Weapons of Mass Destruction

The twins continue to demonstrate their [Connection] for me with a series of attempts at seizing control over one of my simple mana orbs and altering the settings.

I made it as simple as possible, with two modes: hover in place and spin. In fact, I’ve “hardcoded” the states into its functions.

Later, we’ll move on to other skills too, but for now, I’m just trying to get a grasp on their process.

I’m also wearing the echo gauntlet. The idea being that if it’s already allowed me to copy that weird blood skill that guy had on the 1st floor of Beyond it’ll probably work just as well for mimicking the twins, in theory, it should give me some idea how it feels to use it.

I’ve already tried a few times before, but most of the time I find myself getting no feedback. The glove just allows me to use the copied skill—not as well as the original, but it still packs some decent oomph.

Then there are some skills it can’t copy, like Lily’s [Disintegration], but I was able to copy her healing and the twins' [Sensory Deception].

To be honest, I absolutely recognize the glove for the boon it is, especially given how helpful it could be in certain situations, but I still don’t like it very much.

So I just think I will take it apart sooner or later. Observing how its inscriptions work and what connection of materials allows it to have such an effect will probably bring me more. Items just can’t be overly relied on or trusted.

What if some asshole decides to steal it? The kind of guy that comes in and steals everything that’s not bolted down. That kind of maniac.

Still, even though I complain and trash the glove, I decide to test it a bit more. With my eyes on and straining my mind as much as possible. Then it can be used as a secret weapon before I take it apart.

I like that plan.

As that train of thought reaches its end the orb, which was hovering in place, starts spinning, then stops, only to start spinning once again.

The twins jump for joy, practically dancing with excitement, as they spew forth a seemingly endless stream of trash talk regarding my skill’s efficacy.

They even have the gall to start issuing challenges.

I let it pass, empathizing with their joy and excitement over taking another step down the road of progress.

When we regroup with the rest of our band, I will tell Maya some of the more interesting things I’ve heard them say.

As I sit to the side, I watch as Lily and the twins spar. Two blonde boys attacking the black-haired girl.

Even though she’s holding back and taking plenty of damage in the process, Lily’s still winning.

They get their hits in, sure, but she takes it like a champ. Unlike them she doesn’t flinch at every cut and blow, she doesn’t hesitate, she doesn’t let the pain make her overly cautious.

I recently found out that she’s created a number of fake organ-like structures inside her body to use as sacrifices to fuel her skills. Each one about the size of a marble.

Though in terms of efficiency, they can’t really compare to the real deal, which seems to confirm our theory regarding the importance of a sacrifice influencing the power received. But these organs are also her flesh and overall generate more power than they consume in the process of being converted into anything she might need.

Aaron and Dennis place several fast moving decoys throughout the battlefield, but it still doesn’t present much of a problem for Lily.

Does she use logic to locate the originals and ignore the fakes?

No way in hell.

Lily just boosts her body and passes right through them, leading with her shoulder and ramming the copies.

I bet the twins are sweating bullets right now, knowing full well that if she were to tackle one of them like that, it wouldn’t end well.

They quickly adjust their strategy, placing more illusions in front of trees and large boulders, In a bid to cause our petite healer to take on more environmental damage.

But Lily once again cosplays a bulldozer, smashing through any obstacles in her path. It’s so similar to her fight with Tess that I should probably be offended, but I do notice some differences.

She’s using much less mana without wasting as much on healing herself, choosing to focus on boosting the healing process a bit before letting her natural regeneration take over.

And damn, is that natural regeneration strong.

Lily probably has the highest Constitution in group 4, she even enhanced it with her attribute upgrade. Gaining something like Mana Potency for constitution. And once she gets her body upgrade at 250, it should improve even more.

And like she said, the stronger her body gets, the better [Sacrifice] works, which can only make her more versatile. She’s mentioned that she goes 4 parts Constitution, 2 parts Mana, 2 parts Strength, and 2 parts Dexterity. She might change it up later, but it seems to be working just fine at the moment.

As for the twins, they go for 4 parts Dexterity, 2 parts Constitution, 3 parts Mana, and 1 part Strength. Though, much like Lily, they’ve said they might change that later. They both chose Diligence as their subclass, and they seem happy with the choice.

Sensing something flying my way, I step to the side, and Dennis blows past me, crashing into the boulder I’d been leaning against. He coughs up a bit of blood, but his wounds manage to heal quickly enough for him to leap back into the frey, a skill he shares with his twin, though it’s not nearly as effective as Lily’s.

I move once again, and Lily crashes into the space once occupied by Dennis, dust from the exploded stone covering her.

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She disappears again, Aaron slamming against her from the side while Dennis takes a swipe at her leg in perfect synchronization.

Letting my thoughts waver once again, I think back on Mana Cycling, the mana technique Lissandra taught me so long ago on the 3rd floor. The process that’s been helping me handle my mana.

So far, I haven’t seen anything like it. Not in the mana stones, I’ve found on the various floors, not in the information I’ve gotten from the natives, not even when I asked around in the tournament and Beyond. But the more I use it, the more small changes and improvements I make, the more I find myself amazed by the sheer complexity of the technique, especially after seeing the improvements left to me in that mana stone.

It doesn’t just help my body handle my mana, but it also helps me hide the excess while improving my control. And now, with the improvements Lissandra made, I think it’ll have an influence on my body as well.

I don’t know what to think of it yet, given that it’s still wayyy too soon to tell, but its mechanisms are the main reason I didn’t choose Mana Pulse Circulation and went for Mana Fortified Mind.

