First things first, Nephthys thought, pulling up her stats. She was not entirely sure how she did this. It was an instinctive feeling, like moving her arms.
[Name: Nephthys
Race: Celestial Djinn
Class: Nova {Unique}
Level: 999+]
That was all well and good, but where was everything else? Prelude had stats like Intelligence and Strength as well as bars for health, stamina, and mana. None of those appeared in her current stats.
Nephthys, sitting cross-legged on her bed, balled up her fist and held it before her, squeezing it tightly. She felt good, strong. Addy had been careful to stay healthy in the other world, yet the way she felt now simply could not compare with even the healthiest she had ever felt over there.
She stood and walked to the center of the room, striking a fighting pose suddenly. She had not wanted to spend her hard-earned money on frivolities, but she had taken several classes throughout her life, mostly to find ways to exercise without expensive equipment or memberships. This included a few classes on fighting, and though she was certainly not close to competing in MMA, she felt she could throw a decent punch.
She bent her knees and braced her core, punching with all her might. She turned her trunk into the punch and felt the force transfer all the way from her legs, up through her body, and into her arm.
Crack!
She felt the rush of wind that her punch sent blasting outward, the covers on her bed ruffling behind her from the shockwave. That had certainly never happened when she punched back home. That both confirmed she was far stronger than she had ever been and lent credence to her Prelude stats transferring over, even if they were not presented numerically.
Sitting back down on the bed, she assumed a meditative position and cast her thoughts inward. She felt her heart beating, the blood coursing through her body, especially in her neck. In the silence provided by the room’s thick stone insulation, she thought she could just about hear her heart. That was strange. Did Djinn have hearts?
A fragmented memory of pain and violation surfaced, and she probed her body with purpose this time. There, sitting directly between where she imagined her heart and stomach should be, was a black hole surrounded by a glowing accretion disk. It seemed to oscillate between glowing a pale blue and a dark purple, the colors shifting when threads of the energy clashed.
It was strange how the information her inner eyes provided spoke of barely contained destruction, yet what her mind saw was beauty. It was like standing on a cliff, staring out at the sea. It was stunning, and somehow, the knowledge that it would kill you without even noticing only enhanced its awe and wonder.
What was this?
The notifications she had seen called it a Tesseract, which was…not helpful. Her knowledge of that word boiled down to a Sci-Fi McGuffin. It was a nonsense word that meant nothing. Sure, it was technically a four-dimensional structure, but the colloquialization was just ‘science-sounding thing.’
Her mind’s eye drew closer, peering into its event horizon, attempting to plumb its depths. There was something strangely alluring about it, as if it were inviting her in. Before she could even question whether it was wise, she poked her metaphorical head in, inhaling sharply at what she found.
“Holy fuck, man,” she said without thought.
Before her was an endless expanse, a void that extended farther than she could see. And it was filled with mana that swirled in enormous plumes of color, like solar rays. Some mana interacted and created even more vibrant colors, while other mana passed straight through, never touching or interacting. And this was all ambient.
Its source was a point so bright it hurt to look at, even to her inner eye. It was somehow both infinitely far away and right in front of her. It was so small she could not see it, yet it filled her entire field of view. It was a point of mana—or something mana-like. It was so infinitely dense, so thoroughly compressed, that when it ejected the occasional ray, the mana it contained was enough to make the entire space too bright to look at.
It was like a mana engine, like a nuclear mana reactor, that just kept pumping out mana and then pulling it back in to compress, or whatever it was actually doing. The sight was so stunning that Nephthys spent many minutes merely observing, floored by what she was witnessing.
And it was hers.
Focusing back on the present, she blinked a few times to rid herself of the mana singularity within her, which had somehow seared its image into her actual eyes, too. She opened and closed her hand, ensuring nothing had changed. Intellectually, she knew that nothing would have changed by simply realizing that such a thing existed within her, but she couldn’t help feeling somehow different than just minutes ago.
Breathing slowly, she calmed herself. Her mana pool was pretty unbelievable, even back in Prelude, due simply to her grinding, but this…this was something different altogether.
One of the key disadvantages of a Djinn is the lack of stamina. Although a Djinn’s mana pool increases dramatically from absorbing it, it must now also use mana as fuel for everything it does.
This means that a Djinn is constantly burning its mana supply doing mundane things. Walking, sitting, and even just existing cost mana. The boost to the mana pool was significant, but one ironically ends up paying even closer to their mana supply as a Djinn than before.
With this Tesseract constantly creating mana in her chest, Nephthys wondered if that would ever be an issue for her again. She could not even imagine the spellcasting required to put a dent in that amount of mana. Surely, the entire world would be reduced to ash before the mana ran out?
“Let’s see, how do I—menu? Magic…uh, spells?” she said aloud, beginning to feel foolish.
A torrent of images formed around her, tracing the air with multicolored pictures and diagrams like holograms in Sci-Fi movies. This manifestation was different, but she recognized the Spellbook from Prelude. Normally, it would just be a grid-based menu that the player could scroll through to assign spells to quickslots, but this was…actually, what was this?
