Chương 5: Catching Up

The Spellforged Magus · Xiphias · 72 chương · ~37 phút đọc · Tạo 05/07/2026

The mana was being difficult. Enzo sat on a bench in the hospital's ground-floor waiting area, one leg tucked beneath him, the other stretched out, fingers steepled against his forehead, eyes closed. The cane leaned against his leg. The visualization was the same one he'd used in the apartment, but everything else was different. Purple flows drifted across his awareness in chaotic patterns, pulled in a dozen directions at once.

Other mages tugged at the same currents he was trying to draw from, their pull creating eddies and dead zones that shifted every time someone new started meditating or someone else finished. People moved through the room constantly, their bodies disrupting the flows the way rocks disrupted a stream, sending mana scattering in turbulent wakes. He'd managed to find a rhythm despite the interference.

Slow, steady draws through the lens, ignoring the competing currents and focusing on whatever wisps drifted close enough to claim. It was like panning for gold in a river full of other prospectors, each of them scooping from the same water. The reservoir in his mind filled gradually. He could feel the capacity was larger than before, the well deeper, though he hadn't stopped to check the numbers yet. Each wisp of mana that settled into place added to the warm pressure behind his eyes, familiar and welcome.

Someone sat down on the bench across from him. He sensed the new presence through the mana flows before anything else. A sudden pull, strong and practiced, drawing ambient mana inward. The pull wasn't toward the head. It flowed downward, toward the chest, the heart, following a path he recognized from the tutorial's description of the cultivation method. A sorcerer. Recovering, the same as he was. Minutes slipped by.

The reservoir continued to fill, the pressure building steadily until it reached a point where each new wisp added less and less. Diminishing returns. He pushed through it, drawing slower, more deliberately, until finally the well refused to accept any more. Full. Enzo released the visualization and opened his eyes. Valentina sat on the bench opposite him, legs folded beneath her, hands interlocked with knuckles pointing down, pressed over her heart. The cultivation pose.

Her eyes were closed, her breathing measured and deep. Blood streaked her face and arms, some of it dried, some of it fresher. A new bruise colored her left cheekbone, swelling slightly beneath the skin. She was fine. Bloody, bruised, and exhausted, but fine. Which meant the situation had been handled. Without him. While he'd been sitting here with his eyes closed, she'd gone upstairs and dealt with whatever had broken through. She'd told him to absorb and catch up.

He'd done exactly that, and it had taken long enough for the crisis to start and end without him. At least thirty minutes. Enzo looked around the waiting area. The space was built to hold over a hundred people, but most of the connected seating had been ripped from the floor and hauled outside to reinforce the barricades. He and Val occupied two of the surviving seats near the back wall. The cleared center of the room had been filled with whatever people could find.

Folded blankets and towels spread across the tile. A handful of people meditated in poses similar to his own or Valentina's, the split roughly even between fingers steepled at the forehead and hands interlocked over the heart. The cultivator with the handwraps occupied a seat near the corridor entrance, eyes closed, chest rising and falling in the same measured rhythm as Val's. His shift at the barricade must have already ended. Enzo settled back and turned his attention to the notifications he'd been ignoring.

They'd been accumulating in the back of his awareness, each one a small mental nudge he'd pushed aside while fighting. Time to see what he'd earned. He pulled them up with a thought. — Eater Eliminated (x5) → Bonus Mana Capacity Provided (+50) Bolt (Level 3) → Bolt (Level 6) Shield (Level 2) → Shield (Level 3) Attunement (Level 1) → Attunement (Level 3) Mana Absorption (Level 3) → Mana Absorption (Level 4) Mana Sense (Level 2) → Mana Sense (Level 3) — Most of the gains made sense.

Bolt was a little surprising, though. From observation, he realized that missing attacks provided no growth. But, even though the first Eater had eaten the second attack, it had contributed to the two levels he'd gained at the time. With the extra kills since, he'd expected to be at least level seven or eight. Attunement remained an unknown. Skills didn't appear to have descriptions, though most were obvious in what they did. There was nothing he could do but wait until the Guide provided information on it.

The Eater bonuses accounted for most of the growth, but the absorption level-up had expanded his base capacity as well. More room to store, more to spend. He studied the numbers for a moment longer, then dismissed the interface. Techniques still sat empty. He wondered what it would take to fill that category, what the distinction was between a spell and a technique. The Guide hadn't elaborated, and he hadn't encountered anything that qualified. Just another question for the growing list.

