For several moments, I just stare back at him in silence, caught off guard by the request. In turn, he studies me patiently, clearly in no hurry to pressure me for an answer.
"Alright." (Mizuki)
Hearing my response, Deralt's ghostly face shows the first traces of genuine surprise. Of course, he's not the only one.
"What do mean, 'alright', Mizuki? You're just going to kill him without any follow-up questions!?" (Alto)
I glance towards the bereaved-looking Alto, and can't help but cock my eyebrow at her. Follow-up questions? That's what she's hung up on?
I shrug.
"I don't think I need to vet the nigh-immortal, older-than-civilization spirit's reasons for suicide. Besides, have you already forgotten your own hesitation about living forever?" (Mizuki)
After all, I had to actually talk her into accepting Azazel's blessing back then, and we even explicitly discussed the possibility of suicide in a life that lost its luster.
Alto's expression stiffens, and she falls silent. I return my gaze to Deralt, studying him expectantly.
"Regardless of your own wishes, I don't want to curry enmity with the other spirits. Can I assume that you'll be making the proper arrangements before you ask me to follow through on this? A guy your age isn't in a rush about anything, I'd imagine." (Mizuki)
Deralt nods his head in acknowledgement.
"You are correct...this is not a matter that needs to be further discussed at present. I merely wished to secure your participation in the endeavor while it was convenient for me." (Deralt)
I let out an internal sigh of relief at his confirmation. Guess that just leaves one thing...
I direct my gaze at Alto, who's still wearing a conflicted expression.
"You up for a little side project?" (Mizuki)
The change in her attitude is as immediate as it is amusing. Her eyes lock with mine, full of renewed fervor.
"New research!?" (Alto)
I can't help but smirk. Some things never change...
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
Some time later...
Deralt stares at me, a faintly disappointed expression on his ghostly face.
"I told you...this will not work." (Deralt)
I shrug, giving him a dismissive glance.
"Perhaps...but I'm not so sure." (Mizuki)
His eyes narrow suspiciously, but I'm already looking to Alto. She's seated on the ground nearby, quill and ink in hand, a large parchment spread out before her. Catching my gaze, she nods seriously.
As my lips twist into a grin of anticipation, I return my attention to the forest clearing in front of me. To the massive, hollow sphere of my magic floating in the space above it. Invisible, impermeable to other magic particles, and now...chock-full of enough atmospheric magic to rival Ciri's original power level.
"Begin." (Mizuki)
As soon as I give the command, I hear the distinctive sound of quill scratching against rough parchment. But only for a moment, before my focus shifts fully to my magic sphere.
Slowly, the sphere begins to shrink. As it does, and the magic inside inevitably becomes more dense, I begin to feel something strange. Something I've never felt from a purely magical interaction.
Resistance...as though the atmospheric magic inside my makeshift compressor is pushing back, rejecting the density I'm trying to force it into. And as the sensation becomes more noticeable, so does the drain on my magic.
But, I have plenty to waste.
So, I keep pushing. Compressing the sphere, the magic inside it. 1 minute...2...3. The drain on my magic becomes faster, more relevant. 96% reserve...90%...80%. The sphere's shrinkage rate begins to slow, until every inch feels like moving a mountain. 4 meters...1 meter...a foot...
Sweat breaks out on my brow as my magic reserves evaporate at an increasing rate, and I grit my teeth. No doubt noticing the strain, Deralt raises an eyebrow, a note of exasperation invading his voice.
"As I said, the spirits have tried this before. Simply accumulating magic is useless, no matter who does it or how much magic they use." (Deralt)
As nearly a third of my magic reserves become depleted, a part of me has to agree with him. While I don't know my actual power level, I know its astronomical. Extrapolating from teleportation spell energy scaling and Ilina's capabilities versus mine, I'd guess I was somewhere north of a 30 on the guild's scale even before my Bond with Ciri.
So, I've probably already invested like a quadrillion-quadrillion (10^30) times as much magic into this experiment as the spirits did originally. If my theory about being able to brute force scaffold particle generation was correct, I should have seen some evidence of success by now.
I spare a glance at Alto, who notices my gaze and shakes her head, confirming that she's noted nothing of interest yet. I sigh internally, already wondering about next steps. As I prepare to release the magic compression spell, however, Mud lets out a low growl behind me. His eyes are locked on the area of the clearing where I'm casting the spell, as though he can actually see it. At the same time, Deralt goes deathly still, an expression of utter disbelief painted on his ethereal face.
"Mizuki! The magic...it's disappearing!" (Alto)
Alto's voice rings out across the clearing, a mix of excitement, confusion, and apprehension. As if on cue, light within the seemingly empty space occupied by my spell begins distorting, making spacetime itself look like a shattering mirror.
Deralt's voice joins Alto's, audible and inexplicably heavy despite being no more than a choked whisper.
"This sensation...it's..." (Deralt)
Without delay, my gaze sharpens on the magical distortion growing larger by the second, and I begin pouring the last half of my magic into the compression without reserve.
