Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 149: Active tempering

Lissandra is built differently, oh, I donʼt mean her current state she is in right now. Nope, the woman shares with me multiple ways to manipulate my mana to be able to go through what she called active tempering.

I donʼt understand at all.

She continues to dumb it down more and more to the point where she complains that even animals could do it.

I wonʼt refute that. I know multiple deer, bears, and one corgi that would totally be able to do that. Iʼve long known that the most dangerous mages will be from the zoo.

Lissandra then tries to explain and I can hear her getting more and more annoyed. I would expect her to be a lot more patient, being as old as she is and as powerful, but she has absolutely no patience with her students.

She is impossibly powerful and talented beyond belief so for her something like moving mana on a subatomic level sounds like basics.

“Okay, Iʼll dumb it down even more, little pup. You will activate the thing you call Kinetic Mana Heart, then you need to use the thing you call Mana Regulator to feed it as much mana as you can handle. After that I want you to weaken your passive skill otherwise it will weaken the effect of tempering. First, we will temper your body with kinetic energy. You will have to change output a bit, frequency should be like,” she says some mumbo jumbo difficult terms I do not understand, “Then you will use different frequency on your bones, but at the same time you have to temper your muscles too, also with different frequency.”

It all sounds reasonable and the results she promises are all amazing. Nothing too excessive for first active tempering, but I can continue to improve on it.

“You will have to keep infusing your body with your mana, but not as you usually do. Thatʼs what amateurs do, you need to be more precise and not just throw it around uselessly. You are wasting so much of it.”

Itʼs all good, but damn, somehow she pisses me off. Is it because we are so similar?

“Your tone pisses me off,” I say out loud.

Short silence.

“Would you say that to me when I had my body?” she asks, annoyance clear in her voice.

“No, you would beat me up.”

“... I would.”

It takes half a night and enough testing to make my head spin, but Iʼve somewhat taken a grasp of that and we will try it on my arm first before going at it with my entire body.

So now, Iʼm taking a short break to relax and calm down before we get to it. All while the air still rages outside and the room continues to be lit with a mana orb filled with thermal energy that I made a bit bigger.

From past experience, I know that there are barely any monsters so close to the wall, even during the night we didnʼt meet any so the entire process shouldnʼt be interrupted.

“Why are you so slow? Move your mana faster.”

Yeah, the mighty used-to-be-absolute-but-is-now-creepy-brooch-made-from-flesh-and-bones continues to complain.

“Again, you are controlling it like a kid doing its first mana exercises. Be more delicate and do not waste so much of it.”

Are all the geniuses like this? Is it because she is a grumpy old grandma? Actually, is she even a grandma? Ruby was close to one hundred and she did look barely over twenty. Could even Lissandra look to be twenty years old if she wanted to?

“Actually, I might even have seen kids better at handling mana than you,” the brooch made of flesh and bones continues.

Is she not going to stop? Iʼm staying quiet in hopes that she will stop, but unsuccessfully.

“This is better, now make it a bit more dense and even. You can start sending kinetic energy through your body, do not forget about the frequency.”

How could I when you keep reminding me every five seconds?!

“You are thinking something rude, arenʼt you?”

“Your personality seems to be different from yourself I met on the second floor,” I say and I mean it. This version of Lissandra, the imprint as she calls it seems to be a bit more talkative and less dignified.

“That much is to be expected, it was the first time for me to create an imprint of my mind,” Lissandra answers.

”What?“

”I knew only a bit of theory and logic behind it, itʼs not like I had any want or need to duplicate my mind before.”

That monster. The imprint she did leave on peacemaker and that got transferred to the palm of my hand is so delicate, infinite amount of thin mana circuits. Working with a tiny amount of mana, yet was able to copy her thinking and keep so much of her skill. A skill so close to creation.

And no matter how hard I try I canʼt get to observe it properly. Even when I perceive the tiniest edge of the imprint my head starts hurting in between my eyes.

