Chapter 31 - Bonds

Alex spent a few minutes flipping through his 'Basic Rituals' manual before he found one that he was comfortable practicing with. He was trying to be considerate to the Mana Spinners around him, so he took extra time to find something that was nonlethal, didn’t cause bright lights or loud noises, but was still in the range of difficulty that he could complete it.

While he could go with the Weight-Reducing ritual, he’d already made that one multiple times and thought it would be best to practice creating more abstract ones.

He wiped his foot across the stone ground, doing his best to remove debris, as he got the chalk out from his pouch. Taking a deep breath, Alex read through the basic instructions on the Silencing Ritual.

‘Silencing Ritual…creates a small, localized area of 2-3 meters, where all sound is dampened or fully muted for a short period.’ Hmm… it looks like a bit more complicated than the one that reduced weight, but it’s still got a pentagon as the core.

Skimming the shapes and their purpose, he noted that this ritual used an ellipse in the center of the outer square to create soft focal points and draw in the sound waves. There were more straight lines to guide the energy toward another set of curves that were meant to absorb residual energy.

It says here that the most common mistake is drawing the outer set of curved lines too hastily or imprecisely. The effect may be too weak to absorb the sound, which would then cause the sound to be muted rather than completely silenced.

Alex crouched and got to work, doing his best to make the chalk lines clean and precise despite the slightly uneven cavern surface. Once he finished, he pulled the three Catalysts needed for the ritual from his pouch. He was pleased with how easy it was to mentally call the correct items to his hand and then remove them from their waterproof bags.

A soft cloth, a bit of sand, and mana from a Mana Stone.

He pulled the items out in sequence and placed them into their nodes before pulsing his own mana into the ritual structure. Just as before, there was a soft glow of blue energy, that appeared very bright as he was able to see it in both of his eyes. His right eye saw the worldly glow of mana coming into the physical plane through the ritual. At the same time, he was fascinated to see the process through his left eye. Before the man was brought through the ritual, he could see how the pathways and shapes moved or distributed the mana.

Alex was pleased to note that the ritual didn’t even take a tenth of his overall mana pool.

Between my increased mana pool and the new passive skill, this just got a whole lot better!

Once the ritual finished, Alex stepped back, pleased with himself. From the corner of his eye, he noticed that he had a small audience. There were five Mana Spinners quietly watching him.

With their mana control, I’m sure they’re able to tell that I’m doing magic. I wonder what they’re thinking…

Alex smiled and picked up a nearby rock. He tossed it up a few feet and watched with satisfaction as it landed in the ritual center but made no sound at all. His smile only grew as he felt the childish urge to step into the circle and yell at the top of his lungs.

Fuck it.

He did it just because he could.

Normally when he even spoke at a normal volume, the spiders would react and move away from him. But even with him screaming bloody murder in the middle of the ritual circle, his five onlookers didn’t even flinch.

Wow, they really can’t hear me at all. This is awesome.

A few minutes went by, and Alex began to clean up the materials and wipe away the chalk. As he did so, he thought about how he might use this ritual in his normal life. While there might be use if he was making a lot of noise himself, he thought that it might be more interesting if he prevented sound from entering the ritual area.

At least then, I might get some more peace and quiet in the city…

As he had the thought, Alex paused.

Why can’t I make it do that? I’ve learned the basics of these rituals. Could I just change some of the nodes or the mana flow? What if I changed the curved lines that absorb sounds to instead funnel noise through triangles and instead of an internal ellipse that softens the sound, I use a square to prevent the flow of sound and mana? I’ll need to draw it out, but that really could work…

He finished cleaning up the materials and noted that several of the spiders had moved away, but one was slowly making its way closer. Through his eye, Alex could see a small mana web reaching out toward him, vibrating softly. He tried his best to gesture and shrug his shoulders to let the little monster know that he couldn’t understand what it was saying.

There was a pause, but it must have understood as it retracted the web and stared at Alex. After a few moments, it began to gesture with its smaller forearms toward him and then the ground. It moved its legs around and bounced up and down in an expressive manner.

Alex held up the piece of chalk and the spider pointed at it, then the ground.

Do you want me to do it again?

Figuring that it would just be more practice, he crouched down and began to draw the circle again. The green glow guided his chalk as he did his best to focus and keep the shapes precise. About halfway through the base shape, his hand slipped due to a distraction. He stood up and stepped back, surprised.

Holy…

Through his left eye, he could see mana webs that had been following after his chalk. They were leading back to the small spider outside of his small area.

Are you tracing the lines? To make your own ritual?

Excited by the thought, Alex continued to redraw the Silencing Ritual. The mana webs followed it the whole way through the process; at the end, a small layer of webs hovered over the exact shape of the entire circle. Alex reached for his pouch to grab the Catalysts once again, but the Mana Spinner moved forward quickly and raised its little front legs.

It skittered off, leaving Alex confused. He scratched his head and looked closely at the webbing, interested in how fine the detail was with the thin threads. Shortly after, the spider returned holding two small wrapped bundles against its chest. Both bundles were wrapped in a fine silk cloth that seemed to glow a blue-white in his enhanced vision. One bundle held crushed-up dirt, while the other held a shattered Mana Stone. The spider handed him both bundles.

