Chapter 13

After leaving his room, Arcius decided, this time, to head to an Arena on his own. You may need two or more to begin a fight, but one could use the room to train in. It had been too long since he last practiced, and even longer since he tried to experiment with magic. Entering the exercise area, Arcius noted that Arena 1 was the only vacant room, with Arena 2 occupied and Arena 3 set to Private.

As such, he entered, and made his way to the centre of the participant area. Interestingly, he tried to set the door to enter the participant area to Private, something he once saw done outside of Arena 3, but found he could not. It seemed that the door was only set to Private when an actual match was taking place. When he reached the centre, he began his old training routine. First, he sat down in a crossed legged position, and began to meditate. Slowly, but surely, he opened his mind to Reality, and attempted to attune it to a specific attribute, one after another.

First was Fire, the concept of thermodynamics. Electrons, positrons, plasma, heat, fire, electricity, all of it. As he contemplated Fire, Fire Mana started to cycle through his body, creating visible lines of red light that flowed into his body through the Calvaria, flowing down his body, and exiting through the Perineum, before flowing up ad around to the Calvaria again. This formed an image not unlike those of magnetic fields. Because of his level of understanding of Fire, these lines were translucent, but only slightly rough.

After completing 100 cycles of Fire, he attuned his mind to Earth, the concept of foundation. Stone, pressure, strength, geomagnetism, gravity, all of it. The lines around him changed from red to brown, and starting flowing in the opposite direction. Because his understanding of Earth was greater than that of Fire, the lines were more opaque, and less rough.

Next, he attuned his mind to Wind, the concept of motion. Sound, hurricanes, breezes, gusts, circular motion, kinetics, all of it. The lines became grey, and flowed in the opposite direction again. His understanding of Wind was actually weaker than that of Fire, so the lines became less visible than with Fire, and became much rougher.

Finally, came Water, the concept of adaptation. Rain, snow, ice, tsunamis, softness, osmosis, diffraction, all of it. The lines became blue, and changed directions again. At this, the lines became near-totally opaque, though they were still somewhat see-through, and also lost almost all of their roughness, a sign of his great understanding of Water.

Having contemplated The Four Elements, he moved on to The Opposites. He started with Light, the concept of transparency. Photons, illusions, mirrors, crystals, the photoelectric effect, all of it. The lines continued moving in the same direction, but become pure white. They became slightly rougher, but no less opaque.

Then he contemplated Darkness, the concept of opacity. Dark matter, anti-photons, dark energy, secrecy, all of it. The lines changed directions, and became so black, it was as though all light in the area was being sucked into them. They became a bit rougher and more transparent.

Next he moved onto the Cycle of Reincarnation, starting with Life, the concept of the beginning. Growth, change, joy, birth, all of it. The lines became a vibrant green, but stayed flowing in the same direction. They became completely smooth, but not fully opaque, symbolising his near total understanding of Life’s link to Death, in other words Rebirth.

Obviously, next came Death, the concept of the end. Decay, stagnation, despair, burial, all of it. The line became a sickly green, seemingly embodying the concept of the eldritch on its own, and flowed in the opposite direction to Life. Similarly, but slightly differently, to Life, they became completely opaque, but not completely smooth, again symbolising his understanding of Rebirth.

Finally, at the end of it all, came Destiny, the concept of time. Space, infinity, the finite, fate, freedom, possibility, all of it. The lines became colourless, and ceased to flow in any visible manner. They became chaotic, seemingly shattering in several areas, as though they were made of glass. They became so transparent you almost couldn’t see them. This, was the result of how little Arcius truly understood about Destiny, despite his great achievements in the use of Destiny magic.

Having completed the first part of his training, and thus gathered a large quantity of Mana of all attributes around him, Arcius began the next stage, he started mentally manipulating the Mana to take various shapes, starting simple, with cubes and spheres, and becoming more complex, with tori, and even multi-dimensional shapes, such as hepteracts. Each Mana-type produced its own influence on reality as it was manipulated.

Fire produced heat, and had flickering flames upon its surface. Earth caused shards of stone to float around it in orbit. Wind produced soft breezes that flowed around it. Water chilled the air, and caused snow to fall from the Mana. Light, shone brightly, while Darkness seemed to suck away all light. Life produced a calming, almost happy feeling, while Death produced one of unease, and fear.

Finally, Destiny caused flickering images to appear on the surface of all objects its Mana was used to make. These images were possible futures, but only a fool relied upon them to predict what may be, for they were disjointed, and often only showed the least likely event to occur. These exercises trained control, an important tool for any magician. Having finished them, Arcius now dispersed the Mana, having now spent almost a whole day training, and thus completing said training session.

Most magicians would have taken longer, and trained in chants and hand signs as well, but Arcius had already progressed beyond such things, and as such didn’t need to train as long. After all, chants and hand signs existed solely to help the user focus their efforts, and didn’t actually improve the related spells is any way.

Now Arcius decided to experiment, particularly focusing on how to use Divine Mana in a fight. He had several theories and hypotheses, but trying to put them into practice showed only how little he could do with it. Trying to mimic the effects of other attributes without converting the Divine Mana to that attribute, only resulted in Mana explosions, although a more interesting (read: terrifying and quite devastating) effect occurred when he tried to imitate Destiny Mana, that being a twisting of Reality nearby, to such a degree that it cracked open, revealing a nothingness beyond, through which, a twisting something that simply should not be emerged.

It was impossible to describe, but one thing Arcius knew instinctively, was that if it so much as touched him, he would cease to be. It was fortunate, then, that a surge of Mana that Arcus could not identify swept though it and the crack, erasing them both. Note to self, Arcius thought, never experiment with Destiny Mana through Divine Mana ever again.

Another hypothesis that was proven untrue was the idea of creating unique Divine-only spells, but this too proved impossible, not even producing an interesting failure effect. Instead the Divine Mana would simply dissipate and convert into other attributes. However, he did stumble upon a very useful effect.

Because, as a God that could inherently utilise Divine Mana, and he could convert Mana of other attributes to Divine Mana and then back to other attributes, he found out that he could manipulate a spell that was functioning, by changing it to another attribute’s version of the same spell. He couldn’t manipulate what the spell was any more than usual, but its attribute could be changed.

This was especially interesting with how different attributes affected things. For example, changing Titanic Gusts attribute from Earth to Wind had no real impact on the effect of the spell, but changing it to Light created an intense flash. Not very damaging, but quite disorientating. Similarly, changing Disc of Weight’s attribute from Earth to Wind only created a suction towards the Disc, but changing it to Life actually sucked all life energy it was aimed at into the Disc, releasing a healing pulse upon the spell’s release. This also allowed him to negate spells by converting their attributes to Divine and leaving them there, as this caused automatic dissipation.

As he experimented more with this new magic, he heard the door to the participation area open up behind him.