Chapter 457: Show them

The first test of the giga-web, made with the help of

[Ley Line]

was a huge success!

I didn’t die.

That’s it.

No need to go into the details. I’m sure the next attempt will work out! I just need to iron out some… things.

I’m also kind of amazed by my new passive. Even with all that… happened… I didn’t even break a sweat. There was barely any strain on my mind, and somehow I find that more exciting than the results of the giga-web test. It means I can push myself harder.

I’m always worried about my mind. My body can be fixed, I can replace my limbs with mana, but my mind? If my brain melts I’m screwed. You can’t just power through the destruction of your brain, unlike the rest of your body.

But now that I have this new arcane passive?

It’s got me full of new ideas for improving my constructs, It’s got me thinking of ways to compress enormous inscriptions down to the size of a fingernail. It basically means that the amount of information I can process is only limited by my skill, rather than the physical limitations of my mind.

Maybe I was a bit disappointed at first. After all, I have been saving up for this for quite a while, but part of that disappointment has evaporated. Now I just need to find a powerful opponent with mind magic bullshit and totally stomp them. Only then will I truly be happy.

Bringing myself back to the real world, I glance at our new camp, about a mile away from our previous one. We had to change locations because of… stuff.

I look at the twins and increase the difficulty for their evil orbs, forcing them to drop back to a single instance instead of the two they’ve been managing. They’re used to it by now, so they don’t complain too much, keeping their energy focused on training. The blood, sweat, and effort they’ve put in is all the proof I need of their will to survive.

In two hours we’ll abandon the evil orbs for the time being, and spar instead. All part of striking a new rhythm in the twin’s training.

This method may be cruel, but they need to experience what it’s like to get hit and be injured.

As much as possible.

We have Lily to restore damaged limbs, repair punctured organs, and staunch any excessive bleeding. It brings me no pleasure to hurt them like this, rather, it feels like a duty, it’s something I just have to do.

Still, each and every single time I ask: “Do you want to continue?”

Of course, I listen to their answers, but more than that, I watch for their reactions. Their expression, and the look in their eyes.

And even though they are shaking, scared of what’s to come, they agree.

Dennis and Aaron don’t like to get hit. Often, even a smaller wound makes them drop out of the fight, lose consciousness, or try to run. They tend to rely on their high speed, illusions, and amazing cooperation to avoid being hurt in the first place.

There is a big weakness in that strategy. You need to strike a balance between being careful and fighting at full power, even when wounded, even when you know you’re going to get hurt.

So you don’t freeze mid-combat.

They just need to get used to it, and I’m helping with that. Keeping the injuries small won’t help, they have to experience true danger, so I provide it.

“How will you try to attack me this time?” I ask them curiously.

If they have enough presence of mind to answer, I will up the difficulty of the orbs.

“This time we will try to win through sheer speed. One of us will act as the main attacker and the other will serve as a healer so he can go all out,” still not taking his eyes off the two orbs over the palms of his hands, Dennis answers.

Aaron also adds, “We thought of using ranged attacks, but we have a suspicion you would just bombard us with explosive orbs or teleport around us.”

"It's just like a video game! When you try to attack the boss from a distance, it changes its moveset, gets more aggressive, and counters with its own ranged attacks."

“The goal is to force you to go into a second stage one day,” Aaron jokes, smiling playfully.

“The loot drop would be amazing,” his brother chirps mischievously.

“Maybe his second stage would be him dying, then some orchestral music would start playing, and Biscuit would be revealed as the real boss all along.”

“They both have similar skill sets: mana constructs, flying, orbs, so it makes sense,” Dennis says, seeming to agree.

I listen to their banter with a growing sense of fascination, finding their train of thought almost as amusing as it is baffling.

“It’s just a shame that Nat does more damage to himself than we ever could,” Dennis sighs in the end and turns to me. “You want to raise the difficulty of our orbs, right?”

“How did you know?”

“You always do any time we improve even the slightest bit or poke fun at you.”