The description of Mana Pulse sounded just similar enough to Mana Cycling to bias me against it.

Is there a chance Mana Cycling is a somewhat active version of that arcane passive? Will the technique replicate the passive’s effects as I reach the higher stages? Why are the names so similar?

When Caius spoke from his deep prison of a hole, he said that Lissandra left a mark on me, what’s more, he called it archaic, bordering on ancient. A relic of the Absolutes and Champions of old. He said it had a degree of disdain to it like he thought it was uncivilized, like something from the stone age.

Liss would’ve kicked his ass if she’d heard.

Mana Cycling reminds me of Lissandra’s mark —an archaic technique that modern Champions and Absolutes would almost certainly call obsolete. But I like it that way. I like how much it demands from me, what it does, and how it punishes me every time I slip up, letting my own mana harm my body.

I have a week left until I return to Beyond, I’m already eager to find out if I’ll get to meet any humans from Earth who’ve seen the message I left on the board. Tess hasn’t done her 3rd trial yet, and Lily’s even further behind than her. And Sophie’s got longer still. So I’ll be on my own again.

I already spoke to Tess about it, so I’m sure she’s mentioned it in the Beyond Community for our fellow Earthlings.

There's only one guy who could join me though, and I bet it would be annoying. Actually, make that two—though given the first Beyonder’s penchant for never speaking, I sometimes forget he’s even there.

My goal is to spend the next three days in Beyond trying to reach the checkpoint. I’ll even bring some of my white sand with me to get some quick cash, though I’ll have to find a way to seal it somehow.

I'll find out if I can enter the first floor of the dungeon on my own. If it's manageable, I'll go in solo a few times.

Afterwards, I'll save my stay tokens for future expeditions with Tess and the others and we'll hunt some lurkers on the first floor just to show them the ropes.

I don’t think we have enough time to work on my body modifications with Lily, but she should be able to leave a few marks on me just in case.

We also start cutting off my left arm, so she can feed it to [Sacrifice] in an emergency while I’m gone.

We perform a few test runs and find that sacrificing my severed left arm gives her an even bigger boost than it did before.

And honestly, I would’ve been angry if it hadn’t. It’s the arm of a Champion candidate, someone on the cusp of reaching level 300, and an individual with an arcane passive. It better be good stuff.

With fascination, I also watch as Lily brings out a big bag and packs my arms into it. It seems it has just enough room for a few more, and then she will… well, I don’t really want to know what she’s going to do with the rest. She could always bury them underground, or just stuff them into another bag.

What I find creepy is that she starts cutting my arm apart and testing the level of boost and asking questions. How much of a boost will a hand give? How much from a single finger? How much from the bones?

I’m getting more and more worried about her future.

I can already see the necklace made from my finger bones and tendons hanging around her neck.

So while we prepare arms for her, I also give her a mini quest: to observe how my arm will behave over the 7 days I’m still here and then when I leave. I don’t think it’ll change much, at the very least it won’t decompose or start rotting. Still, I’m eager to find out.

Would my body remain preserved, even after a year? What about ten years later, or after I die? Would it be possible to emulate my traits with it? Would my heart be useful at all?

If I died because of a destroyed heart and my head stayed untouched, would it be possible to get me some new fancy heart and then kickstart my brain again, even years later?

These thoughts fascinate me, and Lily seems to share the sentiment. So we talk and theorize, ignoring the twins and their concerned gaze.

I don’t deserve such looks from them.

A day passes.

I train, I spar with Lily and the twins. I work on improving [Resonance] by observing the twin’s use of [Connection]. It feels like I’m close to working something out, yet something’s still missing, but I don’t waste time dwelling on it. I just put in more effort.

The twins are doing surprisingly well and they almost seem to have found aspects of their training to enjoy. They’re getting better at close-range combat too.

My style of letting the enemy hit, so I can hit back twice is what I’m teaching them. It won’t be their main tactic by any means, but I like to be flexible, so it may as well be another trick up their sleeve.

And over time, I’ve begun to notice them getting more and more comfortable around me. Up till now there’s always been a little bit of tension on their end, and even now I can’t see that ever fully going away.

Lily, lord have mercy on her soul, runs around with my arms and sometimes bones from the arm. She does some body modification testing, and sometimes these bones explode… violently.

It would certainly be a shame if something like that were to happen to my spine while she was trying to modify my body, right?

I try to ignore it as much as possible. It still surprises me how easygoing Lily can be about things that would make the average person lose their lunch. I don’t think a normal person would be so casual about breaking down a human arm.

I watch with great interest whenever she trains her [Disintegration], and the twins seem to take an interest as well.

She works on everything from shaping projectiles out of her gray mana, to making weapons, mostly smaller ones, and threads.

She’s really beginning to improve, and it doesn’t seem to be straining her nearly as much.

We even test it against my highly compressed mana, which she tears through with ease. I even attempt to disrupt the skill, all to no avail.

At one point, I use a large chunk of my body’s mana to materialize a finger-length thread of [Ley Line], and her gray projectile collides with it.

And my beautiful new skill resists. A goddamned beautiful thread of whatever this material is actually manages to resist the tiny terror’s gray mana.

Lily, decidedly less pleased than I am, attacks again, drawing more from her reserves, taking this new attempt more seriously.

In the end, after multiple attempts, the thread does get destroyed, consumed by her evil gray mana.

That simple exchange feels almost like a challenge between Lily and me, and we stare at each other for a moment, our competitive spirits thoroughly awakened.

I’m sure Lily’s skills will only grow stronger over time, but that goes for me as well.