Chương 54: 54 Loop 2, Part 8

[Manifestation — Level 25: Journeyman Tier Unlocked] Prestige Unlocked: [Mana Pool 4] [Mana Pool 4 — Passive]. +300 maximum mana. Your pool expands beyond mortal convention. My mana pool became a vault. My maximum mana jumped from 520 to 820, and I sat there on the workbench feeling like I'd eaten way too much food. It took me a few minutes to get back into a meditative state. But the next chime came before I was even ready.

[Alteration — Level 50: Adept Tier Unlocked] Prestige Unlocked: Choose Your Path [Cascade II — Passive]. After casting the same spell 3 times in quick succession, the 4th and 5th recast cost 30% less. [Spell Stretch — Passive]. Extend the duration of all active spells by 25%. Spell Stretch again. It had been offered to me 3 fucking times now. Which meant the system thought I needed it, or it was always going to be an option. And sure, in fairness, fewer casts of my morning spells was a dream.

But [Cascade II] and [Recursion II] meant I was getting closer and closer to a much more important dream. Never running out of mana. Obviously, I took [Cascade II]. The system could keep offering me [Spell Stretch]. And maybe one day I'd take it. I finished the meditation properly, let the pool crawl the rest of the way up, and opened my eyes on a workshop full of painted golems and one healer already awake.

"You're making the face. That's, like, twice in ten hours." He had come out of his own meditation looking like he'd actually slept, which made me hate him.

"What face?"

"The one where you thought about how much effort something was going to be, and then realized you're not gonna have to do it." I laughed. He was right. Now, it would be his turn to do the work. It was time to go, but he wasn't standing up. So I looked over. He was checking his own screen.

"Huh. I hit 75 for Soul Magic." I blinked. Of course he hit 75 in his main skill. For all my knowledge, I was a slacker when it came to leveling.

"What did you get?"

"Uh, a passive for stabilizing people." He closed the screen.

"It's nice." It's nice, he said. And then failed to elaborate. Ugh, like I wanted to know what that passive did, anyway.

"Get up," I said to Finn.

"We're going to the armory. There's one more thing we need to do before we go after my uncle."

"What about giving the Keeper her body?"

"She knows what we're doing, and she knows where my uncle is. She'll understand. Besides, I didn't say when I would bring it back to her."

"All right, then. Why are we going to an armory? You don't fight. You've given, like, thirtyspeeches about how fighting is for idiots."

"Well, I never said I was going to fight." I stood up while Finn started to protest.

"And we're not going there for the weapons." Standing was, unfortunately, going to be a problem for me. My legs had gone numb around the second time I'd started meditating, and now, like always, they were on strike. Because it was hard to meditate while floating, Finn and I had canceled the spells. Now that we were done, I didn't want to spend the mana for [Stride] or even to recast [Float] —but I didn't need to. I had golems who could do my walking for me.

I found a single chair in the workshop, sat down on it, and said, "Purples, assemble." The purple golems peeled out of their formation and held my chair at hip height like they had been doing this for a decade already. I swung my legs over the side, and said, "Onward." The entire company of golems followed behind me. Finn nodded, and his fourteen fell in behind my six like they had all rehearsed it. You know the awesome thing about twenty sets of armored feet on old stone? We weren't subtle. We were fucking loud.

The sound was threatening.

"You can't be serious," Finn said.

"What do you mean? This is great."

"You look like a fucking asshole."

"I mean, I am an asshole, but this doesn't hurt anybody."

"Why am I not surprised that you just built an army and the first thing you use it for is this?"

"Well, the first thing I used my army for was color coordination. This is the second thing." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. He rolled his eyes at me.

"Oh, good," Flag said, floating through the air like he was having the time of his life.

"The chair is back. I like the chair. It made you look important."

"See, Flag gets it," I said to Finn. The armory door was open, just like last time. Racks of weapons behind yellowed glass cases, swords and staves alongside weapons I didn't have names for, others covered in so much dust you couldn't make out a thing. And near the back, dangling at an angle from a single mount, was a bearded axe with a soul. I had my golems take me to the axe. The soul was faint, but unmistakable. Somebody was home.

There were a bunch of smaller ones in the room, and I didn't quite know what that meant. I had to squint a little to be able to see the telltale signs. But that was a later Lazlo problem.

"We're here for the axe?" Finn asked.

"Laz. That's a weapon, dumbass. That's the definition of a weapon. In fact, I'm pretty sure in the dictionary, it is the picture next to the word 'weapon.'""We're here because there's a soul in the axe." He stared at me, wide-eyed, and then at the axe.

"Please tell me the library doesn't have a haunted axe."

"The library doesn't have a haunted axe. It has other ghosts, though." The horror that jumped to his face would be an image I'd cherish forever.