“Wouldn’t it be smarter to pretend you have trouble or try to avoid poking fun at me?” I ask, curious.

“It would, but I think you’d probably notice, and wouldn’t that render the whole thing useless anyway? We both want to improve.”

His brother nods, “The suffering sucks, but it makes it easier when we can see you doing the same things, and you’re even harder on yourself. Seeing that it would only feel shitty to look for ways to avoid it.”

Dennis pops his orbs, “It would be pathetic of us to try to avoid it, especially since you’re taking the time to help. I know you probably won’t say it, but I don’t think you would be doing this if you didn’t care.”

“And we appreciate that, really.” Aaron nods seriously.

“Of course, we still hate you a bit for all the pain, and given the opportunity, we will get our ‘revenge.’”

“That’s exactly how it should be,” I confirm. “And you’re free to try anytime.”

A day later, Lily places another mark on me, and I watch the entire process.

At this point, it may as well be routine.

Her body’s already accustomed to the influence of her mana, and rapid healing, not to mention all the ways it’s more durable than mine, which makes my body the perfect test subject for revealing any mistakes in her process.

However, that also means that my left arm takes a lot of damage. And damn, it hurts.

As a few times before, I watch the bones grow through each other, shattering and breaking in the process while new flesh keeps growing over that mess at the same time.

“It looks like you used too much mana around the edges of the mark,” I note and stretch my messed up arm in her direction.

“I thought I’d made enough improvements for the mark to handle it,” she sulks, as gray mana coats her arm before she cuts off the mess she made.

Then, as my arm regrows, she uses

[Sacrifice]

, causing the severed arm to vanish, as it’s converted into mana that flows to her.

“How much more mana did you use compared to the 7th variation?”

"I think about three times more? Using double the mana worked really well, so I thought it would be fine. I also made adequate changes."

“You should go over the mana stone Savant gave you again; you broke the loop, and it messed up the distribution.”

“Isn’t your weak body the real problem here? I tried the mark on myself, and it worked just fine.”

“Okay. Will you say the same if Grumpy breaks like my arm when you try to heal him?”

Lily freezes mid-movement, shock written across her face, and I see a flash of anger behind her eyes as she does. After a few seconds, she calms herself, seeming to push those feelings aside, without so much as yelling at me.

And once she does I explain, “I think you are often forgetting how different we are from normal people, Lily. You, me, the twins, Biscuit, everyone in group 4 is so much stronger that we don’t break nearly as easily.”

I open and close the hand of my freshly restored arm into a fist before looking back at her, “You tend to let these things slip by you. You sacrifice efficiency without a single care for true mastery, relying on your skills to fix your mistakes or your body to endure them. It’s also how you like to fight, and I think Tess showed you just how foolish that is back during the tournament.”

As I speak I take a few steps over to our baggage nearby and locate the mana stone Savant gave Lily. The one with the information on body modification, among other things. A truly valuable repository of knowledge compiled by Hella, a disciple of Champion Tristan.

Which Lily clearly hasn’t studied as deeply as I would’ve liked.

I hand it to her, “Whether or not that changes depends on you.”

If I were her, I’d be studying this research data, experiment results, and ideas until I could recite them, even if someone woke me up in the middle of the night.

Then I watch as she closes her hand around the stone, nodding with her gaze fixed on the ground.

That night, we sit quietly around the fire. However, maybe "fire" is the wrong word. It’s one of my trademarked thermal cubes.

It’s vastly improved from before, and even its insides are made from multiple layers with the intention of testing how much I can concentrate thermal energy through it.

Just for the fun of it, I send it into a slow spin and cause it to flicker like the light of a campfire.

I still haven’t figured out how to make it sound like crackling firewood, but I still haven’t given up on the idea. With some internal modifications and possibly the use of kinetic energy, I should be able to get it to produce some noises.

There is also a single evil orb floating over my shoulder. And this is the most evil variation yet, specifically designed to be a challenge even for someone like me. It’s forced me to split my mind into pieces, each one dealing with a different annoyance the orb provides.

