I get into the bunker where I find the asshole in the room with the core as he examines the giant mana crystal pillar. As I enter, I feel his senses touch me, and he turns his attention to me.

“Again…” he stares at my missing arm and my eye that is close to being healed, “do you even realize how much we tend to lose limbs? It can't be normal at this point. Is it Bambi's curse?”

“What have you done?”

“Just try to think about it; you could build five of us with the limbs you’ve lost. Actually, do you think it could work? If Lily helped...”

“It's not that many. And maybe? What have you done?”

“It is a lot. We are the only reason Lily’s been able to level up her healing skill so quickly; we boosted her. And I did nothing wrong.”

“The sleeping noodle moved,” I say.

“Yup. I woke it up.”

He did what to the three-question-mark monster?

“Damn, it is fun to tease you like that. I know how you will react, and most of the time I can even predict the exact words you’re going to say, yet it's still funny. Like a game, trying to predict a coin flip."

I can't even say much, it really does sound fun, “So, want to show off?”

“Oh, you know me well.” He gestures at me and leads me to another room. “I already toured the bunker, and it's mostly useless, as is to be expected. At this point, I bet it’s the system making things more difficult. All the data has been deleted, the facilities are destroyed and it’s beyond my abilities to make them work. At the moment it's just a cool place to store the mirror. Obviously you’re free to check it out, you will surely find a lot to inspire you here along with a few tidbits of knowledge.”

We enter the auditorium, and he boosts his body and sits on the podium, and I follow, taking a seat in the front row.

He explains, “Do you remember that annoying acid serpent and the weird aura snake?”

Oh my, he did not do that.

“Yes, I did that!”

Fuck.

“Yup, fuck.” Clonthaniel seems to be having fun, “I was thinking, you know. This bunker’s sole purpose was to store the mirror, so how can we learn what happened here? Surely not the Sanctuary and even the Bastion seems to be lacking. Then I remembered that there was a quest to avoid waking up the sleeping Calamity. Why? No one would go close to it anyway, right?”

He swings his legs, as he uses a thermal orb floating between us to light the huge room and its rows upon rows of empty seats.

“It's a bit of a stretch, but I wanted to find out if there was some kind of facility or bunker near the sleeping noodle,” he adds with a dramatic pause, “And there is! The problem is that I couldn't get inside. So, I found the acid snake asshole, left some marks on him, and imitated his mana. Then I used a few bombs mixed with his acid to attack the noodle. You probably saw the outside, but the big boy wasn't happy at all.”

“Damn, I would have loved to see that.”

Clonthaniel nods, “Cool as heck. Anyway, the asshole snake is gone. The danger noodle moved a bit, which allowed me to place a few anchors through a crack in the entrance he’s been sleeping on. I already sent a few monsters through one of the anchors, and it hasn’t woken him up, so we can go in a bit.”

“So, you are hoping something inside will help you?”

“Yup, the natives here created the Veil, so they will surely have some nice stuff in their databases. And that place seems to be one of the facilities they used to work on the Veil. Even Butler assumed there might be a facility like that in the Valley.”

At first, I wanted to trash-talk him for taking such a risk, but then I took notice of my missing arm. Ehm, maybe let's stay quiet about that for a bit.

It also confirms that we are slowly becoming more and more different. His goals are different than mine, so he’s thinking about different things, and practicing other skills.

It's fascinating to watch, and when I think about it now, most of the things he did make sense, and I totally can see myself doing the same in his situation.

“By the way, healing with our passive is quicker when you use thermal energy from the Vortex Core,” I tell him.

“Sounds good. Will you give me one of the Voidsteel blades?” he looks at the new one that I just got.

Without hesitation, I throw it to him, and he grabs it.

I know both of us are thinking of the same thing at that moment.

“Let's practice controlling black mana. We can spend a day or two on it." I suggest. "After that, we can go to the Bastion, get some mana conductive paint, and maybe a few more useful items. After we come back here, we can enter the bunker under the Calamity,”

“That much is reasonable. Also, I want you to help me with the core of this bunker for half a day. I think I found a few interesting things, and two sets of eyes might be better than one.”

