Magic Breaker Ch 223 - 225 (Patreon)

Chapter 223: Small Changes

“So, tell me a bit about your father.”

I tilt my head, staring blindly at the wall. “I dunno what there is to say. He wasn’t around much.”

“Mmh.”

“When he was, he usually wanted things from me. Do well at school, focus on these interests. I think, in a way, he wanted me to succeed at the things he cared about and wanted for himself,” I say, humming slowly. 

“Sounds like he cared about his own joy more than yours,” comes the reply. The voice is calming, focused.

Slowly, I nod. “That sums it up well. I was a means to an end, somewhat. Just act in a way that makes them proud of me, that lets them brag to the neighbours?”

“And that made you feel small, huh?” 

I tilt my head. “Sure,” I reply. “It makes me feel like my presence needs to be minimal, in order to be worthy of affection.”

“Is that why you’re such a bitch?”

Softly, I sigh. Then I get to my feet, and let Kuro lick the blood off my face. The deep cut that marred my bone a moment ago has long since mended. I stare ahead blindly, pulsing my mana instead, finding the figure who shittalked me, laying on the floor in a puddle of her own blood.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess that’s why I’m such a bitch,” I say. Then I step on their hand, feeling the bones crunching as they’re forced to let go of the knife they just cut me with. 

There’s no noise from the woman. She’s from Lucky’s gang, a defector apparently, got paid off by someone to take a good luck into my business, and then come for my head. But she just stares at me, unblinking, unflinching, as I hurt her. Her own authority pulses steadily, like a heartbeat.

“Little fucking bastard,” she says cheerily, her dark hair stained darker by the blood, her crystalline wings cut short by old wounds. Crimson eyes stare me down, and I twirl my knife, placing its edge along her skin.

“That was nice,” I say. “Despite everything, I rarely talk about my parents.”

She rolls her eyes. “Because no one wants to listen to your whining?” 

The comment passes over me like a spring breeze and I just smile. “Yeah,” I lie. “That must be it.” Then I plunge the knife into her throat.

For a moment she gasps, breathlessly, and her eyes roll back. The tattoo that covered her neck is split cleanly in two. Blood pulses out in steady beats, without any gory jets. Just a slow, pulsating stream. I breathe in, and the rain mixes with blood, already washing crimson streams into the gutters.

I let Kuro have a taste of the blood and then sigh. My authority roils as I roll my shoulders, staring at the flobs around me. They’re in their high seventies, at best. Pretty elite by the standards of the slums, but even there, not properly elite. People who’d need a single monolith climb to properly become someone.

Or, in other words: Desperate.

“You can go home now,” I say, waving them off. “Or you can die here.”

It takes a few heartbeats for the first one to dip. The second follows not too long after, and the third, too. Arithia lays dead behind me, and the cool rain falls. With a small sigh, I put up the hood of my cloak and shake my head. “These assassination attempts are getting so tiresome,” I say.

Then, I look at Arithia’s corpse. “Well, at least you were a decent listener, if nothing else.” Mana pulses out of me, scanning the surroundings, and finding nothing. I do a few more checks with a couple tricks I’ve learned, just to make properly sure there’s nothing there, but then I just shrug.

[Observation 28 > 29]

It doesn’t really matter all that much. I let my mana stick in the area, courtesy of Clinging Consequence, and keep feeding me information. And then I step out of the little killing shack they built for me. New enchanting merchant, they said. You’ll find so many cool things, they said. Now all I’ve got to show for it is a cooling corpse and a bunch of fleeing flobs.

Sighing again, I nod. “And yes,” I say, to the empty rain. “That’s why it’s hard for me to do things I like for my own sake.” And then, thinly, I smile. “But I’ve been getting better.”

Stalking off into the night, I spin the umbrella of force I now carry on me. It’s what they’re all after. It’s why I go to these meetings as Ion. They think they can get it back, but they can’t. Not with pay, not with coercion, not with force.

They’ve even tried sending guards after me, which went about as well as one would expect - by which I mean our trusty extrovert brigade, mainly Inu and Thatch but also, surprisingly, Norman of all people have been burying them in bureaucracy. Truly, that he would use his devious, devilishly dull accounting experience to help me out. Who would’ve thought?

[Obfuscation] wraps heavily around me as I slink through the crowds. The rain is light tonight, which means that the flobs are out and about a lot more. Less mana-rain means less danger when heading out of shelter, and that means more people and more pickpockets.

