Chapter 29 - Materializing
"Holy fucking shit!" Garvin squealed like a little boy as he jostled the bag of Materiality Cores. It would make him rich. It would make a pair of them rich, and he seemed to have forgotten that was not the case.
"That's a lot for a day without any effort," Charbil said with a grin.
"I remember," Sarkot grinned. "Someone saying they wanted the spoils to be split by the final blow. Don't you think you, of all people, should be careful of that?"
Garvin's grin stiffened slightly. He seemed to consider for a moment if he should take his words back, but in the end, pride won. "I still want that. If that were the case, I'd have earned more than anyone."
"By being a fucking sneaky kill thief!" Sarkot scoffed.
"Because healers, warders, and observers would never earn anything, we will not be devolving into such barbaric practice," Liesel said. "Equal split, and that does include Verka and Kurvam."
"Even though they were not part of the expedition today." Garvin frowned.
Liesel ignored the indignant tone in his voice. The way things were going, she was expecting to have enough Materiality Cores to buy herself a villa in Saffron Helm, though the debt she owed and the potion brewing materials would siphon it all away and then some. She might be buried in debt even after the expedition. Garvin's issue was not with the money but with the idea of sharing with the undeserving, even though that idea had no root in reality.
"We can argue about it when the expedition is over," Liesel drew her eyes to all the members of the team, pausing on Healer Barron. "How's Verka?"
"Physically, as good as he can be. He's going to need some time to get used to his lost hand."
Liesel nodded. "I will see him. Thank you for your efforts."
Verka was on his bed.
"I will come along tomorrow," he said as Liesel entered his room.
"Do you want to?" Liesel circled the bed and settled on the stool by the window.
"Captain wants to join tomorrow."
Liesel nodded. She wished he didn't, but that was better left unsaid. "And you are obligated to follow him."
"You make him seem heartless, but he stayed behind today to allow me the time to rest."
"Do you want to rest another day? Or a few more? He will survive without you."
"That's not how it works." his lips twitched, and his tone hardened slightly.
"You can answer my question honestly. You are not obligated to anyone at this moment."
"No. I want to see how ruined my skills are without my dominant hand."
"As you wish..." Liesel sighed. "Have a good rest until morning."
Liesel strolled toward the door. As she settled her fingers on the door handle, Verka said, "Your disappointment, is it because I am putting myself at risk, or that you'd have to deal with the captain?"
"Neither, if I am being honest," Liesel replied. "I'd rather learn to deal with him now than when facing a lethal enemy. At the same time, I am just one person. I'd rather be two. One to deal with him, and one for the expedition team."
"You don't need to wear the mantle of Leader. You can be just a pawn. It's very much not as unpleasant as you think."
"For each person we lose that is not a warrior, our expedition team loses a limb, and there are not many of them. To live, to be free from here, is to preserve as many of the limbs as possible, and that does include you, Verka. Your role is unique, and equally important."
"And it has to be you? Even if you have a few tricks, you are the weakest member of the expedition."
Liesel's lip curled into a grin. "What does that make your boss? He is always on his toes like a wet kitten."
Verka's eyes twitched.
Such reverence... for what?
"I have watched my entire company slaughtered, and I wonder if the outcome would've been different if I were more proactive? Could I have changed the inevitable fate that awaited us?"
Verka nodded without saying anything.
Probably not. What does my existence amount to against a borderline Divine Being?
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Liesel had crossed the Tenth Threshold again in Control.
The second technique was Materializing.
With it, she could materialize the Materiality from within her body into the world outside. It was a very important skill for mages, as they required it to weave spell circles in the air.
Of course, manifesting a spell circle would require a lot of training, and evoking spells without an accommodating trait wouldn't amount to anything close to the effort.
Before attempting the new ability, Liesel reeled in her Materiality Sense and focused it on her soul. She gathered up all the residual natural Materiality in the deformed blob and kneaded it into a tiny orb. Once the viscosity matched, she absorbed it into the Nebulous Core. Her soul again had space to gather even more Materiality.
