“So far, you’ve only been exposed to Alteration magic by reaching into possible futures, right? I believe I’ve given you a very light amount of information about how attunents work, but it was quite shallow. Before I really get into details, do you have any other knowledge of shaping?” asked Ella, giving a curious look as she found a comfortable place to sit. I looked around the empty chamber on the top floor of Ella’s house, thinking about my answer as I tried to find a place for to sit.
Ella seed to notice what I was looking for, and waved her hand at the ground near my feet. A chair that I vaguely rembered being stored downstairs in a storage room suddenly appeared right next to . I gave Ella a grateful smile, and she gave a friendly wink as I sat down.
I focused on Ella’s question, before I shook my head. “I’m basically clueless about what shaping does, apart from the tiline trick and the fact that attunents let you turn stuff into whatever you’re attuned with.”
Ella fell into thought as she processed my answer. “That’s probably a good thing, honestly. I’ve heard from the other shapers that plenty of new apprentices co in with the idea that a shaper is basically a spellcaster, which is fundantally wrong. Sadly, since there aren’t many shapers in the city, kids don’t really get much exposure to our abilities, which ans they don’t know what to expect.” Ella snorted. “Completely ridiculous. Spellcasters and shapers are as different as mathematicians and artists. They have very little in common beyond the fact that both use mana, much like how mathematicians and artists both use paper and ink. That’s about it as far as similarities go.”
Ella frowned. “Let’s see… you should already have a rough idea how tiline manipulation works, and I’ll teach you more in depth about it later. But right now, I want to focus on attunents. Do you mind if I use my mind-related attunent on you? It’s impossible to get precise enough to read soone’s thoughts, or do anything that invades your privacy like that, but I can inspire unnatural fluctuations in mood, in addition to ‘touching’ your thoughts, if that makes sense. My headache-related ability is basically like sticking my finger into your thoughts and stirring them as violently as I can, but what I want to do here is just let you experience the lightest ‘touch’ I can manage. I think it’ll help you build a better idea of what an attunent feels like, which will be helpful for you. If possible, I’d like to help you form your attunent today, and then I can start teaching you how to improve it later.”
“Go ahead.”
“All right. Just try to be alert, and I’ll ‘touch’ your thoughts a little bit.”
Ella started to gain a sort of hazy expression, as she stared at my face with a mixture of sleepiness and concentration. A few monts passed, and then I felt sothing at the edge of my mind. It felt sort of like soone blowing the dust off of a countertop… in my thoughts. I also got the feeling that I could swat the ‘touch’ away using my Willpower, if I wanted to. Since I knew it was Ella, I decided not to resist the external influence, and I felt the sense of soone ‘touching’ my mind deepen for a mont. It was an incredibly strange experience, and felt very different from the mind-crushing pull of the ocean from my previous world.
“I feel it,” I said.
“Good,” said Ella, grinning as the feeling withdrew from my mind. “This is what my ntal attunent feels like. Every single attunent will feel differently, because every single attunent is different. However, at the very least, try to rember the feeling of my mana as it made contact with you. Did you get any sensation of the mana behind what I was doing?”
I tried to rember if I had sensed the mana behind Ella’s attunent, and I was surprised to realize that I had. It had been subtle, but if I trawled back through my mories, I could distinctly sort out the sensation of the alteration essence when she used her attunent on , and also sort out the mana as well. It was as if her alteration essence was a weaver, knitting the mana in its surroundings into an incredibly specific shape.
“I think that your altera… ah, I an… your shaping ability was… shaping the mana in its surroundings, right? It was essentially making the mana in its area fit a certain pattern. And the reason you were able to do so was because you had a really strong image of what that ‘pattern’ was? I imagine that’s what an attunent is, at its core.”
