Chapter 306: I woke it up

Chapter 306: I woke it up

I get into the bunker where I find the asshole in the room with the core as he examines the giant mana crystal pillar. As I enter, I feel his senses touch me, and he turns his attention to me.

Again he stares at my missing arm and my eye that is close to being healed, do you even realize how much we tend to lose limbs? It can't be normal at this point. Is it Bambi's curse?

What have you done?

Just try to think about it; you could build five of us with the limbs youve lost. Actually, do you think it could work? If Lily helped...

It's not that many. And maybe? What have you done?

It is a lot. We are the only reason Lilys been able to level up her healing skill so quickly; we boosted her. And I did nothing wrong.

The sleeping noodle moved, I say.

Yup. I woke it up.

He did what to the three-question-mark monster?

Damn, it is fun to tease you like that. I know how you will react, and most of the time I can even predict the exact words youre going to say, yet it's still funny. Like a game, trying to predict a coin flip."

I can't even say much, it really does sound fun, So, want to show off?

Oh, you know me well. He gestures at me and leads me to another room. I already toured the bunker, and it's mostly useless, as is to be expected. At this point, I bet its the system making things more difficult. All the data has been deleted, the facilities are destroyed and its beyond my abilities to make them work. At the moment it's just a cool place to store the mirror. Obviously youre free to check it out, you will surely find a lot to inspire you here along with a few tidbits of knowledge.

We enter the auditorium, and he boosts his body and sits on the podium, and I follow, taking a seat in the front row.

He explains, Do you remember that annoying acid serpent and the weird aura snake?

Oh my, he did not do that.

Yes, I did that!

Fuck.

Yup, fuck. Clonthaniel seems to be having fun, I was thinking, you know. This bunkers sole purpose was to store the mirror, so how can we learn what happened here? Surely not the Sanctuary and even the Bastion seems to be lacking. Then I remembered that there was a quest to avoid waking up the sleeping Calamity. Why? No one would go close to it anyway, right?

He swings his legs, as he uses a thermal orb floating between us to light the huge room and its rows upon rows of empty seats.

It's a bit of a stretch, but I wanted to find out if there was some kind of facility or bunker near the sleeping noodle, he adds with a dramatic pause, And there is! The problem is that I couldn't get inside. So, I found the acid snake asshole, left some marks on him, and imitated his mana. Then I used a few bombs mixed with his acid to attack the noodle. You probably saw the outside, but the big boy wasn't happy at all.

Damn, I would have loved to see that.

Clonthaniel nods, Cool as heck. Anyway, the asshole snake is gone. The danger noodle moved a bit, which allowed me to place a few anchors through a crack in the entrance hes been sleeping on. I already sent a few monsters through one of the anchors, and it hasnt woken him up, so we can go in a bit.

So, you are hoping something inside will help you?

Yup, the natives here created the Veil, so they will surely have some nice stuff in their databases. And that place seems to be one of the facilities they used to work on the Veil. Even Butler assumed there might be a facility like that in the Valley.

At first, I wanted to trash-talk him for taking such a risk, but then I took notice of my missing arm. Ehm, maybe let's stay quiet about that for a bit.

It also confirms that we are slowly becoming more and more different. His goals are different than mine, so hes thinking about different things, and practicing other skills.

It's fascinating to watch, and when I think about it now, most of the things he did make sense, and I totally can see myself doing the same in his situation.

By the way, healing with our passive is quicker when you use thermal energy from the Vortex Core, I tell him.

Sounds good. Will you give me one of the Voidsteel blades? he looks at the new one that I just got.

Without hesitation, I throw it to him, and he grabs it.

I know both of us are thinking of the same thing at that moment.

Let's practice controlling black mana. We can spend a day or two on it. I suggest. After that, we can go to the Bastion, get some mana conductive paint, and maybe a few more useful items. After we come back here, we can enter the bunker under the Calamity,

That much is reasonable. Also, I want you to help me with the core of this bunker for half a day. I think I found a few interesting things, and two sets of eyes might be better than one.

Okay.

Without any other words, we get to it.

A day passes, we do not sleep, and the black mana orb constantly hums in the air, fighting against us.

It just keeps being annoying, Clonthaniel complains. If we lose even a bit of concentration it starts pulling all our mana in.

I thought giving it a different shape would help, but right now it seems that the only thing that weakens the effect is absorbing it into our body.

It might be because of our passives, hell, maybe the Mantle is helping or maybe its our Mana Circuits.

Mana Circuit sounds more reasonable, maybe its our passives. Upgrading our Mana Circuits might help.

Well, it's not like were going to be upgrading our eyes; theyre hard enough to deal with already.

Traits (2/3): Mana Circuit 1/3, Mana Wavelength Iris 0/3

Lvl 224

Strength: 109

Dexterity: 107

Constitution: 263

Mana (Stage 1/3 - Vast Mana): 874 + 874

Primary Class: Focused Channeler (Epic)

Sub-class: [Initiate of Pride]

Active skills:

Focus - Lvl 46

Mana Manipulation - Lvl 46

Perception - Lvl 42

Redistribution - Lvl 43

Resonance - Lvl 42

Mana Domain - Lvl 33

Tether - Lvl 29

Regalia - Lvl 19

Infusion - Lvl 24

Constructs:

Reinforcement (Construct)

Thermokinetic Mana Heart (Construct)

Mana Regulator (Construct)

Mana Sovereignty Mantle (Construct)

Vortex Core (Construct)

Passive skills:

Mana-Fortified Resilience (rare)

Mana Reservoir (epic)

Arcane Resilience (epic)

Phoenix Embrace (epic)

Mana Overload Absorption (epic)

Tokens:

Beyond Difficulty entrance token

Shards: 11,892

Not wanting to push things further, I stand up and head towards my duplicate. The guy is annoying as heck, but we can test things together that would otherwise tear my body apart. Even then, I'm sure hes already planning something, even though he wont share it.

I'm also extremely curious, so I let him cook. But the question is if I should let him cook.

Well, anyway, I still have this collar I took from Ir Ir, something guy. Cattle guy? Soylent green producer?

Null Collar (Epic):Actively disrupts the wearer's magical attempts and skills, using absorbed mana to diminish both magical potency and physical vitality.

There is a bit to learn from it that could improve our disruption of mana or even create a similar lasting effect without items. Using [Tether] to anchor that sort of disrupting stuff to someone could work. Hell, I already used [Tether] to glue a black mana dagger to the First One, and [Tether] seems to be a better skill than I initially thought. It even managed to ignore my black mana, at least partially.

Is it because it's a spatial skill? Probably? Who knows. Oh, and fuck the system.

Anyway, let's test some stuff and head out to the Bastion. I bet there will be some more interesting things and maybe we can get a few more honest answers.