Intrigued, Alex shrugged and placed them in the Catalyst position. As he handled the cloth, he realized that it had been woven from the spider’s mana webbing. While he might have expected it to be more ethereal because it was essentially made from mana, it was clear that they’d mastered the process of making the mana webs solid and strong.

Once the materials were in place, he stepped back and gestured for the spider to step up. Rather than moving, the spider sent out a tendril of mana that Alex could see with his Eye and was fascinated as it touched the top of the ritual circle. Then it flashed quickly with mana, causing the ritual to activate.

Well, that’s a clever way to activate the ritual.

Mentally, Alex took notes. If he could extend or project his mana, he wouldn’t need to touch the ritual while in combat to activate it. Once it was activated, the spider was very animated and skittered away before coming back with a small group. They talked through their mana threads and gestured around as they spoke silently.

After several minutes, one of them approached, and Alex was curious about what they might do. It gestured several more times before Alex thought he understood.

Do they want me to teach them more? I mean, it would be good practice for me too…

Alex pondered the request before deciding there was something he might want in return. He did his best to extend his mana in a very small tendril toward the spider. This frightened it at first, but as Alex stopped its extension and did his best to focus on making it vibrate several times, the intelligent beast seemed to understand. Several of the surrounding spiders bounced up and down, and Alex was certain that they were laughing at him.

Before he could begin to feel self-conscious, the spider in front of him bowed up and down several times.

I guess we have a deal, then?

The next several days followed this pattern. Alex would wake up, and they would not go hunting the webs. Instead, Alex would practice in his room. He would spend some time alone, focusing on combining the Shadow Step theories with his own knowledge of [Empowered Step]. He was surprised to see it level to level nine on the second day, as it had been stubbornly stuck at level 8. To Alex, this confirmed that he was on the right path.

In the afternoon, he would go out with a spider to get food, which ended up being moss and some other underground greenery. At first, he’d been dissatisfied with this, but as he thought about it, his only other option was to try and eat monster meat. From what he’d seen of the Cave Crawlers, he’d rather avoid that.

They would gather enough for him to eat for that day and the next, keeping it in his pouch before returning to the colony. Alex would practice some of the forms from the rapier training manual, and then the entire evening would be spent working on rituals.

With each passing day, more of the spiders came to watch him. He began to speak aloud, explaining what he was doing. The key to this had just been for him to whisper so softly that he didn’t think anyone could hear him. But as he’d tried this, it was clear that the spiders could hear and understand him. Small tendrils of mana would creep from each spider and go to the edge of his circle as if receptors for the sounds he was making.

Alex did the best to teach them what he could with his limited knowledge. Showing them the shapes and components that he’d pulled from the consistent ritual shapes. He found that explaining it to someone else, forced him to have a better grasp of the concept as well.

After the ritual lessons had finished for the evening, most of the Mana Spinners would disperse, but three would stay behind. He assumed that they were the same three every time, but he couldn’t be sure as they almost all looked the same. The only one that stood out in the group of three was the one that helped him the most. It was missing one of his small front two arms, so he could tell that it was consistent in coming to the evening lessons. They would then show Alex how to proceed with his [Mana Shaping] and then how to connect or control the small tendril of mana in a way that he could understand what was being said.

It wasn’t until the seventh day that he was able to hear anything from the others. It scared him when he was successful, as the voices he heard were in a language that he could understand and sounded like higher-pitched human voices. The trick had been that he needed to get the tendril thin enough to allow it to oscillate at the appropriate variable, somehow transmitting sound. The concept reminded Alex of the time that he and Jake had taken two plastic cups and tied a wire between the two. It allowed them to make out some of the garbled speech that the other was shouting on the other side.

Except, instead of cups and yelling, we’re using mana and thoughts… totally reasonable. Yep.

Even though he’d managed to get a grasp of the method they used for speech, he was far from being able to repeat the feat consistently. While he had a very high Willpower stat, the control required was staggering to him. His [Mana Shaping] leveled as well, but he was having a hard time getting his mana tendril any thinner than his pinky. He realized he wasn’t anywhere near the skill level of these Mana Spinners, but it did give him a good goal to shoot for.

Alex got to spend the rest of the seventh day practicing and attempting to hear the excited speech of the Mana Spinners. He went to bed with high hopes and a plan forward. He could continue to work on improving his [Empowered Steps] and also train his [Mana Shaping] to make thinner tendrils. His understanding of rituals was improving through teaching, and while he’d mostly been swinging his sword through the air in preset patterns, he felt like there was a certain amount of muscle memory building.

During these days, Alex enjoyed watching Val in his downtime. The mana wyrm would alternate between playing with or devouring small balls of mana webs that their hosts would make. Then, when the little glutton was full of mana, he would leave whatever they were doing and go into their alcove. The first few times, Alex had been intrigued as he saw the flashes of light from through the crack in their ‘door’.

Intrigued, Alex had followed Val to the room once to watch what his companion was doing. The small wyrm began to glow and, after a short pause, would explode with mana. A sphere of mana would expand out from his little body several feet in every direction. Val would repeat this several times until his mana reserves were lower, and then he’d take a nap before returning to siphon more mana from the spiders.

Alex just laughed and felt a fondness for his bond. The little mana wyrm must have seen Alex training every day and decided to do some training of his own. Alex found it extremely cute.

On the eighth day, however, any sense of routine and planning was thrown to the wind.