“Pretty close. An attunent isn’t just a ntal image. You’re literally taking so of the shaping essence in your body, and remolding it to fit a certain shape or image. That way, you have a ‘reference’ when you try to shape your surroundings. When you remold your surroundings using general shaping, you’re using an alternate tiline as a very clumsy reference image to tell the mana in your surroundings, as well as reality itself, what shape it needs to take. However, there is only one ‘real’ tiline that we live in, and every other tiline is more of a… vague, shadowy ‘could have been’ tiline that splits off from the real world we live in. If that makes sense. Attunent-based shaping is where you create that image inside of your essence instead, and then force reality to bend to your will.”
“I see,” I said. “So it’s all about having a good ntal image of what’s there, and what I want to change?”
I was starting to get a suspicion about why the ‘alternate tiline’ explanation rubbed the wrong way. I didn’t know if my idea was correct or not, so I would keep quiet and experint so on my own, but I had a sneaking suspicion that ‘alternate tilines’ either didn’t exist, or were completely unneeded for general shaping. One could probably get the sa, or better, results using a ntal image for general shaping that didn’t include alternate tiline at all.
Of course, I had no idea if this was correct or not, so I decided to stay quiet for now. I could test things on my own later.
Heedless of my internal thoughts, Ella continued with her explanation.
“Yes, attunent shaping is all about what image you form. This is why shaping can be excellent for fighting, or it can also be terrible for fighting. General shaping, the art of reaching into other tilines to bring aspects of them into our world, is incredibly inconsistent, since the nature of general shaping is so dependent on its environnt. However, your attunent is easy to form, and is completely unrelated to your environnt. Which makes it several tis easier to use in battle, but only if you have an attunent that’s actually useful in combat.
“Now, what I want you to do is start focusing on a ntal image of what kind of attunent you want. You’ll need to have a clear understanding of it, and the better you understand it, the easier it will be for you to use your attunent.” Her tone took on a note of warning.
“Furthermore, don’t try to use a substance that you don’t want to interact with. A big part of growing your attunent is interacting with whatever you based your attunent on. Since I chose to use orthanoid minds as the basis for my attunent, I spent quite a bit of ti interacting with people, getting to know them and how they think because it was what suited the best. I spent ti getting people’s permission to ‘touch’ their thoughts, and even give people mild headaches, in order to better increase my attunent. I even managed to experint so on a few Orukthyri minds, when I got trapped during one of my journeys to the surface and needed a way to escape. Whatever you base your attunent on, if you want to improve it, you will need to interact with the substance or idea you based your attunent on.
“I know you wanted to use either the ocean or madness as the basis for your ability. If you haven’t changed your mind, you will need to either interact with mad people, or the ocean. There is an asylum in a nearby cavern, which would let you interact with mad people. If you want to interact with the ocean, that would be much harder, but you can probably do sothing with the town’s river, even if it won’t be perfect.
“Then, once you’ve chosen your image, start to condense your shaping essence into a copy of that image. The more detailed it is, the easier it will be to use in the future.”
I gleaned down at my lake-gazer’s dress, wondering if it counted as an ‘ocean’ for the purposes of my attunent. Then, I chuckled to myself.
In a way, an attunent was kind of like a keyword, as far as I could tell. At least, that was my assumption based on how I was interpreting Ella’s words. Whenever I interacted with the image I ford my attunent, it would improve, giving a stronger and more reliable tool for fighting in the future. Similarly, whenever I got in contact with the ‘idea’ a keyword was based on, it would temporarily power up, boosting my ability as long as I was near the relevant keyword.
Part of wondered if Eluxia, or whoever had designed the keyword abilities of the Market, had taken inspiration from a magic system like this one while designing everything. It was hard to say what had happened in the Market before its fall, but it was hard not to notice certain similarities.
At the sa ti, I had a sudden, random thought.
What would happen if I used the ocean from my previous life as my ‘attunent?’
In my previous world, the laws of physics had been completely different. The way magic worked, the technology of the people who had lived on the islands, the creatures of the ocean… all of them had, at best, only been loosely similar to this world.
