Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 50 Three Hours?


Isaac could feel that the world around him had been in various states of turmoil but that faint realization was subdued by the feeling of Lenna close by and the simple fact that he had never truly felt in danger. He meditated for fifteen hours straight before his bodily needs aroused him from his mediation. After a quick run to the outhouse, he met Lenna back in the courtyard where she had been waiting patiently.

"How was it?" Isaac asked as he returned, feeling lighter and much less internally strained. "I feel like I could run a marathon."

"Bloody." Lenna replied from her chair. Philia had ordered one brought for her, as well as two meals throughout the time that Isaac had been meditating. It was almost time for the mess hall to open back up for breakfast which was when a third would've been brought for her. "Walter took a shot at the lindwyrm. He hit it but it escaped. You need to witness his larger weapon fire." She explained some of what had happened in typical Lenna fashion. "That weapon is stronger than a siege weapon. I would rather get hit directly by a ballista than by him."

"Magical or unmagical bolts?" Isaac asked. He needed to know-

"Magical." Lenna stated simply. "He told me some things about it. The gun and the projectile. I understood all of the words that he had spoken but not much else. He said that you would understand, at least to some degree."

"Like what?" Isaac wondered.

"'Momentum equals mass times velocity, and when velocity is two and a half times the speed of sound, and the mass is three eighths of a pound, the energy transfer is 'fuck you'." Lenna quoted. "In short, the lindwyrm should be pretty injured and a few scout teams are going after it."

"Will our trip be delayed?" Isaac wondered after he chuckled at the quote from Walter.

Lenna shook her head. "No." She replied. "Walter will not be joining them until after we have arrived. Unless we need him for something else first. He agreed to wait to hunt it down until after we've been escorted back. It is not on his 'list', whatever that means."

"He has a list of monsters that he wants to hunt to help him make magic items out of their corpses." Isaac explained. It had been one of the things that they had talked about during their travels. Lenna had only paid attention most of the time. There was a lot of talk about things that she didn't understand mixed in with general 'boys being boys' talk that she had mostly tuned out.

"Breakfast?" Lenna wondered as the doors to the mess hall were opened by a cook who was just arriving to work.

"In an hour." The chef said without looking back. "We have to start the fires and cook it."

"Understood." Isaac told the chef. He had used Lenna's word and she looked at him suspiciously for a moment before her features returned to normal. "I can use your words, just like you can use mine." Isaac defended himself. "Other than Walter hitting a dragon snake with a bullet out of a sling used by Storm herself, did I miss anything good?"

"Gypsy ate something." Lenna said after a moment of thought.

"Huh." Isaac said and looked to the sky in thought. "How's that work?"

Lenna shook her head. "No idea." She replied. "How was meditating?"

"Interesting." Isaac replied. "The first two hours and the last three were useless. The rest in the middle were… hard to explain."

"Did you learn anything?" Lenna wondered.

Isaac nodded slowly. "I think so." He told her. "It felt almost like someone or something was trying to give me a hint."

"A hint about what?" Lenna asked.

"How to level up." Isaac said with furrowed brows. "It feels like trying to remember a dream. I remember two pairs of something and one solitary vision. One of the pairs was resting on top of the other and the vision."

"Mana was talking to you? Or was Mannen talking to you?" Lenna questioned him and leaned in slightly.

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"We need Walter for this, I think, I have questions about this 'Mannen' deity." Isaac told her.

"Catch him when he comes for breakfast?" Lenna wondered.

Isaac nodded. "That sounds like a good plan. It'll also give me some time to try and get my thoughts in order."

Nearly an hour later, a few minutes before breakfast was actually ready. Walter stumbled into the mess hall. Isaac and Lenna had chosen a table while the entire place was empty to wait for the artificer and he did not disappoint. Walter looked like a walking corpse. He had either not slept at all or slept too well because when they were on the road he never looked that bad in the morning. That was not to say that he ever looked good but today he looked especially terrible in the morning.

"Walter!" Isaac called out to him and waved him over.

Walter stopped and squinted at them before he made his way over and joined them at the table. "Morning." He said through a yawn. "Finished already?"

Isaac shook his head. "No. Just hungry and I have some things on my mind. I was hoping you could help with some of that." Isaac got straight to the point.

Walter blinked slowly at him and swallowed dryly. "I'll try. But I really need breakfast first if you want my brain to function." He told his fellow reincarnator.

"Alright." Isaac agreed. "Are we going to leave right after breakfast?"

"I'll start getting ready right away." Walter explained. "Leave in two or three hours."

Isaac nodded. "I'll try to get some more meditation in then. But first, get breakfast so I can pick your brain about Mannen."

