Carlos snuck as quietly as he could manage through the endless jungle, every scrap of attention focused on watching for and avoiding any sticks his feet might break, any branches his clothes or — especially — skin might snag on, and any dry leaves that might crackle underfoot.
He also deftly managed a suite of spells at the same time. He lifted himself just enough with Levitation to avoid crunching a patch of leaves he couldn't easily step around. He bent a pair of branches an extra inch to the side with Telekinesis to make the widest available gap between bushes become wide enough. He sharpened his vision with Eagle Eyes, with the spell settled into his body like it was part of him. He kept his body temperature at a comfortable level with a customized combination of contingent heating and cooling. He tracked his position on the course that his improved version of Find Path had laid out for him.
He also worked on expanding and improving his library of spells and utility functions. He'd already implemented all the types of collections he could remember, each one optimized for high performance in one or another group of operations. He had investigated what math operations were already built into the existing incantation system, and he'd done his best on adding some more — including exponentiation, some trigonometry, and a constant with a frankly excessive number of digits of pi. Heh. Hooray for idle intellectual fidgeting in moments of boredom during my college years. All these years later, and I can still recite the first 36 digits of pi effortlessly. More importantly, he had built up a substantial repertoire of spells that he had overhauled and improved, or even created from scratch, for a variety of combat and utility purposes. He'd shared several of them with Trinlen, who had declared them more efficient and effective than the standard spells.
He also considered the problem of fixing the sabotage in the royal guards' gear. That persistent project often felt like running in circles or bashing his head against a wall, but he had let his subconscious ruminate on the issues since yesterday, and it was time to see if any new ideas would bubble up. The core obstacle at this point was that he and Amber were still below the level of the sabotaged enchantments, and they weren't willing to share the necessary secrets with a Crown mage. Just waiting until we've leveled up enough is still an option, of course, but I don't know if we can actually afford that delay with how things are heating up between the Crown and the… Is 'rebels' the right word? I haven't heard of them announcing a name for themselves, and killing an actual Crown scion two days ago clearly crosses the line into open rebellion, right?
He dismissed the irrelevant tangent. Anyway, we've already tried everything we can think of for working with enchantments above our level. We can meaningfully affect them now, but they resist our efforts too strongly for the degree of precision we need. We might be able to cut off the sabotage from the rest when it's separated itself out to let the main enchantment display unaltered for inspection, but we're pretty sure that would break the power source part. The Enchanters Guild did some kind of hacky workaround to make that, not the proper intended way that we found in the documentation, and the sabotage is all tangled together with the rest there.
We would have to replace the power source, and that runs straight back into the level issue. Our mana and essence isn't high-level enough, isn't dense enough and powerful enough, to create an enchantment power source that would match the power of what they already have, and they don't want a weakened downgrade. We can't artificially inflate the level of our essence, either; if we try to pile a bunch of our essence in one place and forcibly compress it, it pushes back too hard.
He paused. Or can we? … The natural way to compress essence is for it to build up to a certain point in a soul structure, and we can shift essence around between our soul structures. If we pile all our essence into one, that would boost it, hmm… 10 structures' worth in 1, closest power of 2 is 8, which is 2 cubed. The 1 structure would be 3 Levels higher. We could keep the leftover essence in the other structures so they'd just be de-leveled a bit. Hmm. It's technically viable, I suppose, but how the hell would we explain it? I think it would excessively push the bounds of Lorvan's willingness to let us keep secrets.
He also bantered telepathically with Amber. [Did you see my last Levitation step over that cluster of leaves, there? I bet even Sconter couldn't leave less of a sign of passage.]
Amber sent back a mental chuckle and smirk. [Physically, maybe. You left traces of mana use to do it, though. Sconter would too, but his mana traces would be fuzzier, harder to notice. You had good efficiency, though. Now, did you see how deftly I kept that branch from snagging my sleeve?]
Carlos sent the mental impression of an impressed, smiling nod. [Yes, that was very nicely done. Just the tiniest little localized domes of blunt force around the very tip of each prickly point to make them slide off smoothly. Wait, no, that was the result, not the structure of the spell's logic. Is that a new one you made? It's faint and weak enough that it's hard to pick out the details.]
