The Insider System

Chapter 104: Going Deeper Pt.3

Entering the 41st floor that was supposedly used to practice magic for as long as the spire had existed. From what Joy had told him there were actually a few floors devoted to training the use of magic. Lake had thought it was a distance thing at first but then Joy had told him that when the teleporters worked distance was no issue and there had only been more than one to deal with the volume of people that used to live in the spire when this had still been the Mages guild.

It was funny to Lake to think about this massive training room not being enough at one time because now it was empty. It was weird to think the Mages guild had been so much stronger and had so many more members than the Alchemist guild when the Alchemist guild was still so much stronger than most other organizations.

Lake wondered if it was possible the other guilds and such had been affected in the same way that the mages guild had so they had also dropped in power leaving the status quo intact. That was very likely from what he had heard about how the Demon Lord was able to win people over or even just directly control you when you meet him in person.

"Joy, how do I enter one of these rooms?" There were smaller rooms that seemed to be for private practice and Lake wanted to use one but their doors were shut. "Use your badge." Lake guessed it was like how keycards worked in his old world. Putting his badge next to the door it slid open and he walked while telling joy she could go if she wanted.

She probably wouldn't mind with her job literally being standing in one place for hours, but where she usually did it she had other guards to talk to to pass the time, so Lake had no intentions of making her silently wait till he was done because it might be hours. Once the door had closed behind him he looked around and sat on the bench that was in the center of the room.

He thought it had to be what he was supposed to do with it being the only thing in the entire room. Now that he was here he quickly went through what he needed to do and what he knew about the Wind element. The wind element was almost as simple as an element could get; it was literally three principles: form color and speed. The form being gaseous, the color clear and for some reason a certain speed.

He wasn't sure why the speed was set so low, but unless you were only fighting small weak monsters you needed to get control of the speed principle so you could make your spells faster so they could do more damage. Gathering only a small amount of Wind mana into his hand, Lake spun it until it formed a small vortex in his hand.

He couldn't really see it too well with it being clear so he turned on Mana Vision. It wasn't necessary because he was controlling it, but he wanted to be able to see what he was doing, not just feel it. Ready to start for real Lake got it spinning as fast as he could with minimal effort then started to really try and spin it faster.

After a minute of trying he found his efforts had done nothing to speed it up. This was its principle that made it move at a curtain speed working against him and to make it go any faster he was going to need to figure out how to lift the restriction. He wondered if his skill Gale Force would help because it said it only Doubled the speed of Wind spells, and he wasn't casting any spells just controlling mana.

Also the fact that it just did it for him and he had no idea how it worked would probably not help even if it did affect what he was doing now. The other skill he had that he thought would help was Spell Weaver. It literally just made him better at controlling every principal, but he bet its effects would be subtle and hard to notice.

After some more time passed with zero progress Lake wondered if there was some way he could get a feel for what he was looking for. The first time he had used magic he had just used the mana Nelg had gathered to figure out how dark mana felt and through that process he had learned how to separate the element you were looking for from all the others.

There was no one around that he could copy but maybe he could try and separate the Wind mana into its three principles. He would be destroying it but he could always gather more so it was no big loss he just needed to figure out if he could even do so. It was possible he would need to be able to control the principles in the element to be able to pull it apart.

Stopping the vortex Lake tried his best to see if he was right but when nothing happened when he thought about breaking it down he was pretty sure he was right and this was a dead end. He thought maybe had started with the wrong exercise and he should have done the cube one first.

He already knew how to turn unsolid elements solid because he had done it with Dark mana during his first fight using magic. Trying to do so he found it wasn't that hard to make a solid cube out of the mana he had been using for the vortex. Lake stopped here to think about why he was able to do this, which was just changing its state from gas to solid, or in other words changing a principle, but he wasn't able to speed it up by changing the speed principle.

The only thing he could think of was he actually understood what a solid was in some way that he didn't understand speed but the way he saw speed there was nothing to it he didn't understand; it was just the speed you were going whether it be fast or slow.

Lake started to stretch the cube by adding in more mana as he thought about speed and once he got it to a size where he didn't feel like he could make it any bigger without it losing its shape he contracted it and slowly got it back to its original size. Even though it hadn't taken him too long it had actually been pretty hard to condense that amount of mana into such a small area.

It had also caused a cool effect where the cube now looked like it was made of glass instead of being completely invisible like it had been at first. After looking at it for a while he started the stretching process again. It was much slower now than it had been the first time because the amount of mana he was having to add to keep the density the same was much higher.

He also found he was having a hard time getting it anywhere near the size it had been the first time he had stretched it, and the edges that had been perfectly flat were now starting to lose their shape. A few seconds after he noticed this happening he lost control of the mana and it popped like a balloon.

It actually just returned to being a gas, but it felt like a rush of air and sounded like a balloon popping. He hadn't really learned anything from that other than this process would probably help someone who was having trouble turning air into a solid so they could use it to defend but he already knew how it worked to begin with, so he hoped there was more to it if he made it to the next round of compression this time.

Forming the cube again Lake quickly finished the first round and was to the part where he had failed the first time Doing his best to make sure there were no bulges in its shape Lake slowly increased the size until it was finally at the size he needed it to be to start the compression right after starting he could tell he was quickly starting to lose control and one of the sides started to bend outwards which meant he wasn't even compressing everything inside at the same rate.

Letting up and getting the cube back to the right shape, Lake tried again but much slower and was able to shrink it slightly before it started to bend again. Stopping before it could pop, Lake did his best to reshape it into a perfect cube, but was unable to, no matter what he tried. Trying to let it grow out a little so he could try again, Lake lost control for a second and the density dropped as some of the mana turned to air and burst from the side of the cube.

Sighing Lake let the rest of the air out there was no reason to continue because the method he had read said once the density dropped it was easier to just start again. Reforming the cube Lake quickly went through the first cycle, and slowly made it through the second round of stretching. He only slowed down once he started the compression again.