Expertly, I avoid touching anyone, mostly by simply keeping a small sheath of [Suppression] around me. Most people can sense some amount of mana, even instinctually, and avoid it. Waves pour in and out of me, my mastery over the technique having improved vastly over the past month. 

Tomey-tome has been spilling its secrets to me. And I’ve finished bulking up Sylves’ arm, even. She now looks perfectly healthy again, which has been a pleasure. A small smile spreads on my lips at my devious plan. By now, I’ve been working on Bloodstain and cashing in that promised payment.

With lackadaisical steps, I make my way to the Upwind Manor, where I live with the others. There’s only a few sky-bridges to cross, rickety things held together by ropes, hopes and dreams, carrying me from one floating island to the other. They sway as I walk, but I’m not afraid.

The wind doesn’t touch me, and neither does the rain. Already, I’ve learned from the fancy umbrella, and improved my own [Suppression]. With the changes I’ve made, it now uses a counterforce to keep things from touching me entirely. Fun.

The raindrops stop above my head and continue their fall when I move on,

[Suppression 37 > 38]

Humming softly, I step into the garden of our manor, where Thatch waits for me. He smiles, looking up from his place in the grass. He sits there to meditate, having placed down a small rug to help him focus, which is now properly soaked.

So is he, of course. A short button-up shirt clings to his chest, its pale blue turned faintly translucent. His muscles show underneath, and I turn to look up at his unfairly handsome face instead. Strings of blonde, wet hair cling to it in a messy array that looks good, and he gives me a grin.

“How’d it go?” he asks.

“Assassination attempt,” I grumble. “No new items.”

“Awww,” he empathizes. “Well. We’ll always have the next climb to look forward to. And we do, actually, have a message for you.”

I tilt my head. Another message? “Usually there’s at least like… a day before they try to kill me again,” I say.

And Thatch’s smile widens. “This one is for Yuki, not Ion.”

“Huh,” I say. Since when did I get post for that? Ah well. Accompanied by Thatch, I head inside, picking up a sandwich from a platter Richard left out. They have some soft bread up here, grown in greenhouses and stacked farms, empowered by druids. Food remains important, for now.

Sylves has been helping out there, a little. Her tailoring has been going well, and she wanted to develop her affinity with plants some more, so… the greenhouses are as close to nature as it gets on this floor. They sometimes even spawn sentient plants, if one of them levels up too much.

In fact, as I’ve recently learned, some plants level, gain sentience, and then enter contracts to provide seeds and growing food for other climbers. Which is efficient, if a little bizarre, since it’s like selling off non-sapient babies. But, at the same time, the “babies” are just normal plants.

As I take a bite of the sandwich, that thought quickly fades. It’s delicious. “Thanks, Rich!” I tell the little alien, and she nods, as I head back into my room. There’s a letter there, resting carefully on my bed. 

“No, bad,” I say, smacking tomey-tome on the head, as it tries to grow mana tendrils and devour the piece of paper. I’ve been regularly feeding it more pages these days. There’s a soft attempt at invading my mind and corrupting my thoughts to become its eternal slave, but I quickly brush it off.

“Stop that,” I chide, and smack the core again. Gosh, treasure-tomes sure are trouble. It calms down a lot when I feed it a wave of mana, filling its core up from half-empty back to full. I stare at the core again and wonder, not for the first time, whether to modify it. But then, I decide against it.

There’s still a lot I don’t know about the treasure-tome, and I don’t want to destroy it. Treasures, in general, seem to act a little bizarrely, especially bigger ones like tomey or Kuro’s devoured treasure-shadow. Smaller things like my lovely, incredible, fabric-eating and self-repairing shirt are simpler.

But despite that, creative. The self-repair runes are still a very strange design. I can’t figure out if they use perfectly replicated runic arrays, that each individually are capable of restoring the shirt, or if it’s one grander array that repairs itself and only incidentally repairs the shirt due to that being its “canvas”. What a strange thing.

[Job up! Core Controller 21 > 29]

In the last month I have made a significant amount of progress on my enchanting skills. The mana-maze hovers behind me in the air, kept aloft by a thread, and even now, a part of my mind is focused on constantly threading mana through its winding corridors.

The specialized core that Warden left me has been studied and dissected, and I still cannot fathom how he made it. It’s so complex that every time I look at it, even for just like… ten minutes or something, I need to get new bandages for my eyes and maybe throw up once.

