Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 489: Mana Weaving

“Are they your disciples now or something? You got lonely without that cute half-demon of yours, so you adopted these two twerps instead?” Maya taunts, as she paces around the living room.

Dennis and Aaron are too busy dealing with their experimental Burden Enhancement Inscriptions to answer, so I do instead. “They would probably say they’re more like guinea pigs than disciples.”

“In a less respectful tone, I assume?”

“Probably,” I confirm.

“So, what did you do to them?”

“It’s a modified version of my Burden Enhancement Inscriptions. The version Lissandra gave me blocks all my movements and only allows movements powered by kinetic energy. Since these two don’t have kinetic energy, I had to modify it. They still can’t move, but in this case, they need to refine their control over mana to break free.”

“It’s not disrupting their mana, is it? So what stops them from just powering through?”

“I thought of that, so I made some changes. If they mess up, they’ll hurt themselves, after all,l it takes a lot of mana to power through. It’s still not as complete as I’d like, and it’s one of three variations I’ve been working on.”

Maya takes a swift step and smacks Dennis in the back of the head. Since he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, he tilts slowly and crashes to the ground, landing in a weird position.

I’m surprised by her sudden use of force, but I don’t complain.

“You know very well what that was for, Dennis,” Maya declares with satisfaction.

“That was Aaron, not Dennis,” I say.

For a moment, I see a flicker of surprise in Dennis’s eyes, but he quickly understands and I’m sure he appreciates it.

“Huh, they’re getting more and more difficult to tell apart by the day.” She takes another step and delivers another smack to the innocent Aaron, who also falls onto the floor.

“Are you happy with Bloodthirst?”

“Quite a bit,” Maya nods, glancing toward the claymore resting against the wall. “It’s like we thought, the more blood it absorbs, the more it ‘fixes’ itself. And it grows sharper against opponents whose blood it has tasted. And it’s already very sharp.”

“I still hold to my opinion that you’d do better sticking with weapons made of mana that can change shape.”

“Yes, and I agree with you. I took inspiration from you, and I’ve been using Bloodthirst as a tool to try to get a new skill. I’m almost there.”

“And you won’t tell me what it is, will you?”

"Nope. I'd rather keep it a surprise. That way it'll be something that's all mine. After all, you wouldn’t want your knight taking the backseat."

“You’re going with that again?”

I form an energy orb and move it toward Maya, who takes over, joining me in my mana exercises.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

She then sits down to focus her concentration. “You never know, I may be more serious than you’d expect. By the way, did you also want to throw that tailor out of the balcony?”

“Multiple times.”

Her orb bursts, and she waits for me to send her a replacement. “Well, I already got the clothes, and they’re goddamn great, but the people here act just like arrogant nobles from some old romance or a deranged clan of vampires looking down at us peasants.”

“Vampires… I wonder if they exist as a race within the system.” I muse in response to Maya’s fascinating implication.

“Well, we have demons, so why not? And we’ve met the feylith and they’re like chicken-winged angels, the lynthari are straight-up catgirls, vyssari are knock-off dwarfs. The only things we’re missing are elves and vampires; you said you saw those giant-looking douches in Beyond, and then there’s that pink bitch Beatrice that Sophie likes to rag on.”

“And more besides.” I say, gesturing at the orb she balances, “You’ve gotten quite good at it.”

“Right? I just needed a moment to get a grasp of these orbs of yours. You can increase the difficulty if you like.”

I do as she says, and even then, she keeps pace like a champ.

"Will you show me what you did to your manabloc sometime?” Maya asks. “Even Sophie’s still singing its praises, she says it would take a ridiculous amount of effort to disrupt. I'd love to try creating something like that," she continues.

“Why not, but don’t expect quick results. It took me six months to get there, and I had [Ley Line], and [Connection] to observe, and I still had to incorporate bits of my other skills.”

“Can you show me?”

With a gesture, I burst the orb beside her and use [Focus] to shape a dagger from the material I call manabloc, using my own proprietary method.

Thin, durable threads of mana extend from my body, before weaving themselves into the form of the dagger. Gaps take form between the threads, but mana rushes in to fill them—creating a small imperfection I'll address when the time comes.

The dagger made by these threads is just as sharp as it would’ve been if I made it normally, and even the color is the same—changing according to the density of mana, though the difficulty of its creation was much, much, much higher. But it’s a process I’ve been able to shorten by a lot, especially if I’m not trying to make the most powerful version.

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“How long will it last?” Maya asks curiously, immediately noticing the parts that differentiate it from the “normal” version.

“The one in your hand will probably last a few months if left as is. Maybe half that if you keep using it. The version I made for Sophie should last for a year—though I still haven’t had enough time to test and see, so it could be longer.”

“Cool stuff.” She says, waving it around a bit, as her mana rises up around it. “I can surround it with my mana, but I can’t send it through.”

“Yup. I’d need to work with you and devote a lot of time to matching it to your mana. Though in the future, I might find a way to make it so everyone can use it.”

Maya keeps a close watch, enveloping the dagger with more mana and refining it, using the manabloc as a foundation. Then forms her own mana weapon and strikes it against the dagger. Like most who work with mana, she can disrupt it to some extent, so she tests that as well—but it has no effect. And I’m certain the result would be the same, even if she put everything she had into the effect.