Enzo let his head rest against the wall behind him and watched his sister meditate. After some time, Val's breathing shifted. The measured rhythm broke, replaced by something shallower, more conscious. Her fingers separated from the cultivation pose, dropping to her knees. She rolled her neck once, then opened her eyes. She found him watching and frowned.

"How long have you been staring at me?"

"Long enough to count the bruises." Her hand went to her cheek, touched the swelling, and pulled away with a wince she tried to hide.

"It's fine."

"Looks painful."

"It is painful. It's still fine." She unfolded her legs and planted her feet on the floor, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees.

"You're topped up?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Took you long enough."

"The stairwell?" Val's jaw tightened. For a moment, she looked as if she was going to say something about it. Then the tension left her shoulders, and she just shook her head.

"It's handled." Two words that covered everything and nothing. He decided not to push.

"How bad is it overall?" he asked instead.

"The barricade looked like it's holding, but barely."

"It's been ten hours of barely holding on, but they think the waves are starting to slow." She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms.

"We've got maybe thirty mages here, plus about sixty or seventy others helping with homemade weapons and a couple of guns. Everyone else is either too scared or too busy managing the hospital. Half of the mages are still trying to unlock Mana Control. The rest either have one spell or no spells. The rotation's been working, but people are getting tired faster than they're recovering." He'd noticed.

"What about the survivors? The Eaters?"

"The researchers have been tracking the data. Most people don't seem affected by mana exposure, but those that are start seizing and they either die within the first few hours, or the seizures calm down and they wake up between eight and twenty hours later. With magic." She laughed.

"It still sounds crazy to say it out loud." Enzo nodded, remembering the moment he'd had to say he was out of mana. Valentina stared at the floor. Her voice dropped.

"The numbers are bad, Ren." This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

'Ren.' Everyone else either called him Lorenzo or Enzo, but as a baby, Val had trouble pronouncing her Zs. These days she only called him that when something was wrong. It was obvious she wanted to talk about it.

"How bad?" She looked up, meeting his gaze.

"One in three die from exposure. They're estimating one in one hundred and fifty become mages with all factors accounted for." Enzo's breath caught as a chill ran up his spine.

"Silver lining is that most people are inside, right? At work or home, inside stores, or their cars…" She trailed off, then continued.

"Anyway, they think it takes about eight hours minimum after someone dies for an Eater to wake up." He thought about Murph, still unconscious when he left. That had been the eighteen-hour mark, give or take. She hadn't died in the first few hours, which was very lucky for him. He might not have woken up from his own nap otherwise.

"What about animals?"

"Happens to them too, but I doubt anyone knows the numbers. We've been too busy just dealing with people." She frowned.

"We did find some bodies in the underground parking that had been… chewed up. And not by people." He decided it was time to change the subject.

"Any idea what's going on with technology? The electricity at home cut out. Keeps flickering back on every once in a while. Cell and Wi-Fi are dead. The phone stopped working by the time I left home."

"It was the same here until they started compensating for increased resistance or something. The engineering faculty has a theory about that, actually. Based on some Guide entries the engineers unlocked, they think mana's being absorbed and that it's disrupting electrical current. They think it's affecting everything. Gasoline burns slower." She gestured vaguely toward the window.

"Even the cop out there complained his gun wasn't working properly." Enzo shook his head slowly.

"If the entire world is going through this, nothing is going to be the same." She nodded. Silence fell between them.

"We need to go home," Enzo said. Val stiffened.

"What?"

"Murph is alone in the apartment. We got caught in the rain when it started. I cleaned her up, left food and water, but she hasn't woken up and I don't know if she will."

"Enzo..."

"And we don't know how Mom and Dad are. If the phones are dead forever and the Eater problem is going to get worse, then we have to get out of the city before it's too late." Val's expression cycled through several things at once. He could see the argument forming, the instinct to push back, weighing the people here against the people at home. Her eyes flicked toward the corridor, toward the barricade outside, then back to him.

"I know," she whispered.

"I've been thinking about it too." That surprised him. He'd expected a fight.

"Val! You're back!" A voice cut across the waiting area, bright and relieved. Enzo turned to see a young woman moving across the room toward them. Asian, maybe mid twenties, with her dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She was small, even shorter than Val, and moved with a nervous energy that suggested she hadn't slept in a while. Val's face changed. The exhaustion and tension softened into something warmer, revealing a smile that reached her eyes. Enzo stared. He'd seen his sister smile before.

