Chương 97: Spatial Stitching

"What is the meaning of this?" Head Miner Milva asked. Ryland understood her consternation about everything going on. Here they were, threatening to deal with her Manabreak mine as they saw fit without much input from her, throwing their weight around on something she had been working on for ages. Frankly, it was disrespectful. She was his next stop, of course. As soon as he was done finalizing things with the Prime Minister, Ryland would have headed to the Head Miner before he began anything.

But he supposed the issue of permission was a bit complicated here. It was out of respect for the Head Miner's position and experience that he had intended to incorporate her viewpoints into the attempt to control the Manabreak. But if respect was the issue, then the Prime Minister outranked everyone present, so what he said was supposed to be the final order.

"We're seeking to assist you with your current debacle, Head Miner!" the Prime Minister said with the effortlessly expressive smile of his.

"You and yours have been suffering due to the lack of a Vestige for a long while now. So while we attempt our best to recover it, we've come up with a temporary solution."

"One you came up without my input, Your Honour," she said rather testily. If she was being disrespectful towards the most powerful man in Androvia, then nobody raised an issue about it. Even the Sentinel, who was quite happy to point out every instance where Ryland didn't care for Klyne Faldor's station, was now reluctantly quiet.

"Do you oppose?" the Prime Minister asked.

"I don't even know what I'm supposed to oppose or agree to," she said. She turned to Ryland with no small amount of affront.

"I don't even know who you're supposed to be!"

"I am Marionys Ryland," he said with a smile.

"That explains everything!"

"It does?"" No. I was being sarcastic." She looked a little pained at the fact that she had needed to explain that.

"Are you truly capable of doing something about the surging Manabreak? I will admit, the lack of the Vestige has made things quite difficult." Ryland nodded.

"I should be able to, provided I can get some space. As in, I require the rest of the Miner Mages to stand back. Then I can act freely." She looked very conflicted about needing to put her faith in him, and in all honesty, he couldn't really blame her. Unlike a lot of the others who were present, she neither knew Ryland nor had ever seen him in action. She was right to be doubtful. So, he unleashed a bit of his magic.

"What in the—" The Head Miner wasn't the only one reacting to him. Several had stepped back from him or, as was the case with the students, were staring at him directly. The Sentinel had placed himself between Ryland and the Prime Minister. For his part, Klyne Faldor's eyes shone almost like Viren's, like he couldn't wait to see what Ryland would get up to.

"You're…" Milva swallowed.

"You're powerful. Who are you?"

"I believe I've already stated my name," Ryland said.

"But just to repeat—""No, I mean. Who are you? What are you?"

"Well, that's rather rude. I am a person, just like anyone else present here. If you believe my magic suggests otherwise, then you're sorely mistaken. I am not so different from you." Her mouth worked like she was trying to form the right response to that before it came blurting out. The Prime Minister went ahead, though.

"Ooh!" he said, eyes shining with so much excitement, Viren was actually starting to look at him oddly.

"Incredible. Please, go ahead, Ryland. I was ruing the fact that I didn't get to see you act during the last insurgent assault, but I suppose I can make do with this demonstration. He can go right ahead, yes Head Miner?" One didn't really contradict or countermand the Prime Minister, even as the ostensible leader of the most important mine in all of Androvia. As such, the Head Miner just mutely nodded.

"Remember," Ryland said, eyeing Klyne Faldor.

"I require your full cooperation as payment."

"What in the Realms are you going to do if this payment doesn't materialize?" the old Sentinel asked.

"Do to us what you did to Sokolo Dyron and the Eliminator Mages from Kurin?" The last bit had almost everyone nearby choking and staring. Hmm. Perhaps Ryland himself should have dropped the name of the Empyrean-ranked mage he had so handily dealt with. That would have brought that look of awe—and more importantly, a lack of pesky questions—in minutes.

"Not at all," Ryland said.

"If there is one thing the Realmbreaker Wars taught me, it's that it's quite easy for things to spiral out if one lets it. For innocents to get caught in things they have no reason to be threatened by. So instead, I will make only your life a living nightmare." He smiled at them to emphasize the point. Going by their lack of a response, by the paleness of the Sentinel's face, he and everyone else got the message.

"Alright." Ryland once again nodded at the students. They were really the only things he truly cared to safeguard here in the dungeon.

"Head Miner, if you could please cooperate and ask the rest of your subordinates to give me some space." Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. She complied easily. What followed was a lot of shouting, a lot of spells being cast to answer everything, and then, Ryland had some free space. It was just him and the enormous rent in space left behind by a Calamity. The tiny opening that had allowed his manasoul to push outwards now widened. More of his magic surged out.

If he had to operate on such a grand work, then he'd need to act without holding anything back." [Translocate]," he cast, taking himself via a rift to the right position, floating in front of the gigantic tear in reality. There were several things at play here. The first was that the wound had a natural propensity to unleash Living Mana through it, and without the Vestige to control the outflow, the amount of Living Mana leaching out of the tear in reality would keep growing and growing.

Then there were the pieces of the various Realms that had been haphazardly squished into the wound, which gave the Living Mana all the powerful properties that everyone desired. Ryland's job might ostensibly be to act as a substitute for the Vestige, where his magic was supposed to tamp the flow of Living Mana to manageable levels. For they had already experienced one of the outbreaks already, and if left unchecked, things would grow much worse. But Ryland didn't want to be a mere substitute.

