Nico went back to where he fought the slime.

He traced his steps back using his Map and Measure. It wasn't far, and he used that time to clear up some thoughts.

The tower shook, or at least it felt like that to Nico. He didn’t feel like he was in a tall building in the middle of an earthquake. It was more like music with a really high base reverberating through him.

Why didn't Yuri feel it? Was it because Nico had a divination ability, and somehow Measure had picked up on it a little bit?

That was his first guess. Because when he tried to divine anything about the shaking he felt with Measure, he got nothing. He was pretty sure that his ability was back to full force again because he could feel the cold calculation suppressing his fears and anxieties.

Just in case, he muttered, "Measure width of the hallway."

A screen appeared with the exact width, down to the very centimeter. He didn't need the screen to appear since he received the knowledge right away. It was best to double check just in case. For some reason, getting the information on the screens seemed to comfort him. Maybe the screens inspired by the video games he grew up on distanced him a little from the wackiness of his situation. It helped him be more objective rather than straight up panic at the overwhelming possibility he would die in the NextOver.

He now knew Measure not only had limitations. A depleted stamina and MP bar would render Measure useless.

That fact alone humbled him. It was a reminder that he shouldn't rely too heavily on a single tool. He fought against the seed of insecurity that suggested he was nothing more than a simple hedge magician without Measure.

No.

Measure was useful, but it didn't make him who he was. For years, Nico felt he was nothing more than a second rate hedge mage who amalgamated a hodgepodge of magic theories with Gallahad as the base. Then years of helping those less knowledgeable than him with haunts and low level grey dead boosted his confidence. He dared to feel like he was more than a hedge mage. But only a little, like a small candle in an ocean of dark, a microscopic hope he allowed himself to cling to.

Only now that the dust settled could he begin to believe that he was more than a hedge mage. Nico was a real magician, and a damned good one. But what kind? With an MP and stamina bar back to full, and an arsenal of ideas for new applications of theories, it was finally the time to figure that out.

Figuring out what happened when fighting the slimes was of utmost priority. The grey bar still hadn't disappeared and could potentially be another power source. However, Nico had to be careful. The grey energy could be harmful to him in some way.

He recalled when he thought his good luck had finally run out. The slime had covered his entire body, leeching every last essence of energy he had. But instead of passing out completely, Nico had still stayed awake and alive. Then that odd light channeled through his empty body. Was it because of his ability? Or was there something else at play here?

Nico asked Measure to divine anything about it, but came up with no answers. A few theories floated about in his mind. Well, more hunches than theories, but that was where all progress started.

What else had happened? Nico ran through the memory step by step.

When he had activated the simple Gallahad control formation, the array shifted, changing like the puzzle he solved to get into the tower. Nico hadn't willed it to happen or even added modifications. He didn't even know that was possible.

And yet, the formation changed.

On top of that, he had absorbed whatever the grey energy was. Maybe...absorbed wasn't the right word..

The energies transferred through him because he was an empty vessel and then gravitated toward the crude Gallahad control formation. He didn't have any MP left to activate the spell array, so it should not have triggered.

Then what caused the control formation to trigger? Nico had no magical power to draw from. The closest source of magical energy was the slime...

Nico stopped in his tracks. The slime.

Without a magical power source, the control array wouldn’t have been activated. In order to trigger a formation, a magician only needed a will and magic. It was the sole reason why he relied so heavily on formations over predetermined spells. Formations weren’t just versatile, if altered properly, but didn’t require a memory or a requisite level of magical power. He could input as much power into the formation as he intended.

Well, it was more complicated than that. Without understanding the purpose of the array and having an appropriate level of control of one’s magic, it would be difficult for anyone to control a stranger’s spell formation.

So, Nico had supplied the will to activate the Gallahad formation. He recalled his only intent was to get rid of the murderous little slimes. Then that meant the magical energy could only come from one place.

The slime.

