System Scribe Academy Book 1 - Chapters 61,62,63,64,65 (Patreon)

Chapter 61

Flamethrower

The coolest thing about the bracelet's ability to remember information was the way it segmented that information. Ethan quickly learned that he could issue a few sharp orders and organize the books it scanned. He had to do little more than hold his wrist out for the bracelet to consume all the information in a book, and soon it found a way so that all he had to do was flick through the pages rapidly, and it would absorb all the text. This wasn't the most powerful feature of scanning the books, though.

Ethan summoned his list of books and filtered them by category.

[Spatial Magic]

Space and Stuff by Edgar Barglewinger

Basics of Spatial Magic (Vol 1) by Satier 1

Basics of Spatial Magic (Vol 2) by Satier 1

Chronomatic Influences on Spatial Distortion by Unknown Author

…

Ethan lowered his voice to a whisper. "Can you compare each of the texts that match my search parameters, and see if any of them mention spatial magic appearing as anomalies?"

“Processing. Estimated time to completion: 1 hour.”

It wasn't perfect, but this meant that Ethan no longer had to spend countless hours in the library searching through texts manually. It was a shame that Gale House hadn't digitized all their materials before. It would make research so much easier, but with his artifact bracelet, that's exactly what the scribe intended to do. Now it was time for him to make his money because, after all, Barry would never get his workshop if he didn't work hard for it.

Although Ethan still hadn't found the perfect property for Barry, he had cleared out some of the anomalies in the city anyway. He selected some that seemed pretty simple, all elemental in nature. The anomalies that went outside of the elemental affinities were a lot harder to solve if the gravity anomaly was anything to go by.

Ghost were easy. But there were no ghosts reported as anomalies. Which was unfortunate, since Avalara was such a good houseghost.

Ethan made his way through the city using his jumping ability to get to the locations quickly, promptly solving the problems. He started with the water anomalies since those were the ones he was most familiar with. There was a back garden in somebody's home that had been flooded, and they couldn't explain why. Another person had the unenviable situation of a permanent storm appearing above their house. At first, that one had been suspected to be a prank by the students, but as it lingered long beyond any spell had the capacity to do, they got suspicious that it was anomalous. After clearing out all of the water-based anomalies and shoving all of their power into his Affinity Ring, he moved on to the ones he was less familiar with.

Ethan folded his arms in disappointment, looking up at his next anomaly that rested in a courtyard in the northern section of Gale House City. "That is a pillar of fire."  

"Yes, it's been here for quite some time. The locals have taken to using it to light their chimneys or roast meat." The guard that Ethan had linked up with was a grizzled old veteran. Most of the guards here were some flavor of spellblade, but this guy seemed completely magically inept. He was getting a bit too close to the fire. 

Taking a deep breath, Ethan began the way he had with all the other anomalies he dealt with. The first order of business was to drain the surrounding area of fire-based mana. The air around the anomaly, which presented as a geyser of flames shooting out of absolutely nothing, was absolutely soaked. He did whatever he could with that mana, attempting to shove it into his rings or withdrawing his celestial pen and tracing the shape of his mind ring. But there was simply too much of it, and he was forced to expel the excess where he could.

As expected, once the surrounding air wasn't so saturated with fire magic, the flame itself died down considerably until it appeared as though an invisible Zippo lighter was floating about a foot off the ground in front of him. That allowed him to get close enough and begin the actual work. It might have taken him a bit, but he breathed a sigh of relief when the system popped up as an anomalous version of the X-13 system. He created a sigil, and engaged Emulation Mode.

[Anomalous X-13 System Variant Emulated]

ERROR: You have emulated an anomalous system. This variant of the X-13 system is incomplete and mostly non-functional. Your interaction with this system will be limited more than normal. Please use your Celestial Pen to resolve enough errors to stabilize the anomaly.

Fire Magic Anomaly

Difficult Rank: Effortless (Rank 0)

Known Errors: INCOMPLETE

System Alignment: X-13

Anomaly Designation: Flamethrower

Current Status: Unstable.

Ethan smiled to himself as he considered the designation of the anomaly. It was indeed a flamethrower. He began picking through the underlying function of the anomaly and finding sections he recognized. He wasn't altogether too familiar with fire magic, but it was close enough to his experience with water magic that he could muddle his way through the problem. His thoughts were interrupted when his bracelet provided him with the previous report he had requested.

“References about Spatial Anomalies are sparse within the texts. Satier 1 posits that…”

“Could you file that away for now? Create a new file with your report.” Ethan said. He looked over his shoulder, spotting how the guard gave him a look as though he was insane. The scribe cleared his throat. “Can you help me with this Fire Anomaly?”

“Provide parameters.”

As Ethan began describing the anomaly, including the system sigil he had established for it, he could practically feel the memory blocks filling up. He winced with each detail, but this was the true test of his bracelet. Once it had enough information, he had a task for it.

“In reference to Flamethrow Sigil 1, can you assess the viability?” Ethan asked, wincing at the vague wording.

“Calculating…”

The fear was that the request was too vague. Searching a bunch of books was one thing, but making logical leaps? That was going to be the true test of the bracelet. Ethan had already spotted the issue, he just needed a way to disperse the Fire-based mana to ensure this thing wouldn’t sprout to life after he left. He suspected it was supposed to be a natural phenomenon where bits of fire danced through the air, but had instead morphed into a damned flamethrower.

“Second sigil, Spew, should be replaced with Sphere. Redirect power from the mana collection rune and recycle or discard excess energy.”

Ethan's brows peaked. He didn't remember feeding that much information into the bracelet, but it had made a logical leap, and it was the same logical leap that he had made. The problem with the flamethrower anomaly was that it was shooting out excess mana and had entered an endless loop of gaining new mana, processing it, and then feeding into that flamethrower. The way it should have worked was to suck in a finite amount of energy, create an orb of fire in the air, and then dissipate gently.

“How did you reach that conclusion?” Ethan asked. “I didn’t give you enough information, and you didn’t take long enough to read the texts we scanned.”

“Innate knowledge obtained from owner.”

“So, if I know something… you know it?”

“Innaccurate. Crucial information to function retained to help speed processing operations.”

“So, you’ve got some RAM?”

“Define RAM.”

“Get back to work on the Processing Unit. I’ve got this one,” Ethan said.

“Understood.”

