Edge Cases

129 - Book 2: Chapter 66: Magical Studies

129 - Book 2: Chapter 66: Magical Studies

Vex was in the Ashion section of the tower, doing his damndest to ignore Irvis' frozen body.

Something about it was unnerving. There were times he looked away and could swear that Irvis' eyes were following him, somehow those eyes remained full of hate, in a way that made him shiver. But anything he did to interfere with his father's magic might also free Irvis early, and Vex wasn't ready to deal with him.

The more time he had to study Irvis, the more uncertain he was about whether he could deal with Irvis at all. Even if Derivan, Misa, and Sev had all been here with him...

His mana sense told him a lot of things. Irvis' entire body was made out of exactly one mana aspect, though whatever aspect it was, it was nothing Vex had ever encountered before. It was more alive than any form of mana he'd seen before; every piece of Irvis showed individual, identical reactions.

His... his not-father's freezing spell was far more complicated than he'd thought, too. There was a reason it had taken his entire being to cast. This was a propagating stasis spell that was alive, in its own way, the mana imbued with bits of Karix's soul; every time Irvis tried to break free, the ice-infused energy reacted, attacking that piece of Irvis until it was once again frozen solid imbued with too much ice-aspect to be able to move.

But even that was fading away. It would take a while Karix had definitely managed to buy him time but the spell that would have lasted for centuries on anyone else was only going to last for about an hour on Irvis.

The problem was that he'd studied just about everything he could through the ice. His glyph couldn't make it through the potent ice to understand what was going on with Irvis in detail, which meant he couldn't spend his time probing for a weakness.

Vex turned his attention back to the rest of the tower instead.

Behind the broken rubble was a mess of books; the Ashion section of the dungeon was constructed like a library, no doubt a reflection of his family's propensity for study and magic. There were traps here, he knew. He'd heard plenty of tales from others that had been here. Sometimes delvers would bring materials out of the dungeon and to him, and it was from this dungeon that he'd gained some of his study material...

Having access to this library would have made him happy in nearly any other situation.

Instead, Vex searched. His bonus room was probably somewhere here but trigger conditions for bonus rooms were strange. His room had been , and so he could only guess that the trigger conditions were in some way related to that, the same way Misa had gained access to her room by replicating the conditions in which she had lost her village...

...except he had no such event in his past. He'd never been disconnected from the system. The closest he'd ever done in that regard was when he'd helped Derivan break free from it, and that had happened after the dungeon had created the bonus room...

...what type of magic had he used back there?

Vex paused, struck by the thought. He'd never considered it too relieved that he'd been able to help, and then too caught up by everything that had happened afterwards, maybe. That didn't feel like it was enough to explain him completely forgetting to explore this branch of magic. It didn't explain the fuzziness with which he remembered that notification that had appeared when he'd cast his spell.

WARNING: ###### aspect magic is not allowed

He'd known what that aspect was.

He'd understood that magic, when he was casting it, but that knowledge had been taken away from him at the same moment the box had appeared. It was part of the reason he hadn't focused on it with the intensity he otherwise would have. A magic that could interact directly with the system, that allowed him to act on it maybe the same way Derivan could with Patch and Shift having access to that would have changed everything for him.

No wonder it had been locked away.

Vex wanted to start iterating through all the ideas he had and he had so many, now that he understood more about how these aspects came about but something gave him pause, and it wasn't just the fact that Irvis was beginning to thaw.

It was the information he received, in a very familiar sort of way, of an attack. Of a multitude of attacks. Vex had to put down the book to parse the rush of knowledge, because the flow was stronger than it had been the first time Derivan had used their combined Sign to block an attack. A small part of him managed to mentally reach out and call out the system menu again, to see if the interference had faded, but he stumbled and had to lean on the wall to steady himself before he could read the chat.

Instead, he focused on his mind. If Derivan was using their Sign, he was trying to tell him something; if he was just blocking one of Misa's attacks or something...

But he already knew that wasn't the case. Derivan wouldn't have used it for something as trivial as that; the circumstances under which he would try to contact Vex in this way were few and far between, and Vex had no reason to think this was anything less than a real attack.

He was, of course, right. But more interesting and more alarming was the nature of what was attacking his friends. He felt a part of his mind chugging along, automatically sorting the information he'd gathered, and parsing it together with what he'd just learned.

Aspect of Hatred, Irvis

A physical manifestation of a single aspect in the mana, given life through a concentration and manipulation of Reality. This particular form of manifestation allows him to manipulate aspects of reality that are not normally accessible without the use of a Reality Shard.

Poison Fang, (26)

A poisoned bite. The specific poison varies, but are almost universally drawn from shifted realities that have been rendered uninhabitable, usually due to the actions of poison mages in Elyra. Plague aspect variant.

Discordant Sound, (32)

An infectious sound, gathered from an unpatched Bard class. The sound does physical damage through a quirk in system-assisted physics and possesses a quality that will cause listeners to sing along, damaging themselves in the process. Sound aspect variant.

Biting Sight, (47)

A broken image of something that has been erased. To look upon it is to wipe away any memories that would otherwise be associated with that image, as the associated infolock spreads to any memories that are 'contaminated'. Mental aspect variant.

Vex swallowed. That was probably why he'd struggled so hard to process everything over a hundred distinct attacks, even if many of them were the same ones; he wondered if that was related to why Misa's health costs were per-attack. Perhaps the system had to process each one individually, the way he'd had to.

More importantly, this meant his friends were also being attacked by Irvis... and a more powerful version of him, if this was any indication. Vex glanced at Irvis' frozen body, feeling a slight chill come over him that had nothing to do with the ice magic that kept the living Aspect in stasis.

If there was more than one of him, he wasn't necessarily safe.

And with Derivan and the others in trouble, he had to decide what to do, and quickly.