Chapter 69 – Isolation Room Shenanigans

Tom entered the isolation room, reminiscing on his decision to defy April and on his refusal to gain Heal Organ at the end of the last trial. Usually, something like that would have been a mistake, but in this instance, it had been the right choice. Attempting a perfect cast of the spell then would have been the height of foolishness. His experience over the last half a day had proven that. Whenever his mana regenerated, he had practiced the process of blending all fifteen input spells into a single, unified whole.

It did not go well.

The first attempt all the way to the fifteenth had failed absolutely, but since then he had made some progress. The current merge that he had created barely resembled the sleek lines of the wire frames that he was aiming to duplicate, but the spell form was not falling apart, and, when he squinted, he could see a resemblance to what he was trying to create.

It was impressive progress since the previous evening, when the result had been an unidentifiable mess that collapsed the instant he stopped exerting his will upon it. This spell form was almost certainly not what he was looking for, but it was stable and would heal his organs - or, at least, some of them.

The moment the isolation room indicated that he was locked inside, Tom spun around, as he always did now, and studied everything to confirm his safety. There was nothing visible, and when he focused on Danger Sense, it didn’t stir either. Having confirmed that there were no threats, he looked up at the secret cupboards with greedy eyes. Up there was the secret to mastering his latest spell. Even in something as apparently technical skill-based as manual spell casting, having the actions be meaningful and ensuring that they mattered made a difference. An hour here, where he had to use the magic to mend himself would be worth days, if not a week, of training in a sterilised environment.

Leaning on his months of practice, he built the makeshift ladder up. It was more a pile for him to climb than anything. Then he gathered the cocktail of fifteen different poisons that he intended to use.

With everything laid out in front of him and no reason to delay, he used ten fate with no purpose other than to keep him alive. It wouldn’t help him to gain expertise, or to make it easier, or to increase his chances of success. All he wanted for it to do was to keep him alive, because he understood how dangerous what he was attempting really was.

As far as he was concerned, it was a good investment. 

Once more, he studied what he had collected. Most of the gathered liquids and powders targeted singular organs, but some were more general in their use. This was definitely going to be enough to make his spell casting meaningful. He just needed to make sure that what he was administering would not be lethal despite the healing crystal.

He had put this plan together over a couple of weeks of down moments in the isolation room. The dosage tables he had referenced had been clear on the deadly dosages, the time it would take for the healing crystal to purge them, and, of course, the known dangerous interactions. To the best of his research abilities, there shouldn’t be any surprises.

But he was still worried.

He had excluded too many substances due to interplays with other poisons that took the paring to something that was individually borderline lethal to a combined pair that was you ended up super dead in ten seconds-kind of lethal. While he was confident that he had split out all of those problematic internal reactions, he didn’t know if there were any cases where interactions with three or four different substances compounded their individual effects like the known double combinations did.

With a sigh, he spent another ten fate with the purpose of it keeping him alive. This time, he made it clear that any clumsiness on his part would be viewed as an external intervention that had just saved his life.

He organised all the materials, taking care to separate out which ones from his notes required a full dose, and which other ones were only going to be quarter ones. The split was fifty-fifty, and he shifted them into two lines to make their status clear.  The combined impact was enough to kill him ten times over, but, with the help of his fate investment and the healing crystal, he expected to survive.

Tom got to work.

Each dose was painstakingly measured and consumed on the spot. He made two mistakes, namely fumbling a liquid and accidentally spilling a fine blue powder. In both cases, he didn’t reset, abandoning the liquid altogether and taking the reduced amount of powder. It was probably just because of his clumsy fingers, but, given the nature of his spent fate, he wasn’t about to take foolish chances.

Danger Sense was no help, either. It was a dull, angry roar in his mind, and had been at the same level since he stacked the poisons in front of him. Tom accepted the consequences of what he was drugging himself into. This was the price of the ambitious timetable he had set.

By the time he consumed the last of them, his stomach was already cramping.

He didn’t wait an instant longer.

He constructed the combined spell. It was an ugly mockery of what he was aiming for.

But it existed, and he desperately infused it with mana to patch himself up.

He lay next to the healing crystal, letting its power push into him to heal the consequences of what he had consumed. Every minute, he reformed the spell and used the five points of regenerated mana on the cascading failure of organs. There was nothing in the cocktail that affected the brain, so he was aware of everything that was happening to him – of the vomit, the blood, and his bowels misfunctioning. It was beyond miserable, but, despite that, he never felt like his life was truly in danger. As the healing crystal mended him back together, the spell forms he was making looked more and more crisp. It was still going to be days until he could even contemplate a perfect cast, but the improvement was noticeable.