Overall, the flamethrower anomaly was quite easy to solve. Anything at the effortless ranking was a simple misalignment of the sigils within the embedded spell array. Although the scribe was certain he would encounter more difficult problems, like the spatial anomaly, he was happy to clear out the easy ones. He added a decent amount of depth to his affinity ring and also a bit of cash to line his pockets. After “patching” the code of the anomaly, the dancing flame became a ball of fire that drifted off into the sky. A system message appeared shortly after that.

[Flamethrower Fire Anomaly Repaired]

You have repaired an anomaly known to the Grand System. Please continue to resolve anomalies.

Reward:

Increased breadth and depth of one Attribute Ring of your choice.

50 coins.

The 50-coin piece that landed in his hand was a welcome thing, but he simply combined it with his larger one. No small sum like this would be enough to buy a house, even if he got it severely discounted thanks to the anomaly. Before he headed to his next destination, he took a seat and applied the free energy to his affinity ring.

"I heard you talking to yourself there," the grizzled old guard said, coming to take a seat beside him. "So, are you going crazy or do you have a mind spirit?"

"Since I don't know what a mind spirit is, I'm going to assume that I'm going crazy." Ethan smiled to himself. He wasn't sure if he would consider his bracelet any kind of spirit, since it didn't have a personality of its own. He doubted it was sentient, let alone sapient. “But, yes. I’ve got a little helper.”

"Damn useful things, mind spirits. I knew a guy who had one. He did eventually go crazy because the thing wouldn't stop talking into his brain, but it sure helped him become strong.”

“Well, that’s encouraging.” Ethan couldn’t help but laugh at himself. Truth was, the bracelet was stuck on his wrist. Maybe he would go crazy one day, but right now he still viewed it as a laptop. “Fortunately, it doesn’t like to talk.”

“Consider yourself lucky, then,” the old guard said with a laugh. “So, is that thing going to float over the city forever?”

Ethan shook his head. “Just as it was designed to do, it should fade with time.”

“So, how did it get the way it was?” the guard asked.

“That’s actually a very great academic question.” Ethan couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Was the old guard the first person to ask him that? He couldn’t remember. “The system creates things sometimes. It does so when there is a great accumulation of mana in one area. That mana can come naturally, or it can be from people. Imagine if this area was filled with water mana in the air, like down by the coast. One day, a small spring of water might appear. It would bubble for a while, creating a pool that mingled with the seawater.”

“I think I’m following…”

“But if that same spring of freshwater was created wrong, it could have an infinite lifetime. That normally comes when the internal array is wrong.” Ethan thought of the best way to put it. “These natural forces aren’t meant to be pushed one way or the other. When they are, you get an anomaly. Draining the mana away can fix these things, normally. But sometimes… they just stay.”

“That’s a very fancy way of saying you’re not sure.” The old guard nodded along. “Don’t worry. I still think you’re rather skilled.”

“Thanks, buddy. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go jump to another anomaly.”

“You do that.”

Shaking his head, Ethan took off into the air. He cleared through more anomalies, fixing a few more Fire-based ones and finding some undiscovered Water-based issues. All these were enough to make his Affinity Ring swell with power. He had been focusing on it so much that the swelling became uncomfortable in his chest. Focused completely on the concept of splitting or otherwise creating a second level to that ring, he could sense the dam about to burst at any moment.

And then it happened. A sensation like a balloon popping in his soul forced the scribe to his knees. He gritted his teeth, pushing through the uncomfortable sensation as he got to his feet. On shaking legs, he found something to sit on. Despite the discomfort and pain, a smile spread across his face as a system message appeared.

[Affinity Rank Increased]

Chapter 62

Rank Increase

[Affinity Rank Increased]

You have increased the rank of your Affinity Ring, increasing the number of rings by 1. Your first ring is considered a Rank 1 Ring while your second is a Rank 2 ring. All spells, abilities, etc slotted into your Rank 2 Ring are considered Rank 2 versions of themselves.

Ethan read the message a few times, more confusion spreading through his thoughts the longer he processed the information. He had to rewind his thoughts, going back to the basics to get a handle on how this was supposed to work. Ranks, no matter what they were called by a specific system, were marks of power. Normally, these ranks came with jumps in power and affected an entire person. Not just an attribute.

“What the hell does that mean?” Ethan asked, scratching his head. At that moment, he realized he needed a haircut. But there were more pressing matters.

“Would you like me to theorize?”

“I can theorize plenty myself.” Ethan grumbled. He scanned himself, looking for that drastic increase in power both people and books talked about when discussing Ranks. He wasn’t more powerful, but his Affinity, as it related to spellcraft, was. It was a confusing feeling to have the power of a Rank 2 mage at his fingertips… With the mana-reserves of a Rank 1 mage. “Stop working on the new processor for a minute and get me an estimation for how many Rank 0 anomalies we need to get a Rank 2 Mind Ring.”

“Calculating… Estimated time to completion: 5 hours.”

Ethan grumbled at that. His mental math told him it would take about 20 of them to fill a Rank 1 ring with enough power to spawn a Rank 2 ring. But he turned his attention to the description of his rings provided by the system, finding a new style to the old interface waiting for him.

[Attribute Rings]

Strength 1

Agility 2 (System Leap)

Dexterity 1

Vigor 1 (Clean Body)

Endurance 1

[Affinity Ring]

Mind 2 (Lesser Mana Siphon)

“Right.” Ethan breathed out a steady breath. “Because lumping everything in one screen would be too confusing.”

He mentally clicked on the Affinity Ring, gaining a completely new screen for his efforts. It was far more detailed than the old one, a fact he greatly appreciated.

[Affinity Rings]

Rank 1 Affinity [2 Slots] (Lesser System Barrier)

Rank 2 Affinity [1 Slot] (Empty) 

But there it was. An empty slot on a brand new Affinity Ring. Rubbing his hands together, Ethan thought about the best spell to put there. With access to two spells, he’d have a lot more utility when traveling around. By using the Lesser Airwall spell from the X-13 Mage class, he could generate the Lesser System Platform ability. While maintaining access to the important Lesser System Barrier spell. He slotted it into his Rank 2 ring, and was unsurprised to see the name change to System Platform.

Even without casting it, the scribe could tell the cost had increased dramatically. It went from something like 10% of his mana to 50%. He was once again reminded that his Mind Ring was sorely in need of upgrading. That was the only way he knew to increase his mana pool. With that, he set off without the intention of using his Rank 2 ring for now. There were only a few more anomalies to take care of, then he planned to generate a new ability for his Mind Ring to speed things along.

