Chương 96: The Pleasurable Retreat Club

The First Manabreak created a system that ejected a great deal of Living Mana into the world. Similarly, all the subsequent Manabreaks did much the same, though to varying degrees. In Arcoryx, the mine underneath the city was the work of a long-lost Calamity that was subdued and destroyed ages ago. But its leavings were not destroyed. Because even as the threat presented by the Calamity was finally ended, mages made breakthroughs in other areas, such as how to use Living Mana productively for the good of society.

As such, despite the clear danger it presented, the greatest work of the Calamity of the Cosmos was allowed to be harnessed. There was much debate about the decision, much controversy and blame thrown upon the administration at the time, but the decision went through. Powerful people were interested in putting Living Mana to good use.

So, the Manabreak mine was established, where a Calamity had torn through multiple Realms and stitched them together in one spot to endlessly birth Living Mana that was stuffed with more properties than any mage could ever use alone.

Mining Operation Velos G. Ryland had absolutely zero worries about the Prime Minister and anyone accompanying him. They'd be perfectly fine. And even if they weren't, well, he wouldn't mind it in that case either. He wasn't callously cruel. It was just that his sympathy was limited for those he didn't think were deserving of it. So, his cast of [Translocate] took him away from that train with its surprisingly insufferable passengers and to a far more pleasant one.

"Sub-Academ Ryland," Academ Jules said in surprise. He had started when Ryland had appeared through his rift.

"What has happened?" They had to have felt the tremors too. Several of the students, including the graduate ones, were looking concerned.

"The Living Mana is acting up," Ryland said.

"I'm not quite certain what is going on or what it's undergoing at the moment, but the Miner Mages are trying to address the situation as best as they can. Regardless, it is dangerous, so I suggest that we pause the trip for the time being."

"I agree," Alendra said. The train was already coming to a stop because she was in charge of the Glyphtech control panel.

"Let's take the students back just to be safe." There were immediate protests from nearly everyone.

"We're the Excursion Club!" one of them said.

"Not the Pleasurable Retreat Club!"

"We can't run!" said another. Even Viren was adding his voice to the din.

"Facing these sorts of things is what we're for!" Ryland glanced at Acrypha, and even she had a resolute look on her face. While she wasn't joining in on the general hue and cry, her expression said she wholeheartedly agreed with the rest of them.

"Calm down, please!" Academ Jules said.

"The suggestion was hasty, yes, but we are only thinking of what might be best for you. Do we have any further information about what the situation is like? Anything specific?" They all looked at Ryland like he could reliably answer the question, and he sadly had to admit that he hadn't taken a good look. Although, that wasn't hard.

"One moment," he said as another tremendous tremor had them all grabbing onto anything on the train that could help stabilize them." [Omniscience]." Ryland tried not to wince at the situation farther below them. That said, with what he was now seeing, he absolutely believed Alendra had made the right choice to at least halt the train for the time being. The whole area was flooded with Living Mana now. There was so much destruction, Ryland was having trouble parsing one locale from another.

Space itself was rupturing in several areas, the cavern looking at once much smaller and much bigger at the same time.

He saw Miner Mages falling back in their failed efforts to contain it. And he saw no sign of the Prime Minister or any of the mages with him. The Living Mana itself wasn't easily… comprehensible. At best, Ryland thought it resembled a constantly expanding nebula, a cloud of cosmic dust that changed colour, consistency, and shape like an octopus roving across the seafloor and rapidly changing its camouflage pattern.

Only in this case, it was carving up space itself and leaving hollow ruptures filled with implosive vacuums.

"What does it look like?" Academ Jules asked.

"Bad," Ryland admitted.

"I don't wish any danger upon the poor Miner Mages, so I might step in." Viren was very alarmed by this." You have to step in, sir?"

"I'm not quite certain why, but it seems the Living Mana has grown excessively strong. The people I left behind to help deal with it haven't stepped up. I have no intention of letting others get hurt because of my own pettiness, so therefore, I've decided to handle things myself."

Ryland thought for a second and realized he had set foot in Arcoryx City long before he had actually exorcized Fate, so it could have left its dormant-till-now mark on the Living Mana from the Manabreak mine just as it had on the Living Mana that had turned into a Primordial-ranked Incursion. Was that really the truth? He couldn't quite tell currently. That said, he intended to find out for himself eventually. First, he had some more Living Mana to stop.

That was when the Inscribed Glyph of Communication on the train crackled to life.

