The disciple a gamelit p.., p.25
The Disciple: A GameLit Progression Fantasy, page 25
“Okay. There is an auction in four days that I will be attending. You can rest before then.”
‘The assassination deadline is in three days. Probably not a coincidence.’ “Okay, thanks. See you in a few days.”
Once Zed had finished hog-tying his prisoner, he turned to the second chain. On one end of the chain was a thick eye screw. Zed jammed it into the middle ceiling beam and twisted the screw in. On Earth he would never have been able to do it by hand, but between his improved physique and mana enhancements, it wasn’t difficult.
Once the chain was securely hanging, Zed grabbed the clasp at the end of it. He lifted Sylvanus by the middle of his chain and put it in the clasp. Once the clasp was welded, he gently let Sylvanus down and watched him hang in the air, slowly rotating, belly down. It looked incredibly uncomfortable, but he wasn’t sure how else he could keep the álfar secure.
He was originally going to chain him to the wall, but when he thought about how to anchor it securely, he couldn’t think of any way to keep Sylvanus from simply ripping it out.
‘Sorry, bud, but hopefully you won’t be in there long.’
Hopefully, they could reach a deal.
**
Zed grew bored waiting for Sylvanus’ protective field to end, so he talked with Iris about how to do the water purification tattoo.
‘I’m thinking we want to keep it as simple as possible,’ she said, ‘so let’s do this. Water is H2O, which is a very small molecule. If you pull every molecule that’s bigger than H2O to, say, your hand, that should eliminate all the impurities. It should be pretty close to distilled water.’
‘I like that. Let’s give it a try.’
Zed got a clay pitcher and filled it up with water. Iris helped him visualize what a water molecule looked like. It was not a straight line like Zed had initially thought, with the oxygen in the middle and the hydrogen atoms on opposite sides. As it turned out, the oxygen was in the middle, but the molecule was shaped like a “V”, not a line.
‘That, by the way, is why water is so good at dissolving things,’ Iris said. ‘The hydrogen atoms are pulling two of the oxygen atom’s electrons towards them, so that side is a little bit negatively charged, while the oxygen side of the molecule is a little bit positively charged. The water molecules are good at slipping into small areas and glomming onto molecules with positively or negatively charged areas. Once the water molecules surround them, presto! They’re dissolved.’
‘Iris, do I need to know any of that to purify the water?’
‘No,’ she said, a little grumpily.
‘Then how about we stick to “keep it simple”.’
Although she didn’t say anything, he could practically feel her dissatisfaction. Zed sighed. ‘Thanks for teaching me so much stuff, Iris. You have been a literal lifesaver for me.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Alright. We have a bunch of “V” shaped water molecules, and we want to pull in any molecules that are bigger than they are.’
‘Right.’
Zed put his hand into the pitcher. He felt a little weird about doing something that he had been taught since childhood was taboo because it would make the water impure, but it was far easier than doing it from a distance. Zed gathered mana into his hand and diffused it into the water. He then willed it to pull in every molecule bigger than H2O.
“Crack!”
Zed was surprised when the pitcher shattered and the jagged clay shards rushed to his hand, cutting him in multiple places and embedding themselves in his flesh. The water from the pitcher was all over the floor, and water dribbled out of his wounds.
‘What the… oh, right. The mana is only letting the water part of the blood out.’
Zed sighed as he turned the “water purifying” off. The water flowing from his wounds turned red. He started pulling shards out of his hands.
‘Guess I’ll need to try that again with a little less pull.’
**
Zed looked over at Sylvanus a few hours later. The protective field around his head was noticeably smaller. He didn’t know when it would disappear, but it could be any time now. At the most, a day.
He noticed a couple of rings on Sylvanus’ fingers and chided himself for being a fool.
‘Who knows what he could do with those?’
Zed removed the rings and looked at them. One was heavy gold with a ruby the same width as the broad band. The other was also gold, but with an inscription on the inside, “To my beloved.”
Zed felt like a jerk for taking the inscribed ring, like he was peeking into something that wasn’t his business. He checked it for mana abilities and, when he didn’t find any, put it on the finger he removed it from.
The other ring immediately pulled at his mana when he probed. Zed put it on and activated the ring. It opened up to him, showing him the contents of its extra-spacial inventory.
‘Jackpot!’ Zed crowed.