After taking care of the last few anomalies, Ethan sped back home. He placed all the power granted to him by the Grand System into his Mind Ring, expanding its depth in an attempt to generate a Rank 2 ring. When he finally landed near his cottage, his stomach growled. As if summoned by the sound, there was Barry, ready to get some grub. Seeing it as a good chance to take a break, the pair headed off and had some extremely filling food. While the scribe didn’t eat exactly like his companion, he came pretty close.

“Almost ready to show you something pretty cool.” Barry seemed excited about something as they left the dining hall, and Ethan didn’t want to blow him off.

“Let me know when you’ve got something. That War Rig was amazing.” Ethan let out a long sigh. He couldn’t stop himself from imagining the stuff Barry could create, given enough time and experience.

Barry gave a hearty thumbs-up and made a grunting sound. “Yeah!”

Without waiting, Ethan turned his attention skyward and darted off. Feeling full and full of himself, he waited until he got to the apex of his jump and used System Platform. A shimmering barrier of prismatic light appeared beneath his feet, and his felt dizzy from the sudden drain in his mana. Maintaining his composure, he kicked off it with System Leap, rocketing toward the bay. This time, he didn’t fall into the water. Instead, he angled for one of the many bar islands that dotted the area. This time, he landed with an uncomfortable thud, almost falling into a roll.

“How long on that math?”

“One hour.”

With a shrug, Ethan sat and got to work on a new ability. One of the many secrets of the Deep Qi Path was the Deep Qi Meditation technique. This was a way a cultivator could empower aspects of themselves through light meditation. Since the scribe needed to add depth to his Mind Ring, there was no better way. With ease, he generated the ability: Deep System Meditation(Mind). It was the same thing as the Affinity version, but this one increased the breadth and depth of his Mind Ring.

With a deep breath, he got to work. Using Luna’s sect’s technique wasn’t difficult for him. He took deep breaths, soaking in surrounding mana before adding it to his Mind Ring. There was a form of this technique he could do on his own, effectively just using the Deep Qi Meditation ability unaided, but that way was slow. This way was extremely fast. Or, it felt as though it was fast.

“Analysis completed.”

Ethan’s eyes snapped open. The sun had gone down around him and the gentle sound of the waves lapping nearby brought him back to his senses. “Let’s hear it.”

“The technique you currently employ is currently more efficient than gathering anomalies.”

“I don’t remember asking you to do that.”

“Adaptive learning means that any action that would benefit the owner shall be performed. When analyzing the quality of the Rank 0 anomalies you have already fixed, it was determined that the variance in produced Celestial Energy was too high. Therefore, an accurate number couldn’t be generated. Instead, an estimated 20 to 50 anomalies was generated. During analysis, the system detected your current action and ran a much easier calculation.”

“Huh. How long of meditating like this do I need to do?”

“30 hours.”

Although that didn’t seem like a lot of time, that was with the progress he had already made up until this point. 30 hours of constant meditation was a long time, especially with the week being so busy already. Ethan was officially behind on both his classes, and would need to burn some weekend time to catch up. As he thought, he realized the best course of action was to multi-task like a madman.

After sending the bracelet back to work, he tested the Deep System Meditation ability. There was a part in the description that stood out to him. He should’ve been in a state of semi-awareness, but every time he tried to use it, his eyes snapped shut and he felt as though he was sleeping. After a fair amount of testing, he got it so he could move just a bit while in the meditative trance.

Eventually, Ethan snapped his fingers. “Synergy time.”

Rather than going to bed like a sensible person, Ethan had a pretty decent plan. He forced his bracelet to pause all operations, headed to the library, and got it working on scanning a bunch of books. By the time he made it back home, it was almost midnight and Barry was already snoring away.

“Pause the Block construction. While I’m asleep, working on finding a spell that could combine with Deep System Meditation to give me more awareness while I use it. Don’t find exact matches, I don’t want you wasting processing power on that. Instead, just try everything and make assumptions.”

“Understood. Calculating… Unknown processing time.”

“When you’re done, get back to working on the Block… Uh… Please.”

“Understood.”

“Well. Thank you.”

Although Ethan felt awkward ordering his bracelet around, it was just a machine. Still, he treated his computers well back home, so he would treat this thing well. It deserved a few “please” and “thank yous” here and there. After all, it was working pretty hard. The scribe settled into bed, relying on a burst from his Vigor Ring and his Clean Body ability to keep his sheets nice and clean. Then he fell asleep, comforted by the fact that the robot on his wrist would have some interesting information for him in the morning.

***

Ethan’s Wednesday class wasn’t until noon in Opaque Pearl Building 2 with the unnamed mantis professor. They called her Sally. Barry was nowhere to be found the next morning, but Amelia was more than happy to be his dining hall buddy for the day. Even before he had risen from bed, his bracelet gave him an absurdly long list of abilities to sift through, including something he had never encountered before.

“How do I emulate an ability from a rogue class?” Ethan asked, picking at the eggs on his plate.

“That’s all on you. Maybe head over to Haunted Old Duskthorn and ask for yourself…”

Ethan shivered at the thought. He wasn’t interested in paying a visit to Halloween Town just yet. Besides, there were plenty of other perception-boosting spells he could pick from, right from the comfort of Gale House.

“Let me run a list of spells by you.” Ethan cleared his throat. “Bracelet… I really need to give you a name… Anyway, repeat that list for me.”

As the bracelet rattled off the list of perception spells that might merge with his cultivation ability, the scribe repeated them for Amelia to hear. She was always a wealth of knowledge, and hadn’t let him down yet. She nodded along the entire time, waiting for him to finish with the list of 20 before making her comments.

“Yeah, if we’re talking about bringing you out of a meditative state, we’re looking for something closer to awareness.” Amelia hummed to herself as she thought. “Two of those spells stand out. They’re both in the support mage category, and count as buffs. At Rank 1, they’re pretty brief, but I’m sure you’ll swap them to a channeling version, because you’re that way.”

“Spill the beans, lady!”

Amelia giggled politely, making a point to take a few bites of her food before she bothered responding. “Lesser Awareness, obviously, and Lesser Precognition. They’re both very weak perception abilities. The first one makes you more aware of your surroundings, while the second is commonly used to get people out of danger. Imagine a man being attacked by a goblin. The goblin swings a club, and the man moves a few inches to the right without his knowledge, avoiding being smashed in the head by said club.”

Ethan nodded. “Bracelet, can you show me those arrays?”

“No.”

“Just… ‘No?’”

