Chapter 59 - Lock 2.0 (Patreon)

Chapter 59

Lock 2.0

Enzo closed the door to his bedroom workshop and set the spellbook on the bench, open to the page with his final Lock design. Sumi was right. He hated that she was right, but she was right. The reinforcement could come later. What mattered now was whether the Guide would accept two different spells with separate concepts and intents bound to a single spell form, and therefore a single invocation.

He studied the design one last time. Then he closed his eyes and reached for the mana.

The first thread spun out from his forehead, familiar as breathing. The outer circle. Both he and Sumi had come to the same conclusion early. That by wrapping the rest of the threads inside a containment circle, it was easier to define the rest of the spell. She’d taken it a step further, using it in combination with other concepts to recycle some of the mana that naturally bled during the spell’s life cycle, making it last longer.

Enzo had come to it from the direction of a craftsman. Define the boundary, then fill in the design. She’d come to it from a different direction. Biological containment and the cycling of energy through systems.

He still didn’t understand how she did it. But seeing the others run into the same problems with some of his own spells, and their unique way of working with mana, he’d stopped stressing over it.

He locked it in place and triggered Geometric Replication. A second, much smaller circle snapped into existence, nested at the center of the first.

His own creation. The point of origin. Combined with the containment circle, the structure indicated the casting should be maneuverable around the caster in any direction. In theory, the only limitation was spell range.

Within the smaller circle, he layered the dual infinity symbols so that they touched the edges. The other creation Sumi had come up with. The second component of the recycling process, which also established the spell’s steady, continuous flow until the mana ran out. The idea was to moderate mana expenditure throughout the spell’s life cycle, rather than expend it all in one burst.

He’d considered many directions, and while he had an idea that would be more efficient, more elegant even, this time he would opt for brute force.

The next seven threads carried the wavy quality that made Telekinesis work. Six of them carried directional intent. The seventh was for the ability to seize the object.

The spell form so far was identical to Telekinesis.

The eighth wavy thread carried the first difference. It was subtle. Where Telekinesis’s purpose was to accelerate an object in any direction within range, Lock would need to accelerate an object opposite to the direction it was already traveling, if any, in order to lock it in place.

Deceleration. Which was just acceleration with a different end goal in mind.

The thread settled into place.

He took a moment to study the design. The first time he’d cast Telekinesis, it had taken him half a dozen attempts over hours to get to this point. Each thread dragged on his focus. Each failure depleted his reserves.

And while he could feel the strain, and he was only one bad distraction from the entire spell construct collapsing, he knew he was in control. What’s more, constructing it from start to finish was much faster than his first successful attempt at Telekinesis had been.

Enzo frowned. It was probably a result of his Mana Control being ten levels higher. But he couldn’t help but feel there was something more to it. It wasn’t just that his control was better, though it helped, as did Geometric Replication. 

He stood there pinning twelve different threads in place, continually cycling between them, almost mentally chanting the intent each thread was meant to hold, reminding it of its singular purpose.

But he paused.

There was something there. The threads came easier, true. But the spell construction felt familiar. Except that wasn’t right. He hadn’t manually reconstructed Telekinesis since the first time. The successful spell form had resulted in the Guide codifying it. 

He’d used Simplified Invocation to cast Telekinesis ever since.

The threads wavered. His eyes widened, and he locked down his focus, mentally wrestling them back under control.

The construct stabilized.

Enzo exhaled slowly. He didn’t want to get punched in the face again. Once was enough. He quickly layered the rest of the threads.

Another circle between the outer and inner, carrying his understanding of locking and unlocking. Pins and bolts. Mechanisms that should shift. Then another thread carrying the intention of those mechanisms being aligned with the rest of the parts.

Then a third thread for identifying the target and his desire to either toggle a lock or seize an object, locking it in place.

It was a quick and dirty solution, and it took Lock from being a beautiful demonstration of pure Mana Control and direct intent into a clunky, ugly form that demanded too many threads to accomplish the same thing.

He held the completed spell form in his mind. Fifteen threads to combine Lock’s direct threading and Telekinesis’s twelve.

Hopefully.

Enzo focused on the door, closed his eyes, repeated the litany of intents in his mind once more, and released the construct.

A click came from the door. 

He opened his eyes and walked over to it, his knee aching a bit without the cane, then turned the knob. 

Locked.

Enzo laughed. Then he shuffled to the workbench and picked up the bark marble from his crystal mana experiments.

He tossed it into the air with one hand. Then pointed with his other hand, index and middle finger forward.

“Lock.”

The orb froze in the air, a faint purple aura coating it.

“Yes!”

Enzo reached out and grabbed it, then he pulled. 

The arcane mana holding it in place shattered, motes of energy dissipating, almost invisible to the naked eye.

That wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped to achieve when he first began working on the upgraded Lock spell, but it was an acceptable first step.

He pulled up the notifications.

—

Spell Forms (Level 15) → Spell Forms (Level 16)

Mana Control (Level 15) → Mana Control (Level 16)

Attunement (Level 13) → Attunement (Level 14)

—

Spell Breakthrough: Lock (Level 10) → Lock (Level 11)

Type: Arcane

Description: Exerts targeted force to manipulate locking mechanisms or fix objects in place. Effect determined by caster intent. Holding capacity scales with mana investment.