Fortunately, the ring did not have an AI included. Zed wasn’t sure how he would feel about another one. His brain already felt a little crowded.
‘I think you meant to say “comfy”, Zed.’
‘Right,’ Zed thought with a bit of an eye roll. ‘That’s exactly what I meant. We’re very comfy in here. So comfy that I occasionally want to scream. In a comfy way.’
‘Hmph. You could be nicer to me, you know.’
Zed sighed. ‘I know. It’s hard. We’re like Siamese twins that can’t get away from each other. But, as much as I complain about our “comfiness”, Iris, I am grateful for you. You are my greatest supporter and my best friend in this world.’
‘Better than Constance?’
‘Of course. I think Constance and I both know that what we have isn’t going to last.’
‘Just as long as you remember that.’
Chapter 32
Zed hadn’t realized how rightly he spoke when he called finding Sylvanus’ ring “hitting the jackpot”.
He did now.
The ring’s storage volume was roughly twice that of Iris’ ring, making it a treasure even if there was nothing in it. On top of that, there were plenty of valuables inside.
There were gold coins, platinum coins and bars, potions in glass bottles, small jade boxes with unknown contents, books, and memory crystals. And clothes. Lots and lots of clothes. Zed was tempted to make room by pulling all the clothes out and tossing them to the corner of the room, but decided to leave them in the ring for now.
The books were primarily texts on physics (“Force and Motion”, “Sub-atomic Physics, “Gravity and Sub-atomic Physics”, and “Duality of Matter”), chemistry (“Acids and Bases” and “Organic Chemistry”), and metallurgy (“Alloys and Their Properties” and “Metallic Crystal Structures”), along with some novels about heroic álfar.
As much as Zed valued the books, he was even more interested in the memory crystals. He took one and was about to put it on Iris’ ring when she said, ‘Try the new ring.’
He did, and the contents of the crystal were instantly accessible to his mind. It was a cultivation technique that, like his own, aimed at having the body become mana-based. Unlike his, which was direct and—Zed hated to say it, but it was true—artificial, this method used a gradual approach based on increasing mana flows throughout the body. It was an extension of mana-based physical enhancement. Interestingly, the advanced sections also had mental enhancement.
‘I wonder if it’s like mine?’ Zed wondered.
‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve already gone down the other road, so we can’t use this.’
‘We can’t use the physical parts of it, but the mental enhancement might be useful.’
‘That’s true.’
Zed returned the crystal to Sylvanus’ ring and pulled out the second one. It turned out to be the technique that Silwan used on Leilani—”Plasma Whip”. Zed grimaced when he thought about how Silwan had forced Leilani to the ground and burned her neck. It was an effective technique.
The crystal also described an upgraded version—”Lightning Whip”. It appeared to be the Plasma Whip technique with an added electrical component.
‘Iris, why haven’t we looked at lightning attacks? Wouldn’t they be really powerful?’
‘Yes, under special conditions. Lightning is usually a very ineffective attack.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you can’t aim it. It goes wherever the easiest route to ground is, which is probably not through your target unless you’re in the sky and they’re holding a lightning rod in their mouth. To get it to go where you want it to, you have to make sure that the path you want has the least resistance.’
‘How do you do that?’
‘Generally one of two ways: 1) Connect to the target with an electrical conductor, like metal, or 2) Create an air plasma path to the target, since plasma is an excellent conductor. You could, for example, use your laser to create a plasma path to the target and then zap them, but if you can hit them with the laser, why not just kill them with that instead?’
‘Hmm. I see what you mean. The lightning still sounds like a good addition to the plasma whip, though.’
‘Yes, that’s one of those special cases where it probably makes sense.’
The plasma whip manual referenced the “Remote Mind” technique. It appeared to be the sect’s name for the mana structure Zed saw in the plasma whip that allowed Silwan to control it far from his body.
‘I’ve gotta get that, Iris.’
‘Yes. Perhaps you can get it from Sylvanus.’
‘Probably, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
‘Why not?’
‘Silwan knows I’m interested in it. He might be suspicious if I don’t try to get it from him.’
‘Good point.’
Zed returned to the cultivation technique to look at what it had on mental enhancement. After a few hours of studying, Iris interrupted.
‘Zed, Sylvanus is awake.’
Zed dropped what he was doing and looked at him. Blood was seeping out of the partially healed cut at his neck. The protective field was gone, as was the cold field Zed had set up around the body.