Being able to see how much more she could hold even in the deformed soul, Liesel felt a sense of despair. She refused to believe Laks Empire didn't possess the knowledge contained within the Soulirius Codex. They decided that it was better to keep it hidden. It assisted the ruse that none understood or possessed the ability to manipulate the Ashening. If they were willing, she'd have so much power, both in strength and influence. Her mind wandered to the possibilities of what she could've been. What was stolen from her, and more often than not, she told herself she was overestimating that potential future. What would her future have looked like? Once she settled down, she came to the term that she'd have been a ruthless butcher, blinded by her earned pride, and would be consumed by selfcest no different than Kurvam, if not far worse.
The expedition was becoming increasingly worrying as time went on. The merged layers were one thing, but she needed to figure out how to bind stronger demons while hiding her skill from the rest of the expedition. It would be hard.
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Exhaling, Liesel refocused her attention on the actual goal of the night.
Materializing the Materiality required first drawing the energy into the tip of her finger, so Liesel gathered as many strands in her Soul Veins as she could.
Now the second part was the difficult one. She pressed her index finger against her thumb, pushing the Materiality from the finger into the thumb. Then she captured the incoming Materiality in a lock. As she lifted her finger up, she expected to see a strand of glowing string between the gap. But the string snapped as soon as she began moving.
Liesel huffed and tried again. This time with a little more Materiality, and a denser form.
Materiality was energy in its purest form, but it was equally as violent. If she could materialize enough of it in the right structure to create an explosion, she'd not need to waste her Impact Rune to do it. And raw Materiality might be a little more lethal because it would be an explosion rather than an impact.
She had practiced structuring for the Layering Technique, so that shouldn't be as hard, even outside her body.
She tried again with a denser string, but even that failed. Materializing was a nonstandard skill. It didn't have a standard manual for manifesting it, relying solely on an individual's mind rather than a tried-and-true formula. She tried a few other methods that were widely considered worth attempting, but none of them worked.
Almost instantly, her Soul Veins were burning in pain, not because what she was doing was strenuous, but because they were far from healed. If she focused on her Soul Veins, she could see they were inflamed. Without the Imaging ability, she couldn't see what their color would be. Standard understanding said Soul Veins, before any enhancement, should be white.
She allowed the injured veins to rest while she rationalized other possible methods. The night ticked by, and each failure settled with heavier and heavier weight. Despite everything in life, Liesel had a hard time accepting personal failure that rested solely on her abilities. Usually, every setback she faced was due to some external factor. Even the fact that she was still a Nebulous-stage Ascendant was a point of pride. She had reached that point despite the odds, instead of being the failure she was supposed to be. She, as an individual, had quite high self-esteem for that reason.
"What are you doing?" Around midnight, Auram asked.
"Nothing interesting," Liesel answered. "You should probably go to sleep."
"I don't need it," Auram said proudly, puffing her chest. "And I know you need it. So why don't you go to sleep?"
"In a bit," Liesel replied, closing her eyes. Frustrated, she returned to the first attempt, hoping hours of failure would enlighten her, even if she had not pondered the reasons for her failure.
She had been constantly taking breaks to rest her Soul Veins. She was feeling strain and burning still.
"I think you are pushing yourself too hard," Auram said. "I say that because he is impressed by your diligence. You are on the right path, he says."
"That's a good thing, I guess," Liesel smiled. "Let me try another way..."
Liesel frowned, frustrated that she had this idea after Auram mentioned the evil watcher as if he had stolen a portion of her achievement.
Liesel pressed her thumb and index finger together. This time, she drew a strand of Materiality from either side and spun them into a thread in the middle, just as she did to create the net structure for Layering.
With her other hand, she pinched between her thumb and index finger as though she were trying to grab a tiny string with her nails. The Soul Veins in her other fingers caught the newly woven strand of Materiality in her Soul Form. Liesel pulled it out, keeping her attention only on her Soul Form to make sure the strand didn't snap. Once the Soul Veins of both hands were slightly apart, Liesel opened her eyes.
Caught between her fingers was a tiny strand of Materiality, one-tenth the thickness of a hair. It glimmered under the light, almost like a wet cobweb.
Auram flew close to observe it. "Woah... It's so beautiful."
She clapped her hands.
The sound jolted Liesel out of her breathless trance, and the strand shattered instantly, turning into thousands of specks of light.
"Why would you—"
Before Liesel could finish, Auram spread her hands wide, and between them was a strand of Materiality no different from Liesel's.
"It's so cool. I should've tried it sooner."
The mercenary stared at the spirit in utter disbelief.
"You can just do it?" It was a statement rather than a question. Liesel couldn't hide her awe.