—

Status

| Name: Lorenzo Locke

| Class: Magus (Tier 1)

| Mana Perception: 25 meters

| Spell Range: 17 meters

| Mana Capacity: 860 (M 340 | H 260 | B 260) units

Mana Skills

| Mana Sense (Level 15) [Mana Information Translation and Display]

| Mana Control (Level 16) [Increased Range]

| Mana Absorption (Level 16) [Increased Capacity (M)]

| Spell Forms (Level 16) [Geometric Replication]

| Mana Circulation (Level 8)

| Attunement (Level 14)

| Cultivation (Level 3)

Discipline Skills

| Enchanting (Level 8)

| Infusion (Level 5)

| Empowerment (Level 1)

Spells

| Lock (Level 11)

| Shield (Level 7)

| Bolt (Level 14)

| Telekinesis (Level 9)

| Pulse (Level 7)

| Analyze (Level 8)

| Conjure: Weapon (Level 5) — Invocations: Sword, Spear, Maul

| Light Orb (Level 1)

Techniques

| Burst (Level 1)

Schema

| Barrier | Gather Mana | Convert Mana |

—

Enzo frowned at the Attunement notification. That and Cultivation were the two skills that they lacked information about. But he was almost certain he’d just touched on Attunement in some way. 

His reconstruction of Telekinesis had been too fast for Mana Control and Geometric Replication alone to explain. The process had been too comfortable. Not by a lot. Not even by a little. But his hands had spent years setting stones no larger than a grain of rice into bezels thinner than a fingernail. Adjusting prongs by fractions of a millimeter. Feeling the difference between a seating that was perfect and one that was almost right.

That kind of work trained you to notice the things that shouldn’t be different but were.

And something had been different. Then, right on cue, Attunement had leveled up.

That could be a coincidence. But it could also be a connection.

Especially because Kenzo and Val were both insisting Cultivation had to be related to them experiencing earth-shattering revelations, upon which they’d ascend to the heavens and master the dao.

Idiots.

Mostly.

The fact was that Robert had the highest Cultivation of the three cultivators. Four, if he included himself, which he wasn’t really. Not yet. He was too busy. But Robert’s skill sat at level nine, and they were all eagerly waiting to see what happened when it reached level ten. 

The idea that Cultivation somehow tied into bodily development through mana wasn’t farfetched. Along with having the highest skill level, Robert had actively, intentionally worked himself hard, and physically changed as a result. Enough that even his wife pointed it out.

So if Cultivation was related, could that mean Attunement was somehow tied into mental development through mana?

Enzo sighed. It could also be something else entirely. For a second there, he’d even considered that the Guide might have a secret training function, where Simplified Invocation was actually teaching their bodies to cast spells and techniques.

But that would mean the Guide was actually helping. And he didn’t believe that for a second.

Enzo stretched, then grabbed his cane. Now that Lock was sorted, it was time for his next project. He headed for the door and made his way downstairs, then headed out the back door. He walked around the house and came to a stop.

The cellar entrance was a pair of heavy steel doors set at an angle into the ground beside the house. A thick chain looped through the handles, secured with a padlock.

“Lock.”

The padlock clicked open. He unwound the chain and let it drop, then pointed at the nearest door.

“Telekinesis.”

The steel door groaned upward, and settled open against its own weight. Stone steps descended into the dark.

Enzo tucked the cane under his arm and started down, ducking beneath the low frame. The steps were uneven, and his knee registered each one with a grinding reminder that stairs were not, and had never been, its favorite thing.

He reached the bottom and straightened.

“Light Orb.”

The spell formed immediately, and a soft white glow rose above his shoulder, illuminating the cellar.

It was a single room, low-ceilinged and dry. Stone walls, concrete floor, the faint smell of dust and old wood.

The left corner held the old chest freezer, useless without power, now serving as a platform for stacked boxes. Beside it, his father’s tool rack and workbench. A few hand-carved bows in various stages of completion leaned against the wall. Shavings littered the floor beneath them.

The back wall was his father’s real project. Cases of MREs stacked three high. Flats of bottled water. Canned goods sorted by type. Enough to keep the family fed for weeks if everything else fell apart.

Nobody outside the house knew the full extent of what was down here. The family, along with Kenzo and Sumi, had decided early to share a portion with the settlement’s communal supply. But they’d kept a reserve. Just in case. It wasn’t something Enzo was proud of, but it was something his father had insisted on, and none of them had felt it necessary to argue.

The right wall was what he’d come for. Boxes and plastic crates stacked two and three high, labeled in marker by whichever raiding team had packed them. The jewelry stores in Mill Valley had been a community effort. Once people saw what Enzo could do with the materials, volunteers had stripped every store around their territory and hauled the contents back for him.

That had been before the Riders locked down the rest of the city.

There were also a variety of machines. All useless without electricity, but too valuable to leave behind in case they ever solved the power problem.

He found the crate he was looking for and pried off the lid.

Gemstones glittered under the light. The raiders hadn’t known how to best organize them, so they’d thrown them into plastic bags based on color.

Enzo reached down and grabbed a bag of red stones, holding them up to the orb.

At a glance, it was obvious there was quite a mixture here. He’d need to sort them first, but he didn’t.

He’d given his fire mana battery to Signe, which meant he needed a new one. The project he had in mind was a little more complicated than just a simple replacement though.

Enzo replaced the lid, then headed back up the steps.

It was time to see what crystal mana could really do.