"I don’t think you should make it so everyone can use your weapons. I quite like the idea of a personal weapon or armor, matched to your mana signature, that could only be used by you without simply turning into a sharp, durable item in another’s hands."

That makes me pause, and I let the thought linger in my mind as I mull it over.

“I quite like that idea,” I admit.

“I knew you would.” Maya smiles, but that smile slowly disappears. “Nat, have you, by any chance, applied this thing to the mana mech?”

“What do you think?”

"Fuck, that thing must be terrifying. And here I thought I’d improved mine a lot… How big can you make it?" She asks with a note of competition in her voice.

“A moment.” I stop her and turn away, staring at Dennis, whose mouth has begun to twitch, as he exerts an extreme amount of effort to move it.

He succeeds in the end, barely managing to get a few words through before being forced into quiet once more, “That’s what she said.”

His eyes are bold and filled with pride at his success.

"Anyway, I still haven’t gone all out—I’ve been focusing on quality and maneuverability oversize," I say, shifting my attention back to Maya.

“So what you’re saying is that it’s not the size that matters?” Maya asks.

Both of us look at Dennis and wait. His lips are twitching, chin moving as he fights the Burden Enhancement Inscriptions, but when he still fails to comment after a few seconds, we turn away once more.

“Something like that,” I confirm. “I’m mostly training it on the side in case there’s a huge monster I’ll need to get close to, and my other skills won’t work.”

“There’s something cool about being able to fight face-to-face with some kaiju-like monster.” She replies

“I can’t say it’s not,” I admit, agreeing with her.

“Okay, then, can you please tell me what you did to your manabloc?”

“Sure. If I were an asshole or a pretentious douche, I’d say something like this: ‘The technique, of my own creation, which I’ve aptly named Mana Weaving, involves the precise and intricate practice of forming mana into interlocking, highly stable structures. Through a disciplined process of mana manipulation. At its core, the technique revolves around manipulating one’s mana on a fundamental level to bind it into a sophisticated lattice that fortifies each strand and amplifies its resilience. This woven mana structure serves to establish a self-sustaining network, effectively enhancing its internal cohesion, rendering it far less susceptible to external interference and hostile manipulation and resulting in a reinforced mana framework that is exceptionally difficult to disrupt, and therefore presenting an exceptional challenge for anyone attempting to breach or destabilize it.’”

“Damn, do people really talk like that?”

“You’d be surprised how many do.”

“I guess there are assholes everywhere. Please explain it to me like a normal human.”

“You weave multiple threads of mana together. That way Instead of being able to disrupt all the mana in a construct at once, the attack has to disrupt each thread, and even if it succeeds in disrupting some of them, the others remain.”

“Much better.”

“Right?”

Sophie returns from her first session of work on the Framework’s maintenance, followed by Maya, who has been serving as her bodyguard, being the second most resilient against mental manipulation after me, thanks to our mutual skill [Focus].

Even then they still haven’t encountered Namior, leader of the city’s third most powerful group—someone I’ve been wanting to meet for a while now, though I haven’t seen him yet, despite lingering around his tower multiple times.

This time, we’re all sitting in my room. Some are sitting on my bed, some are seated in manabloc chairs, and others sit on the ground. I, for the record, am sitting on the ground, with a piece of that huge golden chain in my hand while I work on examining it, hoping to improve my insight into the system and, with my skill along with it.

“It’s just as I thought before, the Framework makes it possible to combine the calculative power of every mind mage in the city. But it’s not just them; they can also include the mental capacity of every person controlled by a mind mage and every person within the city’s inscriptions. Plus, they also have thousands of monsters with useful mind traits or skills imprisoned under the city, for the purpose of enhancing the Framework.”

“Damn.”

“Damn is right, Dennis. The amount of power it’s going to require is immense, so they can only really afford to activate it once every eight years.”

“Let me guess, it’s going to be soon?” I look up from the chain.

“Very soon - depending on how maintenance goes,” Sophie confirms.

"That's perfect timing, isn’t it?" Lily says excitedly. "We could clear the floor either before Beyond or right after we return."

“Yes, the activation of the Framework happens only every eight years. This floor’s timing makes it almost certain that it’s one of the ways we’re meant to clear this floor.”

“Isn’t that good?”

Tess explains, stepping in for Sophie, “Try to remember how the floors we’ve gone through so far tend to look the closer we’ve gotten to clearing them.”

“Oh…”

“Yes, oh,” Sophie says, looking from Tess to me. “The question is if we still want to try to check on any of the remaining Containment Cells.”

“That sounds like a job for the Champion-grade annihilation squad!” Dennis chimes in, excited. “We’re the best at ending weakened and tortured champions, right, Nat? There are still three more to take care of.”

Looking at his excited face I reply. “Count me out, I still have things I want to do before reaching level 300.”

At that moment, something catches my interest, a sense I haven’t felt from another member of our group until this moment, and I turn to the right, meeting Tess’s eyes.

Oh my, what has she done?

“I think we should visit at least one of the Containment Cells before we go to Beyond and the Framework activation.” She smiles, knowing very well what I’ve just sensed.

Tess has allowed her title to be felt.

She’s a Champion candidate now too.