Chapter 235: One with the Mists
Coop concentrated on his ethereal spear, watching as motes of turquoise mana drifted off the surface and were carried away by the warm night’s breeze. He cleared his mind, trying to forge a connection with the misty manifestation. His brows furrowed and he squeezed his eyes shut as he focused on the physical existence of the reliable spear within his hands, contemplating the corporality of the vaporous summon, and seeking to expand the link between himself and his weapon. He was a Mistwalker now, he affirmed to himself. He was one with the mists.
Nothing happened.
He stopped with an exasperated laugh, flipping the spear back up over his shoulder so that the tip clicked against the stone slab that braced his back. The Revenant class wasn’t a class that required him to delve into that kind of dubious mysticism. He just thought he’d give it a try due to the unification of his active skills. His weapon was a tool and his connection to the mists merely provided the material. Meditation on the system’s mysteries wouldn’t reveal concealed bonuses just like how climbing 1,000 steps wouldn’t put him onto a cultivator’s journey.
Coop tapped the spear against the stone a few more times before he tilted it back across his knees, admiring the tranquil frozen mists for what they actually were: manifestations with real physical specifications. The mists approximated a molten material that was poured into his imagined mold before solidifying into his desired shape. For as enigmatic as mana was, it still had a physical presence founded in reality.
He swapped his spear for his ethereal glaive while holding it out in front of his chest. The transformation occurred instantly. The solidified mists lost their rigidity and flowed into the shape that he held in his mind, establishing the deadly polearm with a speed that left him impressed in spite of his reevaluated expectations.
There were several differences in the process, though only Coop would be able to notice them. He had summoned and dismissed his weapons countless times, and previously, they had always followed the same order of operations. In order to summon a weapon, the mana cost would be consumed, mists would appear, and they would crystallize into the form that he wanted, so long as it fell within the restrictions designated by mana. If he wanted a different weapon, the original mists would dissipate and new mists would appear to form the new manifestation, following the same sequence of events.
His quick swaps were bound by the same processes, but he was going through the effort in the middle of combat. The tactic only worked because the mana cost was low enough that he could repeatedly summon the weapons, dismissing them as he drew new equipment from the mists, and turning them into disposable armaments. Fitting his quick swaps into his backswings or blocks was a conscious decision to compensate for the delay created by manifesting weapons, but he made it work, creating a potent technique that frequently caught his opponents off-guard. The tactic had even worked against Ledwidge, the alien treant weapon master back on Ghost Reef.
However, as a Mistwalker, the procedure had changed. The mists weren’t dismissed when he summoned a new weapon. They were more responsive to his desires, adaptable, and reusable.
Coop watched as his ethereal glaive melted into his bo staff, a trident, a war fork, then back to his spear in fractions of a second. Mists drifted from the manifestation, but they weren’t dismissed in order to make room for the next. The feeling that his connection to mana had changed was clear as day, and he was able to ascribe what had actually happened when he completed the Path of the Mistwalker. The training wheels had been taken off.
Before, the system was basically providing a step-by-step routine for how his skills worked. After what Coop estimated were hundreds of thousands of repetitions, he could manipulate his mana in the proper order to manifest an ethereal summon in his sleep. Retribution was a simple recipe for constructing weapons and Salvation operated in the same way for his armor.
He flexed his Mistwalking ability and his familiar armor drifted into existence, wrapping his chest with a protective breastplate, adding metallic bracers, shin guards, the layered leather pteruge, and his classic gladiator sandals to the ensemble. He dismissed it all and a puff of mists dissipated into the gentle breeze as quickly as it appeared. Now, he felt like he was really cooking with mana.
Coop flipped his spear around, and increased the density, instinctively finding the right amount to make the missile one of his explosive volatile spears. The weight suddenly increased as additional mists coalesced within the already summoned weapon, mixing together. Satisfied with the result after the swirls solidified, he made it even denser, remembering the maximum he had reached while within the Cathedral of Tides, and the spear grew impossibly heavy. When he inadvertently let it touch the ground, weakened as he was, the rigid stone surface of the temple warped like beach sand beneath the pressure. He reduced the density, and mists were expelled from the shaft as the weapon jumped back to the mass of his regular spears, releasing steam-like pressure in a spray that hissed before disappearing.