“Okay.”

Without any other words, we get to it.

 

---

 

A day passes, we do not sleep, and the black mana orb constantly hums in the air, fighting against us.

“It just keeps being annoying,” Clonthaniel complains. “If we lose even a bit of concentration it starts pulling all our mana in.”

“I thought giving it a different shape would help, but right now it seems that the only thing that weakens the effect is absorbing it into our body.”

“It might be because of our passives, hell, maybe the Mantle is helping or maybe it’s our Mana Circuits.”

“Mana Circuit sounds more reasonable, maybe it’s our passives. Upgrading our Mana Circuits might help.”

“Well, it's not like we’re going to be upgrading our eyes; they’re hard enough to deal with already.”

I nod, “Do you still think there might be hidden grades to active skills and traits?”

“For sure, we already have confirmation when it comes to active skills given that there are skills like [Disintegration], and what did the guy from hard difficulty have? Water blast or some bullshit. If that doesn't confirm hidden grades for skills then nothing does.”

“I don't even remember his name, C something. Well, it would be cool if Mana Wavelength Iris was rare. Even though I still liked the Arcane Skeletal Framework. Could be an amazing trait.”

“Yeah, Vortex Core was an attempt to copy it, but I bet the trait would be amazing.”

Both of us stop at once and send the black mana orb to the corner of the room, where it will crumble on its own once we stop supplying it with mana.

As I stand up, I ask, “So, what did you want to do with the core of this bunker?”

“I want to try activating it for a moment. The two of us should be able to if we use Mana Reservoir as well,” he says, to my surprise, and he noticed it. “You wouldn't believe how mana-hungry that thing is. How the heck did they even power it?”

“Champion?” I ask while we walk there.

“If I was a Champion, I would tell them to fuck off if they kept asking me to recharge their bunker.”

“True,” I agree. “Maybe they absorbed ambient mana and used that to power stuff. But I still think Champions could be the answer.”

“Why?”

“Money. Imagine being a Champion and every once in a while they come to your house. You fill some mana stone for them, and they use it to send mana to the core. You get paid a shitload of money, and you can spend your time doing Champion stuff. If there were a few dozen Champions that would probably make it less irritating to boot. Or imagine your Absolute ordering you to do it.”

“Yeah, but I bet the owners of this place wouldn't like that much. You know, engineers or enchanters would certainly try to automate this to save themselves the headache.”

As we theorize, it feels natural, and the ideas we throw at each other sound reasonable. But I do remember that I'm just talking to myself, and to an extent I just find it funny. It's such a weird feeling to talk, and agree with myself.

As we reach the high ceilinged room with the large mana crystal, we reach the control panel.

Duplicaniel shows me where to place the anchor, and we do so. Then we prepare for a while, and when it's all ready, mana bursts forth from both of us.

Our body reserves, our Mana Reservoir, all of it rushes to the anchor placed on the mana crystal. In waves, our mana rushes inside, filling it, powering it, and the crystal, as wide as a car and tall as a skyscraper, starts glowing ever so slightly.

My role is to control our mana and make sure it flows to the right places, while Clonthaniel bridges inscriptions and collects information.

We push even harder, and a hum fills the room and the lights on the walls flicker on for a moment. Until Clonthaniel redirects that mana and cuts off the lighting to avoid wasting it.

His eyes glow with a golden circle around the pupil, his hand on the panel. And I do the same, even though it strains me, just in case, as I follow his lead and look through the information he’s accessing.

He knows I’m suspicious of him but he doesn't complain when I do.

It takes only a few minutes before our mana drops to a dangerous level, and once we stop finding anything new, we cut off the connection. My Mana Reservoir is nearly empty, and my body mana starts filling it back up.

As we shake off the aftereffects, we let our bodies heal.