A little over an hour later, he sighed and stood up shakily. His hand remained on the crystal as the latter fixed the last of the issues plaguing him. With a shuddering breath through his mouth, he stared down at the mess that covered the floor. Cleaning spells, even as powerful as the one that automatically triggered, were not fixing that problem up.

With unsteady steps, he stumbled to the sink, took a sip of water, and spat it out. His mouth tasted awful. But, after rinsing it out three more times, he felt invigorated enough to get to work. He spent twenty minutes scooping the stuff off the floor and disposing of it down the toilet. Afterward, the room was left in a state that Tom was confident the cleaning spell could deal with.

He sighed.

It had been a painful process, but one during which he had seen real progress. Tomorrow, Tom knew, he was going to be repeating the effort, and he would probably do the same every day after until the trial.

When he left the isolation room, it was to find a morose-looking Briana.

“What’s wrong?” Tom asked immediately.

She scowled. “Nothing.”

“You didn’t get the magic breakthrough, did you?” Kang guessed.

Briana refused to make eye contact with either of them.

Kang frowned sympathetically. “Maybe we can help.” He gestured toward an isolation room.

She brightened slightly, and they went in and locked the door. Tom unobtrusively carried out his normal check. Nothing was lurking anywhere.

Briana was doing the same process Tom was carrying out for Touch Heal, but for Water Manipulation. The current spell she was struggling with was the Heat Transfer step.

“You can practice and we can help,” Kang said brightly. “Give you pointers and stuff.”

“But wait for tomorrow to make the final attempt,” Tom cautioned. “Then you’ll be able to give it a full boost.”

“I’m not stupid,” she retorted immediately. Her fate pool was currently empty, and it hadn’t been when she had left them to enter the isolation room initially. It was easy to conclude that she was already operating on the right principles, but Tom figured it was always best to be as clear as possible.

“Today, we’re just going to help you refine the spell form.” Kang said quietly. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Patiently, they went on helping her for half an hour, splitting the magic practice with physical activity that descended into basically seeing how far they could parkour up the walls. With his ring active, Tom knew there was no way he could ever win.

Kang’s latest attempt nearly allowed him to touch the ceiling.

Inside, Tom smiled. This was definitely an opportunity. “Did you use Quick Step just then?”

The other boy looked at him, shocked. “No, why would you ask that? It doesn’t work like that.”

Tom glanced at where Briana was sitting. She was currently contemplating her magic and comparing it to a piece of paper. It was safe enough to talk; not that it mattered. This was not a conversation they had to hide from her.

“Still, it’s a really useful skill. How did you learn it?”

Kang glared at him like he had kicked the kid’s puppy and looked significantly in Briana’s direction.

Tom successfully suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “It’s not like it’ll hurt her to study it. How did you do it? It’s a skill, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s a skill. But, Tom, you probably won’t be able to get it. I got lucky.”

“Tell me about the luck.”

Kang’s glare intensified. His eyes flickered once more toward Briana, who was looking away from them. The larger boy mimed zipping his lips shut.

Tom frowned. Getting Quick Step was aligned with the aims of his eventual build, he just needed to convince Kang that telling him was worth the risk, and it wasn’t like he could blab about his Danger Sense and his ability to spot the assassins in front of Briana. Whatever angle he went with, Kang was eventually going to have to trust him, or get with the times around the best way to protect his reincarnator status. Her hearing about the movement ability was fine. After all, it was one of Kang’s official abilities, but he could tell he needed a different approach to persuade him.

“You know how I talk to the trial administrator.”

“It’s nothing special. We all do.” Briana agreed not really paying attention to them.

They both startled in reaction to her words and glanced in momentary shock at her. It was hard to believe, considering how focused she had been on her magic, that she had been listening in.

Internally, Tom shrugged. If she was actively engaging in this conversation, that was probably for the best. He cleared his throat:

“Well, the trial administrator thinks I’m gifted at creating skills.” That confession was a risk, he knew, but he figured that, if they asked, he would show them the Living Wood skill.  

“About time that you’re good at something.” Briana said, poking her tongue out at him.

“Hey,” Tom protested. “I’m…” He stopped arguing. From her point of view, he was usually the worst at the dodging and obstacle courses. He had been slow in developing magic, according to her, as he had never demonstrated his healing. Nor had he shown her any of the skills he had earned yet. “I have magic.” He boasted, and made lightning crackle on his fingers.

Smirking, she flicked some water at him.

He leapt desperately aside.

She burst out laughing. “I’m not going to use razor water on you.”

“Then what was it?” he asked suspiciously, staring at the large wet stains the small amount of water had left.