“This unit doesn’t possess the means to project images.”

“Do I need a projector?” Ethan asked, feeling slightly incredulous. “You can scan things, right?”

“Those are different operations.”

“Need some help?” Amelia asked, shaking her head. She withdrew a few sheets of parchment from her bag and got to drawing. “You’re lucky I’m such a nerd about these spells. Support magic is cool.”

“Yeah, support magic is very cool,” Ethan agreed, rubbing his hands together. “Too few people are support magic fans.”

“Right?” Amelia finished off her drawings, labeling each. When Ethan reached out to grab them, she pulled them back. “You gotta let me watch, though.”

With a laugh, Ethan nodded eagerly. “Deal!”

Chapter 63

System Cultivation

Amelia might not have been good at the practical side of magic, if she was Ethan hadn’t seen much of it, but she was damn good at the theoretical side of it. She drew out the Lesser Precognition and Lesser Awareness spells with expert precision, making it easy for the scribe to incorporate them into his own system. Of course, the dining hall was hardly the best place to create spells, so they headed off to the nearest park for the bulk of the work.

“Looks like they’ll both work with Deep System Meditation.” Ethan looked upon his interface with pride. Everything had clicked together and he now had two spells to inspect.

“I’ll never get used to that.” Amelia let out a sigh. “It feels nothing like spellcrafting in my system. So, what are you waiting for? Read them out!”

Ethan nodded eagerly, summoning the first spell and reading it out for her to hear. It wasn’t encouraging that her face twisted into an expression of confused disgust.

[Deep System Projection(Mind)]

Mind Ring Synergy Ability

Generated By:

Deep System Meditation, Lesser Precognition

Description:

Project yourself into your cosmic system.

Effects:

Fall into your cosmic system so long as this ability is channeled.

Amelia waved her hand through the air. “Remove that one. Permanently.”

Looking at his companion with confusion, Ethan went back and read the description again. He wasn’t sure what a cosmic system was, but it didn’t seem all that bad. “Why? What’s wrong with this one?”

“That thing’s talking about going into your own soul, and I don’t know if you know much about soul magic, but it can go very wrong very fast.” Amelia let out a heavy sigh. The scribe could tell she went into talking him off the ledge. “Imagine your soul has a spinning top inside. It doesn’t actually, but stay with me. The top is spinning, and you go in and push it with your finger. Now the top is wobbling, and at any moment it might collapse. That’s your soul if you use that ability.”

Swallowing hard, Ethan nodded. He removed the ability from his list and did his best to forget all about it. “How about the next one?” he asked tentatively.

“Let’s hope you get something better…”

[System Cultivation(Mind)]

Mind Ring Synergy Ability

Generated By:

Deep System Meditation, Lesser Awareness

Description:

Enter a cultivation state, splitting your awareness into two halves. One half will dedicate itself to the cultivation effort, while the remainder is allocated to your motor and thought functions. While in this mode, you may build the strength of your Mind Ring by integrating mana from your soul.

Effects:

Enter a cultivation state.

Amelia clapped her hands in excitement before Ethan could even finish reading the entire description out. After he finished, he cast her a curious glance and raised an eyebrow. “How about this one? Will this one destroy my spinning top? I don’t know if you know, but apparently there’s a spinning top in my soul.”

Amelia just rolled her eyes, but a playful smile spread across her face. “This one looks completely fine and should be perfect for your intended use. I think you’ll be completely safe to give it a try.”

With the seal of approval given, Ethan slotted the spell into his mind ring and took a steady breath. The instant he used the ability, he was plunged into something that felt like frigid water. At first, his body spasmed as though responding to being dunked headfirst into a frozen lake. He looked at the world around him, seeing it as though through a sheer curtain that not only blocked most of his vision but also muted the sounds and downplayed the smells.

After a few awkward moments of probing around with his hands and hearing the distant giggles of Amelia, the scribe was slightly more used to the action. His reaction time was definitely slower and his thoughts moved at a crawl, but he could move around and interact with things just fine. More importantly, he could feel the energy gathering in his Mind Ring that was moving at just about the same speed as it would if he were using the base version of this ability.

“I think this might be working.” Ethan’s voice came out as an echoing thing, and he didn’t miss the strange slowness with which he had spoken. “Woah. Trippy.”

“Sounds like you’re a child learning to read for the first time.” Amelia leaned over, waving her hand in front of his face. “Are you truly in there?”

“I need to get used to this. Might take a while.”

But the message was clear. Ethan knew the best application for this ability. It was to fill the quiet moments of his day with cultivation and contemplation instead of emptiness. If he ever had a time when he had to walk from one point to another or if he was idly resting anywhere, there was no reason not to activate the ability. The only issue that he would hit was the fact that he would eventually run out of mana. At that point, he would swap the ability for Lesser Mana Siphon in order to replenish his stocks.

Overall, this was a vast increase to his available processing time per day.

“Thanks for the help.” Ethan had said it, but the words came out a bit more sheepish than he had expected.

“Any time. You should really try as many combinations as you can.”

Ethan nodded along. While that might be fun, his mind now firmly landed on the idea of pumping as much mana into his bracelet as possible. He had a few hours before his next class, so there was no point in doing much else than flooding the bracelet with his mana.

“Are you… going somewhere?” Amelia asked, watching as Ethan stood.

“Don’t you have class?”

Amelia looked around. “I know what you’re going to do.”

“I’ll walk you to class,” Ethan said, patting her on the shoulder. “And I’ll put mana in my bracelet along the way.”

Amelia clapped her hands again, whooping with excitement. “You don’t mind if I take notes, right?”

“Would you still take notes if I told you no?”

“That’s exactly right,” Amelia said, withdrawing writing material from her bag. “It’s just this way, if you wouldn’t mind. Starting the walk.”

Shaking his head, Ethan set off with his strange note-taking companion. The thing about his bracelet was that it wasn’t very good at pulling in mana from the air. The class he had scheduled today was actually Mana Control Foundations 1 with Professor Sally. In that subject, he knew he was better than most. He hadn’t started off that way, but with how much he interacted with mana, either taking it in to replenish his stock, to fill his rings, or to feed his bracelet, he now considered himself more than capable of getting the strange, mantis-like professor’s seal of approval.

“You’ve developed a very powerful technique.” Amelia studied him like a test subject. He could feel her magical senses pressed against him, hard enough to break the surface of the skin and observe the way his mana moved through his invisible channels. “This is from that woman from the Radiant Mana Sect, right?”

