Chapter 21: Aether Gathering

  Garret and he set up camp just before nightfall on their trek through the forest. They could have kept traveling and made it to their squad before dawn, but neither of them wanted to go through the forest at night. It was too dangerous, and they were both itching to start reading the mana gathering technique to begin their dive into learning magic.

  They both couldn't read it at the same time though, and someone needed to maintain watch in case other beasts were prowling the night. In the end, it came down to a game of rock, paper, scissors. A game that Alex won with, admittedly, a bit of cheating.

  It's not even really cheating. He thought.

  Alex's squad had spent a lot of downtime together over the months of their missions. A lot of down time. After talking about your lives, families (perfect twin brothers included), children and hobbies you kind of run out of things to fill the time. You eventually start playing games. Cards was a go-to but eventually you just start doing kids games, like rock, paper, scissors.

  He always goes rock. Alex learned Garret's go-to strategy after playing him and watching him play so many times. It was hardly cheating if you simply knew what the other person was going to do. He had a choice, not my fault he always makes the same one.

  Garret muttered grumpily as he sat down to take first watch. Meanwhile, Alex sat on the grass and pulled out the manual to the gathering technique they got from Celeste. The [Condensing Spiral] technique as it said on the cover.

  The manual looked to be a couple hundred pages long, with a collection of diagrams and arcane sigils peppered throughout the entire text. To have someone read through and study the entire book should have taken a couple days.

  He finished reading it in a matter of four hours.

  He didn't have the mental wherewithal to wonder how he had managed such a feat, as his head was swimming with the thoughts and knowledge of the book's contents. Alex simply chalked the phenomenon up to some kind of system shenanigans. That carried further implications which Alex would think about and talk to Celeste about, but later.

  Alex set down the book on his backpack and folded his hands into his lap. He was sitting cross-legged once again, a pose that was seemingly a multiversal pose of meditation. It was how the manual said to perform the technique anyway, and Alex would gladly take some familiarity where he could get it.

  Breathe in slowly over a few seconds, then breathe out quickly. Focus on the body gate and feel the connection between your physical self and the ethereal of the world around you. Alex repeated what he had read in his mind before performing that action.

  For a few minutes nothing happened. After a while though he eventually started to notice a warmth at the base of his head at his nape. This was not of the same intensity of feeling he got when spending his experience points, but it was noticeable.

  Grab on to the energy and pull, drawing the energy into a spiral focused on the body gate. Concentrate the energy that feels familiar and disperse the energy of other elements that feels foreign. Again Alex repeated the manual in his mind. It was a summarized version to be sure, the manual was wordy and lengthy. That didn't inhibit Alex’s comprehension during his reading.

  As the aether at his nape gathered Alex imagined stretching and drawing out a section in his mind. The mental image was of a thread that Alex began twirling into a spiral. He started large at first but drew in tighter and tighter with every rotation until he imagined it moving down to a single point meeting at the gate on his neck.

  Alex grunted once he felt the energy touch his gate at his neck. Like a jet of hot water hitting his skin, the aether stream was relentless. At first it took all of his concentration to simply maintain the breathing pattern of the technique.

  In slowly, out quickly. In and out. In and out. As he focused on his breath, his body gate took a beating. The aether spiral hammered his gate with the semi condensed energy, Alex let this happen and simply accepted the energy sliding off his closed gate and dispersing away.

  Once he re-stabilized his breathing Alex's attention went to the stream of energy again. For now it was a combination of elements all attempting to enter his gate all at once. That would certainly fill his core quickly, but would dilute the power he could use or even damage his mage core, so he had to filter out only the fire energy.

  At the start of his spiral Alex focused on feeling the energies being threaded. There were various feelings to the energies and he grabbed on to the one that felt most like himself, his own element of fire.

  The energy he grabbed continued to feed into the spiral, and the other energies he pushed away. Almost instantly the stream of energy plummeted in strength. There was only a small bit of fire aether in the area around them. The stream that attacked his gate changed to a mere trickle instead.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  With everything set, Alex mentally opened the body gate in his neck, a process which almost like relaxing a tense muscle in his body but one he never noticed was always clenched.