‘He must have claimed the mana.’
Zed had expected that. He sensed that mana was circulating furiously in his body, particularly where the neck had been severed.
‘Maybe it’s good that I left the body unrefrigerated for half an hour. Gives him more to work on.’
Zed spun up his laser and magnetic field. He would let Iris handle the telekinetic field.
“Sylvanus.”
Sylvanus’ eyes slowly opened but were forced to look downwards. Zed moved to 10 feet away and sat on the floor.
“Can you talk?”
His head slowly shook a couple of times.
“I suggest you fix yourself quickly. I am under a time limit on my assassination job, which means you are under a time limit. If you don’t want to die, that is.”
Zed went back to observing him. He hated that he was in a nerve-wracking yet tedious situation that required him to be on guard at every moment. He would much rather rest or study.
‘Yes, I imagine Sylvanus would probably prefer different circumstances too,’ Iris said dryly.
After eleven minutes he rasped out, “Water.”
Zed pulled out his self-filling canteen and walked over to offer it to the álfar. He met resistance a few feet away, and Sylvanus’ closest chains were pushed back. He grunted in pain, and Zed thought, ‘Oh, right. Magnetic field.’
Zed hastily turned the field off and moved closer. It was awkward when he realized that simply holding it to Sylvanus’ mouth wouldn’t work because he was facing downwards. Sylvanus jerkily turned his head to the side with a grimace of pain, and Zed held the canteen to his mouth. The álfar quickly swallowed the water.
He released a light cloud of mana around Zed. Zed thought about acquiring it but decided to leave him alone.
‘Lord knows he needs all the mana he can get.’
When Zed saw more accumulating on the surface of Sylvanus’ head, though, he knew something was up. He dropped the canteen and dived to the side.
A spike of something emanated from Sylvanus’ head and pierced through Zed’s cheekbone, shattering it.
‘Holy crap! If I hadn’t moved, that would have been my brain!’
Zed scrabbled to get farther away from his prisoner. It was undignified, but he didn’t care. Once he was at the edge of the room he turned back, heart thumping. He was pissed, but knew that if he were in Sylvanus’ position he would have done something similar. He took some time to calm down while remaining wary and guarded.
“I kidnapped you and made you a prisoner, so I forgive you for doing that. Once. Try that again, and you die. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Sylvanus’ voice was still raspy, so perhaps that wasn’t faked.
For some reason, now that Zed was in the situation he had been working towards for a week, he was strangely reluctant to talk. Instead, he worked on regenerating his cheekbone and skin.
An hour later, cheek whole, Zed said, “Can you get techniques from the Ever-Fruitful Tree sect?”
“Yes.” Slightly less raspy.
“While you’re in the chains?”
“No.”
“What do you need?”
“An item from my ring and my hands free.”
“What item?”
“A jade tablet with the symbol of the sect on it.”
Zed paused and considered some more. “I want to make a deal with you.”
Sylvanus laughed, a painful and mirthless sound. “I’m all ears.”
“I have a deadline to kill you in three days, enforced by an energy contract. I want you to help me break the contract.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know how.”
“I saw that you are also under a contract.”
Sylvanus remained silent.
“Does your contract prevent you from talking about it?”
He said nothing. Zed was about to continue his questions when Sylvanus said, “I like to talk.”
‘That’s probably the closest he could come to a “yes” without it coming down on him,’ Zed thought.
“In my ideal world,” Zed said, “you would help me get the sect’s stellar energy contract technique, help me break my contract, and then I would let you go. I’d keep the ring, but I could return your clothes and personal stuff. I don’t want to kill you, but I'll have to if my contract is not broken in three days. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“The fact that your contract is set up to keep you from talking about it is actually encouraging to me. It suggests that it can be broken.”
Sylvanus slowly shook his head. “They don’t want young masters to know the requirements of entering the sect.”
“Wow. That’s pretty messed up. Still, I refuse to believe that it can’t be broken. Can you get me the technique?”
Zed waited a few seconds.
“Yes.”
“Good. If I put the tablet below you, can you get it?”
“I need to be released.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“At least my hands!” Sylvanus coughed wetly after forcing so much air through his throat.
“No. You burned that bridge by trying to kill me. Once we have a stellar energy contract in place, I’ll release you from the chains.”