“Right.”

Amelia let out a low whistle. “You really hit on an interesting concept there.”

Ethan was already aware that what he did, intentional or otherwise, was pretty clever. “Taking the best pieces from the different systems just makes sense, right? I can combine any ability, skill, or spell from another class or system, and make it work for me.”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous.” Amelia sighed dramatically. “Why do the clueless ones always get the best stuff?”

Ethan barked a laugh. “But consider the weight that comes with the station.” He withdrew the tablet from his bag. “They want me to fix all this stuff. Including the stuff related to the individual system while I’m taking classes. Feels like my brain is gonna fry.”

“That’s true!”

Amelia was far too giddy about studying his mana processing technique, but apparently it wasn’t the technique itself that she was interested in. She was more curious about the way the bracelet interfaced with his body. According to her, she could feel the connection between it and him very closely. The people at the cultivation academy called the spaces in the body where mana moved “channels,” and Amelia claimed that the bracelet was effectively drilled into one of his channels in his arm. That actually gave him an idea. He was surprised he hadn’t thought about it before.

The problem with the lesser barrier spell was that it was effectively wasting mana. There was a vestigial part of it that had never truly been useful, just like the way he was currently using his technique. The lesser mana siphon ability was great at pulling mana in from the air, but it was undirected. He changed the way he was using it, thinking about the advice he had been given by Luna and making the process significantly more efficient. All it had to do was touch his soul, and then he could send it off to his left wrist through those channels to cut down on just a bit of time.

“Thanks for the demonstration,” Amelia said awkwardly. “See ya later, pal.”

“Alright, buddy.” Ethan waved as he turned away. He was already siphoning mana before losing sight of her. He shouted back, “later.”

Ethan put everything he had into creating the new processing block for his bracelet. He had mostly alleviated the issue of memory, but now he couldn’t see it becoming very useful unless the processing speed increased significantly. After creating the second processing block, he planned to make a third and maybe even a fourth. Recycling memory was easy enough, but waiting eight hours for a simple operation to complete wasn’t acceptable. This thing had to be snappy and responsive. It had to process vast amounts of information. Otherwise, he could simply do the work himself.

About a half hour before class started, outside of the Opaque Pearl Building 2, the bracelet finally spoke into his mind.

“Operation completed. Second Rank 1 Processing Block now running in parallel.”

“We multi-threading boys now,” Ethan said, rubbing his hands together. “Did this double your processing speed?”

“Correct. This unit can also switch between parallel and sequence mode at any time before or during an operation.”

Perfect. Now he wouldn’t be bogged down by the absurd calculation times. Well, even if it only took a half-hour to calculate something simple, it was better than the hour it took before. “How big of an increase are we talking on creation time for another Processing Block? Theorize, don’t do the calculation.”

“Time required should double.”

“Not bad. That’s still a hell of a lot of mana, but I think I can sleep through this class and still pass. Okay, don’t want to be late…”

After finding his seat, Ethan inspected the circuit’s description.

Circuit:

Memory Block (2 Units).

2x Processing Block (Rank 1).

Learning…

It was interesting to see that the screen represented the memory blocks and processing blocks in different ways. Perhaps that was because the memory blocks represented a singular unit, no matter how many he added, while the processing blocks were independent things. You can imagine a time when he had 10 or more processing blocks all working on different problems at the same time. If you didn’t need the information right away, it might be worth waiting and segmenting all of the operations. He found himself thinking more and more like the man he was back on Earth. This was a very computer-centric problem, and he couldn’t help but feel giddy approaching it. It was like he was building a new PC.

This time, he could actually download more RAM.

As expected, Professor Sally’s class fell in line with the way the other ones were going. She wanted to go back and reinforce the foundations of what they had learned in the first month of class. At first, Ethan found this approach to be slightly annoying, but now he realized it was just about the best way to make sure that those who had fallen behind could easily catch up. Of course, the scribe himself had no problem approaching the advanced techniques. The first topic they had covered in their class was broad mana control, which meant controlling a lot of mana in one’s body at the same time. Professor Sally added to the challenge of volume. She wanted them to move a lot of mana throughout their entire body at the same time.

Instead of selfishly taking this extra time to go and either cultivate or add mana to his bracelet, Ethan exhibited the core values of Gale House and helped everybody who was having trouble with their mana control. In his mind, this was more a problem of practice than anything else. To get good at controlling one’s mana, one only needed to practice for endless hours. As if to exemplify this point, the entire time he was coaching some of the lowest-rung students, he was adding mana to his bracelet. It seemed the more he performed the siphoning action, the more volume he could move.

Good. He would need it if he wanted this bracelet to eventually become useful.

Chapter 64

Time to be Farmers

Ethan spent ten mostly unbroken hours the rest of the day working on both his cultivation of his Mind Rings' depth and the additional processing block for his bracelet. He wasn't sure what the circuit on the underside of the artifact looked like, but he knew that it was growing in both power and usefulness, and his technique only improved as he went. It took him seven continuous hours to gain another processing block, but the one that came after felt far more difficult. He ended up eating dinner with both Amelia and Barry that night and fell asleep sometime around 1 a.m.

Whatever Barry was working on wasn’t ready to see that night or the next morning. But Ethan had bigger things to worry about.

“Crap!” The scribe rolled out of his bed, bleary-eyed and stumbling as he went for the door. “I’m gonna be late.”

“Don’t forget a snack!” Avalara shouted after him, gesturing to something someone had prepared sitting on the table.

Ethan skidded in the yard, rushing back in before dashing to the yard to activate System Leap. With only five minutes until the meeting of the Anomalous Materials Group, there was no way he was going to make it. Accounting for traveling through gates, navigating crowded streets, and his inability to rely on his jumping ability within the Silver City, Ethan was happy to only be 15 minutes late. As expected, Alex, Luna, and Finn were all standing, already deep in discussion about something. The scribe approached tentatively, sticking to the edges of the circular room and trying to gauge the tone of their speech. They seemed mad.

"Well, look who decided to show up," Alex pointed an accusatory finger at Ethan and described. He felt his blood run cold. "What do you think? You can just show up late, Mr. Fancy Pants, solve all the anomalies, and put us all out of work?"

"Whose fault is it that you're being expelled?" Luna's attention had been locked onto Ethan, but the stars in her eyes took on a strangely reddish tinge as they turned to seek Alex. "Perhaps if you had done as I said and taught some classes, they wouldn't be tossing you out."