So, since I’m currently having a sandwich, I turn my sight to less hazardous things.

With my buzzing thoughts slowly quieting, I open up the letter. It’s a piece of paper in my fingers, and my mana washes over its surface, revealing its outline. And then I remember I’m blind and can’t fricken read.

“Dang it. Opal!”

I yell about as loudly as I feel comfy with, which is about the volume of someone boisterous slightly raising their voice, but we’re all superhuman, so the enby hears me anyway. Within a blink, they’re in my room. “‘Sup, Snow?”

Somehow, they seem to have grown even stronger over the last month. They stand with an easy confidence that felt a little fake before, but now runs bone-deep. I tilt my head softly at the change, and hit them with an [Observation] - only to feel my mana slow down and not quite reach them, instead curling around them.

“Whoops,” Opal says. “Just a sec. Try again now?”

Mana pulses out of me and washes over and through them. I check their insides, mana-suffused muscle lining dense bone. They’re strong, really strong. “Put up your shield again,” I say.

When they nod, I launch another scan, and it doesn’t reach them. Then another, then another. I frown, faintly, then shift my approach once more, putting down the mana maze. I [Select], scan, and then… 

[Annexation 14 > 15]

It clicks. I smile as my scan pierces through their field, and Opal rolls their eyes. “Dang,” they said. “I really was hoping that one would last more than a minute, Snow.”

“Skill issue,” I reply smugly, and they laugh. 

For a moment, they just enjoy my presence, sitting down on the bed and wrapping an arm around me. Then, they give a small sigh and stare at the ceiling. “So. What’d you call me for?”

I hold up the letter. 

“A letter?” they ask.

I pointedly point to my eyes.

“Ah. Yes. Of course.” With a quick motion, they take it into their hands, and read. “Dear Yuki,” they say, putting on a reading voice before snickering. “Very formal, huh? Alright, let’s see here. Blah, blah, enchanting and potions blah blah, strong crew, yap yap yap. Ah, right. This part. We’re asking you to carry an expedition with some of our members up the Stormcloud Monolith.”

“They want me to carry a party?” I ask, tilting my head. “Why me?”

Opal swiftly shrugs, then gives me a small smile. “Well, maybe cuz you're strong, but not strong enough to kill ‘em all in case they piss you off,” they suggest.

“Fair enough. Keep reading.”

“Right. There’s some talk about payment, but then… got it. Meeting location. Tomorrow, midday, at the casino. Signed by Lucky.”

“Huh,” I hum, taking a final bite from my sandwich as it vanishes between my lips. “Whelp. Might as well see what it’s about.”

Opal grins. “What’s the worst that could happen, eh?”

“Another assassination attempt,” I suggest, and promptly, they wag their finger at me.

“Ah, ah, ah,” they chide. “An attempt isn’t the worst! A success would be!” 

I laugh, then shake my head, pulling on one of their dreadlocks as payback. “You rascal,” I say. “Get outta here. I gotta nap before I head out.”

Chapter 224: Payment

“Didn’t I kill you?” I ask.

There is a scithian in front of me. She has a tattoo across her throat - with a line in the middle, where I plunged my knife into it. Her crystalline wings are stumps, and her faintly glittering skin is pale against her raven hair. 

Arithia shrugs at me. “I got better,” she says. Then, a thin smile spreads on her lip. “Bitch.”

I tilt my head faintly. “Are you trying to antagonise me?” I ask.

She furrows her brows at me, then nods. “Yes, bitch. Fatherless bastard. Lil bit whiny cuz your dad went to get milk and never came back, huh?”

I turn to lucky. “Is she usually like that?”

The zoof looks at me with a cheery smile and nods. “Yepyep!” she confirms happily. “She sure is adverserial.” Her straw-gold fur seems to let the rain easily slide off it, her wiry hands tapping her wiry legs.

“Hey! The fuck you mean adversarial, you overgrown rat-bitch?” Arithia asks. Lucky just smiles quietly in response, not gratifying it with a reply. Then, the foul-mouthed scithian looks at me, and glares. “And what makes you so fucking special, huh?”

Very slowly, I turn to Lucky, ignoring the loud-mouth. She’s trying to annoy me, so I file it away and decide to grace it with no attention. “So,” I say instead, “who else do you want me to carry?”

