TBATE - Not Bound By Fate

Part 9

Arthur

It has been six months since I arrived in Zestier. During this time I managed to create the spellform to passively purify a mana core and gave it to Alea and Aya to see if it could bypass the limiter placed on them, but so far there were no results. They were told about our regression to make things easier. While we avoided telling them the specifics of the war for now, we needed them to be at least aware of what was coming.

Regis has made a lot of progress with the creation aspect of Vivum and now was able to create simple objects with it such as swords, daggers and certain 'clothing' that suited his tastes. Lucky for me he couldn't make anything organic.

Tess finished forming her mana core a few days ago, so along with the purifying spellform I also gave her the Acclorite. While I wanted to give it to Ellie so she would have a powerful weapon that was perfectly suited for her, giving it to Tessia made more sense since she would be fighting a lot more in the war, plus I could always ask Wren for something to protect my little sister once I was taken for training with the Asura. We also finished linking the communication rings, making them change in appearance slightly. My ring was now black with a dark green band around it in the middle and Tess's was white with a purple band in the same style as mine.

As for Sylvie's eggs, I was able to develop the merging art to the point where she would be as strong as when her training in Epheotus ended. It was also a good thing I didn't use the art yet, as I noticed an Asuran presence in Elenoir periodically. Whoever Kezess sent here wasn't doing a good job of hiding themselves so it's definitely not Windsom. Hopefully they stop coming here before I finish my assimilation.

My own training has been going well as I discovered I could use aether and my godrunes inside the third keystone, making experimenting with them a lot safer. For Godstep I could now leave markers in place making it so I could teleport to places further away much easier. I also practiced sending my swords through the aetheric pathways, it wasn't easy or convenient but could come in handy in the future. My proficiency with Realmheart increased a bit as well making its aether consumption decrease a little. Destruction hasn't seen much improvement, I could control it for a few seconds more than before but that was it.

The rune that improved the most was Aroa's Requiem. I still couldn't use it on organic things, but if I was quick enough I could use it on spells after they were formed to undo them. Not only that, but thanks to the assimilation process I was able to use Static Void again through the godrune, which makes me wonder what the first phase of my beast will is going to be. It would be nice if it was the ability to make portals but who knows, it could just end up being an improvement to my aevum art.

Right now it was time to solve the keystone as I couldn't see myself making more progress with my runes without real experience. I picked it up and sat in a meditative position in my bed. Sending aether into the device I felt my consciousness being pulled inside it and found myself into the fairly large room I've been using for training in the past few months. It was shaped like a pentagon and divided as such. The walls were a pristine white and the floor black with golden lines for the different partitions. Four of the partitions contained mana, one of each element and the fifth only had aether.

Thanks to training here I knew I could only manipulate the mana through Realmhaert, but just manipulating it didn't seem to do much. I tried to mix the mana of the different partitions and noticed some resistance when I did. I kept trying different things with the mana to no avail so I moved to the aether section. I tried absorbing it, but it wouldn't move to me. Maybe I need to be in the middle of the room for something to happen.

As I sat in the intersection trying to move aether and mana, I noticed that there was a greater resistance the closer the mana was to the lines and the aether seemed attracted to it. Imbuing the lines with the aether in the room I focused on sending it to the fire partition and watched as amethyst walls rose from the lines and closed the section. Keeping a hold of the walls I tried moving the fire mana but only the bits that were on the outside responded to me. I did the same for wind and water mana and got the same results, but this time I noticed that it wasn't that the mana wouldn't answer, it couldn't.