"Hello?" a harried woman's voice said.

"Can you hear me?" Academ Jules hurried to the spot where he could talk back.

"Yes, hello? We can hear you. Are you from the mine?"

"Yes. What depth are you on? Have you encountered the Living Mana yet?" They were clearly aware that everyone knew about the outbreak by now. There was no sugarcoating it. Academ Jules read a mechanical counter on the train's wall.

"We're at Depth Five. We haven't encountered the Living Mana yet. Do you recommend us to return?"

"If you haven't met it yet, then no further action is necessary. Just please wait where you are until the situation is sorted by the Head Miner." They ended the communication then. Ryland decided to comply with the request for now. Much as he didn't want to let things get any worse, it seemed the mining administration had full faith in this Head Miner, so perhaps Ryland would wait and see. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Nevertheless, he wasn't content to merely wait just like everyone else. He cast [Omniscience] again. Things looked even worse since the last time he had taken a peek. Where the Living Mana had been an amorphous cloud before, it appeared to have shed much of its formlessness. Maybe it was growing strong enough to define itself better. Right now, it looked like a large starfish, pulsing and cracking space all around it.

The difference was that this time, it was facing an opponent that could reckon with everything it could throw out. A stocky woman had corralled the rest of the Miner Mages together, and she was casting high-Tier spells over and over against the Living Mana. That had to be the Head Miner. Her magic had Ryland peering more intently at her. It seemed she was stitching space together somehow.

Threads of mana wove through the ruptures that the Living Mana had left, defusing the vacuum before they could suck in the rest of their surroundings and breaking the mine even farther. The moment the threads had strung several pickets of vacuum together, white hot mana expanded outwards and filled it up in seconds. Ah. It seemed she was very well suited to counter the exact properties of the Living Mana. And she was strong, too. Not just in the capabilities of her magic, but in pure spell power as well.

Most of her casts were easily at least Tier [15] and [16]. Enough to deal with this pseudo-Incursion. Ryland wouldn't need to step in. It took a while, but the Miner Mages made steady progress against the Living Mana and continued to push it back. Eventually, things appeared to have calmed down again.

"I wonder how often this occurs," Ryland said, shutting off [Omniscience].

"For it seems we may have overreacted a tiny bit."

"Well, it did seem serious," Academ Jules said a little indignantly.

"I don't think you can blame our reactions." Perhaps. Perhaps not. Regardless, they received a call from the Head Miner herself moments later.

"Everything is clear for you to proceed along your assigned track," she said. Her voice was calm and confident.

"Apologies for the slight delay and any alarm you and your students faced. I will be happy to explain the situation better when we meet." With her reassurance, they resumed their journey. Ryland was technically supposed to be going along with the Prime Minister's party, but they hadn't exactly sought his assistance yet, so he didn't feel particularly inclined to see where they were. The Excursion Club was happy to have him along instead.

Their track actually took them through the cavernous space that the Living Mana had hollowed out not that long ago. Everyone stared at the aftermath of the battle, with all the new tunnels spearing through the rocks and the cracks and fractures lining every wall. For a brief while, they paused there. Unsurprisingly, the Prime Minister's train was just ahead. Klyne Faldor poked his head out to wave at Ryland, who tutted and shook his head.

The Head Miner disembarked from the train car in front before making her way to the students. Despite the strictness evident on her face, her voice was a lot smoother than her expression suggested.

"I am Head Miner Milva," she said. Then she bowed her head a little.

"On behalf of the entire mining operation, we apologize. The last surge from the Living Mana was unexpected, but we should have dealt with it faster, regardless. Delays are unacceptable. Shock and fear are inexcusable. We pride ourselves on maintaining control over everything."

"All is well that ends well," Academ Jules said with a gracious smile.

"Funny. That's what His Honour said too." That made Jules's expression falter a bit. Good man. The Head Miner went on to explain what exactly had happened with the Living Mana. The thing with the mine was that it needed to maintain a careful balance. Its main function was capturing Living Mana in a form where it could be cultivated for use. But to do that, they needed to let the Living Mana actually grow out.

While there had been much research and development of processes that was supposed to assist in measuring and containing this growth, it wasn't always perfect. Just like moments ago when the outbreak had occurred.

"Many scientific processes have been applied to the study of the Living Mana within the Manabreak mine," Milva said.

