Chapter 70: Experimentation

Kaius stared at the blood that rocketed from his hand, spraying down the front of the desk. Splattering on his carefully arrayed notes. He spun in his seat, turning away from the desk to spill blood on the floor, groaning as agony lanced through his hand.

Porkchop was on him in a flash.“Kaius! What the fuck!”

He grunted. Feeling as his health flooded out to treat the injury. Before it could reach it, he snatched it up in his grip with single minded focus. Ignoring his pain

**Ding! Rapid Adaptation has reached level 19!**

This was an opportunity, one that he couldn’t let go to waste.

Much like he had in his fight with the Grimclaw, Kaius directed the health to the wound manually. Feeling the shattered bone and torn flesh, he diffused the resource, knitting structures back together. Bone was first, the framework for everything that came after. Then came ligaments and connective tissue. He suppressed a heave as he felt as snakes of white filamentcrawledacross bone. Muscles rippled, weaving themselves back over. Then his skin. Pain vanished.

Taking a deep breath, he clenched his hand into a fist, twiddling his fingers to make sure they all moved right. That was one of the main struggles with manual healing. If you messed up you could inadvertently cripple yourself. Requiring you to reinjure and try again.

Still, he’d done well enough, and his hopes had been realised.

**Ding! General Skill Available! Would you like to learn: Fast Healing (Rare)?**

He grinned. A little earlier than he had expected, but a welcome addition all the same. The first of the skills he needed forLesser Regeneration.

“Sorry about that.” He said. Porkchop shot him alook. “What?! I said it was volatile.”

“You might have stressed that you might beblowing up your HAND!”Porkchop yelled at him.

“I’m fine, see?” He held up his left hand, twiddling his fingers. “Besides, I got one of my next skills! Now if you’ll excuse me, I should go fetch a towel before I ruin any of my notes.”

Leaving Porkchop standing there staring at him in shock, Kaius hurried off to grab something to mop up his blood.

Hereallydidn’t want to have to copy his notes again.

Dabbing at the blood on the desk, Kaius’s eyes roved over his latest skills description.

Fast Healing:

Level 1

Rare

Tis’ but a scratch.

Increases the flow rate of your Health pool, drastically increasing healing speeds.

Each levelminutely increases the rate at which Health is expended to heal wounds.

Well, at the very least he would be getting some good use out of it. He doubted that his little accident would be theonlyone to happen while he worked on his formation, and they were likely to getworseas he managed to get further and further through the process.

After cleaning up the blood as well as he could, Kaius sat back down at the desk and prepared to jump right back into inscribing his body formation. He pushed his papers back to the far edge of the desk. In all likelihood, there would be more failures, and he wanted his notes outside of the splash zone.

Laying his hand back down on its surface he grimaced slightly at the tackiness left behind after his little accident. This time he was extra careful to make sure his arm wasperfectlycomfortable. He had no intention of letting simple discomfort be the reason he failed his inscription.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Kaius swept up his stylus, starting theSovereignsigil with gusto. Now that he was prepared for the stinging violation of his stylus slicing through his metaphysical flesh, he stayed steady. Whorling loops followed his implement, standing clear to hisTrue Sight.

Despite his nerves, he refused to rush. It might have been taxing. Exhausting his will as he held the sigil clear in his mind, splitting his focus to hold the saturated mana stable in his arm. It was worth it, this was an exercise in precision, not speed.

Even with his careful pace, he still finished the sigil far faster than he had the first time. More confident in his abilities, and the way the stylus interacted with his malleable flesh. With careful focus he let mana flood the runic working, clamping down to hold it steady in the confines of the central array.

After a minute to ensure it had stabilised, that his focus was clear enough to add yet another point of failure to the mix, he moved on.

Finger-length by finger-length, a dense scrawl of Vhaxanish script began to encircle the central sigil. It was a band maybe half a finger in width, a dozen dozen rings of impossibly small words. Sentences of control, structures of transference. It stretched his dexterity, pushed the limits of his fine motor control. It was by far the densest runic working he had ever done by multiple orders of magnitude.

**Ding! Runic Lexicon has reached level 6!**

His pace slowed to a crawl. The dense working requiring all of his focus. He didn’t even try to keep the entire thing in his mind, instead returning to look at his notes after every word, each made up of up to a hundred complex runes. Despite his focus, his flow, there was only one thought that stood dominant at the front of his mind.

He REALLY fucking hated Vhaxanish. It was so painful to use he was of half a mind to categorise it as a form of offensive mind magic. Even havingpreplannedthe entire working, the grammar was so complex, its runes so subtly different, that every stroke of his stylus threatened to ruin the entire working with a single mistake. Because of course Vhaxanish was inflexible to the point that asingleerror would be more than enough to break the entire array.

It was a nightmare of a time, having to ensure that he slowed his pace low enough that the channelled drain of his stylus kept pace with his mana pool. He couldn’t allow it to start to eat into the mana he was keeping locked in his hand.