His body had acted as a conduit. The slimes' energy was the one that activated the Gallahad control formation.

That alone was incredible.

Still, it shouldn’t have been possible, right? But how could other magicians even discover something like this? Using other lifeforms’ magic when one’s own magic and stamina were depleted would require that they risk their lives.

Nico had discovered this purely off of luck. Well, and his complete devotion to Gallahad, even in his seemingly final moments.

Then how did the formation change before vanishing? It never settled into a specific array. It just kept shifting like the puzzle to entering the tower before vanishing. Thinking that far ahead gave him a headache.

“One mystery at a time, Nico,” he reminded himself.

He arrived.

Ectoplasm covered nearly every inch of stone where the fight happened. The scene reminded Nico of a party his best friend, Carmen, had thrown back in college. She had made an obscene amount of jello shots. In a show of machismo typical to Carmen, she tried to balance all of the jello shot trays in a tower from the kitchen to the living room. She had done an impressive job until the guy she had a crush on walked on, and threw her completely off balance. The mess she made when she spilled was about the same as what Nico was currently seeing, but much more colorful.

Ectoplasm was not a pleasant substance to touch, feel, and he was pretty certain, eat.

Despite that, Nico bent down and ran his fingers through some of it. “Yuck.”

Measure wasn't just a divination skill that acted on its own. It relied on his experiences, like his memories, thoughts, emotions, and sensations he felt. That included his sense of touch. By wading his finger through the ectoplasm, Measure recorded the sensation. Maybe it could extrapolate information from it.

A new blue window appeared with the word ‘calculating’ flashing at twenty four frames per second. It was in the Helvetica, which reminded Nico to change the font of the rest of his screens. While waiting on Measure to come up with any new information, he rifled through different fonts for his screens until he finally settled on a totally non-copyrighted eight-bit inspired font for video games.

“I’m pretty sure fair use legal practices don’t apply to magic, right?” Nico mused aloud.

After a few more seconds, Measure came up with nothing, the blue screen completely blank.

“Well...crap.”

He tapped his fingers on his lower lip trying to figure out what he was missing. There were a hundred angles he could tackle this, but it was best to think about which was the most efficient.

Nico spent years trying to piece together different theoretical formulations and schools of magic while using Gallahad's theories as the central point. He had thousands of failed spell formulas under his belt, countless hours of getting absolutely nothing. It was years of endless frustration with the occasional revelation of how magic could be applied to Gallahad’s arrays.

Those years of experience taught him how to tackle new problems efficiently, training his mind to find the lever that would tilt the boulder out of his path.

At the fundamental level, his ability Measure was the divination ability. It allowed him to define answers. But, in order to get the right answers, he needed to have the right questions.

This was where his years of being a hedge mage desperate for information about how magic really worked helped him. For years, he thought his desperation was a weakness, something that made him less than a real magician. Only now did he realize that it laid the foundation for his ability, Measure.

After a couple moments of pacing back and forth, he looked at his map just to check on the grey knight. The grey dot blinked in the same location of the three dimensional map of the tower. The only reason he was able to track it was because Measure had been easily able to understand and comprehend the powerful magic signature.

Nico paused his pacing. He realized what the right question was.

"Analyze any residual energy signature," Nico said.

All living things, and some magicians would argue inanimate objects as well, were made out of three things. First,their physical representation in the world. That usually meant bodies. It was why haunts tried so hard to possess people in the mortal world. Without a physical body to anchor them, they could not exist for long on Earth.

Second, living beings require magical power. Everything had at least a little bit of magic power in it. Even trees and grass and ants had a little magic. Although, since they lacked any control of their magic, their power would leak from their body like residual heat into the atmosphere.

That was what caused ambient magic in the air, and why lay lines existed. Third, and the most mysterious of them all, was the pranic barrier. The pranic barrier, some argued, was the soul itself. Others contested that it was the thing that protected the soul.