Now that he was here, he might as well fix the messes that kept dragging at his eyes like a smudge of dirt on an otherwise pristine plate. Things were different now. The last time Ryland had been present in front of this Manabreak, he hadn't possessed the kind of power he was currently capable of. In fact, the last time, he had been kind of responsible for the Manabreak in the first place. Maybe more than just kind of. From certain perspectives.

So, admittedly, there was a certain amount of responsibility playing into his decision to do something here. But onto the matter at hand. Ryland started reaching into the gargantuan reality wound with his mana. The more of his manasoul he unleashed, the easier it became to connect to every iota of reality stored within the wound and reach a state where he felt he could control it. Ryland was not considering things from the perspective of space.

The Calamity of the Cosmos had broken spatial rules that defied explanation, and despite the knowledge he had accrued, even he struggled to understand it all. But that was the nature of Calamities. They defied reason. So instead, he was thinking of things from the perspective of reality itself. But none of that meant Ryland couldn't insert his own rules if he used enough force.

Since he was constantly unleashing his manasoul bit by bit, as a storm of magic grew up around him and turned more and more intense, he eventually reached the threshold he was seeking. The one where he could read the entire wound as nothing more than an unbelievably complex map of Conceptual Glyphs.

"What exactly are you doing?" the Head Miner asked. She yelled it out, as though she was scared Ryland wouldn't be able to hear it over the din of his own magic. He heard it perfectly fine. If anything, it sounded like she was screaming in his ear.

"I am about to rearrange the layout of the wound," he said." Rearrange?" The Head Miner's eyes goggled.

"What does that even mean?"

"The reason the Living Mana keeps surging out with increasingly greater intensity is because of all the Realm-pockets stuffed into the wound in reality. I originally thought there might be some Fate-manipulation going on, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Not for what you're dealing with at least."

"So you're going to reorder the Realms to prevent Living Mana from coming through and thereby getting amplified via all the Realms?" Acrypha asked.

"Wouldn't that cause the Living Mana to lose a lot of the properties they're looking for?" Ryland wasn't turning his head, but he could almost feel everyone staring at the girl. It certainly sounded like an overly insightful question for just a mere student to ask.

"If they continue their old process, then yes," Ryland said.

"The Living Mana will not have all the sought-after properties in a single surge that they're currently using a distillation-like process to separate. Now, every property will be in its own strand."" Oh." The Head Miner sounded as though Ryland was suddenly making a lot of sense.

"Instead of letting through one, enormously powerful flood of Living Mana, you're turning into multiple smaller inflows, each with their own property."

"And each coming from a specific location if I can finish rearranging things correctly." Like with everyone's reaction to Acrypha's question, he could feel Milva nod in acceptance.

"This is going to change how we do things here. A lot. But I agree, it will be for the better overall."

"A small warning, however," Ryland said.

"The rearranging process might just cause some… alarming situations to arise. Please be prepared." There were a few questions flung in his direction about what exactly he meant by "alarming situations" but he ignored them for the time being. Right that moment, he had to focus on the rearrangement process. If anything arose during the process, he was quite sure they'd be able to handle it." [Dimensional Lock]," he incanted." [Realm Vice]. [Restraint of The Rupture]."

The first spell obviously ensured that things would remain dimensionally stable even as he messed around with it. His other two spells were all about the organizing procedure. Ryland "grabbed" the Realm pockets and began physically dislocating them through the wound. He was careful not to push them into a different Realm through the connections they possessed, certainly not the Realm he was currently occupying.

The moment he started doing so, Living Mana surged out of the gigantic wound in reality. It was the bits and chunks trapped in between the various Realm pockets, now dislodged and free to emerge out of the Manabreak wound. With screeching cries that sounded much like distant thunderclaps, they bounded outwards.

"Please deal with the Living Mana," Ryland asked the rest of the mages present there. They were already starting to do so, of course. The Miner Mages, at least. Everyone else was mostly a guest, but the Miner Mages were professionally required to handle anything from the wound. This was a good thing because they were already getting a first-hand experience of how to deal with the new kind of Living Mana that would emerge from the rearranged wound.

Although, that hopefully wouldn't include the other threat coming out. A large number of man-sized flying lizards shot straight for them all once he was done. Yulvelads from Realm 17. So, one of the pockets was from there. How interesting. Ryland couldn't actually tell what each Realm was through simple touch, but he now had legitimate proof of at least one of the pockets inside the Manabreak wound.

"Ahh!" someone screamed far behind him.

"What are those things?" another shouted.

"M-monsters!" this one sounded young enough to be a student.

"We've got monsters!" The Miner Mages were dealing with both the Living Mana and the monsters now. From the sounds of things, all the students from the Excursion Club were determined to find a way past Academ Jules and assist directly. And maybe the Prime Minister's attendants—not just the Sentinel and Senior Warden, but all the others who had now arrived—would finally take part too. Ryland ignored it all. There were still a handful of Realms left.

He just needed to get them all in line before something worse appeared. Which it promptly proceeded to do. So rude. Three burning eyes, each the size of warhorse, flared in the wound. A second later, the entire battlefield went quiet as three enormous serpentine necks emerged from the rift through space, each one ending in a one-eyed draconic maw studded with jagged teeth and broken horns.

"T-that's a Demihydra!" someone shrieked.

"Is that Primordial-ranked?" another person cried. Ryland seriously considered letting the monster be. His primary goal was finishing the rearrangement of all the pocket Realms within the Manabreak wound so that it would no longer be as much of a hassle without the lost Vestige. But then the creature roared, and despite not turning, he could feel how several of those present quailed at that. Hmm. Maybe Ryland would need to take care of it.