“But, now focus or you will lose your arm again. From what I heard itʼs something you are used to at this point, but itʼs kind of pathetic.”

She also really knows where to hit to make it hurt.

I breathe in and filter out the noises from outside after checking my stats one more time.

Lvl 111

Strength: 33

Dexterity: 31

Constitution:92

Mana: 327

[Focus] activates and I consolidate it through the newest upgrade and the world becomes black and white, even feeling as if the time somehow slows down. Lissandra says something but I donʼt listen to her anymore.

From this point, itʼs up to me.

I calm my beating heart and then set Mana Regulator to 20 percent and start sending kinetic energy through my body.

While my heart beats audibly and the energy flows through me, I move my mana in the way Lissandra showed me and start sending it everywhere. I infuse my bones and muscles, I infuse my ligaments and nervous system, and my veins. As always when I focus a lot, my head starts hurting and I hear ringing in my ears that also quickly gets ignored by my [Focus].

Taking another deep breath, I release that energy tentatively into our surroundings. I change the frequency beforehand and unlike when Iʼm normally using it, the waves are smaller and the noise it makes is more pitched.

That seems good so far.

In the next step, I weaken my newest passive that helps me to endure strain on my body. Then I also turn off the Reinforcement construct and make sure Iʼm not using Symbiotic Transference. Lissandra, after observing me for a bit, said that setting my Mana Regulator to 20 percent of the output of Kinetic Mana Heart should be fine and that I should try to temper only my left hand to get used to it.

But, how about 30 percent?

My regulator setting changes and thirty percent of my mana starts flowing into the Kinetic Mana Heart, sending waves of kinetic energy through a nearly as weak as possible body.

Left arm? How about if I try it on my entire body? I delve deeper and the voice of Lissandra gets filtered out as well as the wind outside and the creaking of the house.

Right now, only me and my body exist.

Deep breath in. Hold. Deep breath out.

Letʼs go with 40 percent.

I change the regulator once again and focus on infusing my body with mana in ways I just learned, while also grabbing hold of kinetic energy and collecting it in my body, which starts to react to the pressure much stronger now that Iʼm not strengthened by reinforcement and the passive is weakened.

As soon as I feel my body is infused properly, I grab hold of the kinetic energy and start sending it, this time not out of my body, but through my body. I adjust the kinetic energy slightly and also alter its frequency.

Immediately, I feel as if someone started pummeling my body with a massive hammer while shaking it impossibly quickly. Itʼs getting hard to focus, and the pain feels omnipresent and constant, and I get bruised even in the parts where I feel Iʼm doing it perfectly. The energy just continues to pummel, to temper my body, putting a lot of strain on it. Only thanks to my body being properly infused with mana and thanks to the special frequency of kinetic energy, my body absorbs some strain so I do not get torn apart. Yet, it hurts, it hurts so much.

I keep getting more and more wounds every time I lose my focus even for a split second, but I force myself and continue.

A minute passes.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

One of my eyes explodes because of me losing my focus and the frequency of the thread of kinetic energy changes for a second.

Four minutes.

Five minutes.

Lissandra said five minutes is a good start and the maximum I should do on my first try.

Six minutes.

Seven minutes.

Another wound that feels somewhat serious, but I continue.

Eight minutes.

I change the setting on my Mana Regulator again, but this time Iʼm not even sure to what percentage. The world for me becomes just my body and two energies I have to handle - the kinetic energy that can kill me at any second and the mana that I use to infuse my body with.

At some point, I notice some imperfections and change the frequency a bit, and use a bit less mana to infuse my body.

The pain strengthens but the efficiency improves.

Good.

Then, who knows how much later, I stop. Right after, I set up my regulator again and at the same time turn back on Reinforcement and the passive, as well as start to strengthen my body with Symbiotic Transference.

I open my eyes... my single eye, and turn it to the fleshy brooch still lying there, on the ground in front of me.

This time Lissandra doesnʼt say anything.