What would happen if I just… used the ocean from the islands as my ‘ntal image’ for my attunent? I already had experience using it as the image for my runes, after all, and I was pretty sure I could reshape the ntal image a bit and recycle it.
So part of my enhanced instincts related to alteration essence started… tugging at . It was the most clearly I had ever felt my ‘extre affinity’ giving a sort of… innate, instinctive understanding of what I was trying to do. I was distinctly certain that my idea was possible. Even without the help of the Market’s System, I would be able to force the laws of physics and reality in this world to temporarily take a completely different form by using my alteration essence.
The nature of alteration essence was to alter. It could alter not just mana, but even the laws of reality itself.
However, the laws of physics and reality, unsurprisingly, were quite resistant to change. I would probably need hundreds of tis my current alteration essence storage if I wanted to actually change the laws of reality, even temporarily. However, if I got strong enough, I was fairly certain it was even possible to permanently alter the laws of reality in small, specific ways, creating little areas where gravity, matter, and physics all worked completely differently from the rest of the world.
However, if I did that I would be fighting against the laws of this dinsion every single ti I tried to change them. If I ford my attunent based on the ocean from the islands, I would have an incredibly hard ti using my alteration essence right now, even with my near-perfect instincts for how alteration worked and my Grade 7 Alteration Essence stat. I would also have a much harder ti growing my attunent, since I would be completely unable to interact with the ocean from the islands here. I would be able to make contact with the city river, but that was only a poor imitation of the ocean my attunent would be based off of.
However, I did file away the fact that it was possible to use the laws of a completely different dinsion as a basis for my shaping, even if there were several practical issues I would need to overco first.
Then, I started focusing on the image of water itself. We didn’t have access to any oceans unless we went to the surface, and I wanted to be as strong as possible before we went to the wastes. But we did have quite a large river that flowed right next to our town. Water wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it would serve us well during our journey to the surface when we got older…
As I tried to form an image of water, however, a burst of inspiration struck .
Instead of just using water, what if I used the ocean of souls itself as inspiration for my attunent?
I wasn’t quite sure how the physicality of dinsions and the ocean of souls worked, but since new souls entered this dinsion as newborn babies all the ti, it stood to reason that it was ‘close’ to in so way, shape, or form. Even if I didn’t fully understand how it worked, it should be good enough to do sothing with it.
Furthermore, this image would be usable in every dinsion we were born into in the future. If my theory about the ocean of souls touching every dinsion was correct, that ant that I wouldn’t need to change my attunent from one world to the next. In the Market, my attunent would be, if anything, stronger, since the Market was continuously sailing on top of the ocean of souls. I would be able to spend 3 worlds after this one practicing my attunent, figuring out how to use it, and then be able to use almost the exact sa skill set when we went to fight for our lives. If I could get this to work properly, it was too good of an idea to pass up.
I only hesitated for a few seconds before I made my final choice.
I started forming an image in my head, much like I had done when I ford my fourth rune, back on the islands.
I imagined a giant, twisting ocean, carrying all of the souls of every dinsion in the multiverse from one world to the next. I visualized the way geotry twisted from one dinsion to the next, and the way the ocean of souls was sohow able to maintain itself, even as alternate forces of reality sought to rip it apart. I thought of the oblivion brought about by the ocean of souls, the way the water of the ocean of souls seed to wear away at one’s thoughts and mories until nothing but a newborn soul remained. Achievent protected souls themselves from being ground to pieces by the Ocean of Souls, but souls unconnected to the Market quickly ran out of Achievent before their mories were drowned in the endless waters between worlds.
I thought of the way that the Market managed to free itself from the darkness of the ocean of souls, sailing across the top of the waves in a galaxy-sized pirate ship. I thought of how the ocean of souls didn’t just destroy mories and souls that it ca into contact with; instead, it also ferried souls to their next destination like a kindly grandmother, giving one the gift of rebirth in addition to the curse of oblivion.