“Fine,” he said bitterly.
Zed took the jade tablet out of the ring. He was about to slide it on the floor to Sylvanus when it occurred to him that he had no idea what the tablet could do.
“If you attack me with the tablet, you die. If you summon help, I probably won’t be able to tell. But if anyone comes here, you die. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
The word caused the ember of hope inside Zed to flare into a bonfire. This moment could lead to what he’d longed for the last year—freedom.
He slid the tablet across the floor to Sylvanus. It wasn’t a perfect shuffleboard shot, but it was only three feet short of being directly under the prisoner.
Zed sensed Sylvanus’ mana reaching out to the tablet and lifting it to one of his hands that was pulled painfully behind his back. A minute later, a white crystal dropped from the tablet and rolled on the floor a few times. If Sylvanus hadn’t tried to kill him a few minutes ago, Zed would’ve had a hard time doing anything other than focusing on the crystal.
“Push it over to me.”
Sylvanus’ mana reached out one more time and shoved it towards Zed. Zed walked over and picked up the crystal, eying his prisoner the entire time.
“Thank you. Now the tablet.”
Sylvanus huffed, but gently laid the tablet on the ground using telekinesis and shoved it over.
“I’m going to learn how to make contracts, and then we’ll see about getting you out of those chains.”
The álfar was silent. Blood had stopped seeping out of his neck.
Zed inserted the crystal into his ring.
‘Iris, can you monitor our guest while I’m studying, including his mana usage?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Keep an eye on him, let me know if he pulls any funny business. If necessary, take over my body temporarily.’
‘Okay.’
Zed immersed himself in the theory and construction of mana contracts and was fascinated by what he learned. It turned out that his assumption that his subconscious mind decided whether he had broken the contract or not was incorrect. Instead, the contract included a modified version of the “Remote Mind” technique.
‘That “Remote Mind” keeps popping up in a lot of places,’ Zed thought.
There were differences, though. Remote Mind was an active technique that allowed the user to exert their will at a distance. The mana contract’s version was a static capture of the mind’s will when the contract was formed. That snapshot of the mind’s will is what determined whether to trigger the contract’s clauses or not, so if the contractee’s understanding of the contract changed over time, it wouldn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was their understanding of the contract when it was created.
‘The assassination deadline is in three days. Probably not a coincidence.’ “Okay, thanks. See you in a few days.”
Once Zed had finished hog-tying his prisoner, he turned to the second chain. On one end of the chain was a thick eye screw. Zed jammed it into the middle ceiling beam and twisted the screw in. On Earth he would never have been able to do it by hand, but between his improved physique and mana enhancements, it wasn’t difficult.
Once the chain was securely hanging, Zed grabbed the clasp at the end of it. He lifted Sylvanus by the middle of his chain and put it in the clasp. Once the clasp was welded, he gently let Sylvanus down and watched him hang in the air, slowly rotating, belly down. It looked incredibly uncomfortable, but he wasn’t sure how else he could keep the álfar secure.
He was originally going to chain him to the wall, but when he thought about how to anchor it securely, he couldn’t think of any way to keep Sylvanus from simply ripping it out.
‘Sorry, bud, but hopefully you won’t be in there long.’
Hopefully, they could reach a deal.
**
Zed grew bored waiting for Sylvanus’ protective field to end, so he talked with Iris about how to do the water purification tattoo.
‘I’m thinking we want to keep it as simple as possible,’ she said, ‘so let’s do this. Water is H2O, which is a very small molecule. If you pull every molecule that’s bigger than H2O to, say, your hand, that should eliminate all the impurities. It should be pretty close to distilled water.’
‘I like that. Let’s give it a try.’
Zed got a clay pitcher and filled it up with water. Iris helped him visualize what a water molecule looked like. It was not a straight line like Zed had initially thought, with the oxygen in the middle and the hydrogen atoms on opposite sides. As it turned out, the oxygen was in the middle, but the molecule was shaped like a “V”, not a line.
‘That, by the way, is why water is so good at dissolving things,’ Iris said. ‘The hydrogen atoms are pulling two of the oxygen atom’s electrons towards them, so that side is a little bit negatively charged, while the oxygen side of the molecule is a little bit positively charged. The water molecules are good at slipping into small areas and glomming onto molecules with positively or negatively charged areas. Once the water molecules surround them, presto! They’re dissolved.’