Just rarely at other people. She was more of an animal person.

"Hey, Sumi." Val stood to meet her.

"The third floor's clear. It took a while, but we got it." Sumi reached her and immediately raised a hand to Val's bruised cheek without asking.

"Heal." Soft green light bloomed from her palm. The swelling on Val's cheekbone shrank visibly, the angry purple fading to a dull yellow in the space of a few seconds. Val sighed and tilted her head into the touch like a cat leaning into a scratch. Enzo was on his feet before the light faded, cane in hand.

"How did you do that? What's the spell form? And is that a different mana type? The color was different. Will you teach me?" Sumi blinked at him, looking like a deer in headlights. She turned to Val. She laughed. A genuine laugh, unlike the earlier one.

"Enzo, breathe. Sumi, this is my brother. He's a wizard, and yes, he's always like this."

"Hi," Sumi said, offering a small wave.

"He makes jewelry for a living," Val added, as if that explained everything. To be fair, it probably did. Enzo reined himself in. His knee throbbed from the abrupt launch off the bench, the same dull protest that followed every time he overextended himself. A habit he hadn't managed to break in four years. Life since the accident was punctuated by moments where he forgot he wasn't the same man who used to spend weekends scrambling up cliff faces in the Sierras, and his body had to remind him.

Watching the last of Val's bruise fade under Sumi's palm, he almost asked if the spell worked on old injuries. Then he let it go. There was no way it would. It hadn't even fully healed the bruising, and there were people here with worse.

"Sorry. It's a pleasure to meet you, Sumi." He smiled.

"That was incredible, though. I've only seen arcane magic until now, but I remember the Guide mentioning there were types." Sumi relaxed.

"It's a combination of Life and Body type mana. The spell's called Heal. I can show you the form if you want, but it won't work without being able to convert your mana first."

"Convert?"

"Type it," Val said.

"Change it from base arcane into something specific. Sumi figured it out early on and she's been teaching others." She glanced at her friend with something akin to pride.

"She's the reason our cultivators have been lasting as long as they have on the barricade. Her buff spell is what's keeping the rotation working."

"Two spells?" Enzo looked at Sumi with renewed interest. Sumi nodded.

"Heal and Bolster. Bolster reinforces a cultivator's mana circulation, making everything work harder for about a minute. Strength, speed, durability. It's temporary, but it helps."

"And the conversion process. How does it work?" Sumi's initial uncertainty had shifted into something more comfortable now that the conversation was on familiar ground.

"It happens during absorption. When you're pulling mana in, you hold an intent in your mind. An idea of what you want the mana to become. Fire, water, life, whatever feels natural. The mana changes as it enters your reserves, and once it's typed, your spells can use it."

"Once you've worked it into your spell, of course," Val added.

"Some types come easier than others. Sumi took to Life and Body like it was breathing. She tried to teach me, but I'm terrible at it. I went with Fire instead."

"You can do it already?"

"Sumi walked me through it this morning during one of the breaks." She held up her fist and grinned.

"Adapted my Burst Fist technique straight away. Fire Burst Fist hits different." That answered the empty line on his status screen. Techniques were cultivation abilities. As for converting, it sounded simple enough, especially if people were doing it instinctively. It couldn't be that hard.

"Can you show me?" he asked Sumi.

"Sure. But first," she said, turning to Val, "Amy wants to know if you're taking the next rotation or resting."

"Resting. My brother just got here, and we need to figure some things out." Val sat back down and pulled Sumi down beside her.

"Sit. You too, Enzo." Sumi settled onto the bench beside Val, and Enzo noticed how naturally the two of them oriented toward each other. Val rarely connected closely with others. She maintained distance as a default, holding everyone at arm's length until she'd decided they were worth the effort. Sumi had apparently passed that test. He sat down.

"Enzo wants us to go home," Val said.

"Us?"

"Me and him. Our parents live outside the city, and we need to find them and check that they're okay." Sumi's face fell slightly.

"Oh."

"You're coming too," Val said, as if the matter were already settled.

"I am?"

"She is?" Enzo echoed.

"Your family is in Osaka. You can't reach them and you're not staying here alone." Sumi opened her mouth, closed it, then looked at Enzo as if expecting him to object. He wanted to. Another person meant another responsibility, another body to protect. But he'd caught the look on Val's face when Sumi walked up. Something he almost never saw from his sister. And he saw it now, while she watched him, feigning a casualness that poorly hid the vulnerability behind her insistence.

"You're welcome to join us," he said.