"But magic doesn't really care to adhere to strict, scientific rules. As such, this entire operation has been formalized over the generations, yet there remains a certain art to the process even now." Ryland thought about illuminating them about how Fate had formerly had it out for him, but he decided against alarming anyone in a public setting. He doubted it had actually been active here. Otherwise, would Fate really let someone else be strong enough to handle it?

They continued their journey, with the Head Miner accompanying them as part of her apology, even after Jules and the students assured her it was alright.

"As you've probably already learned," Milva continued.

"The Living Mana here is a complex conglomerate of many magical properties. We use their initial primary property, that of spatial carving, to create tunnels within the mine. That was what we were actually attempting with the last outbreak."

"Does that mean you have ways of manipulating the Living Mana?" Acrypha asked astutely.

"As in, controlling how far and when it starts its surges?"

"To an extent. We've developed methods of stimulating it as we need."

"I see. So you could, technically, set off your own Incursion." They all stared at her. Theoretically, she wasn't wrong, so no one was looking at her like she was mad. That said, drawing that sort of connection needed an intellect that was not just sharp, but very daring too.

"Well, we technically could," Head Miner Milva said after a moment of hesitation. A moment where she had waited to see if anyone from the academy would admonish Acrypha for the statement.

"But we would certainly never do such a thing. The Glyphtech itself is incredibly carefully guarded." Acrypha nodded. With that slightly awkward insinuation out of the way, Head Miner Milva was free to continue her little lecture.

"With Inscriptions resisting spatial manipulation, we can then head into the tunnels. Then we line them with the material that we use to harvest the second stage of the Living Mana. Absorbing that and subsequent stages also opens up the first stage for harvest."

"Harvest, cultivation," Viren muttered.

"Is this a mine or a farm?" He had spoken quietly enough that everybody could disregard his remark. Though, Ryland secretly thought he had a point there.

"In Realm 34," Ryland said.

"They have a certain liquid that is a conglomerate of a great many sub-liquids, so to speak, and they perform a form of distillation to separate it into the constituent elements, because each of those constituent elements have their own uses. My understanding of your mine's function with the Living Mana is much the same."

"That's an apt comparison," the Head Miner said, squinting her eyes. Maybe she was wondering why he had numbered a Realm instead of calling it by its name, but since no one else was calling out the oddity, she was forced to endure it as well.

"Distillation isn't that different from what we're doing here, technically." As the Head Miner ended her lecture, they arrived at their destination.

"Welcome to the lowest Depth of the mine," Milva said.

"Depth Seven." Viren, as well as several other students, had their faces pressed against the train's glass window.

"Incredible!" If the space they had passed through was cavernous before, this new one felt like a Realm unto its own. The wide, open area was filled with scaffolding and dozens of other Miner Mages, all of whom were working on the centrepiece of the entire space. The Manabreak. It was a jagged wound in reality big enough to swallow a whole block of Arcoryx City, a fractured version of the rifts that Ryland was capable of creating.

The difference was that while his were carefully controlled, as evidenced by the black gate on all his rifts that only allowed passage for what he deemed necessary, this was a violent riot of far too many colours. Far too many pieces of far too many Realms all condensed and coalesced into one location. It was why the Living Mana that even now was emerging from the gigantic rent consisted of so many properties. But the problem was that the wound was bleeding. And growing.

"This doesn't look good…" Academ Jules murmured. The mine's state explained the sheer number of Miner Mages everywhere, because the platforms and other structures meant for the space available appeared a little too crowded by too many personnel. Several other security measures in the form of constructs, Glyphtech defences, and powerful warding Inscriptions all lined the tunnel, and all looked hastily established.

"We have been in a bit of a quandary since the theft of the Vestige," the Head Miner admitted with clear reluctance. Right. That was quite obvious when they looked at the state of things.

"Ryland!" the Prime Minister called when their trains landed and they had all deboarded. He waved again.

"You didn't act earlier, so I've heard, but now it might be your turn." He very shamelessly jerked his head to the huge wound of the Manabreak. Hmm. Ryland nodded his farewell to the students and excused himself from Academ Jules. Then he rifted to the Prime Minister. The Sentinel scowled at his sudden appearance.

"Where in the world were you?" he asked gruffly. Ryland ignored it as one might ignore the buzzing of a gnat.

"You've clearly been angling for me to take care of this the entire time, Your Honour. But I require a price." The Prime Minister nodded.

"Name it."

"Once I have dealt with the matter, I want you to help me," Ryland said.

"I want you to turn your considerable power and resources towards finding more pieces of myself. Before you unwittingly allow the rise of new Calamities."