Somehow he managed. Holding his focus rigid enough to keep his arm saturated, hisSovereignsigil stable, and still scribe the Vhaxanish control array. Nearly a full three hours later he was finished. He sat back, dropping his stylus to the desk with numb fingers to wipe at his sweat sodden forehead. Still making sure to take perfect care not to shift the hand that he had planted flat on the desk.

**Ding! Runic Lexicon has reached level 7!**

**Ding! Runic Lexicon has reached level 10!**

He had to admit, despite all its problems Vhaxanishwasa pretty script. Sharp and austere, the densely packed circles of runic sentences hung black against his skin. Looking much like an impossibly sharp and defined tattoo. Each ring of runes was small enough that he imagined it would probably look solid black from a distance to someone without an ocular skill.

Now for the moment of truth.

He suffused the array with mana, letting the density in his arm rush inwards, controlling it with his will. So far so good. The dense rings of black script started to light up, line by line.

**Ding! Mana Manipulation has reached level 7!**

Suddenly, hisManahit…something. There was a surge. Acrack.

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He’d made a mistake.FUCKINGVhaxanish!

The array destabilised, blowing a hole clean through Kaius’s palm . Agony surged, blood and viscera splattering through the air.

“Son of aBITCH!” Kaius screamed, yanking his hand away from his precious notes. Cradling it to his chest as health surged to heal the gaping wound. Moving with far more speed than before he had acquired his latest skill.

**Ding! Fast Healing has reached level 2!**

Evidently Porkchop was confident that he would be fine, because all he heard was the sharp cackle of his friend laughing at his misfortune.

Getting the control array to stabilise ended up taking two full weeks. Two. Weeks. Of frustration, agony, and bloody minded determination to throw himself into the wall he had stumbled into until it broke. If the confusing and overly complicated nature of the script wasn’t enough, he’d discovered a new problem with Vhaxanish. The actual runes were pretty stable.

Now, that might have sounded like a good thing. For all other scripts it would have been. Unfortunately, Vhaxanishwasn’tother scripts. He could make a single transcription error, use a single wrong character, or make a slight misspelling, and he hadno way of knowing. The bloody thing would sit there, perfectly fine looking, until he injected mana into the array.

Even then, things would seem to go perfectly smoothly, until the rising power density tripped over whatever tiny mistake he made and blew up in his face. Not only did that mean that he had no way to correct, no way to abort before everything went to the hells, it also meant that every attempt failed at thelast possible moment. With the array itself taking roughly three hours, and regenerating his health and mana after blowing a hole in himself taking another, he could only get in two or three attempts per day.

He refused to quit, and eventually he cracked it. Unfortunately, while Yosh’s Supplementary and his translation and connector array was far simpler than Vhaxanish, it was by no means simple. On top of that, every additional working added complexity. Another thing for him to focus on, another mana construct for him to hold in stasis.

Though inevitably after another week he managed to consistently succeed with that too. A week after that? He was confident at the binding array. Thankfully, the High Lothian runic hymns werenota core part of the central working, and he had all the pieces he needed to complete his formation.

This would be his last attempt, he would make sure of it.

Porkchop had left him alone for this one, quickly growing bored of his repeated failures. That was fine, he would need his full concentration.

He sat at the desk once again. The formerly varnished surface was stained with splotchy brown, blood and viscera leaving its permanent mark on the wood. His notes too were blood stained and red. Even with having replaced them twice now, they never lasted long. As his spell casting formation grew closer to completion, each failure grew more destructive. More explosive.

There was one upside to the constant injuries he had suffered at the hands of his failures. It was phenomenal training forFast Healing, and provided him ample opportunity to acquire one of the other skills he needed forLesser Regeneration.

Stone Blood:

Level 14

Rare

Exsanguination only works on that which bleeds. Harden your heart and fight on, Slayer.

This skill automatically constricts severed blood vessels, reducing the amount of vital fluid lost. Enhancing magics reinforce the body, improving the rate at which spent blood is restored.

Each levelminutely decreases bleeding.

Each level minutely improves blood generation.

Still, it was messy. Kaius was almost certain that if he checked the ceiling he would be able to find dried specks of blood and flesh. He didn’t, only having the mind to focus on his work.

He touched the stylus to the back of his hand, steadily scrawling out theSovereignsigil with practised ease. With each attempt he had grown surer of his work, more confident. That brought with it speed.

Before he knew it, he was funnelling compressed mana into the runes channels, holding it steady as it saturated.

**Ding! Intelligence has reached level 20!**

He switched to Vhaxanish, slowing his pace. The control array was an exercise in patience. Three pages of notes sat close to him, going through the entire array in detail. Previously he had focused on trying to memorise whole words, each a chain of fifty runes at minimum. He’d quickly learned that that was pure hubris on his own part. Now he double checked his work every few runes. Sacrificing speed for precision and accuracy.