"Well, guess what, lady? Now you're in charge of this cluster." Alex folded his arms, seeming unwilling to accept the blame for whatever was going on.  

Ethan was confused. He didn't understand all the details about what a person needed to do to stay within the academy forever, but he did know that as a student, if they didn't perform well, they would be expelled. Expulsion didn't necessarily carry a negative connotation. It mostly meant that the person could no longer stay on the planet and had to seek their life out in the wider universe.

“Someone want to fill me in?” Ethan asked.

Finn pointed at Alex. “He messed up. Didn’t do enough to be considered valuable to the academy, and they’re booting him a year early.”

Alex just grumbled.

“Which means we’re down a man.” Ethan bit the inside of his cheek. “That’s bad, right?”

Luna shrugged. “Not really. His numbers have been down recently. He knows what he needs to do.”

“Sometimes long-term academy residents get this way. Whoever is in charge decided that Alex needs purpose in his life.” Finn seemed amused by that. “I tend to agree.”

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.” Alex finally sighed, standing and shaking his limbs out. His posture changed completely. Vanished was the appearance of a child throwing a tantrum. In an instant, he looked like a leader again. “Here’s the deal, folks. I’m bored as hell and I hate it here. Our benefactor gave me the chance to make a difference within the system. Erradon, specifically. This is a post that I’m happy to take, as it involves a lot of research. Since Ethan likely doesn’t know, my family comes from Erradon.”

“There he is.” Luna’s eyes shifted to a pleasant sprawl of light blue stars.

"This does not affect the Anomalous Materials Group. I want to make that very clear." Alex looked between each member of his group and nodded. "We have active Gates between here and all the Middle Realm planets, so I can come back and visit and even help if need be. The only thing they're taking away from me is my permanent status here.”

“Is this the part where you tell Ethan the bad news?” Luna asked, giggling.

“You’re coming with me, kid.”

Ethan choked on nothing. “W-what?”

"That's right. Pack your bags, put your head between your knees, and kiss your butt goodbye." Alex had a devious smile on his face. "We're going to be farmers, apparently."

After a few tense moments where Ethan could only sputter a few half words, Luna finally broke.  

"He's messing with you. You're not going permanently. There's been a request from the Lord of Erradon. Apparently, your ability to close anomalies permanently has reached some pretty high-station people.”

“The part they left out is that we’re all going.” Finn was quick to add that. “They tried to just snag you, but our benefactor denied the request. When they tried to escalate it, a certain divine figure stepped in on your behalf.”

“Who?” Ethan asked.

“You’ve gained favor with the Lord and Lady, apparently.” Alex offered an exasperated shrug. “How in the many hells you did that is beyond me, but good thing. The Anomalous Materials Group officially has some weight to throw around. We demanded a mountain of coins for the job.”

“And a house for Alex,” Luna was quick to add.

“A mansion, really.” Alex puffed with pride. “And a wizard’s tower. They’re working on it now, apparently. Some two-bit town that’s barely just put down a packed dirt road called Stoutforge.”

Shaking away his confusion, Ethan finally came to his senses. “When do we go?”

“Should just be a one day affair.” Alex released a pained sigh. “That’s when I’m moving, anyway.”

“We wanted to check with you, first.” Luna looked to Ethan. She was perhaps the only one of the group that viewed him with respect.

Ethan wouldn’t deny that he liked her. Luna was beyond insightful, especially when it came to mana processing. But he couldn’t deny that he needed the talents of two people present. “I’ll go, but I need help with something.”

“Big man! Asking a favor of the group!” Alex shouted with a laugh. He deflated a moment later, all bravado gone. “Wussup?”

Ethan cleared his throat, trying to figure out the best way to save this. "I've discovered a spatial anomaly that I need help with. I'm fairly certain I can siphon the mana from the outside, but Luna and Finn’s help in that regard would be very useful."

“Oh, I noticed you didn’t mention me. You’ve all forgotten me already, I see.” Alex pouted.

“No, I need your magical knowledge.” Ethan said it plainly, not trying to inflate the man’s ego. This was a pragmatic situation centered around the core of the Anomalous Materials Group. “The Spatial Anomaly is very weird, and as I’m sure you know that level of magic is outside of my ability. Even at Rank 0, it looks… Well, I’ve never felt like throwing up more than when looking into space contracting and expanding.”

“You’re serious?” Alex asked, blinking rapidly. “Looks like we’re going on a field trip.”

Whether Ethan realized it or not, he had just given the anomalous materials group something interesting to focus on as the fate of their leader hung in the balance. Of course, there was nothing they could do if it was his time to go. He couldn't remain at the academy forever if he didn't want to teach, and the scribe understood the idea that complacency and laziness would settle in after so long doing the same thing. Perhaps going to Erradon would give him meaning in his life.

Since everyone in the group had a different way to travel, they endeavored to arrive at the site of the anomaly in a few hours. Of course, Ethan wanted to go grab breakfast, and Finn had something to take care of back at his own academy, but thanks to the interlinked gate system, it would not take them long to arrive. For his part, Ethan intended to grab a bit of monster meat within the Silver City, and then head directly to the site.

Of course, the entire time he worked on adding the last processing block to his bracelet for the time being with four, he was confident it could handle a great many tasks that he wanted it to complete. He selected some Hydra meat, which was incredibly expensive, and processed all the mana it provided him before injecting it directly into his mind ring. Then he headed back to Gale House and made for the spatial anomaly with his System Leap ability. He was the first to arrive. He sat on the edge of that gully and looked down at the contracting and expanding space in bewilderment. It threatened to upend his launch, but he held firm.

While he waited, Ethan finished off his last Processing Block and breathed a sigh of relief. They were getting harder by the block, and he didn’t look forward to making the next one.

“Operation completed. This unit has a suggestion to offer.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“With 4 Processing Blocks, this unit took the liberty of running calculations. Increasing the rank of a Processing Block will provide another doubling of processing speed. The operation time for upgrading a block is now lower than creating a new block, and the operation time should remain constant for all 4 blocks.”

Ethan’s brows peaked. “That’s some excellent news. So, we’re ranking the blocks?”

“That is correct. This unit has analyzed the process. Compared to the method employed to add depth to Attribute Rings, increasing the rank of a Block shouldn’t be different.”

“Very nice work. Could you please run an analysis of the anomaly?”

“Anything specific?”

“I’m interested in the composition of the central area. Maybe a way to get in without getting crushed or expanded.”