‘Iris, do I need to know any of that to purify the water?’
‘No,’ she said, a little grumpily.
‘Then how about we stick to “keep it simple”.’
Although she didn’t say anything, he could practically feel her dissatisfaction. Zed sighed. ‘Thanks for teaching me so much stuff, Iris. You have been a literal lifesaver for me.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Alright. We have a bunch of “V” shaped water molecules, and we want to pull in any molecules that are bigger than they are.’
‘Right.’
Zed put his hand into the pitcher. He felt a little weird about doing something that he had been taught since childhood was taboo because it would make the water impure, but it was far easier than doing it from a distance. Zed gathered mana into his hand and diffused it into the water. He then willed it to pull in every molecule bigger than H2O.
“Crack!”
Zed was surprised when the pitcher shattered and the jagged clay shards rushed to his hand, cutting him in multiple places and embedding themselves in his flesh. The water from the pitcher was all over the floor, and water dribbled out of his wounds.
‘What the… oh, right. The mana is only letting the water part of the blood out.’
Zed sighed as he turned the “water purifying” off. The water flowing from his wounds turned red. He started pulling shards out of his hands.
‘Guess I’ll need to try that again with a little less pull.’
**
Zed looked over at Sylvanus a few hours later. The protective field around his head was noticeably smaller. He didn’t know when it would disappear, but it could be any time now. At the most, a day.
He noticed a couple of rings on Sylvanus’ fingers and chided himself for being a fool.
‘Who knows what he could do with those?’
Zed removed the rings and looked at them. One was heavy gold with a ruby the same width as the broad band. The other was also gold, but with an inscription on the inside, “To my beloved.”
Zed felt like a jerk for taking the inscribed ring, like he was peeking into something that wasn’t his business. He checked it for mana abilities and, when he didn’t find any, put it on the finger he removed it from.
The other ring immediately pulled at his mana when he probed. Zed put it on and activated the ring. It opened up to him, showing him the contents of its extra-spacial inventory.
‘Jackpot!’ Zed crowed.
Fortunately, the ring did not have an AI included. Zed wasn’t sure how he would feel about another one. His brain already felt a little crowded.
‘I think you meant to say “comfy”, Zed.’
‘Right,’ Zed thought with a bit of an eye roll. ‘That’s exactly what I meant. We’re very comfy in here. So comfy that I occasionally want to scream. In a comfy way.’
‘Hmph. You could be nicer to me, you know.’
Zed sighed. ‘I know. It’s hard. We’re like Siamese twins that can’t get away from each other. But, as much as I complain about our “comfiness”, Iris, I am grateful for you. You are my greatest supporter and my best friend in this world.’
‘Better than Constance?’
‘Of course. I think Constance and I both know that what we have isn’t going to last.’
‘Just as long as you remember that.’
Chapter 32
Zed hadn’t realized how rightly he spoke when he called finding Sylvanus’ ring “hitting the jackpot”.
He did now.
The ring’s storage volume was roughly twice that of Iris’ ring, making it a treasure even if there was nothing in it. On top of that, there were plenty of valuables inside.
There were gold coins, platinum coins and bars, potions in glass bottles, small jade boxes with unknown contents, books, and memory crystals. And clothes. Lots and lots of clothes. Zed was tempted to make room by pulling all the clothes out and tossing them to the corner of the room, but decided to leave them in the ring for now.
The books were primarily texts on physics (“Force and Motion”, “Sub-atomic Physics, “Gravity and Sub-atomic Physics”, and “Duality of Matter”), chemistry (“Acids and Bases” and “Organic Chemistry”), and metallurgy (“Alloys and Their Properties” and “Metallic Crystal Structures”), along with some novels about heroic álfar.
As much as Zed valued the books, he was even more interested in the memory crystals. He took one and was about to put it on Iris’ ring when she said, ‘Try the new ring.’
He did, and the contents of the crystal were instantly accessible to his mind. It was a cultivation technique that, like his own, aimed at having the body become mana-based. Unlike his, which was direct and—Zed hated to say it, but it was true—artificial, this method used a gradual approach based on increasing mana flows throughout the body. It was an extension of mana-based physical enhancement. Interestingly, the advanced sections also had mental enhancement.
‘I wonder if it’s like mine?’ Zed wondered.
‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve already gone down the other road, so we can’t use this.’
‘We can’t use the physical parts of it, but the mental enhancement might be useful.’
‘That’s true.’
Zed returned the crystal to Sylvanus’ ring and pulled out the second one. It turned out to be the technique that Silwan used on Leilani—”Plasma Whip”. Zed grimaced when he thought about how Silwan had forced Leilani to the ground and burned her neck. It was an effective technique.
The crystal also described an upgraded version—”Lightning Whip”. It appeared to be the Plasma Whip technique with an added electrical component.
‘Iris, why haven’t we looked at lightning attacks? Wouldn’t they be really powerful?’
‘Yes, under special conditions. Lightning is usually a very ineffective attack.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you can’t aim it. It goes wherever the easiest route to ground is, which is probably not through your target unless you’re in the sky and they’re holding a lightning rod in their mouth. To get it to go where you want it to, you have to make sure that the path you want has the least resistance.’
‘How do you do that?’
‘Generally one of two ways: 1) Connect to the target with an electrical conductor, like metal, or 2) Create an air plasma path to the target, since plasma is an excellent conductor. You could, for example, use your laser to create a plasma path to the target and then zap them, but if you can hit them with the laser, why not just kill them with that instead?’
‘Hmm. I see what you mean. The lightning still sounds like a good addition to the plasma whip, though.’
‘Yes, that’s one of those special cases where it probably makes sense.’
The plasma whip manual referenced the “Remote Mind” technique. It appeared to be the sect’s name for the mana structure Zed saw in the plasma whip that allowed Silwan to control it far from his body.
‘I’ve gotta get that, Iris.’
‘Yes. Perhaps you can get it from Sylvanus.’
‘Probably, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
‘Why not?’
‘Silwan knows I’m interested in it. He might be suspicious if I don’t try to get it from him.’
‘Good point.’
Zed returned to the cultivation technique to look at what it had on mental enhancement. After a few hours of studying, Iris interrupted.
‘Zed, Sylvanus is awake.’
Zed dropped what he was doing and looked at him. Blood was seeping out of the partially healed cut at his neck. The protective field was gone, as was the cold field Zed had set up around the body.
‘He must have claimed the mana.’
Zed had expected that. He sensed that mana was circulating furiously in his body, particularly where the neck had been severed.
‘Maybe it’s good that I left the body unrefrigerated for half an hour. Gives him more to work on.’
Zed spun up his laser and magnetic field. He would let Iris handle the telekinetic field.
“Sylvanus.”
Sylvanus’ eyes slowly opened but were forced to look downwards. Zed moved to 10 feet away and sat on the floor.
“Can you talk?”
His head slowly shook a couple of times.
“I suggest you fix yourself quickly. I am under a time limit on my assassination job, which means you are under a time limit. If you don’t want to die, that is.”
Zed went back to observing him. He hated that he was in a nerve-wracking yet tedious situation that required him to be on guard at every moment. He would much rather rest or study.
‘Yes, I imagine Sylvanus would probably prefer different circumstances too,’ Iris said dryly.
After eleven minutes he rasped out, “Water.”
Zed pulled out his self-filling canteen and walked over to offer it to the álfar. He met resistance a few feet away, and Sylvanus’ closest chains were pushed back. He grunted in pain, and Zed thought, ‘Oh, right. Magnetic field.’
Zed hastily turned the field off and moved closer. It was awkward when he realized that simply holding it to Sylvanus’ mouth wouldn’t work because he was facing downwards. Sylvanus jerkily turned his head to the side with a grimace of pain, and Zed held the canteen to his mouth. The álfar quickly swallowed the water.
He released a light cloud of mana around Zed. Zed thought about acquiring it but decided to leave him alone.
‘Lord knows he needs all the mana he can get.’
When Zed saw more accumulating on the surface of Sylvanus’ head, though, he knew something was up. He dropped the canteen and dived to the side.
A spike of something emanated from Sylvanus’ head and pierced through Zed’s cheekbone, shattering it.
‘Holy crap! If I hadn’t moved, that would have been my brain!’
Zed scrabbled to get farther away from his prisoner. It was undignified, but he didn’t care. Once he was at the edge of the room he turned back, heart thumping. He was pissed, but knew that if he were in Sylvanus’ position he would have done something similar. He took some time to calm down while remaining wary and guarded.