  The energy entered his neck and washed into his body, pushing into every direction. Like the warmth of a loving sun, it crawled through him. Alex let himself enjoy this for a few seconds before closing his body gate once more and repeating the unclenching muscle exercise to open his soul gate, or also known as his core gate, instead. The fire aether was pushed through his neck and into the gate in his head. The warmth disappeared into his soul space where his core greedily absorbed it.

  Alex breathed in slowly again and the whole process was repeated. Filtering the fire aether. Condensing it through the spiral. Through his body gate, and then into his core gate.

  It was difficult to keep the rhythm at first. Alex found the energy flows clashing with his breathing and the spiral unraveled in a few spots on occasion. He managed to get the hang of it eventually. He found that he should match drawing the energy through his body gate on his inhales, and drawing through his core gate on the exhales.

  The manual didn't specifically say to do this, but Alex guessed that was supposed to be figured out by the user. It simply made too much sense in his mind to not be the case.

  "Hey Alex!" Garret's voice broke his meditation and drew Alex back to the present.

  "What?" Alex said. He shot Garret daggers with his eyes, pissed that he had interrupted his practice of the technique even though he had only just started.

  "How long you going to sit there man? I want to read the manual too, and we still need to sleep."

  "I'm just trying out the technique man. Just come get me when it's time to switch over for night watch." Alex gave him another irritated look and closed his eyes in preparation to meditate.

  "That's what I'm doing. Alex you've been sitting there for like four hours." Garret said.

  "Four hours? That's not possible," Alex's opened his eyes in shock and looked back to his friend. Garret didn't have his normal joking smile. He looked serious. For Garret, that meant a lot.

  "Yeah man. It's been a while, I was wondering if I should even wake you but I was getting worried."

  Alex was certain he had only been using the technique for a few minutes. He had barely even started. If Garret was telling the truth, and it sounded like he was, then Alex had not only lost grip on his surroundings while using the technique, but lost any notion of reality itself.

  "Holy shit," Alex said. He got up, finding his joints were stiff and his muscles ached. He probably was sitting there for a long time. "Okay go ahead. Watch out though, apparently it messes with you."

  "Alright," Garret said. He settled down in a seated position himself and grabbed the book on Alex's backpack.

  Alex left him to read through the technique. He had other things to begin focusing on. First he brought up his system status to see what, if anything, had changed.

  That's it? He was amazed how little progress he had made. If he had been there using the technique for nearly four hours how could have made such little progress with his mage core? It felt like he just got roundhouse kicked in the gut.

  If Alex spent four hours using the gathering technique every day, it would take thirteen months for him to completely progress it to the next stage. That was using one of the most basic techniques, admittedly. So finding a better technique, increasing his willpower, using items or ideal environmental conditions would cut that down. Even with all that taken into account, Alex assumed it could still take over six months with a top gathering technique, a refined willpower stat of five and a decently attuned gathering area.

  That's too long. Alex didn't have years to spend in this world barely making progress. He was already barely hanging on as it was. He was so eager to dive into magic, gaining power, and climbing the seven tiers. Because it would feel great being a powerful mage, yes, though that wasn't the main goal. The main goal was utilizing the magic system in order to get back to his world. Which meant getting to the fourth tier, becoming a Sage. It was something that would be very hard, but he had no doubt that there would be a way. It was magic after all.

  A year at the to get to Adept tier? How much longer for Magus Tier? And then Sage after that. Not to mention actually learning a spell to get out of here, which would not be easy. Alex's plans began to crumble in his mind. He thought he could start breaking tiers in a couple months or so. Celeste's annoyance finally started to make a lot of sense to him. Especially the idea of speeding up the process by using unfiltered aether, even if it meant being less powerful.

  Just barely over 713 days… That was how much time they had to either escape the system, or impress it enough so that they wouldn’t all be killed. Based on what Alex was seeing, that really wasn’t enough time.

  He looked over to Garret, who was already engrossed in the book that sat in his lap. His friend's face showed only a passionate enthusiasm and elation for being able to dive into magic.

  Alex's face by contrast, showed defeat and fear.

  We are so fucked.

  ?