Chương 67: Fishing Report

Enzo walked down the trail with his cane, heading back toward the settlement. The last few hours had been highly productive, and he was confident he'd confirmed the Guide's line in the magical sand. Codification required that the spell form or technique be composed of at least thirty-three percent of the mage's mana. That was a limitation he could work with. It made things harder while relying on Simplified Invocation, but the trade-off was worth it.

At least until the day came that he could thread spells and circulate techniques as fast as he could speak them into existence. He pulled up his notifications.

— Mana Control (Level 17) → Mana Control (Level 18) Mana Absorption (Level 16) → Mana Absorption (Level 17) Spell Forms (Level 16) → Spell Forms (Level 17) Mana Circulation (Level 9) → Mana Circulation (Level 10)* Attunement (Level 14) → Attunement (Level 15) Cultivation (Level 4) → Cultivation (Level 5) — Spell Updated: Bolt (Level 14) Type: Arcane, Fire, Wind, Crystal Modifiers: Power-, Piercing-, Charged-, Fire-, Crystal- Description: Projects concentrated mana as a damaging projectile.

Modifiers may incorporate secondary effects that trigger on impact or at the mage's direction. — Spell Codified: Flash (Level 1) Type: Crystal, Metal, Light Description: Conjures a directional burst of intense light. Causes temporary blindness and disorientation at close range. — Spell Codified: Jet (Level 1) Type: Arcane, Water, Fire Modifiers: Fire- Description: Projects a concentrated stream of water with significant force. Modifiers may change the type of stream produced.

— Spell Codified: Shockwave (Level 1) Type: Arcane, Wind Description: Releases a concussive burst of force in all directions from the caster. Knocks back nearby targets and disrupts footing. — Technique Codified: Reinforce (Level 1) Type: Crystal, Earth Description: Circulates mana through the body, temporarily reinforcing and hardening skin and muscle. Defensive strength scales with mana invested. — He dismissed the notifications and kept walking. The spells were a good start, but they were just that. A start.

He had a list of ideas longer than the trail back to the settlement, but not enough time. There was never enough time. Techniques were the bigger problem. Burst and Reinforce were useful abilities, but cultivators like Val and Kenzo had been developing their combat skills for weeks. He had two techniques, one offensive and one defensive, and both were basic. Still, they might keep him alive when it mattered. When some Eater or Beast got the jump on him.

Or when a mage like Gus made the mistake of assuming he was just another wizard. But what he really wanted was something regenerative. Sumi had built Heal by accelerating the body's natural repair processes, using arcane, body, and life mana to do it. Even with everything they'd learned since, her spells were incredible. The problem was that in order for him to even consider adopting that kind of magic, he had to figure out how to work his own natural types into it.

And while Sumi's spell used arcane mana, the reason for it was obvious now. She used arcane to transfer the magic much like he did with Pulse. She punched the rest of the spell into the area she intended to heal. It might have been the reason she understood what he was doing so clearly, even before he'd really thought about it. A technique wouldn't need arcane to transfer the magic. The mana was already in his body.

It wouldn't even be necessary to target anything with arcane, because the flow to the correct area of the body would be part of the technique's circulation. The idea of simply adding other mana just to force the Guide to codify it had occurred to him. But the thought had resulted in a visceral desire to avoid adding mana without purpose. The physical reaction reminded him of the first time he'd come face to face with an Eater. It was the mana responding to his intentions.

And it felt like nothing short of a warning. After everything he'd learned so far, he wasn't ready to test it. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. That left him with the original problem. His signature mana types were arcane, crystal, metal, and light, and none of those had an obvious relationship with biological repair or the actual processes that made it happen. Which was the second problem.

He didn't know how healing actually worked, and every spell and technique needed not just mana carrying concepts, but a clear intention to achieve something specific. He couldn't see how any of his mana affinities accelerated healing. The brute-force approach would be to build a technique from pure battery mana and accept that it wouldn't codify. Cast it manually every time.

But circulating body and life mana throughout his entire body without understanding what he was telling it to do sounded like a good way to end up experimentally dead. He'd have to talk to her about it. Maybe there was an angle he wasn't seeing. And then there was the asterisk on Mana Circulation. Level 10 meant an adaptation slot had opened. He hadn't even started thinking about what to do with it, and the list of other people's adaptations was still sitting in the Guide waiting to be browsed.

He'd need to talk to Val and Kenzo about what they were using for theirs, and Robert too. Another thing for the neverending list. The palisade wall came into view a few minutes later, and he turned, following it toward the gate. A narrow beaten path had started to form along the wall's base, worn into the grass by the hunters and their daily excursions. As he approached the gate, a figure in the nearest tower leaned forward over the wall, spotted him, and disappeared.

"The High Magus is back! Open the gate!" Enzo heard the shout carry. The sound of the heavy beam being lifted followed, joined a moment later by the groan of the gate swinging open. By the time he reached it, it had come to a stop, fully open. The guard from earlier gave him a nod as he passed. Then the man glanced past him and frowned.

