Cain attempts to jump out of the pit, but overshoots it by a few meters. Looks like there's still some kinks to be worked out. Heck… there's not much time left. Cain sits next to the chair Dresil made to watch anime; her clone still staring at the screen. Once the mini Rex and Bob dissipated, Cain converted the dj setup, speakers, gas generators, and the table the clones were on into mana and stored it in the Mana Storage dimension.

Well heck… that was inefficient. Only got around 2/3rds of the mana back. Cain does some rough calculations in his head, attempting to figure out the exact numbers. His thoughts are interrupted when Dresil's main body returns to her clone to watch anime and hands him his shirt and a few skewers of meat.

—Dms: Cain and Dresil— (9ms)

Dresil: When do you want to go to the duel?

Cain: After I do 3 three things or when it's 11:58am.

Dresil: Aren't you cutting it quite close?

Cain: :shrug: I'll just teleport to where Maddison is.

Cain: Worst case scenario, I look through her memories for where the arena is then teleport there.

Dresil: Ok… Just don't be late.

Cain: Ok.

--------------------------

—Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex— (2910ms)

Cain: @Bob, explain what you meant last night by "when my soul heals."

Bob: Understood.

Bob: When a being forms a contract with a spirit, part of their soul "merges" with the spirit. It's roughly between 0.1% and 10% of the being's soul that takes on the property of the spirit. The percentage varies on what spirit the being contracts and how well they can communicate, as in, their spiritual talent.

Bob: I guess "copying" would be a better term. In any case, part of the being's soul becomes similar to the contract spirit, and part of the contracted spirit's soul power is used to make this happen, thus why the level of spirit affects the percentage transmuted.

Bob: There is no difference to the being's soul before and after the mutation in terms of sentience, self identity, and other meta-physical properties. The only thing that really changes is the ease at which the being can use and understand the spirit's element. For space spirits, some beings may even be capable of creating new pocket dimensions.

Bob: It usually takes decades for the mutated part to completely blend and unify with the being's soul, assuming the being just lazes around without using the spirit's power on its own. Using the spirit's power without the help of the spirit will decrease the time needed to heal as well as increase the soul power of the being.

Bob: If the contract is forcibly terminated before the mutated part can fully merge, the unmerged parts will either break off or revolt against the being's soul, causing severe side effects. In case of the being's death before it's fully merged, it is the spirit's obligation to take the unmerged parts with them.

Bob: If the contract dissolves for any reason after the mutated part is fully merged, any benefits of the mutated part will dissolve, apart from the increased soul power. The mutated part essentially goes into a dormant state and slowly decays back into the soul's original form.

Bob: The spirits use the mutated part of the being's soul to manifest themselves and perform spells while using their own mana. It's commonly mistaken that the summoner's mana is used because of this. The spirits are essentially just using the being's RAM while using a different power supply.

Cain: Interesting… So it appears mana is controlled through the soul. Would that make the brain the CPU, the body the hard drive, a being's mana is the power supply and natural mana is the electricity?

Rex: :huh: How is the being's mana the power supply, but natural mana the electricity.

Cain: The being's mana converts natural mana into usable mana. In other words, natural mana -> being's mana -> spells and what not. It's not the same, but it's a similar process to the PSU. electricity from house -> PSU which only provides the needed amount and not the entire grid's worth -> computing processes.

Rex: ...I'm just gonna… yeah

Cain: F

Dresil: Oof.

Bob: F

Bob: Close. It'd be more appropriate to say that the soul is the motherboard, and the RAM is the soul power. The soul power is limited based on each soul, just like each motherboard can only sustain a certain amount of RAM.

Cain: Can the limit be increased?

Bob: Yes, through various means. One being the mutation acquired from summoning a spirit.

Cain: What's my situation like?

Bob: 30% of your soul is mutated, 15 for each of us. I'm not sure why it's so high though… This is a first even among beings summoned from another dimension. The rate at which your soul is healing and merging with the mutated parts is also unprecedented.

Cain: Great… Another mystery…

Cain: Anything else I should be aware of?

Bob: That should be it.

Cain: Sweet.

--------------------------

—Cain's Speedy Thoughts— (32ms)

Cain: So many mysteries. There's

1. Why was I summoned here?

2. Why does my mana replicate like a pathogen instead of a cell's reproduction method (forgot the name for now), the former being the assumed norm… I'll need to research more on the latter.

3. How was I summoned here with so much mana, and why was it so pure?

Side note: How pure is the mana I create from matter. Is it as pure as the first mana I felt, or is it as pure as can be…

4. Why is my soul so strong? (presumably able to control 30 million mana since day 1 since that was what I was summoned with)

5. Why does my soul heal so fast? Could it do with my naturally fast adaptation rate? ...it can't be that simple though...

