It hurt like hell, but not as bad as the last ti. I forced myself to start eating more of the food in the room, giving myself a break to try to reduce the pain. I was sure this level would be manageable, even if I didn’t like it. Slowly, the pain receded as I forced the food down. My brain finally cleared enough for to check my new-level situation.
I had shot up to level one twenty-two, which was great and all, but I was now pretty sure I knew what the new modifier was. At every ten levels, the experienced needed for the next level was increased by a factor of ten. This just wasn’t sothing I could keep up with. I had found a sweet spot, at the very least, where the modifiers hurt, but they didn’t hurt enough to make stop. I could push this a little further by adjusting all the modifiers so I was only using the ones with the largest multiplier, but it still wouldn’t be enough to push that far beyond where I was.
What I really needed was base dungeons that were harder. I did have access to the Basents of Shadow still, but as I had done no fighting at all the first ti I was there, or even really explored it beyond what Elody had done, I wasn’t sure if I could tackle it alone. Even with my increase in levels, she still seed to have been far beyond , but there was only one way to be sure. I booted up the simulator, cleared all the modifiers, and started the dungeon.
I started back on the sa floor where I had felt the dungeon begin the first ti. This ti, I could feel all the shadows around without any of Elody’s magic to keep them at bay. I was surrounded and the darkness was pressing in on . It only now occurred to I had no way to counter that issue, so without a better idea of how to handle the problem I started swinging my mallet at every shadow that felt like it was moving. I managed to catch a few, but not nearly enough, as several claws raked their way down my back.
I scread out in pain, and my mana began to rapidly drain and my skills tried to compensate for the damage. Several more shadows used that mont to attack from all sides. I had no chance at this fight at all. Within monts, I felt my whole body torn to pieces, and I was back at the nu screen, trying to force the horrible mory from my mind. The difference in power between myself and Elody was now more evident than ever. I wasn’t remotely able to fight anything on her level.
Steeling my mind as best I could, I moved myself onto other topics. I had attribute and skill points that needed to be assigned, and I’d unlocked a few more new things as well. I had sub-attributes for heat and slashing resistances and one under disease for sothing called withering poison. I’d also gained a sub-attribute for generalized visual: night vision. Crossing level one hundred had done nothing to further increase my attribute caps, so I instead maxed out night vision and split the rest across my resistances.
Skills were an entirely different matter. Despite the constant cycling of my core, none of my mana orbs had ranked up, so I was still stuck with what I had there. Considering what had just happened, it was probably ti for to stop ignoring my elental orb. I unlocked Fundantal Forces and moved it up to twenty-five ranks. That unlocked two tier-two mana skills, and they were different from anything I had seen so far.
Mana Orb
Elental
Tier
2
Orb Rank
Skill
Elental Focus
Requirent
Elental Focus (25)
Only a single rank may be invested into this skill and doing so will prompt the host to pick an elent, locking this orb into a specialization of that elent. Once this is done, Elental Mixture may no longer be selected.
Skill Rank
Mana Orb
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Elental
Tier
2
Orb Rank
Skill
Elental Mixture
Requirent
Elental Focus (25)
Only a single rank may be invested into this skill and doing so will allow the host to use Fundantal Forces to mix different elents together. Once this is done, Elental Focus may no longer be selected.
Skill Rank
I had a feeling that most people choose elental mixture so as not to limit themselves. The good news for is that I was not most people. I wasn’t nearly so limited in what I could do with mana orbs. I quickly picked Elental Focus and looked at my options.
AirEarthFireWaterAether
So, it was a classical elent situation. I was reasonably sure I could work with this, with one slight problem. I had no idea what aether could be. It had long ago been removed as any real scientific concept on Earth. I understand the other four weren’t exactly elents either, but guessing what they represented was easy enough. Looking at what aether could be through the scope of what was missing could have an answer, but that also had a ton of options.
Where did electrical energy fall in these elents? Magnetism? Then, there were even more concepts I could pigeonhole into a classical elent list ranging from nuclear energy to antimatter reactions. Delaying this wouldn’t help anything either, as even if there was soone who could answer my questions anywhere, I certainly didn’t have access to them.
I had started this with the intention of wanting access to so sort of light magic, so after debating between air, fire, and aether, I selected fire. I then moved on to the second orb and repeated the process, this ti choosing aether. Strangely, neither of these had any other lines connecting from them to anything else. As of now, it looked like tier one was their max. I’d have to ask Elicec about that, as there had to be sothing I was missing.
Not knowing what else to spend skill points on at the mont, I finally decided to max out my speed reading as well, and interestingly, with the four bonus ranks I had gained in it, I was allowed to go above twenty-five up to twenty-nine.
With nothing else I could do productive at the mont other than sleep, and I didn’t consider that productive enough just now, I decided to put my new reading ranks to the test. Once I returned to Earth, I had no idea if I’d ever be in a place like this again, and there were a few things I still wanted to read up on while I still could.
As soon as I read the first ten books in under an hour, I made another decision to max out ntal training as well. I may as well stretch my abilities in every way I can. My first focus was on the concepts of elents and how they had been defined here. Sohow, they had mixed a classical understanding with a sowhat modern understanding. They know of many other forces that existed but defined them as traits of the main four, and anything they couldn’t agree on a placent for ended up under aether. Things like electricity all fell under air as it was considered tied to lightning. Magnetism fell under earth due to the naturally magnetic rocks. What I was pretty sure was a description of an antimatter/matter reaction fell under aether.
What I didn’t understand was why the System had gone along with this. Considering its interactions with , it certainly knew better. Did it, though? Was it possible I was the only source it currently had on these new ideas? Did that an it was currently testing if the things I knew were actually truths or just nonsense my own world believed? Had I been assuming the System had more knowledge than it did?
That line of thought had the potential to be a giant problem. If I was just a lab rat in a new series of experints for an unfeeling multiversal-level artificial intelligence, there was no way I could assu I was actually in any way safe during these. It may not care at all about the outco, so much as it sees there is an outco.
A new and even more terrifying question occurred to . Was this just Roko's basilisk co to life? This didn’t seem exactly like I would expect a lifeti of torture to be, but it was also possible I wasn’t the target, and this was just what happened to so people when the integration occurred, but no, the brothers seed to disprove that idea. They weren’t tortured, though their family was, and l seed to believe that their chance eting with was the only reason they were still alive.
This thought experint was going to get nowhere, much like the original one itself; it was just sothing that ultimately didn’t matter. It was either true or it wasn’t, and no amount of existential dread affected that in any way, so it was best to operate as though this was all what it seed on the surface. I was reminded of the similar thoughts I had about my own sanity when this all started. Was this just a recurring thought that would find a new way to worm itself into my mind?
The aether that makes up the space between all things is what bonds the universes together. Altering these bonds in any way can produce both explosive and implosive reactions. It is critical when using aether as a source of magical energy that the user be aware of the damage they can do to not only their target but also the unintended consequences to themselves and those around them. One must never forget the folly of Selmas, the grand wizard of Trelina who, in a desperate attempt to slay an invading army of titans, not only turned all the oxygen in their lungs into water, he did it to himself and the entire planet.
An excerpt from Aether, the Elent of Danger by Henjen Klank.
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