The Third Portal: Chapter Forty-Three

Before I knew it, my meeting times with the local guild leaders had come, and the first one on my list was the leader of the Beastbody Guild. He had arranged to meet with me in a park. The city was still a bit too under construction for it to really be a safe park, as it was more like a slice of uninhabited land that had been set aside, but it seemed fitting that one of the beastial guild leaders wanted to meet there. 

When I arrived, I spotted him speaking with another man, one who looked vaguely familiar. Their spirits blazed brightly in my senses, both of them strong arcanists. The Beastbody leader a powerful nexus of concentrated life energy and mana, complete with a powerful core inside of his chest, just below his heart, and felt like he had just broken into sixth gate. The other man was a werewolf, though he felt like he was somewhere near the middle of fifth gate. 

The pair was a study of contrasts. The Beastbody guild leader looked completely human, but was short, broad shouldered, and balding, while the werewolf had long, dagger-like nails, shaggy hair, and was tall and skinny. They spoke for a few more moments as I walked up to them, before the werewolf nodded to me, then shifted form and trotted away. The Beastbody guild leader stuck out his hand to me.

“You’re Malachi, right? My name’s Espen, I’m the local guild leader of the Beastbody guild, but of course you already knew that bit. Nice to meet you.” 

I took his hand and shook it, and we both swept our mana senses over one another. He pushed in harder than was strictly polite, but given he was going to be training me, I didn’t say anything against him. I did, however, put the pressure on him, pushing my senses deep into his body and spirit. None of my Truths were especially helpful here, but I drew on the power of my staff’s resonance and tried to project it into my senses, helping me get a decent idea. 

It was clumsy and only half worked – it was much easier to do under pressure, or with the assistance of the nascent truths, than it was for the neutral power of the staff to work. Still, it worked at all times, with no problems, so I thought I could understand why Meadow and Orykson favored them. 

My probing of the man revealed some interesting facets. The first gate spell they were using to create a beast core was incredibly polished and refined, and also quite powerful. It had taken blowing up a treasure, then bonding to a star dragon while using the powers of a legendary tree for me to evolve mine to the point it was at, but his seemed to be far more developed. 

It didn’t hold soul mana, but there was something. Something that felt like more than the average energy I could find anywhere. 

The second gate spell that was a weird mishmash of Magister’s Body and Beast Mage’s Soul also felt incredibly well polished. I could feel it connecting to biological arrays all throughout the man’s body, and how they fed on his body to empower those arrays, then replenish the lost reserves stronger.

Despite the fact it had many of the benefits of both my full-gate spells, there were also some things it lacked. 

It was less powerful, of course, but that went without saying. Two overlapping spells working in tandem with a legacy boost was going to output more raw power than one spell without it, no matter how polished the spell was. It was like the solidified mana some cheaper brooms ran on – no matter how good the enchantments in the broom were, having twice as much solidified mana was a large chasm to cross. 

More interestingly, there were virtually no spiritual elements to it – even though the arrays were present in his body, they felt more like storage containers or enchantments that were dumped into the spell’s casting than actually connected to the spell on a fundamental level. That probably meant it also wouldn’t form biological spells right away, a theory further supported by the fact the man had a bunch of half-formed sixth gate spells. 

I could basically skip the casting stage and could activate spells far faster thanks to the fact mine operated on a spiritual level as well, calling power both in and out of my mana-garden. 

The lack of a spiritual side also meant it wouldn’t cause any physical mutations from pulling the soul into the body. That had been a plus for me, but I was self aware enough to admit that a lot of people who were already comfortable in their body wouldn’t want that. 

The rest of his spells were normal, not full-gate spells, but there was also something strange about them. Some of them were stretched in weird ways, braided along the muscle and bone, while others were almost knotted together. His energy was also cycling in patterns through his body, as if it were doing a mana meditation, but with energy. If I could get something like that, it would be quite useful…

“Mana Mirror?” Espen asked, knitting his eyebrows together.

“Yeah, how’d you know?” I asked, blinking my own surprise at him. 

“Our original guild master had the legacy, though he passed about two decades back, and was only life and death, while you’ve got the space and time. And you seem to have formed some sort of weird hudau core, too. Yeah, you’re definitely an odd one, huh?” 

The guild leader laughed and put his hands in his pockets, then pulled out a storage ring. He put it on, and fetched a strange cube from it, about the size of a grapefruit, alongside a ball that looked like an energetic binding-knot, but slightly different, complicated in a way I didn’t perfectly understand. He tossed me the knot, and I grabbed it out of the air.

“Eat that.” 

I turned it over in my hands, not entirely willing to take in a random spiritual treasure. Orykson had hammered in the point that fully entering a mana-garden was rare, but spiritual attacks and damage weren’t. Heck, even I had one in Foxthorn. The odds of him attacking me were low, but not zero, especially out in the wilderness of Crysite. 

“What is it?” 

“It’s a way weaker, temporary, knockoff of a complex enchantment. Natural treasure? Enchanted treasure? I don’t know,” Espen said, shrugging. “There’s a process to refine a powerful beast core with some spiritual metal and forestheart leaves to create a… thing. It improves your command over bodily energy manipulation. The real one heightens it to the point of creating a second mana manipulation technique that runs through your energy.” 