“Starting operation…”

Ethan only got to sit there for a few moments before he heard a voice from behind him. It nearly made him jump out of his skin. When he whirled around, he spotted Alex laughing to himself.

"Well, I'll be damned. You've got yourself a mind spirit, huh? Why do you have all the luck?" 

Ethan pointed his finger in the air, shaking his head. "It isn't technically a mind-spirit. It's more like a computer back home if you're familiar with the concept from technological worlds. If not, then just think about mana circuits."

Alex came alongside him and sat on the edge of the gully. His eyes were locked on the spatial anomaly below, and it was clear to see he was considering the best approach forward. "It doesn't really matter what you could call it. Having someone to help you sift through a ton of information is incredibly useful. Is it any good at it? I mean, it doesn't take a genius to see the insane artifact on your wrist there, so assume the bracelet is powerful.”

The only thing Ethan could offer now was a shrug. The jury was still out as to whether the bracelet was actually useful. "It grows as I feed it mana, so right now I'm simply working on getting it to actually process information. I had a pretty simple cross-referencing job that took eight hours to do.”

“Yikes.” And then Alex went silent.

Ethan felt the awkward atmosphere intensify. Alex might’ve been able to pass it off as his concentrated effort directed at the anomaly, but it was more than that. The air was heavy with the implications of the mage leaving the group. It was a loose organization, but he was its leader. It didn’t matter if he had wanted the job or not, there he was. Suddenly, he would vanish from that structure.

“I wouldn’t want to leave.” That was all Ethan could think about. Staying with what was familiar. But was that what he really wanted? His entire time in college showed him that he didn’t want the comfortable path. Now at the academy, he realized how important discomfort was for growth. “But I also don’t like getting out of bed when the weather turns cold.”

Alex nodded. “No need for a pep talk. Before you came in, Luna and Finn were going on about how this was a great chance for me. They got through to me, but then I lost my temper. That’s why you heard us screaming so much.”

Ethan didn’t have anything else to say about that. It wasn’t his place to tell Alex how to live his life, and it wasn’t as though he had a choice. He had gone down this path because of inaction, and the only way to make his situation better was to take control. Most of all, it was clear the last thing he wanted to discuss was his future.

“How experienced are you with Spatial magic?” Ethan asked.

“Not very. We’re talking about a school of magic reserved for people above Rank 5. Even then, this is a very specialized field.” Alex scratched his chin. “I can’t imagine getting into the center to do your thing.”

“The good news is, I have all the books in the Gale House library right here.” Ethan patted his bracelet. “Except my bracelet is busy finding a way to the middle… And also it isn’t very good at searching for information yet.”

“Sweet, so we have nothing. Doesn’t matter, we’ll find a way through.”

Ethan kicked his legs over the edge a few times, eventually fishing in his bag to withdraw some dried fruit. It was the snack that Avalara had put out for him that morning. “Want some? My ghost got them for me.”

Alex looked between Ethan and the hunk of dried fruit. He eventually shrugged and laughed. “Sure.”

Chapter 65

Spatial Magic Anomaly

It took a while for the others to show up. To Ethan’s surprise, his bracelet came back with a report. He was less surprised at the content of the report. It was impossible for it to calculate a safe approach with its current processing power, meaning he had to work on the ranking trick if he wanted to get it to work fast enough to keep up with the constantly shifting landscape.

When Finn and Luna showed up, they both marveled at the anomaly.

“This is the kind we wouldn’t mess with.” Luna leaned a bit too close to the cliff. Finn grabbed her by the back of the robe as the anomaly expanded, nearly encompassing her.

Alex waved his hand at that, shaking his head. “Not much to worry about. Spatial magic can’t split a person apart as far as I know.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Finn asked, giving Luna a concerned look.

“Same old.” Alex shrugged, finally getting to his feet. “Decrease the overall mana on the outside, make sure we’re balancing it as we go. Once we whittle away the excess mana, we’ll see the true effect of this bad boy.”

“Easy enough.” Ethan finally rose, finding a small twinge of pain in his back. He stretched it out.

“You need to start some martial arts.” Luna glared at Ethan. “That was absolutely pathetic.”

“If you’ve got time to yap, you’ve got time to siphon!” Alex shouted. He clapped twice. “Let’s go!”

Unlike the last time the group had tackled an anomaly, the water anomaly, this time Ethan felt as though he could help quite a lot. Thanks to the Mana Siphon ability, he could process the Spatial magic without fear of hurting himself. But as he worked, mainly working alongside Alex, he learned a lot about what Spatial magic was. After all, the books he had access to were vague.

Spatial magic was the mastery of the size of a certain area. The most common use for this school of magic was the creation of magical storage bags. A person could have a small bag in their possession that could only hold a football, but when imbued with Spatial magic, they could fit a fridge. Assuming the entrance was large enough, anyway. But that wasn’t the end of this school.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of combat Spatial Mages. Imagine you’re fighting someone, standing a foot away, and suddenly you’re two miles away.” Alex let out a nervous laugh. “They didn’t teleport you. They just turned the square foot of space you were just standing on into square miles.”

“Good God.” Ethan let out an equally nervous laugh. “That’s frightening.”

“Yeah, but casting these spells is a pain. I heard of people who use it, but the application of those spells is so rough. You’re more likely to see this in an enchantment.” Alex took a moment, the visible stream of mana he had been siphoning cutting off for a moment. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with it.”

“That’s the plan.” Ethan thought about what his plan was, but he didn’t have much. He was going to take the Spatial sigil and weave it into another spell. But what spell would that be? “I’ll be honest. I’m kinda worried after fighting that dragon.”

Alex blinked a few times. “The what-now?”

“I might have forgotten to tell you about something.”

“A big something!” Alex shouted. “You don’t tussle with a dragon and keep that on the inside.”

“Really? My professor made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal.” Ethan scratched his head, once again being reminded of his overly long hair. He went on to explain the story, which ignited a fire in Alex’s belly.

“I don’t think I’ve spent my time in the academy well. You haven’t finished out your first semester, and you’re dodging dragons, scooping up artifacts, wooing the ladyfolk.”

“I don’t remember wooing anyone.”

“I’m adding that part for personal motivation.” Alex breathed deeply, then exhaled as he looked up at the sky. “I gotta go find my own dragons. No better place for finding dragons than Erradon.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Home to the Crystal Dragonflight. You can spit in any direction and hit a dragon.”

“And… we’re going there to fix an anomaly?” Ethan asked, officially not having fun with the idea of visiting Erradon.