"But no, I didn't see any ghost weapons last time. I just know there's a soul in the axe, and I'd rather have him on our side than leave him hanging on a wall for another century." Here was the part where the math used to hurt. And hurt a lot. [Soul Tether] reserved my maximum mana permanently, with no real way to get a refund. Currently. That I knew of. I wasn't sure how much it would reserve if I cast it on the axe. And on my old pool, it had felt like handing over a limb.

But if it was anything like when I'd cast it on Flag, it would only be, like, 8%. And 8% of 820 was only 66 mana. And after paying it, my usable pool would still be more than my entire maximum had been when I'd first woken up at the table on Monday. I was in the clear. But then I thought about my uncle. And how casting another soul into the tether would just end him. Except the healer standing next to me had just hit Soul Magic 75.

Whatever prestige skills came with that, he hadn't mentioned anything besides the name of a single passive. But I knew, for a fact, that he could cast [Scan] on my uncle and tell me exactly how far past red his channels were. And once I had a number, I could figure out what I needed to do to help my uncle. And potentially bring more people into the loop. Which meant the axe could wait—or at least the tether could wait. My debt from [Soul Tether] was up to 33% of my mana. But the mana wasn't the problem.

That was minor. I wasn't 100 percent sure, but I figured that being attached to my uncle through a soul tether was how Flag and I had gotten dragged back in time. And every soul I tied to mine was another soul my uncle's casting had to carry through the spell as well. A third tether could do nothing, or it could kill him altogether. But I wasn't going to find out by experimenting. That wasn't something I was willing to risk. But I knew Finn, and he'd want a weapon. So here we were, about to get him one.

And once he had it, I had an idea for how to use that weapon to make my life easier.

"So, good news. You're gonna learn a new spell today."

"I don't like the way you said 'good news.'""Come on, when have I ever led you astray?"

"Well, there was that time last year where I ended up in detention for a week and got a 0 on my exam because you cheated."

"I didn't cheat. I was just trying out a new spell, and Professor Mela thought it would copy your work. But it didn't. Look, anyway, the spell's called [Soul Tether]. And if you cast it on the axe, you can talk with it."

"What? I can talk to an axe? Who would be insane enough to want a talking axe? Besides, why can't you cast it? You deal with the creepy soul stuff."

"I'm not gonna cast it because I already have two tethers running. One of them's attached to my comatose uncle, and the other is attached to Flag over there." I pointed at my golem, who was busy flying through the air.

"You, on the other hand, are fresh, healthy, and have twice as much mana as me, probably. What's your mana at again?"

"Damn it, Laz, I'm a healer, not a... ghoul leash."

"Dude, you already used that joke. I'm the one in a time loop. I'm the one who gets to repeat things, not you. It's not even gonna be, like, 10% of your mana. You'll never even notice it." Eventually, I wore him down. He grumbled the entire time. But then, just like me, he cast it perfectly on his first try. The spell took effect. It was obvious, because Finn went from skeptical to listening to alarmed in the space of about four seconds.

"What?" I asked.

"What's he saying?"

"He, um, said his name is Axe." I lit up.

"What? That's a fantastic name. I love it."

"You would think that."

"What's not to love? It's efficient, descriptive. The name I probably would have given him." His eyes unfocused, and I could tell he was listening.

"No, I don't want to do that. Just be patient. It'll be fine." And then he turned to address me.

"He wants to know when the battle is."

"Tell him soon."

"He wants to know if there will be blood."

"Yeah, of course there will be blood."

"Laz." Finn had gone slightly pale.

"He says he wants to bathe in the blood of a valiant battle. What did you make me do, man? What did you have me bond my soul with?"

"See, he's got goals. I respect that," I said, skirting the topic.

"You respect that? He's a murder weapon. And now he lives in my fucking head."

"Dude, in, like, a minute, you're not even gonna be annoyed anymore. Just put your axe in the hand of one of your golems, and watch the magic."

"Oh. Is that why you wanted me to do this?"

"Duh. Now who's the dumbass?" Finn picked a golem from his own squad—one of the green ones—and I walked him through the same procedure I had done on Flag twice now. But obviously, since it was a weapon, it couldn't go inside the golem. I'd had an epiphany about that. He found the seam of the chest casing, pressed in, and let the plate swing forward. The battery sat inside, still humming and warm, like always. Finn lifted it out and held it away from his body.

"Careful with that," I said casually, as if it was no big deal.

"They explode."

"They WHAT?" He nearly dropped the mana battery.

"Dude, I said be careful. Just put it on the workbench. Because of this whole tether, he won't need it. A soul holds mana better than any battery ever made." The axe didn't fit, of course. But here was my idea. I took the head off the golem and had Finn slot the axe through the neck hole—into the golem's casing, where it fit snug, just like the battery.