“I kidnapped you and made you a prisoner, so I forgive you for doing that. Once. Try that again, and you die. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Sylvanus’ voice was still raspy, so perhaps that wasn’t faked.
For some reason, now that Zed was in the situation he had been working towards for a week, he was strangely reluctant to talk. Instead, he worked on regenerating his cheekbone and skin.
An hour later, cheek whole, Zed said, “Can you get techniques from the Ever-Fruitful Tree sect?”
“Yes.” Slightly less raspy.
“While you’re in the chains?”
“No.”
“What do you need?”
“An item from my ring and my hands free.”
“What item?”
“A jade tablet with the symbol of the sect on it.”
Zed paused and considered some more. “I want to make a deal with you.”
Sylvanus laughed, a painful and mirthless sound. “I’m all ears.”
“I have a deadline to kill you in three days, enforced by an energy contract. I want you to help me break the contract.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know how.”
“I saw that you are also under a contract.”
Sylvanus remained silent.
“Does your contract prevent you from talking about it?”
He said nothing. Zed was about to continue his questions when Sylvanus said, “I like to talk.”
‘That’s probably the closest he could come to a “yes” without it coming down on him,’ Zed thought.
“In my ideal world,” Zed said, “you would help me get the sect’s stellar energy contract technique, help me break my contract, and then I would let you go. I’d keep the ring, but I could return your clothes and personal stuff. I don’t want to kill you, but I'll have to if my contract is not broken in three days. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“The fact that your contract is set up to keep you from talking about it is actually encouraging to me. It suggests that it can be broken.”
Sylvanus slowly shook his head. “They don’t want young masters to know the requirements of entering the sect.”
“Wow. That’s pretty messed up. Still, I refuse to believe that it can’t be broken. Can you get me the technique?”
Zed waited a few seconds.
“Yes.”
“Good. If I put the tablet below you, can you get it?”
“I need to be released.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“At least my hands!” Sylvanus coughed wetly after forcing so much air through his throat.
“No. You burned that bridge by trying to kill me. Once we have a stellar energy contract in place, I’ll release you from the chains.”
“Fine,” he said bitterly.
Zed took the jade tablet out of the ring. He was about to slide it on the floor to Sylvanus when it occurred to him that he had no idea what the tablet could do.
“If you attack me with the tablet, you die. If you summon help, I probably won’t be able to tell. But if anyone comes here, you die. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
The word caused the ember of hope inside Zed to flare into a bonfire. This moment could lead to what he’d longed for the last year—freedom.
He slid the tablet across the floor to Sylvanus. It wasn’t a perfect shuffleboard shot, but it was only three feet short of being directly under the prisoner.
Zed sensed Sylvanus’ mana reaching out to the tablet and lifting it to one of his hands that was pulled painfully behind his back. A minute later, a white crystal dropped from the tablet and rolled on the floor a few times. If Sylvanus hadn’t tried to kill him a few minutes ago, Zed would’ve had a hard time doing anything other than focusing on the crystal.
“Push it over to me.”
Sylvanus’ mana reached out one more time and shoved it towards Zed. Zed walked over and picked up the crystal, eying his prisoner the entire time.
“Thank you. Now the tablet.”
Sylvanus huffed, but gently laid the tablet on the ground using telekinesis and shoved it over.
“I’m going to learn how to make contracts, and then we’ll see about getting you out of those chains.”
The álfar was silent. Blood had stopped seeping out of his neck.
Zed inserted the crystal into his ring.
‘Iris, can you monitor our guest while I’m studying, including his mana usage?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Keep an eye on him, let me know if he pulls any funny business. If necessary, take over my body temporarily.’
‘Okay.’
Zed immersed himself in the theory and construction of mana contracts and was fascinated by what he learned. It turned out that his assumption that his subconscious mind decided whether he had broken the contract or not was incorrect. Instead, the contract included a modified version of the “Remote Mind” technique.
‘That “Remote Mind” keeps popping up in a lot of places,’ Zed thought.
There were differences, though. Remote Mind was an active technique that allowed the user to exert their will at a distance. The mana contract’s version was a static capture of the mind’s will when the contract was formed. That snapshot of the mind’s will is what determined whether to trigger the contract’s clauses or not, so if the contractee’s understanding of the contract changed over time, it wouldn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was their understanding of the contract when it was created.