“He’s exaggerating!” Finn shouted from afar. A card, which had been magically rotating in front of him a moment before vanished. “There are a lot of dragons, but not so many that you can just spit to find them.”

“Close enough,” Alex grumbled.

The group attacked the problem of the Spatial anomaly the way they handled every other anomaly. No matter the quality of one, the first step was always to bleed away the massive amount of aligned mana that had collected in an area. Once that was converted, they would attack the center mass and reduce it to nothing. Well, mostly nothing. During normal circumstances, they could wither it away to the point where it would drain to nothing. But Ethan wanted to see what he could do with some Spatial magic.

For fun, of course.

The group descended into the gully below, finding the anomaly reduced to a fraction of what it once was. Instead of occupying the entire area, it was now confined to contracting and expanding within a ten-square-foot section of dusty ground. The bracelet had no useful offerings, even after finishing a few calculations. For now, it was down to the old-fashioned way of doing things.

[Anomalous X-13 System Variant Emulated]

ERROR: You have emulated an anomalous system. This variant of the X-13 system is incomplete and mostly non-functional. Your interaction with this system will be limited more than normal. Please use your Celestial Pen to resolve enough errors to stabilize the anomaly.

Spatial Magic Anomaly

Difficult Rank: Extremely Easy (Rank 1)

Known Errors: INCOMPLETE

System Alignment: X-13

Anomaly Designation: Nascent Spatial Magic Font

Current Status: Dangerous.

“Ah, that might be an issue.” Ethan looked upon the warping space, wincing as he watched it shift to a more turbulent state. “Looked like a Rank 0 from afar, but this is a Rank 1 anomaly.”

“Seems potent,” Finn added, looking at it from various angles. “This thing is following a pattern.”

The group observed. Medium, small, big, bigger, tiny. And so on, the pattern went. Ethan spent a few hours mapping the functionality of the anomaly out. It was pretty rough, but a few facts helped him figure out what the best way to patch the bug. First came the state of the anomaly. Whatever this thing was supposed to be, persisting for so long wasn’t right.

Ethan first fixed the way the anomaly ate nearby mana, converting it to Spatial mana. That part was absolutely out of control. Next came the pattern of resizing, which the scribe found represented by something he couldn’t stop thinking about as a mana circuit. It wasn’t, but the way the sigils were arranged reminded him just a bit about programming, if not a tad simple. It was mostly a circle of logic that brought it back to the same thing: endlessly looping between sizes.

“This is weird.” Ethan sighed as he projected the X-13 array within the anomaly. Well, he used his mana to project a small bit of the array, the section representing the looping area. “I know what this does. But, why?”

“You’re asking a guy who uses cards?” Finn asked.

“Magic isn’t my thing.” Luna waved the question away, unwilling to entertain it.

That just left Alex and Ethan to riddle out what was going on. Changing the array to be nonsense wouldn’t work. The system wanted him to revert it to the intended functionality. But what functionality would a randomly resizing bit of area be?

“Gotta go back to the nature of spatial magic.” Alex cracked his knuckles. He pointed at a few sigils in the projected array. “Assume the pattern is out of order. What if we’re supposed to go from big to small?”

“Or small to big?” Luna asked.

“Either. It doesn’t matter.” Alex poked his finger at the sigils in sequence.

“Sure. Let’s move these around and… Just pray?” Ethan asked with a shrug. He figured it was better than doing nothing. Changing the order of operations was as easy as swapping where the connections led. The anomaly flickered as he worked, the Grand System processing his request for a change. The anomaly cycled from big to small, resulting in… No update.

“I think the report updated,” Ethan muttered, summoning the anomaly screen again. He focused on the status.

Current Status: Unstable.

“Good news is that we upgraded to ‘unstable’ from ‘dangerous.’”

“Still looks dangerous to me.” Luna wouldn’t get close to the anomaly as it popped from big, then shrunk. “What would the purpose of taking a small area and making it large be?”

Ethan shook his head, already rewiring it for the opposite effect. “No clue, but we’ll try sending it the other way just in case.”

The Anomalous Materials Group watched as Ethan did his work. It was nothing like the way they handled anomalies, and thus provided them with much entertainment. But Alex was the only one who truly followed what was going on. He was at a high enough rank, with enough background in spellcrafting and mana control to recognize when magical elements were rearranged.

Everything clicked together a bit too fast.

The moment he finished swapping the order of the array, the Grand System accepted it. But Ethan had little time to appreciate the results. Before he could even think to react, Luna had already thrown him over her shoulder, jumping on her flying sword and darting for the cliffs. Apparently, both Finn and Alex had already vacated the area, and found similar perches on the cliffs above.

Although he wanted to puke, Ethan gawked at the area below. “What is going on down there?”

“Dungeon.” Luna said, breathless. “You could lose some weight, by the way. Flying on a sword is hard enough, but carrying another person… especially one so heavy isn’t easy.”

“Seriously? Big to small makes a dungeon?” Ethan asked. “Did I seriously just make a dungeon?”

“You helped the system make a dungeon.” Alex clarified, jogging over and looking down with excitement. “You rarely see them form!”

The scene below wasn’t that interesting. The pattern repeated, increasing in speed by the moment. Something glowing had formed in the center of the confusing space, but Ethan turned his attention to the completion message for just a moment.

[Dungeon Spatial Compression Anomaly Repaired]

You have repaired an anomaly known to the Grand System. Please continue to resolve anomalies.

Reward:

Increased breadth and depth of one Attribute Ring of your choice.

175 coins.

“Dungeon Spatial Compression.” Ethan read the words from the title, still marveling at the sight below. “Feels like a lot of energy, too.”

“The birth of a new dungeon, isn’t that a sight?” Alex asked with a sigh. “Let’s watch.”

It was apparently something worth seeing. Since the Spatial Compression process seemed to be the last step in creating a dungeon, it didn’t last long. From absolutely nothing, an archway formed from rough stone. In the center of the stone formation, energy gathered until a portal, not dissimilar to the portal in the center of a Gate, appeared. The group watched with something like silent reverence until the process was complete.

What Ethan was left with was a decent amount of coins, and at least two Sigils to work with. Just like the Gravity Font, he could produce an “increase” and “decrease” sigil. For a moment, the scribe considered calling them “enbiggen” and “ensmallen,” but the thought was a bit too silly for something so interesting.

“Who wants to dive into a dungeon?” Alex asked, wiggling his eyebrows.