kijani, who forewent a single great power to empower multiple lesser ones.” 

“They are,” Kene said with a nod. “I also know that there are also strongholds of the Sheut and Ka vampires there, Starshatter College, and… the something fishing company?” 

“The Ria-Dorji Fishing Company,” Meadow said. “Yes, that’s actually the local power for where we’ll be landing. The Sekhem Court is going to be about a hundred and fifty miles north-north-west.” 

“How did a fishing company mint a false occultist?” 

“Oh, it didn’t. It minted three of them,” Meadow said. “Deep sea fishing is a dangerous career. The number of people who wind up dead or injured from the weather alone is incredibly high. Plus, it’s not uncommon to disturb Arcanist level sea creatures, or even higher.” 

“I… huh. I hadn’t thought about that. Is there anything we should know about the fishing company?” 

“I’s legally required for anyone at or above fifth gate to keep their mana veiled, and it’s seen as polite for anyone above first gate to do the same. Apart from that, the port we’re landing in is a tourist destination, so just don’t get swindled,” Meadow said. “No, what I’m more concerned about is your entry to the Sekhem Court’s land.” 

“They’re less than two hundred miles apart in the same country, how different can they be?” Kene asked, scrunching his eyebrows together. 

“More than you may think,” Meadow said with a snort. “Reigonal laws vary wildly, and so do local customs. For example, in the Sekhem Province, it’s the opposite. Sekhem vampires have the most powerful legacies of any vampire court, and that’s bled into the local culture. Power is heavily respected. The Central Daocheng fashion of never veiling is very much in vogue there.” 

“How much so?” I asked. “Might makes right rules get nasty really fast.” 

“They do have laws, it’s not just the law of the jungle,” Meadow said, waving her hand. “Most of them I don’t need to worry about you breaking. But the vampires maintain a higher social position than humanoid beasts, who are in turn higher than humans, who are higher than spirits. But this is a case where going in with your full power on display is a good idea, as long as you don’t take it so far as to challenge someone who you can’t beat.” 

“Only beat up spellbinders, got it,” I said, which elicited a snort from Kene and Meadow. We spent a while longer discussing some of the peculiarities of the Sekhem province, before we were pulled up on deck to watch as we approached.