“A few flobs from my crew, one other ascender. Recently climbed to the sixth, but down on his luck. Got canned from his last employment.” She says. Then, she gestures into the shadows, at Lars. “He said he’d work with us for a year, full on, if we got him a climb up a mono.” She smiles brightly, her eyes glinting. “I thought it was a decent deal.”

My eyes slowly turn to Lars. He still looks the same, but his eyes are different. Hidden under his shaggy hair, which has grown a bit, they look calmer. Less like a burning building, and more like glimmering coals. It’s almost enough for me to respect him, when he turns to me.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice raspy. “I look forward to working with you.”

Very slowly, I tilt my head. He grits his teeth and clenches a fist, and Lucky’s grin widens. Ah. That’s why she wanted me.

This is a test for him. A control test. Arithia is there as, what, damage control? In case he goes wild and I can’t handle him. Lucky must not know I’m Ion - did Lars not tell her? Erodyl might have minded, I guess, but something tells me that’s not quite it.

No, the way he stares at me, as if he wants to bore a hole through me, tells a different story. The hecc? Why is he staring so much? Friggen weirdo. “Well,” I say. “What’s in it for me?”

At that question, Lucky brightens even more. She giggles in delight, even. “Straight to business, huh?”

“Gay,” I say.

“Huh?” she asks.

“Gay to business. There’s very little straight about me.”

“... What?” she asks again.

“Ah, that might not translate well. I made a pun.”

“Oh!” the zoof coos delightedly. “My, what a fun language you have. Shame. You’ll have to explain it to me sometime.”

“I doubt I will. Ask Thatch.” My apologies, Thatch, but there is simply no way. Lucky is too powerful for me. I can already feel my social battery disintegrating under her pervasive smile. Therefore, I must delegate this problem to my strongest, most handsome soldier. 

Hopefully, he’ll forgive me. 

Smiling brightly, the zoof nods. “Of course,” she says. “Well, for you, I’ll include three additional tokens - on top of the one you need to climb. As well as first pick from any true treasures found, a stack of chits, and… well, any requests?”

“An alchemy technique,” I say, without hesitation. ‘Technique’ is a lovely word I’ve recently learned - a catch-all term for little tricks the system doesn’t catch. Something that’s not a skill, not an authority or epitaph, just something someone can learn.

Like what my treasure tome is teaching me. The wave-like mana-manipulation style that courses out of me, helping me scan the area and recoup some of that mana, helps me temper my channels and store even more of that ethereal power without blowing myself up, is a technique. 

The same goes for my attunement loop, keeping my mana tame in my vessel - and even something simple like the cruncher. It’s a minor technique, sometimes called a ‘cantrip’, but it’s a technique nonetheless! A clever little application of a skill or mastery in a way that works a bit different from how it’s intended.

Inu storing her armor in her emotional [Reservoir] is a cantrip, too. The terms are a little wide, but it’s fun. I think my mental map preserved in [Annexation] is also a cantrip - since I have somewhat optimized the way I store locations.

“An alchemy technique,” Lucky hums, grinning widely. “Why, are you trying to get into alchemy?” she asks.

“Yes,” I answer shamelessly. “I plan on making healing potions with Jean and selling them.”

Her eyes glint brightly. “Oh my,” the cute little zoof hums. “I don’t see why I should sabotage that. Well, well, well.”

My true goal is a little different from that - I have already forsaken the path of the scrollmaker because I think single-use items are a bit boring. But there are a few ideas I have, in terms of crossover. 

After all, I can make skills into enchantments, so can I, eventually, make alchemical formulas into enchantments? Or maybe make myself some alchemical formulas to permanently enhance myself? Those would be the real thing. And levelling my job has been feeding me essence on cores.

Which, tragically, apparently, includes some alchemical mixtures to enhance them.

So, I may be looking forward to acid baths for my vessel. Fun.

“Yes, I think we can manage that,” Lucky says after some thinking. She smiles brightly - how surprising - and I stare blanky and nod. 

“Cool,” I say. “When are we climbing?”

“You accept?” Lucky asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t you going to try to negotiate for more?” she asks, tilting her head slightly.

I shake my head. “No need,” I reply. “It’ll turn out okay, in the end.”

“Will it?” she asks. 

“If you try to scam me, I’ll kill you,” I say with a shrug.

Lucky stares at me. I stare at her. Our expressions are as always, a smile and my deadpan face. She tilts her head, just a tiny bit, mimicking me, and her smile looks a little off. Crooked. A glint in her beady eyes. “You think you can?”

