Chapter 203: Chapter 201 ~ Back To The Forge

//Author Note

I just released 2 new books on this platform, check them out!

//End Note

 

“So, why couldn’t we just kill her?” Eshya asks, as our two guests flash away through a twist in space. It seems that Arduelle is running a taxi service, though the fact she takes the troublesome princess out of our hands is at least a blessing of it’s own. How she can afford to be so recklessly wasteful with mana, I have no idea.

“Because Arduelle wants her to act as Kyra’s rival, and enemy.” Nel answers with a sigh. “Kyra, just tell me that you’re not going to pursue this princess?”

“Really?” I ask, shifting in my throne to face her accusations. “I mean she is cute, but her attitude is a little much.”

“A little?” Eshya asks, grumpily falling onto my lap. “If the others we have to deal with are like her and Leon, I’m not sure how they’re going to survive. If you don’t kill them, I think I just might.”

“Arduelle is protecting them from us, just as she’s protecting us from them.” I say. “That was implied with that whole duel setup.”

“That’s also how I interpreted her words.” Nel agrees nodding slowly. “We’ll have to plan for trouble. Malea just declared war on us, and she’s going to cause us as much trouble as she can get away with.”

“We still have other business to see through.” I say. “We have to finish our studies on the surface academy, I still want to grab a few scientists and engineers from Earth, and Red had a few contacts that she wanted to bring in as well. They could give us a leg up in dealing with this nonsense.”

“I’ll practice my magic.” Vii nervously offers, standing up tall and facing us. “And space magic. I might be able to figure it out, too.”

“We’ll all put our best effort in.” I say, my anxiety easing at the sight of Vii’s courage. She’s always so adorable when she’s a little bit nervous or stressed.

“Speaking of that, you have a class to hurry to.” Nel says, pushing us on. “I’ll speak with Red and gather together our own council. We need to have a trial for Khet as well, his actions in planting that teleportation device here were… unacceptable, and everyone needs to understand it.”

“Why can’t we just kill him?” Eshya complains.

“We need to make a show out of it.” Red says striding into the room. “If one of my soldiers betrays our team, I never kill them lightly. A traitors death needs to serve as much purpose as you can squeeze out of it, since you can’t get any more labour out of them afterwards.”

“Another faultlessly pragmatic opinion from my best expert on killing.” I groan getting up off my throne and facing her. “I’ll trust Nel to you then, I’m hoping I can rely on you without getting the same attitude that Arduelle has been giving me?”

“Hey, I like your cute, grumpy attitude.” Red says, “Though I’d argue that you could learn to give a little more bite to it. Get a little more aggressive, you know. It’s not a real insult unless it draws some blood.”

She shows me her fangs in a wide, viscous smile, and I know that she’s being truly honest.

“Save it for later.” Nel says, hurrying me along to class.

It’s time to steal some Skills and look for some talent we can kidnap.

The trip back up is rather peaceful, or boring as Eshya puts it, and I have to agree with her a little bit. Crossing through to the dark ruins, Adler raises her own voice, she’s been somewhat quiet through most of the nonsense.

“Why is Arduelle unconcerned about you?” She asks, “I mean, she intends to make you even more powerful than herself, so why is she willing to push you this far? Wouldn’t she perhaps consider the possibility that you might turn on her?”

“Well, as far as I can tell, Frey is in an unusual position where she can hide from this terrible god-king that I’m meant to slay, and Arduelle and her are rather close.” I say. “Up until the point where I slay our villain, I need her to keep all of you safe.”

“What about after you’re done?” Vii asks.

“I don’t think she expects me to survive.” I reply. It’s rather easy to say it, but even with the odds stacked against me, I can’t really feel my own death as a possibility.

“I guess that would make sense.” Adler says, rubbing at her head as she looks at the walls surrounding us. She’s likely trying to come up with something nice to say, but failing.

“It’s fine. I’m not going to die.” I tell her. “We’ll find a better solution than whatever she has planned.”

I just have to hope this isn’t going to be like my school assignments which I always left to the last minute. We’ll need to put some real effort into these preparations.

“Talking of plans, have you put much thought into how you’re going to develop your mana form?” Eshya asks. “I was thinking about planning mine ahead of schedule, keeping notes on the support device.”

“Are you okay?” I ask. “That sounds more like something Nel would suggest.”

“I don’t like thinking about all these things so much, so I’d like to get it out of the way.” Eshya says, “And get some advice while I’m at it. The potential modifications I can take are just… there’s so many Kyra. I don’t know what to do with it all.”

“We’ll find a moment before bed and plan them out.” I say, nodding as I inspect my own sea of options.

“Good.” Eshya sighs, relaxing a little as she throws her problems onto the rest of us. It should be fun at least, we’re essentially planning out what superpowers we want, so I can’t imagine that could ever get boring.

Excited at the thought, I look through the long list of modifications that I can do to myself as I go through class, paying only as much attention as is necessary. It’s not a critical lesson, and most of it isn’t anything important anyway. I bounce my feet under the desk, impatient for the chance to gather together with everyone to plan out our superpowers.