"All good, sir? Where's Murph?"

"Kenzo took her out to do some hunting."

"Understood, sir. We'll keep an eye out for them." Enzo glanced at him.

"You know you don't have to call me sir, right?" The guard grinned.

"Makes me feel like a real guard, sir." Enzo laughed. Then came to a stop.

"Have Signe and my father returned?" The man shook his head.

"Sorry, sir. Just the scouts sent to check on the marina." Enzo nodded and started walking again. The gate began to close behind him.

"Send someone to let me know the moment they're back," he said over his shoulder.

"I don't care what time it is."

"Will do, sir."

The admin building was quiet when he stepped inside. The receptionist looked up from behind the desk. Someone had found her a nameplate, though it was clearly someone else's, with a strip of masking tape stuck over the original name and 'ANGIE' written in blue marker.

"Mr. Locke." She straightened.

"The Director and Scout Leader are waiting for you in the meeting room." Enzo frowned.

"Since when?"

"A while, sir." She said it with diplomatic restraint. He turned down the hallway and pushed the door open. Val, Matt, Frank, and Robert looked up from the long table. Papers and hand-drawn maps covered the surface between them. Val made an exasperated sound.

"Finally. We sent Kenzo to find you hours ago." Enzo closed the door behind him.

"Sorry. I was in the middle of something." He paused.

"You weren't just sitting here waiting the whole time, right?" Val rolled her eyes.

"Of course not. We're busy people, unlike a certain someone who disappears into the woods without telling anyone."

"I told the gate guard." Matt gave Enzo a nod from across the table.

"It took a while to debrief the scouts and get maps and profiles drawn up anyway." He grinned at Val.

"And we figured you'd be a while."

"Profiles?" Matt nodded. He reached across the table and held out some papers. Enzo took them. They were front and side drawings of people. He flicked through, but none of them were recognizable to him.

"Who are they?"

"Four new mages working for the Riders. Ones I didn't know about, so either they're new recruits or…"

"They're new-new recruits," Val finished. Enzo looked up, glancing between them.

"You think they're freshly awakened?" Matt shook his head.

"I'm leaning toward them being newly recruited."

"Where'd they come from then?" Val demanded.

"Four mages don't just pop out of thin air, and we already know they're probably experimenting on people." It sounded like a familiar argument. Like they'd already gone over this more than once. And the look on Frank's face basically confirmed it.

"I don't know, but I'm telling you, Gus wouldn't send rookies to do this job," Matt said. He leaned forward and jabbed a finger onto a drawing lying in the middle of the table that looked like some sort of lantern fish with overgrown teeth.

"They're hauling things like this back from the fishing runs. There's no way they're going to risk losing the boats by sending amateur mages to protect them." Robert grunted.

"Maybe they recruited them from Sausalito?" Frank nodded.

"Makes sense. If their fishing op is that important, no way they don't pacify the region, right?" Val crossed her arms.

"Maybe they did, but I still think we need to find out if they're making more mages. Or Eaters."

"I'm not sending my scouts into the heart of the Rider's territory, Val," Matt said.

"It's too dangerous."

"Enough," Enzo said, thumping his cane for emphasis. He pulled out a chair and sat down, ignoring the one at the end of the table.

"Matt's in charge of the scouts and if he says no, then the answer is no. Besides that, I agree with him. His team is new. They're not spies or ex-military. They'll get caught." Val sighed and uncrossed her arms.

"Fine. Then what's the next step?" Enzo turned to Matt.

"Tell me what the scouts found."

"Their fishing teams work in shifts, twenty-four hours a day, though the nighttime operations stay within the Richardson Bay area from what they could see." Matt continued, laying out what he'd learned debriefing the scouts. The Riders had turned the entire stretch of marina into a fortified outpost with at least a hundred personnel running it. The scouts had reasoned that the bay, being shallower, was safer when it came to Beasts. Fish Beasts.

Even those caught close to the marina were already reaching the size of small sharks. With the teeth to match. But it was what the larger boats were bringing in from the San Francisco Bay during the day that caught their attention.

"Most of the fish are gutted on the boats before they come back," Matt said.

"But the bigger ones, the Beasts, they haul those in whole and process them on shore." He glanced around the table.

"And every time, the mages are there to oversee it." Val frowned.

"Why?"

"They're collecting something from inside them." Matt leaned back in his chair.

"The scouts couldn't get a close enough look, even with binoculars. But they described them as being different colors about the size of marbles." He paused.

"And whatever they are, the mages make damn sure they collect every single one." The room went quiet. Enzo stared at the papers on the table. From the drawings and the descriptions, it was obvious that the animals in the oceans were changing faster than those on land. It made sense. The blood rain had probably been global, given it rained for several days. And the planet was mostly ocean. Then Murph's Analyze result flashed through his mind.

"They're harvesting the Beast's mana cores," he said.