Calmly, I shrug. “If I can’t, I’ll make sure the fight ruins us both.”

There’s a breath as the rest of the gang around us tenses. My mana rises, the threads reaching out to my maze disappearing as I instead pulse it out in a wave. Lucky stares at me, and I stare back for a long moment.

Ten seconds, then twenty. I enjoy the silence, the lack of talking. Everything is so simple. The complex game of politics that hides in every conversation is reduced down to something so simple: To kill or not to kill?

In the end, Lucky shrugs and sighs. “Fine then,” she says. “I will be relying on you, Yuki.”

I nod, once. “I will be relying on being paid fairly.”

The zoof rolls her eyes at that. “Yes, yes,” she waves me off. “You climb overmorrow at dawn. Do not be late.”

“Sure,” I say. And only then do I stop my waves of mana, turn around, and walk away, leaving Lars and Arithia staring at my back.

Slowly, I pull on my headphones, and put on a song. I smile, as the music starts playing, humming along quietly as I walk through the faint snowfall. It’s a decent day. I love getting paid. 

Chapter 225: Stormcloud Monolith

I stand in front of a new monolith. The fourth ring has three of them - the Stormcloud monolith, the Deepwave monolith, and the Dawnbreak monolith. 

This one is Stormcloud. It’s tall, but not as tall as Warden’s Cloudward monolith in the fifth ring. It is, however, more included in the environment. Dark clouds consistently spring forth from its tip, flooding into the sky.

In part, it is what gives Downpour its signature stormy weather. The inner rings get colder, and I think there are some ice-based monos deeper in, where Coldscar might’ve trained. Is he a third ringer, I wonder? Would be kind of cool. Though, I guess he’d be a thirder who hid in the fifth ring cuz he was too weak for the third.

Which would, in turn, be kind of pathetic.

“May I see your token?” Elli asks.

I tilt my head. The snake on Elli’s shoulder tilts its head at me. Its tongue flicks out, licking its snout, and it recognizes me instantly, even when Elli themself doesn’t. I smile faintly at the reptile, nodding at it, and it nods back at me.

“Yes,” I reply, holding out the token. “May I hold your snake?”

“Excuse me?” they ask, eyes widening. 

I point at the snake around their neck. “May I hold your snake?” I repeat. “It’s cute.”

The snake preens under the praise. Elli instantly lights up. “Ah, yes, I mean, as long as Alexander is okay with it,” she says. 

“Oh, sorry, Alexander, do you have preferred pronouns?” I ask the snake. Alexander nods. I tilt my head. “Are you a boy?” He nods. “Are you a human boy trapped in a snake body?” He shakes his head. “Are you far too clever for the plebians who surround you?” I ask, and he nods eagerly, his tongue flicking out and tasting the air.

I smile, holding out a hand, and he slithers into my palm, and up my forearm. Lars flinches back a bit, and Arithia curses, but Alexander doesn’t mind them at all. His head leans down in the crook of my elbows, his intelligent eyes looking up at me, while his tail wraps around my fingers.

Blindly, I look back at him, my mana brushing his fine scales, and he seems to preen under it. Kuro chitters softly, and Alexander replies with a quiet series of hisses. Elli just watches with a faint smile, excited to see their snake make friends.

Or at least, I hope Kuro and him get along. I am not an expert on snake body language. Alexander seems to be clever though.

About half a minute passes, then he gently taps my elbow with his snout, turns around, and slithers back down my arm. I extend it outwards, letting him easily reach his preferred spot around Elli’s neck, and the monolith-guide gives me a beaming smile. “Thank you for handling him carefully,” they say.

I nod sagely. “He deserves it, he treated me carefully, too.”

Elli smiles brightly and nods. “Very well, then. You’re welcome to go into the monolith, all your sigils seem in order, and you have a full party. Unless you want to upsize with some guides?”

Slowly, I shake my head. “I’m the guide, this time.”

“You’ve climbed the Stormlight monolith before?” they ask, blinking in confusion.

“Nope.”

Lars snickers at the answer, then just shrugs. “Don’t mind the weirdo,” he says. “Got a chip in the head, or something. We’ll just be right on through.”

With a quick step he moves past me. For a moment, I notice his fingers twitch. He wants to burn something. Is anger his response to failure? What a strange guy. Not uncommon, I guess.