Warmth, pride, and a sense of exhilarated achievement came over the bond. [Yes. I was working on it off and on for most of yesterday. I had been thinking a while ago about how to reliably determine the precise points you would need to deal with for the minimum possible still-effective protection from thorns, and I realized that there's no need to actually analyze the thorny plant: Just detect when something is almost touching you and check whether it's pointy. It took a while to work out the kinks, but I think it's working well now.]
Carlos felt an urge to hug her and had to remind himself that this was not the right time for that. [Congratulations and well done! You put the result in Purple's repository, right? Ah, yes, I found it.] He copied the spell into his own database and immediately cast it. [Now then, let's see; is there anything I can learn from this, and is there anything I can teach you to improve…]
He also pondered the incredible weirdness that his life had become. He was doing all of these things simultaneously, each of them with what used to be his full and undivided attention, and coordinating them all perfectly as needed. His mind that was focused on his spells just knew exactly when his mind that was focused on sneaking needed a pulse of Levitation, and his sneaking mind just knew exactly when the needed Levitation would be provided. He seamlessly put his weight on the spell with one step and back on the ground with the next, and his spell-handling mind transitioned to letting Amber's new spell deflect most of the thorns without even thinking about it. The new existence of that automated protection was just part of his knowledge that he accounted for in his decisions.
All of his minds coordinated perfectly, and his other minds weren't even tempted to sidetrack into this kind of introspective pondering because he, as a singular being composed of the combination of all of his minds, was already doing that with one of his minds. On top of having improved his ability to regulate his tendency to get distracted, he had also gained an additional outlet for that tendency—he could indulge a distraction while simultaneously maintaining focus.
And all of that isn't even touching the topic of being in another world where literal magic is actually real! Carlos mentally chuckled to himself, then sighed and turned his thoughts to a more pertinent topic. I wonder what this pool of stagnant mana that Esmorana found will be like. No one seems to have a good description for it, but it's somehow dangerous, and we're supposed to deal with it because we're nobles? And we can't just teleport straight to it, or even fly the whole way, and skip all this walking, because that would be too likely to draw the wellspring guardian's attention.
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He almost rolled his eyes at his own griping. Heh, look at me, complaining that my fantastical conveniences aren't fantastic enough. But seriously, how much farther is it? He focused on his large-scale mana sense and extended it forward in the general direction they were heading. He felt the presence of plenty of trees and undergrowth, all of it adapted for the high-level aether permeating the air, various moving concentrations of essence that were probably animals or monsters—telling the difference with mana sense was difficult—and the one selective beacon that was Sconter scouting the path for them.
At the outer limit of how far he could sense, though, there was something strange. Carlos thought it was at least a mile away, maybe two, and discerning details at that distance was difficult, but it definitely felt different from anything he'd sensed before. Details gradually became clearer as they approached closer. It was aimless like aether, but wasn't light or flowing. It was fluid like mana, but wasn't contained or directed. It was heavy and motionless like inactive essence, but wasn't rigid or connected to anything.
Carlos unconsciously narrowed his eyes as they approached about the halfway mark from when he'd first sensed it. Wait, that malformed blob actually is connected to something. Several things, in fact. Three plants, I think, and two creatures. Those five things feel wrong somehow, too. Their essence is kind of… half-melted and covered with streaks of bubbles, I guess? Like if a pottery project never dried and hardened, or if a tower of cardboard got saturated with water. I wonder what effect that has on them.
A short while later, he got the first part of his answer. He sensed one of the bundles of deformed essence approaching rapidly, just as Sconter warned him of an incoming attack, and braced himself for impact behind the shelter of his Force Shield. It was truly his Force Shield this time, cast by himself rather than Lorvan's gear, and he was nervous about how well it would hold up against an attack by something 6 levels above him, but the colonel was very insistent that they had to start relying on themselves now.
Lorvan spoke dryly from his position well behind Carlos, "Are you going to just let it keep doing that all day, Lord Carlos? Technically, that would work to drain the stagnant pool that's fueling it."
Carlos blinked a third time. I… actually could do that, I think. This thing is 6 levels above me, but my Force Shield is barely even noticing its attacks. Is this the power of a noble soul plan? No wonder nobles are given so much authority! He paused, then shook his head. No, not just noble. This is the power of a royal soul plan. I'd better end this before it becomes too obvious. He quickly projected a Force Blade and cut the raging thing in half.