Either way, all things, and all living things required all three of these things.

But, as with all living things in the physical realm, there were levels of complexity. The highest level of complexity were humans, which could think and were made out of trillions and trillions of cells, which were themselves living beings. Cells themselves had their own pranic barriers that resonated with the larger form of the human being.

At the very bottom of that hierarchy in the physical realm were cells. Cells had organelles and fed just like anything above it in the hierarchy of life. In the magical world, what be the equivalent of slimes?

Nico had the answer in his head before he could even say it out loud.

"Slimes," Nico concluded.

The idea was so simple, it almost seemed like it was inconsequential. But, years of experimenting and drawing up false conclusions helped him realize that the simpler the answer was the better.

Nico felt he was close to a breakthrough. He went over the ideas again, just to make sure it felt right.

All living things were made out of magic, their physical selves, and their pranic barrier. Then did slimes technically count as grey dead? Were the grey dead technically alive if they fulfilled these three requisites for life?

The question felt as much existential as it did practical.

If that was the case, Nico had to shift his entire perspective on what the grey dead actually were, at least magically speak.

Slimes ate and absorbed magical power, like little amoebas. Their physical selves were represented in their ectoplasm. When they died, their pranic barrier dispersed.

"Analyze residual energy and see if that equates to a pranic barrier based off of the theories I have right now," Nico commanded.

He felt Measure churning through ideas in the back of his mind. After a few seconds, words appeared on a new blue window.

[Grey energy does not equate to pranic barrier. However, the likelihood of relation to pranic energy is 86%.]

Nico figured as much. It wasn’t technically a pranic barrier. Then what was it?

Again, he felt like he was close, but not quite there. It would've been crazy if he could directly absorb the pranic barrier of another living thing. If foreign magic lingered in his body too long, it would have long lasting negative consequences, and maybe outright kill him. He couldn’t imagine what a foreign pranic barrier would do.

No. It wasn’t the pranic barrier. There was no basis for that.

Maybe it wasn't an issue of type, but degrees.

Within the earth sciences, words like sediment, rock, and boulder were nomenclatures for different sizes of rock. Was that the same?

He felt like he was closer.

What the energy was like protein in a body. The pranic barrier was like the muscle and the grey energy was the protein. Yeah. That felt right. Then somehow, the control formation Nico had drawn had caused it to break down. Nico had acted as a conduit or a sort of powerhouse.

He grinned, reciting his middle school biology class, “The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”

The exact mechanics of how the pranic barrier broke down into grey energy eluded him. That was okay. He didn’t need to know every single detail. As long as he had the concept. Measure could fill in the gaps as much as possible.

“Now the trick is, how can I replicate it?”

He had a better understanding of the principles, or at least now had a hypothesis. Nico said, “Scan for any residual grey energy based off my current theories.”

A blue window opened, but it was blank.He felt his will and magic extend outward toward the ectoplasm. If the grey energy dispersed entirely, then where would it go? Was it like heat in that it rose higher in the atmosphere? Or was it attracted to other pranic barriers? He hoped for neither.

Finally, words on the window appeared.

[Grey energy detected]

The hair on the back of Nico’s neck rose, and he felt his mouth split into a giddy grin. “Highlight grey energy in vision.”

Little motes of grey light appeared. They pooled together. Nico moved his hand around them without touching the pools of grey light. They didn’t react to the air current, which informed him that the energy wasn’t attached to the physical realm anymore.

What would happen if he just let it stay there? Would the energy disperse into something so small he couldn’t reclaim it? Or would it just stay there forever?

“If the grey energy doesn’t react to a physical phenomena, then it can only react to magic,” Nico surmised. “There’s a good chance that the grey energy will just stay here forever, unless there is something I don’t know about.”

Either way, he felt certain he had made the breakthrough he needed.

Nico stretched out his fingers and extended his will and magic. They touched the grey motes of light, and the grey energy moved, as if bumped by something. He grinned.