"Seems so," Auram nodded. She used the Materiality string to skip rope in midair and somehow made it seem convincing as well. She had not just replicated Liesel's effort, but somehow improved it infinitely. "I don't know why I never thought of trying that."
"It's an ability that I gained after crossing the second tenth threshold in the Control Attribute. How can you just do it?"Liesel wouldn't have asked such a silly question if she had done it the first time. But it had taken her hours, and both her arms were burning in pain, and she was exhausted. That's so unfair. Maybe her exhaustion was turning her into an insecure teenager.
"I mean, I don't know what my thresholds are, as I don't get the System's numbers, but you do realize I have been playing with Materiality longer than a hundred times your lifetime," Auram let go of the string, and it shattered into thousands of pieces. "I feel insulted, you know."
"I didn't mean it," Liesel shook her head. "I am sorry."
"It's fine," Auram grinned. "Humans, as far as I have seen them, don't really use Materiality for making strings, though."
"It's useless," Liesel said. "I only do it because, I guess, it's just the way I can imagine Materiality existing in this world."
Materializing was, in some way, dragging the Materiality from a different Shade to this one. Though she had achieved it, she didn't fully understand the inner workings of this ability. She'd like to read a little more about it, and probably from a mage's perspective.
Liesel waited a few more seconds in silence, and then she tried again. This time, she made sure the materialized string remained there a bit longer.
"Though when I look at it closely, your string is much more realistic. It feels like strands were twined together to make it, unlike mine, which was plain."
So Auram tried again, and she had a considerably harder time replicating Liesel's exact formation.
"You have to weave the strands into a rope inside your Soul Veins, and then you can twist two together, and it should look like mine."
"How do I get strands, though?" Auram frowned. "Mine's like... just one thing. I can turn the liquid state of my materiality into semi-solid stuff or just healing magic, but strands sound painful to even imagine."
"That, I do not know. You can ask the Custodian, I guess."
Auram kept trying for now.
Liesel made a closed loop with the string and twisted a knot on both ends to seal it. It was a runic structure that immediately exploded into a tiny puff of stardust. At a grander stage, it might be able to snap wood, she imagined.
"That should be considered a successful application of Materializing," Liesel mumbled, pointedly. Waiting for the System.
She waited in silence for an uncomfortable stretch of time, almost restlessly. But nothing appeared in front of her.
"What did you mean by that?" Auram finally asked. She had been frozen in the air too, playing along. But her patience finally ran out.
"Nothing."
"I am gonna go and ask the Custodian about strands then."
Liesel nodded, paying no mind to the spirit, as her stomach filled with worry.
"I forgot to ask you. The Archive Quest reward also mentioned the Threading Cultivation Technique, and I haven't received it yet. Can you ask him about it?"
"You bet I will. He's not gonna swindle you, Lis!"
"And..." Liesel exhaled, deciding that if she had to rely on someone, it might as well be the one most invested in her pursuit. "Also, ask him if he knows about a demon that can raise my Dominion Attribute."
"Sure... why do you look worried? I mean, you just did something new. I think you should be happy about that."
"I am... I think so, at least. The problem is, this is a Control Skill, one of my highest Attributes. Learning a new ability in it should've raised my Dominion. It has not, and I do know another way that I can."
Auram nodded. "Is it important?"
"I need that to buy my next Archetype Skill, which was the reason why I did the quest in the first place. I could've used the Materiality resistance solution, and Fiya could've killed the Door Guardian instantly."
"Oh..." Auram nodded. She was gone in an instant.
Liesel sighed. She should try to keep Auram a little more in the know. She didn't want to give the spirit the wrong idea about the nature of their relationship.
As for her Dominion, the points in it rose whenever the Archetype-specific Attribute was raised past a threshold, a title was earned, or a new trait was earned, or an older one evolved. For a warrior, those attributes were Strength and Endurance, perhaps Constitution too.
Since she didn't have an Archetype, it should be the pair with the highest points. So Control and Mental Fortitude.
She thought it might happen after learning the ability instead of crossing the threshold, but even that didn't seem to be the case.
Auram returned a few minutes later. She was carrying a stone. It was filled with Malice.
Liesel held out her palm, and the spirit dropped the stone onto it. It instantly charred her palm, dragging Liesel's consciousness into the depths.