Chapter 247 - Line Toeing, and Pool Fragmentation!

The sect of illusion within the phantom city of Fortuna, was as secretive as one would expect it to be. There was no direct way to find it, it didn’t have a concrete location that one could just knock the door of, so it took a bit of work to get a hold of it, and its sect members!

The only hint he had was that the sect was technically local to the city, or, its inhabitants were local, and for a while, that was all of the information that Skendus had to work with. He spent three hours looking for information as to how to enter the sect, and the information he gathered was purely based on rumors! Since he didn't have anything else to work with, he hoped that the rumors would get him somewhere, so he focused on them.

One rumor suggested that a sect member would seek him out if he spent enough time looking for the sect, and he followed this idea, even though he was sceptical about it being a good idea to begin with! He knew that his time in the phantom world was limited, so even in this phantom form, he started feeling multiple layers of anxiety, and a whole lot of skepticism!

This city was precious, and he didn't know if he’d be able to enter it again in the future, so every hour counted, and he wanted to learn as many new things as he possibly could before he had to return to the physical world! Illusion-exclusive knowledge, to a mage of illusion such as himself, was absolutely priceless, and he sought it out like a salt-fed goat would seek water!

Another rumor encouraged him to wear a lady's dress, and walk with his hands rather than his feet, but the people who told him this rumor, might’ve just been messing with him. There was no telling for sure, so after six hours of sweeping through the city frantically with no visible success, he even considered wearing a dress, he was desperate!

Suddenly, he found himself in a large hall, even though he was on the street just a moment ago! When several men and women approached him, calmly, he knew that he finally was at the right place, at the exact place that he had been looking for!

“Took you guys long enough! I was a ball hair away from putting a dress on!” He exclaimed, happily, and felt all of his accumulated frustration melting away.

“The seekers of knowledge should never stop seeking. We salute your persistence!” One of the older entities added, “Do you feel that you're in the right sect, though? We don't use our powers to merely terrorize people, but rather, we create alternate realities for them, therefore absolutely disabling them for however long we find it fit, and we consider this to be the ultimate form of torment!”

Furthermore, he added. “We’re the Reality Mockers sect! Before we proceed, I must warn you that our branch of illusion magic is considered fully necromantic, and therefore dark. You must understand that if you start practicing what we teach you, a portion of your mana pool will be converted into dark mana!”

“Dark mana… eh? I suppose that a mage can't be great without exploring every mountain and valley, so, I accept the consequences of your teachings, as long as we can keep the spreading of dark mana across my pool to a minimum! I made it this far without it, as an illusionist even, who always had to toe the line between what was dark and what was pure, so please tell me when your grand knowledge starts working against my favor! I managed to keep my pool pure so far.” He requested.

“We shall respect your requests. You can't learn advanced abilities without joining our sect anyway, so do not worry.” The other assured him.

…

Arvena understood that her time in the phantom city of Fortuna was very limited, and that she only had a few days before her physical body would give out, and immediately demand sustenance, such as food and water. She couldn’t stay here forever, so she went to the biggest library in the city, and tried to get her hands on the most valuable type of information that she could think of, which was information regarding mana brackets!

Mana brackets had plagued her, and her friends for a while now, and considering that they were labelled as Adept Mages, the brackets were the last thing that they needed! She wanted to find a way around them, and soon, because hundreds of potential mana roots were waiting for them back at home.

Information about this matter was scarce, however, because mana brackets were not a thing in the phantom world! She kept confirming this fact, and she was excited about it, because if she didn’t manage to remove her mana brackets in the physical world, she would’ve at least be able to have a really powerful soul if she put enough work into it. It was a perplexing matter, but she clung on to her hopes on the physical world, especially after she found a tiny bit of information regarding mana brackets in the library!

All of the books in the library were free to grab, anyone could read them, because its clerks were sure that most entities wouldn’t be able to abuse the information anyway. Great mages oftentimes did not rely on books, but freestyle their journey.

The books here in the phantom world were very adaptive, they were cooperative, as its contents automatically translated to the few languages that Arvena could understand! This feature was quite futuristic, and although she had no idea how the phantom world managed to create books in this way, she was still very excited about the opportunity to read through them!

Arvena found a book called The Plague Of The Ancients, and the word plague was symbolic, referring to mana brackets. The book spoke of mages of the ancient, physical world, and their most iconic struggles!

Mana brackets had haunted the ancient mages for eons, preventing them from becoming Arch Mages for reasons unknown. Expert Mages were considered the pinnacle of all titles for thousands of years, but when thousands of mages attained that title, the brighter minds of that time realized that there may be other realms of mana beyond what they considered to be the absolute limit of how much one could improve their mana quality. They were right to question it!

Removing mana brackets from lower-ranked mages was easier, but the brackets that Expert Mages suffered was absolutely brutal, and it was considered impossible to crack, even after people started realizing that there were other realms of mana beyond the Expert Mage title. This was the case until a very bright man figured out a solution, one that didn’t include neither normal methods, nor begging the gods!

The solution referred to Pool Fragmentation, and although Arvena didn’t fully understand what this was, the book cited that it was a very dangerous process, that a mage should only use if they don’t have another option! This solution killed thousands of mages in the past, but it also helped create what could be considered the first Arch Mages to walk the planet!

The book didn’t explain the concept of Pool Fragmentation thoroughly, it just mentioned it as a symbolic, dangerous method as the book was written by some historian, rather than an Arch Mage. With that considered, she dropped the book, and tried to look for other books that would at least cross reference the topic that she was interested in! She spared herself from reading what random mages did with their time thousands of years ago.

Luckily, souls did not get winded, so she had all of the energy in the world to read through every good book she could find, through the day, and through the night as well!