Chapter 8: Information
It was hard to track time here underground, but Valens guessed it took him about an hour and a half to get his mana pool full. Ignoring the growl of protest from his stomach, he started after the undead, trying to act as if he was in the company of a slightly larger man with a set of bones harder than an average adult. And with it serving as the vanguard, he decided he might as well use the time to go over a few things.
Two things, specifically.
First of all, he was beginning to suspect to a degree that things could be not what he thought they were. Whoever that Mad Magus was, the second part of this trial didn’t quite make any sense. He had half the mind to ask this question to the undead, but for some reason the creature was more inclined to believe he somehow lost his mind than to consider the possibility of Valens having come here from another world.
Guess that's the most sensible assumption here. I didn't tell him I came here from another world, after all.
That made him question the alternative scenario in which he told the undead that crucial information. What would he have thought had he come across a man similar in his position back in his old world? Prior to the knowledge of connected worlds? Would he have considered the notion that he was in the presence of a totally oblivious stranger? Another lifeform that didn’t belong to his world?
Not likely. Though arcane was a depthless well, without being familiar with the intricacies of Void, it was certainly easier to treat a case like that as a matter of psychological breakdown. Amnesia, for one, definitely fitted that response.
For now, I'll keep that as a secret. I can't risk it.
The second thing was the instant conjuring of his spells. Say he was facing a Master Void Magus. Say this particular Magus had all the knowledge of the void in the world. Say he was some hermit who took a liking to playing sick games with people who had chanced their way into this world. Even then, it didn’t explain how he was easing the process of casting a spell by simply using his void insights alone.
He could weave magical words in the air with a flick of his finger, but he shouldn’t have been able to affect the way Valens used his own mana. Or could he? Could it be that a Void Magus was such a terrifying existence, and that was why the First of the Magi sealed this source?
Either way, this changed a lot. It meant that Valens was holding a spell like Inferno at his fingertips, ready to blast the cave with roaring flames at any moment. He wouldn’t have to weave those threads one by one anymore. Even now, he could feel the spell burning at the edge of his mind, yearning to blast forth. He could just pick a direction and send the web sprawling over to his foes.
Apathy, Lifesurge and Lifeward were the same. He still had to pay heed to the Resonance and find the damaged area, keeping physical contact with the patient during the process, but the moment he came up with a diagnosis and a way to fix it, he could just send a Lifesurge to do the deed instead of operating himself.
The spell could read his mind and act upon his thoughts by itself.