The images were varied, but they shared a common theme. A diagram of wires running through what looked like an X-ray of a human body was the base, with the paths varying wildly. Some twisted, turned, and looped back on themselves and were lit in blue, while others nearly traced a straight path through the body in red, looking more like blood vessels than anything magical.
Nephthys focused on one of the images, imagining her own body overlaid with the mana pathways in it. A stirring drew her attention toward her center, the void there calling to her. It was like a twitch, though the thing was far from a muscle, like a foot might twitch when one thinks of walking.
Operating on an instinctive urge in the back of her mind, she drew mana from the void like yarn from a spool, threading it through her body like the image, cycling it along the pattern. A heat began to rise in her body, but she felt it was not enough. The magic was impeded by the thread’s speed. It was not a complete pattern at this speed, merely a tracing, a still image.
She spun the thread faster, the speed increasing seemingly without limits. It spun and spun until a living pattern emerged, and Nephthys could feel the magic pulsing beneath her skin, practically begging to be released. And she obliged.
A spark shot through her mind and, Nephthys not being prepared for it, passed straight through with almost no input from her. A flash so bright it forced her eyes closed appeared before her, lighting the room in white light that felt like it should be burning the furniture, given its luminosity.
Nephthys quickly severed the magic, and the light disappeared immediately, rather than a slower fade-out as she expected. That was clearly the Light spell, a beginner mage’s best friend in dark dungeons. She had never seen it that bright or intense, though. She suspected she also knew the reason for its divergence.
Circulating another thread of mana, she was prepared this time and caught the spark as it flashed through her mind. Communicating her intentions, packaging the information within the spark as it passed through and out of her mind, the spell was completed.
A small ball of red appeared, hovering over her hand. It gave off a warm light somewhere between a candle flame and a torch, and it was not difficult to look at directly. She severed her connection to the magic, and it faded slowly, like a flame burning itself out rather than immediately extinguished.
That spark in her mind, that was the point where the spell was actually created. The mana circulation was preparation, but the conditions of the actual spell were decided in that tiny window. Considering the speed of thought, and how she completely missed the window the first time, spells must activate in fractions of a second.
Why then was there such a long casting time for spells in Prelude? The obvious answer was game balance. Mages slinging bunker-busting spells left and right would make for poor gameplay as a physical attacker, so it was pretty obvious that they would need to be balanced somehow.
This was not a game, however. This world was real, so why should she be limited to casting slowly? The lead-up to spell activation was the longest part, though it took only a few seconds. Perhaps that could be shortened with practice? She had only cast a single spell thus far. Surely, if the casting time was already mere seconds, she could reduce it even further?
Her pondering was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Madam, may I interrupt your rest for a brief word?” Ramose asked, his voice entering the room eerily well, as if he spoke next to her.
“Enter,” she said, cringing at how grandiose she sounded.
Addy was not the most socially capable, nor was Nephthys, by extension. She managed as a shift leader. Leading a shift was simply part of logistics, after all. But that was the extent of her social graces.
Ramose thanked her as he entered, closing the door behind him as he approached to stand at the foot of her bed. He clasped his hands behind his back, his posture perfectly straight, yet not rigid. He was the figure of poise and precision.
“I thought to inform you that Akhenaten has disappeared,” he said flatly.
“...” Nephthys stared at him, expressionless.
“Ahem–I went back to the roof, thinking to assist him with any after-ascension activities he might have, but he was gone. I have searched Nemesis top to bottom, consulting several members along the way. None has seen him, and I could not find him myself. It is as if he simply vanished into thin air,” he explained, falling silent and staring at her.
What the fuck does he want from me? she thought. What could she say to that? ‘Look harder?’ or maybe, ‘Okay?’ The man was an adult, right? He could leave if he wanted, surely. Why was Ramose sweating? Was he nervous? Did he think he failed somehow, or that she would punish him?
What did the former NPCs think of her, anyway?
“Did he…walk out the front door?” she asked, incredulous.
“I do not see how that would be—” Ramose started before his eyes widened, the first real break in grace she had witnessed in him.
“Of course! Forgive me, my lady. Such a thought must seem obvious, but I should inform you that during your ascension—that is, for nearly two hundred years—a tremendous energy has been entirely surrounding Nemesis.
“It vaporized anyone attempting to enter and locked us all in. Simply leaving through the front gate has been unthinkable for nearly two centuries, so the thought had not even crossed my mind. Thank you very much for your wisdom,” he said with a bow.
Was he mocking her? Surely, she had no way of knowing that there was some, what, plasma or whatever, surrounding the base.
“If it has been centuries since Nemesis has interfaced with the outside world, we should send out scouts. No doubt much has changed, much that we should be aware of,” she said, shoving past her concerns of being mocked.
“Of course, madam. I will see to it right away. May I help with anything else?” he asked, standing from his bow.
“Unless there is an emergency, please leave me until the morning. I am still acclimating to…myself,” she requested, and with an “Of course, madam,” he left her room.
Alone with her thoughts once again, she cast out the veritable encyclopedia of her Spell book.
She was not leaving this room until she could confidently defend herself.
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