6. Why was I summoned next to Dresil instead of on a summoning circle or surrounded by the people who summoned me?

Cain: ...Man, I just want to sleep.

--------------------------

Two, no, 3 more things left to do now… Cain leans his back against the side of Dresil's chair and stares at the sky. He lets out a stream of his mana into the air and begins to make words with them. Soon after, they form a tech tree detailing each of the options for Immortality, an Indestructible body, Poison Immunity, and Disease and Virus Immunity.

Hehehe… I shall name you Plot Armor. It's just a graphic representation of the list I made yesterday but it's much easier on the eyes… Looks like I'll need to start recording the decay of telomeres among the party to compare to my own to verify some things… but.. I can't because I have nowhere to store it, heck. Cain sighs a little and disperses the tech tree after committing it to memory. He leans his head back some, resting it on Dresil's side while converting the empty skewers into mana.

—Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex— (2120ms)

Rex: ...did you really just create your own plot armor?

Cain: Yep.

Dresil: Oh? You're back already?

Rex: ...anyways. Couldn't you also create your own system?

Cain: Probably, but that'd just limit my growth.

Cain: A normal person's growth would be a logarithmic function, someone with a system would have a linear function (the slope of the linear function changes depending on the system and upgrades/events), and my growth would be exponential.

Dresil:

Cain: Yep, that's a log function. The slope is their growth rate, "a" would represent their potential, and "c" their talent. The x axis is the amount of years and the y axis the amount of power (don't try to relate it to any concrete form of power, it's just there for scale). Although both variables affect each other, what they're labelled for is what they affect the most.

Cain: Dresil, got any examples of those by any chance?

Dresil:

Dresil:

Cain: Sweet. Although "a" seems to be affecting the growth rate the most, that's merely because the cap is being increased. If the slope was the same in the first image, it'd be akin to filling up a bathtub and a bucket with a small pipe. The bucket is the lower potential, the bathtub the higher. To fill in the analogy, the flow rate of the pipe would be the growth rate, volume of water would be the amount of power, and the diameter of the pipe would be the talent.

Cain: Without a bigger pipe to fill the bathtub up, the bucket and the bath would have roughly the same volume of water until the bucket is full. Then the bathtub will keep filling up, but it'd take quite a while for it to happen, so there's a chance the vessel may expire (death) before it's completely full, hence the modification to the slope when growth potential changes.

Cain: Dresil got an image of low talent, good growth potential?

Dresil:

Rex: ...so the modification in growth rate when potential changes is nature's way to ensure they reach their potential before they die?

Cain: Basically.

Dresil: Did hell freeze over? Rex actually understood something.

Rex: :cry pain: :fite me:

Bob: What about linear and exponential growth? And why do you believe you have exponential growth?

Cain: I don't think there's any system that'd eventually grant the user enough power to create their own system. Not to mention, in just 5 days of coming to this world, I've refined my body with twice the amount of mana that someone in the 10th circle would have (that puts them a third of the way to the 11th circle.)

Cain: I'd need to inspect some adventurers before and after they rank up, as well as some that focus on a physical fighting style to see if my method was better or worse though… Anyways, Dresil, got the graphs?

Dresil:

Cain: ye, so "c" is basically how much the system helps its user to grow. This is usually very fluid, thus making some seem like exponential growth. (After all, every curve is made up of a bunch of small lines, even circles.) In other words, the system controls the user's talent or disregards it, which is why it's unnecessary to consider the user's talent (in most cases).

Cain: "a" would be the starting power or starting point they were at before they got the system. The only limit to their growth is the system itself.

Dresil:

Cain: ...Can you zoom in on that some? Also, the variables are missing...

Dresil:

Cain: Ye so, c is the talent, a is the starting power. Pretty self explanatory now.

Bob: What makes you think you have exponential growth and not just a high valued log function?

Cain: I don't feel any limit on me. Granted, it could be I'm just not close enough to feeling it, but my gut tells me there is none. It could be because of how I make magic circles, cast spells, or just because my soul is doing a thing.

Cain: Any one of them is too versatile to be accurately measured by numbers. With 300,000 mana I could create a black hole, make 300g or less of matter, or make a very big and long flamethrower.

Bob: Interesting…

Rex: ...I wasn't asking for a whole lecture. :cry pain:

Dresil: :laugh point:

Cain: Oh… meh, too late now :kek:

Cain: Bob, can you open the Mana Storage dimension? I want to see if my limit to controlling mana is based on my soul or my mana heart.

Bob: Understood. Just don't overdo it, it may cause further damage to your soul.

Cain: Ok. After this, open up the dimension with the spirit bow in it. I need to give her a name.

Bob: Understood.

--------------------------

A portal to the mana storage opens on Cain's left. He glances at it then returns his gaze to the skyline. Cain slowly pulls out a stream of mana; starting with 2 million and increasing it's quantity by 100,000 per second. After surpassing 3 million mana in the stream, Cain began to intently analyze the stream's contents and his own condition.