"Alto, don't stop recording until I tell you to!" (Mizuki)
50%...30%...5%...the last of my magic seems to vanish in mere seconds, my spell fighting against the ever-increasing magical counter pressure. Then, right as it feels like I'm about to be completely depleted, I relax my spell's boundaries, dissipating the strange pressure and returning the magical sphere to its original, massive size.
Keeping a tenuous focus on maintaining the remnants of the spell, I collapse onto the ground with a deep gasp. As sweat rolls down my brow, and I feel my absurd magic absorption rate starting to alleviate that strange emptiness characteristic of magic depletion, I cast a glance at Alto. With the magic concentration spell lifted, the drop in magic power that I had her tracking should have plateaued. However, I notice her brows furrowed in confusion, her hand still moving the quill across parchment with fervent, dynamic motions.
Before I can investigate the strange behavior, her excited voice pierces the brief silence that followed my spell.
"Mizuki, the magic levels...they're increasing again!" (Alto)
What!?
In a flash, I'm standing behind her, my eyes scanning her parchment fervently. She's been using her magic sense to track the relative levels of magic trapped within my spell over time. Seeing the data, I blink, stunned.
As she implied, the plot shows magic levels decreasing in a sigmoidal fashion to minimum of about 20%. But then, instead of plateauing at that minimum, my relaxation of the spell seems to have coincided with an abrupt return of detectable magic, with the rate of recovery slowing steadily over time.
While Alto continues scribbling away, still tracking the recovering magic levels, my mind turns the data over furiously, reeling from the implications.
The abrupt recovery phase, the exponential kinetics – it all looks like the decay of a short-lived fusion product.
So...it worked, but the fusion product I presumably just produced is unstable? Is the fusion product the scaffold particle? If so, why is it unstable under what should now be normal conditions? If not, what the hell is it, and where do I go from here experimentation-wise? I quickly realize, there's only one easy way to answer these questions, and my window of opportunity is decaying fast...literally.
Without further delay, I project my new magic domain onto the area where I cast the compression spell, hoping that some of the fusion product is still un-decayed and within the original spell area. Then, I start trying to tune my magic senses to that area like I've done for so many things and species before.
Of course, this time's a little bit different, because I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for, or exactly where it is within a reasonable margin of error. Plus, I'm definitely on the clock. Nevertheless, the only thing within my magic domain should be air, magic, some dust, and maybe the fusion particle. By process of elimination, if I tune my magical senses to this space without off-target reactivity to the general space nearby, then I will in theory learned to sense the fusion product.
Naturally, that's easier said than done.
Nevertheless, I persevere in the effort, relentlessly modulating that intangible, indescribable quality of my magic to react with 'otherness'. Eventually, something clicks, I close my eyes, and my magical senses open me up to an entirely new realm of perception.
Unlike my magic-tuned domain – which makes the world around me look like beacons of light scattered within a dense fog – this new...setting, appears virtually empty within the current area of my domain, except for a light 'smoke' that seems to be in the process of both spreading out while simultaneously disappearing.
And the very moment my magical tuning clicks, the moment I begin to perceive this new substance through my magic domain, I make another discovery. Or rather, Alto makes it for me.
"Mizuki, the magic just stopped increasing! It just abruptly froze a bit short of the original levels!" (Alto)
I falter, surprised enough that I instinctively look back down at her and the parchment, disrupting my magic domain in the process. Almost instantly, Alto speaks up again.
"It's increasing again!" (Alto)
Sure enough, I quickly notice the exponential recovery phase of her plot stalling for several seconds, leaving the curve obviously disjointed. My initial reaction is confusion.
So, I did successfully tune my magical senses to the fusion product, but the act of sensing it seemed to stabilize it? Why? All I did was 'touch' it with my magic, and it wasn't stabilized by the dense magic surrounding it after the compression spell.
Then, my eyes widen in realization.
Of course! They're not the same! Atmospheric magic is...clean, neutral...it's somehow distinguishable from a person's internalized magic. My magic is imbued with something distinctly me, enigmatically connected to my consciousness, which was actively willing it to not just overlap with the fusion product in space, but to truly interact. If I really am sensing the scaffold particle, maybe it's stabilized by genuine magical interactions, or perhaps even the ethereal properties of consciousness itself.
The implications are profound...too profound! And at this point, I'm all but certain that we actually managed to create the scaffold particle! That said, there's a definitive way to prove it...
I turn my attention to Deralt, who's still staring at the space where my first spell was cast, his expression riddled with disbelief.
"Deralt, don't be alarmed if you sense this...I need to check something." (Mizuki)
Without waiting for confirmation, I unfurl my magic sense across the surrounding area and into the forest, making sure it's tuned to the earlier experiment's fusion product. To my great delight, not only do I sense signatures within the clearing, but I also detect a cluster of signatures a short distance away into the forest – likely the other Greater Spirits.
"It worked!" (Mizuki)
However, before I can start celebrating and discussing the good news with Alto, Deralt, and the other spirits, I suddenly freeze, a heavy realization settling in my mind. The signatures in the clearing...there's Deralt in front of me, obviously, and the residual but quickly fading cloud of fusion products to my right. But...
Why am I sensing a third signature here?