The ocean of souls wasn’t just a hostile force that brought souls into oblivion as they tried to go from one world to the next. It was also the reason that rebirth was possible at all. Without access to the ocean of souls, children that were about to be born would have no way to get a soul, which would basically kill them the mont they were born.
Much like the ocean in my first life, the ocean of souls wasn’t just a hostile force of death and decaying mories. It was also a source of new life; without it, babies wouldn’t be born, and life in most dinsions would ultimately fall apart.
I repressed the urge to chuckle as I realized that my ntal image for the ocean of the islands and my image for the ocean of souls bore strong similarities to each other. Perhaps the ‘ocean’ keyword was a more fitting keyword for than I had realized?
Then, I stopped fighting my urge to laugh, and burst out into wild laughter.
So what if I used a similar ntal image from one life to the next? In my previous life, by virtue of my ntal image I had managed to create a unique ability set that let overco the limitations of my average starting stats at birth. Not perfectly; I had died as a consequence of exploring the deep ocean, after all.
However, I had done the best I could to give the villages a fighting chance. I had no idea if they had survived the fight with the outsiders, but I had given them every possible fighting chance. I had also fard huge amounts of Achievent in the process, and managed to get Sallia a keyword ability related to her extre affinity.
If it worked once, I had no problem using sothing similar again. We had lives to claim back at the Market, after all. I needed to be as strong as possible to make sure my friends and I didn’t die permanently.
I felt my image of the ocean of souls start to resonate with the mana around , and a chunk of the alteration essence in my body started to cent itself into a certain shape. I realized that the essence was taking on the shape of the ocean of souls; furthermore, I would never be able to use that chunk of alteration essence for general shaping ever again. It was permanently altered to fit the image of the ocean of souls.
But that wasn’t a big deal. I had lost less than five percent of my total alteration essence reserve. It wasn’t a big enough loss to do more than annoy a bit.
Power: Form a [Basic] level attunent
Achievent 250
I grinned as my Achievent went from 608.89 to 858.89, but dismissed the notification right afterwards. I wanted to figure out how my attunent worked.
I felt that I could now manifest a very, very small part of the ocean of souls in my surroundings in a very real, physical way. It would be easiest to convert a drop of water into a drop of water from the ocean of souls, but I could even convert sothing like air, or even lava, into water from the ocean of souls if I threw enough alteration essence at it. I vaguely rembered Ella saying that environnt shouldn’t play a role in essence costs when it ca to an attunent, but considering how weird my attunent was, it made sense that it would have a few other oddities. I put that question aside, because I had noticed sothing far more interesting.
I could see sothing… silver-colored inside of my body. It was mostly stuck near my brain, which I obviously couldn’t see, but I could see bits and pieces of it tethered throughout the rest of my body as well.
What the heck is that? I wondered, panicking for a mont, and the silvery blob started wriggling madly. Then, I realized I had seen it before.
Twice, in fact.
I was looking at my soul.
Forming a connection with the ocean of souls hadn’t just allowed to manifest parts of the ocean of souls in my surroundings. I had also, apparently, gained a very limited ability to see souls themselves.
I took a look at Ella, who was still watching in anticipation, and sure enough, I could see her soul as well, although it was much harder for to observe since it wasn’t mine. I could see a silvery blob stuck inside of her brain, with much smaller tendrils of white-silver spread throughout the rest of her body. it occasionally moved and bobbed from one second to the next.
My attunent had co with a rather unexpected ability as an add-on. I wasn’t quite sure what the use of ‘manifesting the ocean of souls’ was in practical terms right now, but I was absolutely certain that learning how souls worked would give a lot of insight into how the Market actually worked in the first place. And surely manifesting the ocean of souls itself would give all sorts of strange and unusual abilities. I just needed to discover what they were.
I grinned to myself.
My first steps into the magic of this world were off to an excellent start.
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