Arithia tries to clap me on the shoulder in mocking camaraderie, but I smoothly step out of the way before she does. My headphones are safely in my pack, out of the way of all of them, and my phone is tucked in as well. Hopefully, they’ll last me a while if I use them sparingly.

Breathing in deep, I step through the barrier and into the Stormcloud monolith. Instantly, I’m enveloped by the familiar sight of the first floor. Me, Lars, Arithia, and the group of flobs, made up from two zoof, a feryran, and a sumeen. The last one towers over all of us, and looks around with wonder, scanning the portals to the next floor.

[Full party confirmed. Establishing cohort.]

I look at them, then tilt my head. “That’s a lot of lightning,” I hum. Already, I’m mentally comparing it with the pattern for Bay’s [Pulse]. The sumeen trudges ahead, reaching out to one of the portals. “Hey,” I say, and they turn their head. “Stop that.”

The sumeen looks at me for a long moment, then tilts their head. “Why?” they ask, and their voice sounds strangely metallic, like from within a tin can.

Since I don’t feel like explaining, I just kick Arithia in the shin, then move on to the portals. The wingless scithian gives me a long stink-eye, but I ignore her with the sum total of my introvert powers, going to look at the portals instead.

Magic swirls in them, depicting foreign landscapes. These are still water-themed, but they’re also significantly more violent than my last monolith, I think. Not that that one was exactly… calm, but here, there isn’t a single level where there isn’t any rain.

I pick the middle portal, one with a puzzle, of all things. Electrical locks, which we need to disable. It’s a bit like a maze, except that the path to the exit is barred by electrical fences that need disabling using a complex mana-lock. 

My scan picks up on the puzzle and it seems… well. Difficult, I guess? I dunno, it doesn’t really compare to my mana-maze. Which is why I pick the floor - it’s a simple time-limit, puzzle-solving floor. Cheap, really. 

And, indeed, it doesn’t take me long to solve it. The biggest problem, really, is my company.

One of the zoof leans in close, staring at what I do. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Working,” I say.

“What are you working on?” he asks.

“Surviving,” I say.

“What are we surviving?” he asks.

“The time limit.”

“Why’re you the guide?” he asks.

Wow. Once again, my skill with people appears… challenging, at best. I sigh, softly, then discard the idea of dealing with these people swiftly. Instead, I solve the first lock, then turn to them. “I’m the guide,” I say, weighing my words, “because I can solve these, and you would die. And because if Lars tries to kill anyone for being a nuisance, I can smack his head.”

“You couldn’t,” he huffs, but there is a tremble running through him.

“Sure,” I say, staring at him. We hold eye contact until his face turns red and he looks away, clenching his fists. Then, I address the group. “I’m the guide because this is a test. I won’t help you. I’m not biased. I won’t make this a kindergarden. I’ll pick the easiest way up, yes, but it’ll be the easiest for me.”

And then, I smile. “Except if there’s treasure in it.” Already, I can feel the excitement at new enchantments tingling in my fingers. For a long moment, I get stares, then, Arithia snickers.

“Great speech, Yuki. So what’s your point?” she asks with a small sneer. “You gonna be a coward when it comes to fighting?”

“I’ll throw all of you at any problem we encounter, yep,” I reply with a nod, undoing another electric lock. My mana courses through it, and the biggest difficulty is isolating a small enough portion from my pool so as to not fry the locks.

My mana maze really is better than this. One by one, I feel the bars of electricity in front of me dissipate, opening up a new cell of the maze, a bit of road, encased by more of the electric locks. 

“I can solve one,” the sumeen says, raising a hand.

Mana softly crashes out of my vessel, breaking like a wave hitting the shore. It brushes up against them, their mana, their passive emissions, and I surmise the size of their pool. “Pitiful,” I whisper. God, their mana must be barely over a hundred. Maybe one-fifty points, or something…

It’s kind of pathetic. 

“Can you?” I ask.

They give me the humming equivalent of a pout, a kind of sad, wet-dog whine, and I mentally assign that as their label. Pout. Pout stares at me, shoulders sagging, and nods. “Yeah, I can,” they weakly defend themselves.

“Okay, pick one,” I say easily. Pout freezes up for a moment, earning themself a snicker from Arithia, who stands there with her arms crossed. But, still, they do go through with it.

In the time they solve one of the electrical bars, I have undone twelve of them. 

We keep making our way through the maze.