“I mean, there’s some nice stuff for a future evil lair—inscriptions, ideas, information on materials, all that stuff—but I want more,” he complains.

“It might be part of the system. It likes to feed us information slowly, so maybe this bunker only contained the mirror and information on the creation of the core and future base.”

“That could be it. Hopefully, there will be more under the danger noodle. Anyway, do your stuff, and I will do mine. We can try playing with black mana after we’ve had a bit of rest, and then head to the Bastion.”

“How long will your anchors last down there?”

“Three to four days.”

I leave the room on my own afterward, I walk through the bunker. It's cold, it's dark, and my steps echo in the empty rooms. I examine them with curiosity. There’s weird architecture, and broken inscriptions all over the place. Along with a few pieces of furniture and some other items that got left behind.

In time I come to the massive forge, it’s amazing that something like this could rival the size of a small building. The inscriptions have been broken here as well, so I can't activate it without fixing some things. But I still take some time to look things over and examine it.

Sure, my crafting skills are far from optimal. Especially when it comes to creating something new. But I could just have someone else take care of it, and inscribe what they make. Or I will learn it when I get bored.

Observing and marking down as many details as possible using a mana stone, I go from room to room. I do the same thing in each of them.

I try to learn as much as possible and write it down.

After a few hours, I’ve come to realize that my duplicate was right. Even though this place is fascinating, it is as empty as its interior. Instead, I spend time training my skills and examining my newest construct, Vortex Core.

So far, it's been an amazing addition, and I'm extremely happy with it. I’m happy with the amount of thermal and kinetic energy it can hold and it’s certainly much more than I would be able to do on my own.

“Status,” I say.

Name: Nathaniel Gwyn
Difficulty: Hell
Floor: 5 - Mentorship
Time left until forced return: 4y 18d 10h 11m 36s
Traits (2/3): Mana Circuit 1/3, Mana Wavelength Iris 0/3

Lvl 224
Strength: 109
Dexterity: 107
Constitution: 263
Mana (Stage 1/3 - Vast Mana): 874 + 874
Primary Class: Focused Channeler (Epic)
Sub-class: [Initiate of Pride]

Active skills:
Focus - Lvl 46
Mana Manipulation - Lvl 46
Perception - Lvl 42
Redistribution - Lvl 43
Resonance - Lvl 42
Mana Domain - Lvl 33
Tether - Lvl 29
Regalia - Lvl 19
Infusion - Lvl 24

Constructs:
Reinforcement (Construct)
Thermokinetic Mana Heart (Construct)
Mana Regulator (Construct)
Mana Sovereignty Mantle (Construct)
Vortex Core (Construct)

Passive skills:
Mana-Fortified Resilience (rare)
Mana Reservoir (epic)
Arcane Resilience (epic)
Phoenix Embrace (epic)
Mana Overload Absorption (epic)

Tokens:
Beyond Difficulty entrance token

Shards: 11,892

Not wanting to push things further, I stand up and head towards my duplicate. The guy is annoying as heck, but we can test things together that would otherwise tear my body apart. Even then, I'm sure he’s already planning something, even though he won’t share it.

I'm also extremely curious, so I let him cook. But the question is if I should let him cook.

Well, anyway, I still have this collar I took from Ir… Ir, something guy. Cattle guy? Soylent green producer?

Null Collar (Epic): Actively disrupts the wearer's magical attempts and skills, using absorbed mana to diminish both magical potency and physical vitality.

There is a bit to learn from it that could improve our disruption of mana or even create a similar lasting effect without items. Using [Tether] to anchor that sort of disrupting stuff to someone could work. Hell, I already used [Tether] to “glue” a black mana dagger to the First One, and [Tether] seems to be a better skill than I initially thought. It even managed to ignore my black mana, at least partially.

Is it because it's a spatial skill? Probably? Who knows. Oh, and fuck the system.

Anyway, let's test some stuff and head out to the Bastion. I bet there will be some more interesting things and maybe we can get a few more honest answers.