Spell Weaver [Book 2 Complete]

Alex took an extra hour to make sure that he was able to maintain his current state.

It felt odd to know that his eyes were open, but for the first time since he had released the Celestial Lotus Sect Head, he couldn’t see anything at all. The vision in both of his eyes was completely dark. Even when he looked down at his own arms in the tightly confined space, he couldn’t see any mana leaking from his skin.

It’s almost time for some payback, Val.

It had only taken the small mana wyrm a day to figure out how to hold in his natural mana, whereas it took Alex almost two full days.

After realizing that he was being tracked through his leaking mana, Alex searched for a way to hide his presence while he learned to get it under control. The solution had been surprisingly simple, and he wanted to kick himself for not seeing it earlier.

The trees. As he’d noted earlier with his vision, they prevented any mana from traveling or soaking into the wood. He’d begun to see the blank spots in his vision as obstacles to avoid but otherwise ignore. After he had the thought, it was just about finding one of the dead trees that had a large enough hollow center for him to hide in it.

Unable to stretch his muscles more than a few inches in either direction, Alex had slept for several hours before practicing holding in his mana. At first, he’d thought about it as if he were holding his breath, but with his Core. That didn’t seem to work at all, and it took several hours of experimenting for him to figure it out. Even though Val attempted to help through their limited communication, it was ultimately more confusing to understand than Alex continuing to test independently.

What worked in the end was Alex thinking of his skin as a porous surface, which, with his modern understanding of the body, made a certain amount of sense. As he worked on the theory, he tried to direct his mana to react to his skin as if it were a shell or a boundary rather than its natural state. He saw immediate results and spent the next several hours testing it with his restricted movement.

He knew it would require a certain amount of concentration to perform while moving outside the tree; however, that was still better than his mana acting as a constant tracking beacon.

Alex had wondered why Val was able to pick up on the method faster than he could, despite the fact that he knew he had a higher Willpower stat than his companion. Alex could only guess that it had something to do with being a beast.

Perhaps their natural ability to hide and stalk prey makes this something easier to grasp? I don’t know, but either way, it’s time to start working our way out of here.

He stretched his shoulder and knew that it would be stiff. It still hurt, though the gash was largely scabbed over by this point. The largest point of worry was that the bandage he’d applied was also scabbed over and likely stuck to the cut.

I’ll just need to be careful with how I move my left arm…

Knowing that he needed to find more water and food soon, Alex shimmied his way back out of the hollowed tree and sat on a branch. The breeze was chilly but refreshing after his confined space for the last two days.

He’d taken those two days to plan and think through how he would tackle these patrols and escape through the Rift exit. The first step, regardless of the plan was going to be to use one of the consumable manuals from the altar room.

Sitting on a high branch, he looked around. There was no movement in sight. So, he reached into his spatial pouch and removed the advanced technique manual. When the prompt appeared to consume the manual, he accepted and watched the book turn into purple motes of light. They looked similar to the experience that came from killing, but instead of flowing into his chest, the lights rushed to his forehead.

Knowledge flooded his mind, and Alex marveled at the fact that he had just instantly absorbed information on how to complete the advanced skill. He was surprised at the ingenuity of how the mana moved to activate the skill and formed to create complex illusions.

Now he knew how it was formed and knew that he could create at least passible illusions using the technique. If his magical control stat wasn’t as high as it was, he didn’t believe that the consuming process would have worked.

Can it fail? Would the book have been wasted?

Alex was thankful that didn’t happen, and as if to confirm his previous thought, a window appeared in his vision.