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

“Wings of wind!” Vii chirps, flopping onto the soft chairs in our little corner of the ruins that lie between the dungeon and the surface. “As in my wings will literally be wind magic.”

“Yes, but will you still be huggable?” Eshya asks, her face straight and her voice intense. “If not, I forbid it.”

“They’re supposed to feel like feathers still, but also not. I don’t know, I think they’ll be even softer.”

“It is agreeable then.”

“What about you?” Vii asks. “What crazy adaptions can you do?”

“Crazy adaptions?” Eshya asks, “I can carve out all of my internal organs and replace them all with magic and stuff. Does that count?”

“What?! That’s crazy!” Vii says, flopping back around to stare at Eshya. “So you’d just be muscle, bone, and blood?”

“And magic.” Eshya nods.

“What about you guys?” Vii asks, turning to the rest of us. “Anything funny?”

“I have the option of forming a hivemind with our children.” Nel says, relaxing at my side. “I’m not going to, for obvious reasons, but it was quite the surprise.”

“My options were all rather reasonable.” Adler says, sitting beside Nel and curling up. She’s grown a little more relaxed around us, and part of that comes in the form of finding somewhere soft to lay down and just chill out.

After a little while trading different thoughts the initial wave of excitement burns out and we start settling in for a long night, looking through the options and trying to piece together those that work best together.

Unfortunately, not everything here works perfectly well with everything else, and while I’m not against the idea of having hair that can change colours with my mood, it’s not good enough to take the place of another adaption that could do something more. While I can have multiple adaptions on the same organs, many of then simply can’t work together.

“Focus on the different roles you need to prepare for, and adapt to them.” Nel suggests. “Kyra, the different forms that you’ve set up and that you’ve been neglecting. What adaptions would work best with them?”

“Okay, so first off is casting, renamed mana canon.” I start off with my most powerful form. “Anything that boosts mana capacity and casting power would work with it.”

There are a few options that I put together on a list, but some of them will put out other adaptions that would help me in a hand-to-hand conflict. I’ve already decided that I’m not going to over specialize myself into nothing more than a magical missile battery.

Thankfully I have a better option than the first time I was exploring my options. No ‘body fat mana storage’ for me, there’s too many practical reasons for me to eat my way into power with that one. It’d pit my self-image, and my hunger for power up against each other, and that’s just not going to end well. Either extremely obese and powerful, or slim and weak? I can’t make that choice, and I have no self control to try and balance it out.

Blood fuel is the first one I take note of.

I can convert my blood into mana, apparently the exchange rate isn’t perfect, as that’d make me ridiculously more powerful, but I might be able to improve that later on in my development. I’m not entirely sure what’s holding me back right now, but apparently it’d somehow lead to complete organ failure, so… girls gotta be careful with that plastic surgery.

I add a few others to the shortlist, some that seem like they’d compliment my other combat styles, and lifestyle in general. When I’m done with the list of adaptions for ‘mana canon’, I move onto my next style which I’ve redesignated as ‘dancer’ which is taking over all of my hand-to-hand roles in combat. My defensive stance has been renamed ‘turtle’, and my senses into ‘investigator’.

I still alter the particular share and concentrations of mana in each, but as a part of fighting it’s important to flow mana to where it’s needed in each passing moment. As such, ‘turtle’ and ‘dancer’ will sometimes blend and flow into each other, and the categorisation will lose some distinction in that regards.

My list of modifications is fairly short for now, but they are concerningly expensive regardless. The top few that I’m going to be working towards first are still manageable, but pricey.

‘Blood fuel’ is going to cost me 20 000 mana shards on its own, but the benefit from it is just too good to pass up. I’ll need to gather some mana when I have a moment.

Mana shards is my current means of measuring mana by its energy rather than its density, it’s a simple measure of how much mana we can pack into one of the little shards that we’re producing as currency. Red insisted on a particular measure for them, due to trade regulations in the wider rebel society in the universe, which we’re adapting to.

The main reason for its use here is to keep a stable value that I can trade with and use as a steady price line for these adaptions. Density is still incredibly important for the growth of my mana form however, so I’ll still be keeping track of it separately.

Next is ‘flash nerves’ which temporarily replaces my nerves normal communication paths with instantaneous magical connections. It’ll make me move and react quicker than even my mana doped system can manage, while forming the backbone to my dancer build, alongside the mind alterations that I already have, which can slow my perception of time.

It costs a rather cheap 8000 mana, but burns through mana while in use.

‘Rebinding tissue’ is one of my more favourite alterations, so much so that I’m already getting the mana put together to have this one forced through as soon as I can. It’ll make my wounded flesh rebind itself together. While it doesn’t technically heal anything that’s damaged, an arm that’s sliced off can stick itself back together, the skin and bone gluing itself together. Even if a chunk of muscle is missing what remains will bind itself up into a functioning muscle as well as it can.

This one will cost me 30 000 mana, but it’s worth it.