Walter perked up at the mention of the name. "Oh? Do tell." He said and leaned in. His eyes were still bleary but some of the color seemed to overtake some more of his sleepy gray. The breakfast bell rang just then. Walter immediately got up, turned, and took a step to teleport directly to the front of where a line would soon be forming.

"He moved faster just now than when he had been taken off of Copper by the Silent Stalker." Isaac commented.

Lenna chuckled. "I think you are right."

A few minutes later, all three of them were back at their table with food and the first of the guards were entering for breakfast. "So, Mannen huh?" Walter asked around a mouthful of food. "Whatchya wanna know?"

"It's a deity, right? Not just another name for the invisible stuff in the air." Isaac requested clarification.

Walter nodded. "Yeah." He replied. "I pro'ly don't got anything to teach you about the stuff that makes magic, well, except for the knowledge that Mannen and mana are one in the same."

"I had a sneaking suspicion." Isaac said with a nod. "So, what does being favored by Mannen mean, who is Mannen really, and how does that affect me?"

Walter was silent in thought as he stuffed his face for a long moment. "Mannen, Mannen's a deity that's diffused into everything in or on Primatia. If Gia's the body, Mannen's the soul, the mind's missing. Some believe that the mind in this analogy's supposed to be us, but, well, we use Gia like a playground more often than not so who knows. If we're supposed to be the mind then we're dysfunctional and damaged more than a newborn dropped on its head." He explained.

"Okay, so, is he aware? He seems kind of aware." Isaac commented.

"He is and he isn't. He's split between everything that exists outside of the physical but resides on this plain of existence. Ghosts, your soul, jellyfish, those're the places where traces of him can be found." Walter explained. "Some of his thoughts exist here, some there, and others can't even come entirely into being."

"That's unhelpful." Isaac replied.

"Ah, but it's the exact opposite for you." Walter told him with a point of his fork. "You see, if you are favored by Mannen, then that means that mana, as you understand it, will like you specifically. How that is expressed, well, I think just about everybody knows by now."

"My unique class and massive throughput while meditating." Isaac thought aloud.

"Yes." Walter agreed. "Not only that, but you might just get help from the mana around you from time to time."

"I've seen it happen." Lenna confirmed. 'The first day we met, actually."

Isaac hummed in thought. "This explains a lot of what has happened to me in the past, but it seems so anticlimactic. I was expecting some grand reveal but this is more or less the conclusion that I had come to after thinking about it for a while." He said after a moment. "So now what? What do I do about it?"

Walter shrugged. "No idea. Try to keep it happy and I'm sure that it'll help you out when you need it." He told the young mage.

"Try to figure out the message." Lenna said to Isaac with a nod of encouragement.

"What message?" Walter wondered. Isaac filled him in and Walter leaned back in his chair in thought. "What level are you?" He asked Isaac.

"Fifteen." Isaac replied honestly without any hesitation. He was pretty sure that Walter already knew anyway so it was more of just a confirmation.

"And there was a set of two and a single under another set of two?" Walter asked him to confirm that he had heard him correctly.

Isaac nodded. "Yes."

"Your last two levels will happen together. They're tied directly together somehow. What you need to be looking at is the three that come next though. Never take your eyes off of the next step in front of you." Walter advised him. "The pair and single might need to be done in order. There's always the chance that they don't need to be done in a specific order but the last two will need to be done in such a way."

Isaac nodded. "That was the conclusion that I had come to as well." He agreed.

"The single's vision related." Walter explained. "It's not a singular vision but a vision related singular. At least, that's how it looks to me."

Isaac hummed in thought and rubbed his chin. "I have no idea how else I am supposed to see with my singular color of mana. But if you are right, then there is some avenue that I have not yet taken."

"If you can figure that out, or the pair of other things that I've no idea about, then you'll be that much closer to level twenty." Walter told him. "I can't really help you with anything unless you break down your entire powerset, how it works, and what makes it tick. And I'm sure that you don't wanna do that."

"Thanks for the help you've given me so far." Isaac told the artificer. "But yes, I do not want to explain it all to you or anyone else."

Walter nodded in agreement. "Good choice. Better that than having someone cast a Silence spell over you when you are trying to shoot, thus causing the Thunder Wave to die out instantly or before it had even begun and the bullet to just hang out in the barrel." Walter explained, completely from experience. "Anyway, we can talk more about this on the road." He told the duo and rose to his feet. "I'm gonna go see Philia and get everything I need. Meet you at the gate in three hours? I'll go looking for you if I'm ready earlier than that."

Isaac and Lenna both nodded. "We can do that." Isaac told him. "I'll be meditating so just get me when it's time to go."

"I'll meditate with him, as long as we can do it in the training hall once everyone is awake." Lenna agreed. "I want someone around just in case a wild beast wanders too close and gets pulled in like all of the ones from yesterday."

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