"We have to head back to our apartment first to grab some things and pick up our dog, Murph. Maybe wait out the rain." Sumi stared at both of them for a moment. Then she swallowed and nodded.

"Okay. Thank you."

"But we're not leaving yet," Val continued, the warmth in her voice sharpening.

"There are people on the upper floors who need help. When this all started, they quarantined the seizing people being brought in, and when they turned, they had to seal off multiple floors. There are patients and medical staff trapped up there, waiting for someone to clear the Eaters." Enzo sighed.

"And you want to be that someone."

"We can't take too many off the rotation because there are two ground-floor entrances being defended. And two more that have to be watched. Plus four stairwell blockades. So, you, me, Sumi, and maybe one more. Same kind of work as outside."

"Hallways and closed doors are a lot different from an open barricade."

"I know, but you have a ranged spell and I can handle anything that gets close." She nudged Sumi.

"Sumi's buff and heal will also come in handy." Sumi turned to Enzo.

"You have a ranged spell?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Bolt. I've also got Shield. And my first spell, Lock." Sumi gasped.

"You created three spells by yourself?" Even Valentina eyed him strangely.

"Why's that surprising?" The pair shared a look.

"We have four spells and three techniques between the thirty of us," Val said. She followed up by rattling out a list of spells and techniques, counting them off on her fingers. Spear and Shield. Sumi's Heal and Bolster. Val's Burst Fist and Burst Step. Then she nodded to the man with wrapped hands, who was still meditating.

"Rick over there made a technique called Reinforce." Sumi nodded.

"We've been sharing everything we learn with each other. Figuring out the forms and circulations are hard enough, but actually creating the spells and techniques are worse. Controlling mana is hard." Enzo frowned. Shaping the mana into stable patterns had been easy once he got over materializing the threads. Figuring out spell forms was the hard part, requiring experimentation and iteration. He'd assumed that would be everyone's experience. Apparently it wasn't.

"Let's exchange forms. I'll show you Bolt, and you show me Spear. Does anyone have paper and something to write with?" Sumi produced a small notebook and pen from her inner pocket. He took them with a nod of thanks and flipped to a blank page.

"Bolt's form is three-dimensional, so I'll draw it from a few angles." He sketched quickly, years of drafting jewelry designs keeping his lines clean and confident. When that was done, he briefly explained the intent behind each line. Then he returned the notepad to Sumi, who took it and immediately started examining the form he'd drawn from three separate angles, her eyes tracing it with an intensity that reminded him of himself when buried in his work.

"Your turn," he said. Val grabbed the pen.

"I can't cast, obviously, but I've seen the form." She drew a straight line on the seat next to her, then added a short angled line off the end, hooking backward at maybe a hundred and sixty degrees from the main shaft. He raised an eyebrow.

"That's it?"

"That's it. Just… think stabby, I guess." Enzo studied it for a few moments. The form might be simple, but that matched the practical nature of using a thread of hardened mana to stab something. Then he closed his eyes and shaped the form, mana flowing from his reserves, the first thread locking into place. The second, shorter, attached to the end and completing the hook. The whole thing took seconds.

— Spell Codified: Spear (Level 1) Type: Arcane Description: Projects a rigid thread of mana in a close-range piercing attack. — It would be useful. Cheaper than Bolt, too, given the simpler form, and probably better suited to tight spaces or Eaters at close range. He dismissed the notification and opened his eyes. Sumi was staring at him, the Bolt sketches forgotten in her lap. Val had her arms crossed, one eyebrow raised.

The cultivator with the handwraps, Rick, had opened his eyes at some point and was also watching him from across the room.

"What?" Enzo asked.

"You just..." Sumi started, then stopped. Glanced at Val. Then back at him.

"That took you five seconds."

"The form is simple."

"Figuring out the form isn't the only hard part," Sumi said quietly. The silence that followed was uncomfortable. Enzo could feel the weight of their attention shifting from impressed to something closer to scrutiny. He didn't understand why controlling mana was difficult for them. The gap between his experience and theirs was becoming harder to ignore, and he had no explanation for it. He cleared his throat.

"So. Mana conversion. Can you teach me?" Sumi blinked. Then she nodded.

"Right. Yes. Of course."

"And after that," Val said, standing, stretching her back with a series of loud pops, "we'll clear the upper floors before heading home." Enzo nodded.

"Deal." Sumi looked between the two of them, then took a breath and squared her shoulders.

"Okay. Let's start."

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