He quickly drew a Gallahad control formation on the ground, stepped on it, and used the array to focus his intent on gathering the grey energy towards him. Quickly, the grey energy swirled toward the control array, as if sucked in by a whirlpool. It barely took a thought.

The grey energy coalesced inside the formation, and Nico could feel the foreign energy the same way he could feel other people’s magic. Except, this power felt cleaner. He was certain that it wouldn’t harm him the way other people’s magic would if it stay in his body.

Oddly enough, the Gallahad control array did not shift like before. Nor did it vanish upon gathering the grey energy. Weird.

“Now’s the real test,” he said nervously. He had been able to absorb the grey energy before because his body was empty of stamina or magical power. Would he have to replicate such a dangerous condition? He hoped not.

Instead, Nico summoned the feeling once again of his entire body empty of magic and stamina. He dug deeper, focused on the idea that he was nothing more than a vessel, a cup. The grey energy moved toward him, but stopped. He could feel the barrier of his own self preventing the foreign energy from entering.

Okay. The cup was close, but no cigar. Then what would help?

The idea came to him, but he didn’t like the source. Pullman had somehow used Nico’s sigil, the level up insignia, to channel his own magical power. The shape of his magic had been like that of a pipe.

Nico imagined his body as an empty pipe that led down into the core of his magical power. Suddenly, he felt the clean grey light entering through him, no longer reluctant or barred by his own pranic barrier. The grey bar in his vision rose a little higher.

All of the grey energy gathered in the Gallahad control formation was gone, now inside Nico.

He pumped his fist. “Heck yes.”

Nico now hada supposedly renewable source of energy outside of magic. Grey energy could be converted both into his stamina and reduce magical power. There didn't seem to be a limit of how much he did absorb.

But what if it wasn’t just magic? What other applications were there? He had a million ideas.

The gamer in him started to theorize how he could munchkin this. He remembered when the Sentinels were at his apartment. Nico was able to increase the level of this hearing. That had been with the assistance of Measure and without grey energy.

With Measure, Nico didn’t just have the typical RPG video game stats like strength, health, and MP. He had access to every little aspect of who he was. Now that he thought about it, he had been able to increase the limits of his hearing in that moment because Measure had treating hearing like a videogame stat.

But what had powered it?

Measure come up with the answer almost immediately.

It was his magic.

That answer alarmed him. There were plenty of spells to buff a magician’s senses, like Vera’s, which Nico had adapted into his own modifications. But his body and Measure had boosted one of his senses without a spell, only with simple control over his own body.

It sort of made sense. Whenever Nico had burst-jumped, he had felt Measure move his body with inhuman efficiency on his behalf, allowing him to narrowly avoid the death knight’s attacks. How else could he push his body, and with grey energy too?

There were other motes of grey energy left in the area. He used the control formation to gather them toward him. Measure noted that the distance which he could absorb the grey energy was at maximum five feet. Good to know. He had to draw a separate control formation to gather the others.

Oddly enough, the grey energy still had no number. It was just a single vague bar. He absorbed the rest of the grey energy in the area.

I felt like drinking cooling water after being parched for so long. He didn’t feel more powerful, just confident that if his stamina or magic got too low, he could replenish it easily.

He laughed as a funny thought came to him. “Grey energy is the real life version of a potion.”

Nico had discovered something he was pretty sure that no one else had. Maybe others did, but he hadn’t heard of them using this odd grey energy. The circumstances to discover it would have been too dangerous. He had barely survived discovering the new source of power.

Now that he had a new source of power, how was he going to get it? He could fight more grey dead. Basically, he could farm. With Yuri at his side, it would be like being power leveled.

That sounded cool, but it was still dangerous. There was no need for unnecessary risks. What tactic could he use that would help him in this situation?

Then it came to him. He wouldn’t have to fight at all to level up.

Nico could cheat.