“Grand Healer.” The guards salute Lanya as we arrive at the Helikan palace. They eye me with extra scrutiny but otherwise make no moves.

“Don’t mind them,” Lanya says. “It’s their job to keep me and this place safe.”

“I understand,” I reply and follow Lanya through the entrance hall and the courtyard.

Lanya leads me to the central spire that has a powerful anti-sensing protection at the top. I am sure I can break past it if I tried, but if there is such a strong concealing effect, then there is sure to be a powerful retaliation in it as well.

At the entrance is no less than six guards standing resolute and alert. They salute Lanya as she approaches.

“I will be bringing someone with me,” she says before taking out a knife and cutting her palm. She places her bloodied hand on the door.

“Of course” The guards nod.

The door opens, and one takes point while a second follows behind us.

“Hold up, are there any retaliations in there?” I ask. I am sure I can lower my perceptive pressure low enough so I won’t trigger them, but I don’t want to take any risks.

“Good point,” Lanya says.

“I will deactivate them, Grand Healer,” the one at the front says and enters, coming back out after several minutes. “It is safe for the guest now.”

We walk up a long spiraling flight of stairs, and at the top is a large crystal cluster made purely of Magic. The Magic has a vibrant color to it and swirls around in turbulent excitement. As I approach, the colors shift to an indescribable color that is more strange than it already is.

Healer

“I take it this is what worries you?” I ask Lanya, to which she nods.

“Yes, it has been here for hundreds of years, long before I was even born.”

Interesting. I examine it with ever-increasing perceptive pressure, ignoring the chime of my skill gaining levels. It doesn’t have a body, at least one not made of matter, energy, or mana; it is pure Magic, much like the Fallen Legacy Safyr fought.

It does not react to my perceptive pressure, but I’m not sure if that is an indication of whether or not it can feel perceptive pressure. In a way, it shouldn’t if it doesn’t have perceptive eyes. When I temporarily blinded Ruluna’s perceptive eyes, she could no longer feel my perceptive pressure.

I am reminded of Safyr’s and Kayafe’s brief mentions of Magic Beings and how they have a type of instinct, or programming, that they adhere to. If that is true and the name of this being is any indication then it should have an instinct to heal.

“As far as I can see, it is not a Cursed Being,” I say, which brings visible relief to Lanya.

The Magic looks weird to me. It is not like the Cursed Beings I saw; rather, it seems to be… what’s the right word… Young?

I place my hand on it and feel invigorated as the surrounding mana vanishes, burnt from existence.

It healed me?

A Magic Being centered around healing in a nation dedicated to healing, that is not a coincidence. Yet it doesn’t seem to be very… active? That’s not the right word, the Magic is very active but not quite coherent. It is still forming? No one mentioned how long it takes for Magic Beings to be born or if there is even a consistent time for them to gestate.

I need to ask Kayafe or Safyr for more information, but Lanya has entrusted me with a national secret; it’s not my secret to tell.

I can probably ask Yrania, she should be somewhere around here… maybe, but will she know more than Safyr or Kayafe? If I try to suddenly call for her, Lanya may take it the wrong way.

I should at least ask for permission. In the end, Lanya asked for my expertise, not anyone else.

“There’s only so much I know, and unfortunately, I haven’t met Magic Beings other than Cursed beings. I can’t say for certain whether this is good or bad, but it is probably not bad. I might be able to get a more definitive answer if I consult my mentors. Is that alright with you?” I ask

“Maybe, but let me get this straight first,” Lanaya says. “Magic beings aren’t Cursed beings right? And this is a Magic Being?”

“All Cursed Beings are Magic Beings, but not all Magic Beings are Cursed Beings. The difference seems to be that one is made or formed with Miasma, the other is formed by pure Magic, but that’s just a guess.”

“I see. Any idea on how this one came to be?”

I adopt a thinking pose and flick my tails in thought.

Is it something akin to how Magic Items form? Magic takes symbolism, emotional attachments, and other things significant to people into account. The more of those significant aspects there are, the stronger the Magic. Can I perhaps see this ambient Magic?