I don't feel any problems yet… The stream is also at 4 mil ish and climbing. Does my mana heart even limit anything? My process for controlling mana seems to be completely bypassing it. Is it possible that my mana heart only comes into play when I channel mana through the veins I made? ...heck, looks like I'll need to test this later.

Cain makes a mental note to thoroughly test the functions of his mana system once he is able to record data. Without the latter method, he'd just have to rely on his memories which have a restricted view, thus possibly requiring him to reproduce the experiment several times just to double check some data that could've been stored on a table or graph.

Within a few minutes, 22 million mana flows throughout the stream in front of Cain. To save space, he's making it flow in a circular path, without the aid of a magic circle. A few seconds later, Cain feels a sharp pain in his head, but not in his head.

This vagueness feels like when I'm starving… except more vague. Although I couldn't tell what muscles were being digested, I still had the pain around my stomach that gave it some definition. This just feels like random pain… Cain immediately stops siphoning mana from the dimension and slowly lets a few hundred thousand enter the mana zone to flow freely, roughly decreasing it by 50,000 per second.

Looks like my limit is around 22,050,000 mana without the aid of magic circles. Let's wrap this up since I only have 6 mins left. Cain hurriedly shoves the stream of mana into the portal on his left, quickly followed by the excess mana that was free roaming in his mana zone. The portal closes soon after and another opens above his lap.

Cain inserts a steady stream of mana that envelops the spirit bow inside and carefully pulls it out. The bow hovers a few inches above his lap while Cain attempts to make some diagrams out of mana. The diagrams continuously morph from their desired shape into random polygons until Cain disperses the mana.

Man… I was just trying to make a plan and a tank, how did I end up making dodecahedrons… I don't have enough time to perfect this either… heck, I'll just do simple shapes for now. A funky triangle with cylinders on its rear and a 2-layered rectangular prism appear; the top layer being smaller than the bottom. A small cylinder appears on the front facing face of the top prism while circular indents followed by the borders of a rounded trapezoid spanning the length of the bottom prism appear on either sides of said prism.

Pfft… It looks like a kindergartener used building blocks to make these. Anyways, since the bow showed no response to those who tried contacting it earlier, perhaps it can't hear properly..? (at least that's what I think the receptionist said)… should I try thought communication? Cain stares at the bow for a solid minute while moving the childish diagrams to either side of it. Once they were in position, he attempted to communicate with the bow.

[Uh… Good Morni-er afternoon… If you sign a contract with me, your name will be Athena. She was known as the goddess of wisdom from where I'm from. I also have some designs for guns, planes, and tanks. Although the latter two are more vehicles than weapons, they're still fun to play with.]

That should've worked… right? Meh, there's only a few mins left before the duel begins. Cain stores the bow back in its dimension and taps Dresil's knee thrice, signalling her that it's time to head out.

—Dms: Cain and Bob— (3010ms)

Cain: Can you teleport me in an open spot near Maddison if it's near the arena?

Bob: One second…

Bob: Roger. It appears she's on the side of the arena in a spot that's designated for judges/supervisors. It's lower than the audience's seats, but still above the arena and behind some protection magic circles.

Cain: Interesting… is it like a Greek colosseum?

Bob: Kind of. Shall I open the portal now?

Cain: Yep.

Bob: Understood.

--------------------------

A gateway opened up in front of Cain as he stood up, revealing the colosseum Bob mentioned. The portal led to the platform where the duelists fought, yet the stands in its view were packed. 'That's odd, why is it so packed? It should just be a casual duel for an official rank, right? It doesn't look like they can see me since there's no reaction apart from being surprised due to the portal manifesting.'

Cain stood there for a minute to let his mana zone seep out the portal and occupy the grounds. Within this time, Dresil absorbed the chair that was made from her vines, dissolved the mana screen, and went into Cain's clothes.

—Dms: Cain and Dresil— (17ms)

Cain: See if you can find Veronica and her party and have Bob tp you there, use the tags if you need to.

Dresil: Understood. Can I make popcorn with the mana in the Mana Storage?

Cain: You can use my mana?

Dresil: Kind of? I can use whatever magic circles you create but I can't manipulate anything.

Cain: Huh… Yeah I'll set up a few circles to make popcorn for you. Or you can just have Rex pop a bag.

Dresil: Let's do both :hehe:

Cain: Pfft, ok. I'll do it when you're next to the party. Don't forget to share if they ask

Dresil: Understood.

--------------------------

After double checking the campsite to make sure nothing was left behind, Cain entered the portal and had Bob dissolve the portals that served as his mask. Dresil sneakily left his clothes through a portal that appeared near Cain's back, reemerging next to a dirty blonde elf whose eyes slightly lit up at Cain's appearance.