“I’m guessing since this is a cheap copy, it won’t do that?” I asked, popping it into my mouth and absorbing it. 

“Nah, nothing so grand. But it will boost your perception and the fidelity of your internal energy manipulation for about twelve hours, by quite a bit. It should be good for what I want to show you. You scanned my body and spirit, yeah?” 

“I did,” I agreed. “It’s really strange…” 

I trailed off as I could feel the strands of power beginning to lance through my garden, up into the skies where the biological circuits were, and then I could start to feel them, blazing within my body. I could feel the natural energy movements, and the buildup of so many energy types. I could feel multiple spells wrapping around my beast core, while others were in my throat, in my hands, fingers, legs, and more.

I shuddered, almost overwhelmed by the sensation, and Espen took my shoulder, gripping it firmly, but not tight enough to hurt. He steadied me as I got my breath under control, then blinked rapidly to clear my vision. 

“Okay, I’m good.” 

“Good. So, what we’re doing today is teaching you how to move the energy arrays for your spells around in your body. Manipulating the body’s energies is a lot harder than manipulating mana, because the body’s quite resistant to changing.”

“I didn’t think it was possible at all. Why don’t people just re-write the energy in their bones when they get a broken bone, knitting it back together?” 

“Oh, that’s not. At least, not without a spell’s power working to do it for you – that’s what some healing spells do. No, I’m talking about the energy in the Beast Body. Wait no, for you, it’s the Beast Mage Soul and Magister’s Body. Same principle applies, though. Are you familiar with the difference between the body’s free energy versus vital energy?” 

“I am. I have a spell that actually re-allocates some of my free energy to my vital energy, condensing it to help keep all my organs in good shape, so I live longer. Free energy’s the spare stuff kicking around that my spells draw on. It’s the same stuff everyone burns walking around and breathing and stuff, and it’s infused into my spells and the biological spell arrays. I’m also a plant mage – when I make a plant unleash an effect, it’s cuz of the free energy. But I also have to keep their vital energy tended, so they don’t die.”

“Exactly!” Espen said with a grin, hands on his hips. “You got it. Vital energy, also called locked energy, critical energy, or a bunch of other things, is the basis of what the body, what all matter really, is made up of. Sub-energetic particle physics isn’t a field I’ll pretend to understand, I’m just an old battlemage, but I do know that for all intents and purposes, we humans can’t control vital energy.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed, shaking my limbs out. They were kind of achy from my heightened awareness of them. My tail thrashed in the air, irritated as well, and even it was aching with the power of Foxstep.

“We can – kind of – control free energy,” Espen continued. “When you focus to break a mental compulsion, work to resist a teleport, or put everything you’ve got into one enormous punch! We don’t think of it as energy manipulation, but that’s what it is, instinctive command over our body’s energies. We can’t really move them around much, but we can flex them, focus them, that sort of thing.” 

He tapped his chest, where the beastcore was. 

“But you and I have spells inside our bodies. I’m not a gestalt like you are, but honestly, that might even mean you get more out of this than I do. Since we’ve got spells in our bodies, and can control our spells, we can manipulate the results of those spells somewhat. Some things are harder to change than others. But we can do a lot of good.” 

“What good, though?” I asked. “I can feel how your spells are in specific places, where mine are just sort of all over the place, but what benefit does that have?” 

“Well, when you’re not using it for the spell, the free energy is going through your body and being used for things like walking, as you said. What’s that spell that’s got a bunch of life knots tied around your beast core?” 

I focused on my left forearm, where the tattoo was, and flexed my spirit. A moment later, the cool rush of Starfish Regeneration ran over me. 

“Regeneration spell,” I said. 

“It’s producing a lot of excess life energy, but all of it’s focused in the skin around your beastcore. I’m sure you’ll never develop acne on your upper left arm, but… that could do so much better braided through your muscle. You’ve also got some seriously intense hudau power flowing out of your beastcore and along your bones, which is great, but look at that spell in your throat. A big chunk of it is telluric energy. You don’t need a tougher throat, and that power flowing through your body out of your beast core could do so much good if you wrapped the spell around your hand bones.” 

“That… makes sense,” I admitted. He was off about it being hudau power – it was my soul mana he was talking about. But if it had more telluric energy to work on, that would be better. 

“That’s only half of it,” Espen continued. “Here, watch.” 

He punched his hand out, and as he did, activated a third gate spell wrapped around his arms and finger bones. The spell transformed his arm into a large, scaled, reptilian one, complete with sharp claws that would have gouged through a pine tree. He let go, and the spell faded. 

“If I had it activating in my foot, then channeled it through my hand, it would take more effort,” he explained. “Same for you. Seems like most of your spells are in your hand, but not all of them.”

“Like when I fire off my beam spell in my throat,” I said. “I have to focus to output it through my hands or tail.”

“Exactly!” 

Thinking it over, there was a good chance that my Kirin spell would impact this. With its ability to create synergies, having my spells in synergistic places should actually help squeeze more power from the spell, as well as improve my overall application of power, my body, and my health. It wasn’t some reshaping of my entire power, but it would let me leverage the power I had more effectively. 

“Alright, take a seat, and let’s start the exercise.”