The two halves didn't even slow down their continuous assault, and their cut sides healed over with a surge of mana from the stagnant pool. They even grew another clawed limb from the newly exposed surface—one on each half of the split. Carlos blinked yet again and stared for a moment. "Um. I know you said our attacks would have to be instantly lethal, but how was cutting it in half not enough!?"
Sconter appeared from the trees to the left and shrugged nonchalantly. "Yeah, this sort of thing is why even veteran adventurers like us are wary of tangling with the creations of a stagnant mana pool. Try cutting it into a thousand pieces at once, or crushing it—all of it—to a pulp all in one shot. Esmorana's the only one of our party who can really do it well."
Amber raised her right hand forward. "Let me try." She flexed her mana, and a new bubble of force enveloped the two raging bundles of claws, lifting them helplessly off the ground despite their furious resistance. Then she closed her hand into a fist, and the force bubble abruptly shrank. The crackle of several things breaking at once rang out, along with some disturbing squishing sounds.
Carlos looked away and gulped, but then he felt the structure of the monster's essence tear and give way. He looked back and saw its crushed body rapidly disintegrating, evaporating back into the environment. In moments, there was nothing left to be disturbed by. He took a deep breath, shook himself, and nodded sharply. "Right. Well done, Amber. Let's continue on."
The other mobile creature connected to the stagnant mana pool turned out to be an animal rather than a monster, so it left a material corpse when it died. Based on the pained whines mixed in with its enraged roars, plus the sharp spines all over its skin that stabbed itself in some places every time it moved, Carlos thought killing it was a gift of mercy. The three plants—two bushes and a tree—were just as deformed and far more actively dangerous than any plant should be, but proved just as easy as the creatures to dispatch.
Carlos and Amber soon found themselves standing in front of an iridescent amorphous blob about 9 feet across and 5 feet tall. Part of it rested on the ground, and he sensed that it extended 3 feet below ground level, too. They stood well back from it, eyeing it warily. Carlos broke the silence first. "So…" He had nothing to follow that syllable up with.
Amber glanced at him, then squared her shoulders and looked back at the irregularly-shaped rainbow shimmer. "So, we have to either disperse this or use it for something. We can't absorb it, because it would warp us like it did those things." She reached out with her essence and cautiously probed it, and Carlos did the same.
Carlos tentatively dipped a thread of essence into the stagnant mana, watching carefully for any danger, but the stagnant mana did not react. It felt potent, but aimless. It was fuel with no purpose, nothing using it intentionally, so it would just gradually seep into whatever happened to be near. Anything too weak and too inactive with its mana usage would be eventually overwhelmed and driven to madness, with the undirected mana forcing its own use in whatever ways were easiest for it to form.
He could feel it eroding the thread of essence he was probing it with, but the erosion was very slow, and he got the feeling that if he gave it a direction to move, something to actively do, it would cease doing anything else in favor of the active instructions. He experimentally widened his thread of essence into a scoop and scooped out a small portion of mana from the stagnant pool. Hmm, could I…? He quickly improvised a spell using an alternative mana source option that he'd thought was intended only for enchanting items, specified that scoopful of external mana as the source, and cast it.
The spell—a variant of Telekinesis—formed and lifted the broken branch he'd chosen as its target. He directed the spell to swing the branch hard at a nearby tree, and the branch immediately crashed into the tree with tremendous force and shattered, chipping off a small piece of bark. He pulled the fragmented pieces of the branch back and examined the spell. It appeared completely normal, except that it was operating at the level of the stagnant pool, not his own. The mana fueling it was Level 46, of course, but the essence that formed the spell's structure was also the same level.
Carlos's mouth dropped open in surprised realization. Oh! How did I miss that, all this time? A spell's essence structure is formed from the mana that's fueling it! He snapped his mouth shut as an idea sprang to mind. His smile grew into a wide grin as he considered the idea and grew increasingly certain of its viability.
Carlos slowly turned to face the royal guard behind him. "Say, Lorvan… How about we use this to fix your equipment's enchantments? Maybe Ordens's, too."