It’s worth it though, doing this has brought plenty of its rewards over the past few days.

[Mana Manipulation - lvl 49 > Mana Manipulation - lvl 50]

[Mana Manipulation - lvl 50 > Mana Manipulation - lvl 51]

[Mana Manipulation - lvl 51 > Mana Manipulation - lvl 52]

[Focus - lvl 53 > Focus - lvl 54]

My precious skill has gotten stronger every day since it returned to me, and soon it will be right where it was before I used it for my skill combinations. It honestly kinda surprises me that it’s not back to its former glory already, given all the new stuff I’ve been doing, but who the hell knows how the system calculates this stuff.

“I would’ve thought you’d want to do more hunting. To raise our levels and get stronger,” Dennis says.

Once again he’s proved himself the braver of the two brothers. Aaron usually prefers to let Dennis initiate conversations before joining in himself.

“What part of our status do you think holds the most importance?” I ask in place of my answer.

“Skills?” he asks hesitantly.

“Yup.”

“But wouldn’t raising our attributes make us stronger?” Aaron asks, not seeming to agree.

“Let’s say you have a thousand points in a single attribute, and you spend days leveling up and gain three stat points. How much stronger did you become?” I counter.

It’s funny to watch the gears spin in his head, trying to come up with a counterargument.

I reach down to pet Biscuit, who’s currently sitting in my lap, and continue, “Even if my level dropped by 100 right now, I don’t think it would make much of a difference. The same logic applies if I were to gain 100 levels and put all 300 points into mana, which would be doubled with my attribute upgrade. Sure I’d have 600 extra points, but that’s it.”

I know what Dennis wants to say, so I lift my finger to stop him.

(Food!)

“Oh, sorry.” I quickly lower a hand and continue to pet the best doggo of the Astral Prison. “Of course, the extra levels aren’t useless. At a certain point, you start unlocking Primary Class upgrades, and you get access to body upgrades, Traits, and more attribute upgrades, and more besides. All this just to say that your priority should always be your skills.”

(Food!)

“And eating well,” I add.

“Shouldn’t Biscuit be training too?” Aaron asks, unsatisfied. In fact, it seems like he’s gotten so invested that now he’s looking for something to poke at.

I glance down at Biscuit and back to the silly twin.

“Show them,” I whisper to the corgi.

Biscuit lazily opens an eye and yawns, his pink tongue lolling out with a cute sound as he does so and closes his tiny maw.

Then the mana that he’s kept moving through his body, in his own crude imitation of Mana Cycling comes to a halt.

His purple mana begins to seep out of his body just a little, and all the sounds of the world slowly fade away.

The twins start looking around, confused, and no sound emerges as they open their mouths to speak.

My thermal cube flickers and the heat within fades slightly. The light slowly dims as if it were being pulled away, towards me in fact. Or rather towards the creature on my lap.

Biscuit’s body feels much heavier now, his presence overwhelming, and even though I’m looking at the back of his head, I can still imagine his purple eyes.

In the fading flicker of my thermal orb, Biscuit’s shadow expands and grows until it’s many times its original size. Seeming almost too big.

And then the growling starts. A deep growl that awakens something in my primal instincts. The urge to run, The burning need to grab a stick and fight back. The urge to fall to my knees and beg.

A myriad of umbral tentacles extends forth from the shadow, surrounding our camp, and then they stop and change direction, all of them turning towards Aaron, who leaps to his feet, his chair tumbling to the ground as he struggles to escape their reach.

“That should be enough,” I say laying my hand back on Biscuit’s head.

All the shadows freeze and are slowly, gradually, drawn back into the enormous mass, as it too begins to shrink back into itself.

The light returns and my thermal cube glows and radiates heat once more.

Lily and the twins stand, their faces pale, holding their breath. I can even sense the mana gathering inside their bodies, ready to fight—or flee.

Slowly, Biscuit turns around, and when I finally see his face again, it’s the same cheeky corgi I know and love.

"Good boy."