“It was a wet spell.” Then she pouted. “It looked fun and was easy to learn, but it’s not helping with this.” She stabbed her finger at the wireframes.

Tom glanced at the wet floor. The magic had been harmless, but Tom was sure Briana was going to get a lot of enjoyment out of it by playing practical jokes on other people for the next couple of months.

“So, Kang? Why don’t you explain how you got lucky enough to acquire the skill?”

The other reincarnator stood up and then practiced a fast step to the side. It was a very deliberate and small motion.

Then he repeated it, again and again. It was very mundane, and the type of movement he could only ever imagine a dancer practicing.

The large boy sighed. “It was just this. I wanted to get quicker footwork to let me fight better. I practiced lots, and it happened.”

“And that’s it? There was nothing else?” Tom raised an eyebrow, expressing his doubt.

“What do you want me to say? When I moved, I imagined the abilities existed. And then I…” he glanced significantly at Briana. “I did what she did. I used all my pool each day. It took weeks, but when it happened, it was sudden.”

The translation was that he has had it in a past life and had wanted to bring it into this one, and fate had let him bridge the gap. “And none of the practicing was in the trial? It was all done out here?”

Kang shook his head. “No, it was a project purely for the isolation room. Whenever I took a step, I imagined it happening instantly, visualising it so that it was almost like I could imagine that, in practice, it was instantaneous. Lots of times I also closed my eyes and did it blindly, but I don’t know if that did anything. I was desperate for it to work. That might have been the only reason it did.”

The description did nothing to help Tom get the ability. Prior experience with the skill seemed to be the main thing Kang was pointing at, and that was not something he could wish into existence.

Tom practiced the step.

“That’s it. That’s the right form. Now, just try to go as fast as possible.”

“This is going to take ages.”

“Yes,” Kang agreed.

While Briana was practicing her magic and getting frequent advice from them, Tom attempted to train Quick Step. He knew that, relatively to what April gave him, this basic sidestep motion was unfocused, and, as a result, it was probably going to require years of effort to reach the point that he could form the skill. But it was something else he could practice in everyday life. He could train this when he couldn’t be developing other abilities, so he might as well do his best. 

Tom kept training, and, all too soon, the week passed. Now, he was seated across from April once more.

“You haven’t got it yet?”

He shrugged. “I’m not completely reckless. Here is still the safest place for the attempt.”

The trial administrator in her angel form smiled at him. “Do you want to do it right away?”

He nodded.

She leant forward predatorily, and a full English breakfast appeared in front of him.

“What’s this?”

“Your last meal,” she laughed. “Eat. It’s nice.”

No, it’s not. It’s going to kill me, he thought. It was destined to be filled with poisons to force a meaningful cast to help him merge his spell. He could tell that by how she was sitting and the tilt of her head. Without giving his thoughts away. He cut up a sausage and ate a piece of it. “Do I really need to eat all of it?”

“Well, you obviously don’t need to eat the sourdough. No one eats that.”

“I thought that was the boiled spinach,” he said, prodding the densely-packed, limp, dark-green ball of vegetables. This pile was a little larger than an egg. It wasn’t steaming at all, so was probably at room temperature, like they were trying to make it unappetising.

“Greens are good for you. Eat up.”

With a shrug, he complied. It was very nice, and even the spinach didn’t go down that badly.

April nodded. “And the coffee.”

He drained it with one large final gulp.

“Good job. Now you fight.”

“Fight what?”

“You’ll see. It’ll be nostalgic for you.”

Tom did not like the sound of that, and a moment later his fears were realised. He was standing on a plain with orange grass under him and a series of very familiar mounds spread out in front of him. Insects were filling the air, and, in the couple seconds April gave him to acclimatise to his surroundings, it was obvious how artificial the scenario she had constructed was.  The wasps in real life had never had more than four species concentrated in a particular area, and even then, they had similar phenotypes. 

His glance had revealed dozens of different types, with a variety of colours and shapes.

“I can’t beat this,” he observed.

“I know,” her disembodied voice said. There was a crackle of energy and a red, dangerous-looking dome rose to encase him and about forty wasps.

Tom remembered why he was here and spent the fate with the image he had prepared for this exact purpose: an evolution that upgraded the average passive benefit of all the input spells.

“Okay, they’re going to notice you shortly,” April told him.

Right on cue, his stomach gurgled, and the pressure was absolute. With a gasp, he vomited up everything that he had just eaten. Above him, the noise of the buzzing wasps changed. Suddenly, he was the focus of their attention with an intensity that made him wonder if some of his enmity from last life had somehow leaked through.