The hours ticked along, Kaius’s mana pool holding steady as he worked in pace with his regeneration. The dense disk of the control array finished. He held his breath, slowly flooding it with mana. Ring by ring it lit up, reaching the centre over the course of a minute. A pulse of light and it was done. Saturated with his power. He bore down on the working, locking it in place as he ignored the sting of salty sweat dripping into his eye.

**Ding! Mana Manipulation has reached level 18!**

After a few minutes' breather he moved on, starting his work on the linking array. Yosh’s supplementary was a beautiful script, full of graceful curves and flicks. Lines of runes joined the controlling array to the keystone sigil like spokes on a wheel. Once that was done, he moved to the exterior of his Vhaxanish controller. Inscribing pyramidal spikes on the outer edge of the disk, a full two dozen of them. Each triangle was tipped with a line of runes, a connection for a High Lothian runic spell hymn.

Twenty-four spell slots was far more than he would be able to support at the moment, but he and Hastur had decided it would be smart to future proof. Afterall, even if his class fully included his spell casting formation, there was no guarantee it would directly modify the working with his first class skill, or even at all. Better to be prepared than forced to redesign as he got access to more mana.

Once he had finished the spell slots, a number of floating Supplementary lines were carved in his skin outside of the overall working, and in the gaps between the spokes of the wheel. Each one he double and triple checked his placement and angles. He had to be sure it was perfect. After he added his Simenoan binding array they would need to connect to the perfect spots, allowing the final stabilising section of the formation to suffuse the overall working.

After a full hour of work he was done with the translation array. Mana flooded through the working with ease, each section of graceful runes lighting up in a sequence. Snapping into place. He focused, teeth grinding as he held three separate runic arrays in ridgid stasis in his flesh. His head was far beyond aching now. Strange auras surrounded his sight, unexplained byTrue Sight, and his brain felt like it had been liquified with a particularly violent branding iron.

**Ding! Mana Manipulation has reached level 19!**

No amount of a break would ease the agony, not when he still had to hold the partially completed formation stable. No, now it was a sprint. To finish the working before his will gave out, as had happened in his last handful of failures.

Thankfully, Simenoan was a geometric script, relying on sacred shapes to pacify the turbulent energy of his body formation.

Drawing overlapping triangles and concentric circles directly over his partially complete formation, Kaius burned through his mana pool. Forcing his stylus to sweep across his flesh with blinding speed. Years of practice, and the learnings of a dozen failures, kept Kaius’s hand steady as he sprinted to the finish line.

Lines cut through tiny gaps between runes, connecting perfectly with stray fragments of Yosh’s Supplementary to form a cohesive whole. Linking his formation into one, complete, working.

He finished.

**Ding! Runic Lexicon has reached level 18!**

His will was flagging, he could feel it. Kaius had also cut itclose. Inscribing the stabilising array so quickly had absolutelytornthrough his mana reserves. Another minute or two and he would have started to eat into the mana suffusing his arm, ruining his attempt.

Kaius took a deep breath, slowly exhaling through pursed lips. It was fine, he hadn’t. Now he just needed to suffuse the array and pray it worked.

The room seemed to sway as he held his mana in a tight grip, slowly allowing it to seep into the Simenoan geometry. Each line started to glow with an even radiance. A good sign, if there was an impediment, Kaius would have expected to see bright or dark spots.

The arrayclicked.

**Ding! Mana Manipulation has reached level 20!**

A moment later his formation started to pull on his mana. Gently at first, barely a light request to sink its teeth into his resource. He acquiesced, sighing in relief as his headache was cut in half as he dropped all mental hold he had on his working.

Instantly pale blue energypouredinto his spell casting formation. Spiralling into a dense funnel centred on hisSovereignkeystone. To hisTrue Sightit looked like an ethereal whirlwind, pulling in not just the final remnants of his own mana, but drinking deeply from the unaspected mana present in the office.

Kaius grit his teeth as he looked at the sheer volume of energy that was suffusing his spell casting array. It really was do or die now. If the formation failed, if there was some minute imperfection in anyoneof his four arrays, the failure would be catastrophic.

At best he would lose his arm. Completely. The kind of wound hisHealthwouldn’t be able to fully restore. Not without specialised skills. Skills he didn’t have.

Inexorably his formation packed more and more power into its runes. Slowly tapering its consumption. Kaius held the armrest of his chair in a white knuckled grip, refusing to so much as twitch his left arm lest the worst happen.

There was a flash of blinding light.

He felt somethingclick. Deep in his bones. A new connection forged to his soul. Violently piecing his innermost self with a painful stab of intent. Hefeltit. The formation. Empty, waiting for spell hymns. But present.

He’d succeeded. He’d cut himself a new path, one that no one had walked before him.

A flurry of system notifications dinged in his mind.

The sudden jarring of the systems pull on his attention tipped him over the edge. He was spent. Fully and completely.

Kaius’s eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped, falling limp onto the desk.

Sound asleep.