Nimbus suddenly looked like he understood what I meant now. “The spellchain? Oh, now I get it. You are planning to use my mana to power your spells.”

  “Or your Words,” I said as I folded my arms in front of my chest while still holding my stylus in one hand. “Remember, back in the trial? You used the spellchain to give me some of your Words so I could cast my Shadow Web spell on that malformed Codex entry because I didn’t have any Words of my own at the time.”

  The spellchain, in case you didn’t know, was another one of the benefits of being synced to a Codex Beast. It allowed Codexers and Codex Beasts to trade mana, Words, and even spells between each other on the fly. I wasn’t pretending that I had an expert’s understanding of it or anything, but it was one of the major advantages of being synced to a Codex Beast.

  And it was also now the main way I planned to overcome the weaknesses of my Discipline.

  Think about it. I might not be able to regenerate spent Words naturally, but Nimbus—with his mana—could. Granted, the last time I used the spellchain, Nimbus had given me Words rather than mana, but it still seemed like a smart way of overcoming the obvious drawbacks of my Discipline.

  Nimbus, however, just frowned. “I remember that. But I’m not so sure that your plan is quite as brilliant as you seem to think it is.”

  Snapping out of my thoughts, I looked down at Nimbus and frowned right back at him. “What do you mean? This way, I can devote my Words exclusively to my Banked Progress and work on turning the next Page—and eventually the next Chapter—in my Codex while still being able to cast spells! I don’t see any issues with it myself.”

  Nimbus thumped his foot on the ground loudly, but he did not teleport away. He was just expressing his disagreement. “Because if you use my Words, then that is going to make it harder for me to get stronger! You aren’t the only one who doesn’t have regenerating Words, after all. And I want to get stronger too. So we’re going to have to be careful about using this spellchain to share Words unless we both want to screw ourselves over.”

  I pursed my lips. “But back during our trial, you freely gave me some of your Words so I could cast that spell to restrain the Codex monster.”

  Nimbus rolled his eyes. “Mostly because I had no choice. It was either that or both of us would have died. But I didn’t get those Words back after I gave them to you. I’m not upset about it, seeing as it allowed both of us to survive, and it was only a small handful of Words, regardless, but those Words are just as gone for me as they are for you. So we’re gonna have to be careful here.”

  I racked my brain for a solution to this particular problem, frowning deeply as I did so. “But couldn’t you just give me your mana and convert it to Words via the spellchain? Because the spellchain normally allows Codexers and Codex Beasts to trade mana, but I don’t use mana. So, assuming the spellchain works normally for us, then any mana you give me should be automatically converted to Words I can use in my Casting Pool, right?”

  Nimbus opened his mouth, closed it, appeared to think about my suggestion, and then opened his mouth again. “I have no idea if that would work or not, but I guess we can try. It doesn’t hurt, seeing as mana regenerates normally for me. Here—let me send you some mana.”

  Nimbus closed his eyes, and the Codex marks under his fur glowed gold briefly before I heard a ping from my portable and a notification unfurled in my eyes:

  Nimbus the cloud rabbit has sent you 5 mana via the spellchain! Due to the limitations of the Inscriptionist Discipline, however, the mana has been converted into [x] number of Words available in your Casting Pool!

  I blinked. What was with the brackets and the letter X between them? Did something go wrong?

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  As if in response to my mental question, an error warning popped into my view on top of the previous notification:

  Error! Nimbus the cloud rabbit sent an insufficient amount of mana to convert into available Words in your Casting Pool. The shared mana has been sent back to Nimbus.

  Nimbus went rolling backward as if he had been kicked by a Wordball athlete. He rolled across the ground until he crashed into the equipment pile in the center of the courtyard, where he lay on his side, groaning.

  I jumped to my feet and rushed over to Nimbus. Reaching the injured rabbit, I got down on my knees beside him and put a hand on his soft, white fur, saying, “Nimbus, are you okay? What happened? Did I hurt you somehow?”

  Nimbus groaned and cursed under his breath. “By Sheol’s burning flames, that mana feedback hurt. The Codex did not like that.”

  I shook my head as Nimbus sat up and scratched at his ears again. “I still don’t understand what happened there. You tried to send me 5 mana, and then I got a notification telling me that it was converted into an unknown amount of Words, but then I got another notification that said you sent an insufficient amount of mana to convert into Words and that the mana was sent back to you.”

  Nimbus huffed in response. “Mana feedback. It’s what happens sometimes when a Codexer or Codex Beast tries to cast a spell that’s a rank or two higher than they can use, or if a Stationary Node glitches during a spellcasting event. I didn’t realize it could happen through the spellchain, too. Then again, I’m pretty sure it’s your fault.”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow in response. “How is it my fault? I didn’t tell the spellchain to do that.”

  Nimbus hopped and stretched in place, seemingly already recovered from the mana feedback he had experienced. “Not you specifically. I mean that stupid Discipline of yours that seems designed to harm rabbits. I imagine the mana transfer would have worked if you had just had an ordinary Discipline like literally every other Codexer on the continent. But because you were cursed with the most counterproductive Discipline ever, the mana transfer failed, and for some reason, I had to suffer the consequences of it. How is that fair?”

  I scratched the back of my head. “It’s not really, I agree, but I don’t think this experiment was a complete failure. The notification told me that you had tried to transfer an insufficient amount of mana to convert into available Words in my Casting Pool. That must mean it is possible to convert mana into Words. You just didn’t send me enough.”

  Nimbus shivered. “Right. Let’s play Blame the Rabbit. Always a fun game.”

  “I’m not blaming—” I shook my head and sat back from Nimbus. “Okay, let’s try again.”

  Nimbus gave me a dubious look. “What’s the definition of insanity, Aaron?”

  I sighed deeply. “Look, Nimbus, I get that you don’t want to risk suffering from mana feedback again, but if we can make this work, then it will allow both of us to maximize our growth and potential.”

  Nimbus hopped away from me with a rather distrustful look on his face. “That’s easy for you to say. If the conversion fails again, guess who’s going to be suffering from mana feedback?”

  I bit my lower lip but couldn’t quite argue against Nimbus’s point. Yet I was sure that we were this close to solving the mana conversion spellchain issue. We were so close that I could practically taste it. Yet I couldn’t force Nimbus to do anything he didn’t want to, and besides, he did have a point about how he would be the one to suffer if our next attempts didn’t work. Especially because I was planning on having him double the amount of mana he was going to transfer to me. Who knew what sort of mana feedback he would get if sending 10 mana failed?

  But I also didn’t want to quit before we figured out this issue. I needed to find a way to convince Nimbus to try again.

  Then an idea occurred to me, and I looked at Nimbus. “Okay. Let’s try one more time. This time, I want you to transfer ten mana to me instead of five.”

  Nimbus looked at me as if I had just asked him to jump off a very tall cliff with a heavy rock strapped to his back—straight into an ocean full of hungry sharks. “Why do you hate me?”

  I held up a finger. “Hold on. If you transfer that amount of mana to me, then we can go back straight to the village and I’ll buy you as many bananas as I can—”

  Ping.

  Nimbus the cloud rabbit has sent you 10 mana via the spellchain! Due to the limitations of the Inscriptionist Discipline, however, the mana has been converted into 1 Word immediately available in your Casting Pool!

  I hadn’t even finished speaking before that notification appeared in my view. I then stared at Nimbus, who was looking at me with an expectant gaze.

  “Well?” Nimbus hopped toward the Codexium and looked over his shoulder at me. “Are we getting bananas now or not?”

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