I focus my perception over the city and focus on where Magic should be arising. Wedding ceremonies, games of cards, a formal meeting between merchants; any place where there might be minor cultural rituals and where Miasma seems to be thinning out the most. There has to be Magic, no matter how small, being made from the conversion of Miasma.

I focus on a spot where there seems to be a lot of Miasma being burned, a colosseum where two healers are fighting in what seems to be a tournament.

“Do people take a lot of pride in winning tournaments?” I suddenly ask, making Lanya tilt her head in confusion.

“Yes, winning the Yena Tournament is a great honor for warrior healers. In fact, one has to win in order to be considered for any warrior healer job. Why do you ask?”

“I’m trying to see where the Magic is coming from that is feeding this Magic Being,” I answer and focus more deeply on the colosseum. “How often are Magic Items made during the tournament?”

Lanya frowns but answers anyway. “About a tenth of the rewards given become Magic Items.”

So it is a lot like the Kyholo ceremony for Runalymo, which has an abnormally high Magic Item creation rate. This is probably the best place to look for ambient Magic.

I stare at the colosseum for several minutes, trying to see any trace of Magic, but no matter how long, I still don’t see anything; it’s as if there’s no ambient Magic in the entire country.

Instead of continuing to look here, I focus my sights back at the Nexus, and instantly a chime ring’s in my mind as I see a cloud of swirling Magic over the Nexus, which are most concentrated around villages.

Ting! Sense Magic has met the requirements for a breakthrough and will continue leveling past level 1080!

53rd Breakthrough: You have seen ambient Magic; this will help you study inactive Magic.

So the Nexus has a lot of ambient Magic, but Helikan doesn't?

It must be that the Magic is being used up, and if it is the case that this Magic Being is still growing, it might be the reason. I will have to study this more and get more levels in my breakthroughs; I can’t let this opportunity go now that I have a subject to study.

“I would like to study this further,” I tell Lanya, who by now has been sitting in silence for half an hour. “From what I am seeing, it seems to be drawing in ambient Magic from your nation.”

“Is that bad?” Lanya asks.

“I don’t know.” I shrug “Has anything bad been happening for the centuries this has been growing?”

“Depends on what you mean by bad. But if I were to compare to other nations, off the top of my head, we don’t seem to have any more hardships than others.”

“Then, for now, it’s safe to assume that nothing bad will come from it, but I would like to keep studying this to give me more insight into Magic Beings.”

“Well, You already know of it, so there’s no harm in letting you study it, so long as you share your research with us, and don’t harm it in any way.” Lanya stands up. “Let me know when you're done” Lanya walks down the stairs, leaving the guard with me.

With the recent events with Urolon, Jetlin, and now this Magic Being, I have gained dozens of levels in [Sense Magic], nearing level one thousand. I am currently only seventeen levels away, at level nine hundred and eighty-three. I wonder if anything special happens at one thousand?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Clone POV:

Ting! Manipulate Magic has met the requirements for a breakthrough and will continue leveling past level 1180!

58th Breakthrough: You have compressed mana into energy, this will allow you to conjure energy in many of its forms.

A cacophony of Electricity sings as bolts of current zips around us, one more musical than the other.

“How are you doing that?” Kayafe asks.

It isn’t great, but I am trying to create electricity in a way to produce a song. I don’t know the full science behind it, but through trial and error, I am getting a hang of it. Honestly, it’d be far easier doing this with lightning mana, but I guess I can do it this way to flex on people. The only good thing is that it is good for practice, but beyond that, there are better methods.

“It’s something from my past life. People, well, very few people, used electricity to make music. It’s something about doing it fast enough that produces pitch. With enough practice, you should be able to do it too.”

What has me more intrigued, however, are other forms of energy. With a wave of my clone’s hand I heat up the air by transforming the mana into heat energy. Again, this is pointless, fire mana does the same thing when it interacts with matter, but it’s a proof of concept and may help me fight cursed beings.

I pick up a rock and toss it, adding in kinetic energy, making it shoot off into the nearby brush.

Now, this is much more useful.