Next is a rather cheap option, but Nel convinced me that simple is often best when it comes to senses, and that I don’t really need to shoot lasers from my eyes, or cast magic at a glance. This just improves my visual clarity over all distances, while widening the spectrum of wavelengths that my eyes can pick up. ‘Wide eyes’, it’s rather simply called for now because apparently my subconscious lacks creativity.

It costs only 5 000 mana but it’s going to be difficult to get used to and I’ll need to have a few days free to get used to it when I do go through with the adaption.

Apart form that, I have a few others put together in a list.

Bone magic storage.

Wide ears.

Repulsive skin.

Shifting nails.

The list goes on, but there’s still more options for me to explore when I’ve made it through. I’ve left my internal organs alone for now, there weren’t many good options that directly strengthen my combat performance, but instead many, many options that do some fairly unusual things.

‘Red hot stomach’ would let me eat iron ore, and actually break it down for minerals. While different sections of my bowels could be further converted to melt the iron, alter its composition, and let me literally shit refined steel bricks.

I could also make my stomach into an interdimensional storage if I’m willing to swallow my wallet and just shove my hand down my throat when I need to search for spare change. Not a very elegant option.

You are reading story The Unified States of Mana at novel35.com

There’s also one that I’m still considering one which would let me pass kidney stones that are purified annihilation catalysts. It seems in every way a bad idea, but the annihilation catalysts just seem… tempting.

“I think I’m happy with what I’ve got.” Eshya says, leaning back and stretching.

“Everything you chose just makes you move faster.” Nel says, shaking her head. “Is that really everything you want? Nothing else was even tempting?”

“I like to move.” Eshya says, “A fight is decided by how well positioned you are, being too slow means I can’t be where I’m meant to be. I don’t need any crazy powerful tricks like Kyra; I just need to hit the enemy where it hurts with just the right amount of power to kill them.”

“What about you, Vii?” I ask. “Are you happy.”

“I can see the future…” Vii whispers, “My eyes… when I get the mana together, I’ll see the future.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing with your magic anyway? What’s special about this adaption?”

“Huh? Ah, haha.” She shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah, it’s just this is supposed to be easy to control, and I can use it all the time. I can only see a little ahead, but it’s still really, really useful.”

“I’m happy to wait for full crystallisation for any serious improvements.” Adler says as I turn towards her. “There’s more power in pure mana density than in little tricks.”

“I have mostly defensive changes.” Nel remarks. “Hardening my skin against attacks and magics. Cushioning the blow that comes through, then making my organs the consistency of jelly to protect them from anything that makes it through. Some adaptions help to heal better too.”

“Impressive.” I say, shivering a little at the jelly organs part.

“It will be when we can start implementing these changes.” Nel says. “I’ll also have some Skill maps planned out and sent to you for consideration, but for now we should move on to planning the next few weeks. The ship is coming to take you back to your homeworld, Kyra. I have the payment ready for your passage, but we’ll need to find a way to get you out of the next weeklong excursion in your combat class.”

“How many class credits can we miss Adler?” I ask, turning to her where she’s curled up on an oversized cushion.

“It’s not so formalised a system. Honestly, it’s best to avoid attention all together, especially with Sedena about. I don’t trust her.”

“So, what options do we have?”

“An accident…?” Adler suggests. “If you’re injured sufficiently, healing would take either time or great resources. While you freely waste it all down here, if you are hurt significantly enough you wouldn’t be capable of going and it shouldn’t reflect too poorly on you.”

“Ah, so how do I explain the injury?” I ask. The table is silent for a moment, Eshya opens her mouth to suggest something, then shuts it again and scratches at her head. It was likely some ‘beastly’ activity that she was about to suggest, something that would only get me in more trouble.

“A flying accident?” Vii suggests.

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stats and Skills

 

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 15,904 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 7,905 / 30,266 shards

 

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,266 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

 

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (20,000 mana shards)

-Bone Magic Storage (40,000 mana shards)

-Nail Shifters (50,000 mana shards)

 

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (8,000 mana shards)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (35,000 mana shards)

-Layered space Muscles (80,000 mana shards)

 

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (30,000 mana shards)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (140,000 mana shards)

-Repulsive Skin (80,000 mana shards)

-Prehensile hair (10,000 mana shards)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (100,000 mana shards)

 

Investigator

-Wide eyes (5,000 mana shards)

-Wide ears (5,000 mana shards)

-Sharp nose (5,000 mana shards)

 

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

 

 

~Favourited Skills:

-Tag and Film

-Trapping

-Stealth

-Mana surge movement

-Annihilation defence

-Annihilation flame burst

-Annihilation net

-Eyes of an Empire

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

//Author Note

More chapters available

Patreon: 

Substack: 

You can find story with these keywords: The Unified States of Mana, Read The Unified States of Mana, The Unified States of Mana novel, The Unified States of Mana book, The Unified States of Mana story, The Unified States of Mana full, The Unified States of Mana Latest Chapter