VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 108: The Nine Steps to Divinity
"Concentrate girl!" Her teacher barked with a sigh as Belladonna was thrown to the ground again. She was back in the tower by the lake, during the days when she had been staying with her teacher and getting lessons in pain from his demonic butler.
"Do I really need to go through all of this?" She remembered saying in a moment of frustration. Although she had been quick to pick up on Infusion, it wasn’t always easy. After being beaten down so many times, how could even the most stubborn ass in the world not begin to fester with frustration?
"I mean sure, It’s important to learn the magic. I get that. But this seems a little... basic. Why don’t you just give me some sources, I’ll eat them up and rocket up to as strong as you and then we can start with the real stuff instead of this..." She had said, wiping herself off onto to have the Demonic Butler throw another clump of dirt into her face, then laugh to himself at her misery.
"Ah, of course. Why did I not think of that?!" He had exclaimed with a tone dripping with sarcasm, turning towards his tower and gesturing to it.
"Why, I have always wanted another tower, but this time with the library at the top floor. Why don’t I just take my old one out and stick it where I want it to be and then I’ll build the rest of the tower underneath it when I can be bothered."
"Pfft... You say that like you couldn’t actually do that...."
"I could, yes. But that is beside the point. Whether it can be done does not matter when it comes to whether it should be done.
Yet let’s say you did do that. Stuffed your greedy face full of sources until you were ready to burst. At that point you would not rise to my level. Instead you would come to a gate that you must over come, and once you pass that one there would be another, and another and then five more after that."
Belladonna huffed in annoyance, wiping her face clean of the dirt and sitting cross legged as she listened to her teacher, doing her best to memorise what he said. He might be a rambler, but a lot of it was educational and helpful.
She just wished he didn’t have to do it in the form of speeches all the time.
"There are nine steps on the path of Divinity, Nine steps that one must transcend. Each step more difficult and daunting than the last. You are merely on step one." He explained, looking down his nose at her like she was a child shouting that she knew all the answers.
Belladonna, however, frowned deeply at his explanation, "Step one? Shouldn’t it be step two? First the mana lobe thing, then the source. That’s two."
"Ha! Forming a mana lobe... A simple gluttonous beast, not unlike yourself, could form such a thing." He said with a hearty, barking laugh. Making sure to take a jab at her in the process.
"Forming a mana lobe happens naturally when exposed to enough mana. A source takes some amount of skill, and is therefore Step one. A mana lobe, while technically a step, can be classed as step zero. The basic ground floor of entry, barely worth mentioning.
If you keep consuming mana rich food or, indeed eating your sources, you will come to a gate. At that gate you will be forced to refine your source. There are two methods to this, depending on the needs.
For myself and many other Magus, we form individual pools connected by streams. Each pool representing the new level, and being filled with more pure mana. This allows for precise control of the type of mana pouring into your spells. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎
Some spells can only be formed by pure enough mana, but if you take a simple spell and inject purer mana than needed..." He said, lifting his hand and conjuring a basic fireball.
It hovered above his hand, no bigger than a tennis ball, as it flickered softly. Then after letting her see and understand, he poured mana from one of his more advanced mana pools into it. The simple orange flame roared as it flared up from the sudden influx of power.
It was the difference between oxygen fuelling a flame versus rocket fuel. What had been barely the size of a tennis ball became half the size of the Wizard as he had to hold it above his head. The flames changed colour, taking on an azure tint as they increased not just in size, but in sheer intensity.
The wave of heat smacked Belladonna in the face, rapidly drying the dirt and patches of blood that covered her as well as turning her sweat into steam.
Then with a flick of his hand, he extinguished it completely.
"Had you taken the path of a traditional Wizard, you would be treading down this path. Instead, your path will be similar but different. When it is time for you to arrive at this gate, remember and follow these words exactly..."
Belladonna nodded, concentrating deeply as she hung on his every word, locking them away in her a mental palace filled with all of her most important memories, as well as half a dozen theme songs that she could just not forget for the life of her.
***
Back in the present, Belladonna let out another steady breath, cycling the air in and out of her lungs in a consistent and practiced fashion as she fell deep into mediation. The mana around her, and the mana flooding her system, moved in time with her breathing as she focused on purifying her source, exactly as she remembered her teacher telling her.
With every breath in, she drew in the mana, pressing it hard against the shell of her source and forced it inside. Like coal forming into a diamond, what she needed most was pressure. By forcing the mana into her already full source, she was putting it under constant pressure that was gradually changing it.
With every breath out, she exhaled some of the unrefined mana that still filled her source. This might have seemed counter productive, removing some as she focused on building pressure. But not all of the mana would purify and if it was left in there, it would corrupt the final product like impurities in metal.
They had to be removed, but it couldn’t leave all at once, as she still needed the pressure.
It was a long and gradual process that took all of her focus and all of her skill in mana manipulation up until this point. Failing now would not be so bad... But doing so at higher levels, in which her Esoterica stat would need to be much much higher to handle the process correctly, could irreparably cripple her progress.
Even with her heavenly constitution, it was worthless without the skill to make use of it.