Being able to accelerate an object will allow me to turn any random thing into a deadly projectile.

I tell Kayafe about the different types of energy.

“How did people figure all that out without mana?” Kayafe wonders.

“Probably because they didn’t have mana. They couldn’t use spells to solve problems, so they had to figure out other ways to solve their problems.”

“So, in a way, our ability to cast spells is holding us back?” Kayafe asks.

“Not really. It’s more like we haven’t yet dedicated ourselves to exploring the nature and fundamental rules of our reality, on a societal level. There are a lot of factors that add to it, though. The spread of knowledge is the most important thing, as it allows the right people to build upon the work of others throughout space and time. Hiding knowledge is possibly the worst thing one can do for the advancement of technology.”

“And that’s where the issue lies, doesn’t it. For the advancement of technology. Keeping that technology and knowledge to yourself is best politically and for personal power.”

“Knowledge is another form of power,” I nod.

Safyr would probably say something along the lines of ‘Tyranny consolidates power and keeps it for itself, and because of that, it would never allow the free spread of knowledge’. I suppose she’d be right with that line of thinking; history is full of instances where science and economy have to be sacrificed for politics.

In an ideal world none of those would have to be sacrificed, but we don’t live in an ideal world. The Nexus is as close as we can get to an ideal place where there is little to stop the spread of knowledge; perhaps I should start a school when things die down a little, and I can afford to operate enough clones to run it.

Come to think of it, the Runalymo don’t have schools, so I guess it’d count more as a university, a place of higher learning where one can learn more advanced subjects. The one thing I won’t be able to really teach is advanced math, since I forgot it all during my past life. I’ve made do with direct observations, but who knows what I am missing since I haven’t been able to express my theories mathematically.

In any case, I can leave my shortcomings to others; I can’t be expected to solve everything on my own.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Oathbound Lin spots the Nexus far off in the distance. Even without his racial [Mana Sight], he’d be able to see the sheer concentration of mana in the form of dancing colorful lights hanging over a wall of mountains.

Inside the mountains is what looks like a tropical sea, much shallower and clearer than the ocean. A few islands with vegetation with a village built upon jetties next to it can be seen. The mana is vastly thinner than the other Nexus he’s been to and is constantly flowing toward the center of the Nexus as if something is pulling it closer.

“So that’s how they have survived here,” Lin mutters.

No civilization can survive in a Nexus, the mana is just too great, but would become possible if nine-tenths of that were to be reduced. These people would have had to live on the outermost edge until they gained a mana toxicity resistance racial trait, but that would be guaranteed after a few generations.

However, that isn’t the strangest part. Even from here, he can feel intense heat radiating from the Nexus, and he can see steam wafting up from the Nexus Sea, which explains the increasing amount of clouds and storms on the way here.

Lin expands his Bond presence, reaching out with it, metaphorically knocking on Safyr’s door; if she is here, then she will answer. Lin didn’t have to wait long to see a gargantuan blue dragon with scales and horns glistening like sapphire gemstones. She lands on the tallest mountain peak and spreads out her wings majestically while her finned tail dances behind her, fine-tuning her balance on the uneven peak.

A wave of pressure hits Lin, Safyr’s oppressive Bond presence stifling his own effortlessly.

“What do you seek, Human?” Safyr demands. With each word, her Bond presence increases, constricting him and making it hard for him to even breathe. “Do you seek knowledge or fortune?”

Lin tries to push back as hard as he can, but that only results in Safyr suffocating him with renewed vigor.

She’s so strong!

“I seek help and friendship!” Lin calls out.

Safyr’s presence halts for a moment. “Help?” Safyr asks, sounding like she already knew what he was going to say

“My Kingdom is facing an unknown threat; we only ask for scrying services and to build good relations with the people who live here!” Lin pleads his case.

If he cannot convince the dragon, then there’s no way he could even begin his mission.

Fortunately, he didn’t need to say anything else, for Safyr withdraws her presence.

“If you so much as raise your blade against these people, Human, you will die before your next breath.”

Lin breathes out shakily. “No matter what they do, I will not retaliate; upon my honor, I promise you this.”