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That particular detail stumped them for a while. The new rift creating plates that they had made actually created a flat portion at the bottom of the rifts, which should have prevented any mana from coming up through the ground. But there was clearly still something influencing the mana.
Their theory was that Matt’s personal mana wasn’t completely pure anymore despite Erwin, Luna, and Kurt all agreeing that it was unaspected mana.
They even made a special trip to the largest city on the planet and found a group of kids being awakened.
To isolate that as a variable, they brought with them a struggling Tier 1 monster pulled from the most neutral rift they had made so far. For the first time, Matt got to see the other side of a mortal’s awakening.
A monster was placed in the machinery connected to the awakening chairs, and then killed. The killer then shunted the essence into the machinery, where it was transferred to the teen, and then absorbed so they could step into Tier 1.
It was incredibly efficient. One Tier 1 monster could awaken two dozen mortals. The machinery was that good at splitting the essence into the smallest of portions, as only the tiniest amount was needed.
Then, they had all the kids donate their mana for a Tier 2 mana stones value in credits. It was quite the reward for them doing nothing, but Matt and Erwin were able to discern that the kids’ mana had no differences to Matt’s. At least, none they could detect in a dozen tests.
They still repeated their tests with the new mana types, to no appreciable variances.
After that failure, they redesigned their rift creating formation plates, and added a barrier as a way to keep out ambient essence, thus removing it from the formation. That required six iterations of formation plates since they needed the plates themselves to be outside of the formation. It was similar to the designs of their earliest versions.
When they tried to create a rift with that set up, they were left scratching their heads. Even when Matt pumped in nearly a million mana into the formation, they still had no rift.
The theories they were tossing back and forth were becoming more and more esoteric. Or they were, until Liz wandered over to observe and help get them back on track.
She looked from between the locked-up formation and the pair of mad scientists, and asked, “Isn’t it just like the saying, ‘Life makes mana. Mana makes essence. Essence creates rifts. Rifts convert all three’? You don’t have any essence in there. So, no rift.”
Matt and Erwin looked at each other in bemusement at their stupidity.
“I can’t believe we overlooked that.” Matt scratched his head as he tried to laugh off the shame as Liz walked away chortling.
Erwin shrugged. “That’s just how it goes sometimes, you miss the most obvious stuff. We were simply too deep into the weeds, as they say. That’s why assistants are good. Also breaks. Mostly breaks, actually.”
Matt looked back to their bubble of mana and asked, “So, what do we do now? New formation plate time?”
Erwin looked at the ring on his hand and then to the rift. He repeated that action half a dozen times, before withdrawing an essence stone and meeting Matt’s eyes.
“Well, I guess we just add Essence?” Even the older man seemed unsure.
Matt figured that nothing bad would happen as Erwin tossed the essence stone inside the barrier.
The world went blue as the mana reacted to the introduction of essence explosively.
Instinctively, Matt activated [Cracked Phantom Armor] and protected his face, but Erwin was as fast as his Tier befit.
He stuck out a hand and, instead of washing out in a fury, the energy was directed upward in a geyser of mana.
Everyone else came running as Erwin started cursing, as his hand had been almost entirely scoured of skin.
Matt was just impressed the man had been hurt at all. He never shared his exact Tier, but he had in passing mentioned his Tier 25 Talent, so he was at least that strong. To have his flesh stripped off by touching the explosion was impressive. Scary, in fact, It meant that Matt wouldn’t have teeth left if the older man hadn’t stepped in.
Melinda moved forward despite Erwin waving her off. “Don’t worry about it. I make healing potions by the ring, and you don’t need to go wasting all your mana trying to patch me up. There’s a few Tiers of difference at play, after all.”
The healer of the Empire ignored that entirely and cast a [Healing Touch] on the man.
To only Erwin’s astonishment, the hand regrew its skin in a matter of seconds.
Erwin blinked at his hand twice before turning to examine Melinda closer, with his glasses flaring to life.
“Wait, wait, wait. How did you do that?” The man’s eyes flicked off to the side. “Wait, I got a message about that? Oh. Hm, where did those go… Ah. Hmm… Overhealth, oh, yeah… Oh. Oh!”
He stepped forward and started murmuring as he examined Melinda. “I thought that was a joke. How does that even work? Hm. Essence isn’t really…”
Mathew asked the question that Matt was thinking. “Did you really not notice that before now? Melinda’s been healing all of us from crippling injuries for months now.”
Erwin blinked several times at all of them. “Ummmm…I was… Of course I…um. Look, what’s important is that there’s some experiments I need to run now!”
That derailed their rift experiments for a few hours, until Melinda explained her Talent and demonstrated it for the man again.
Hearing that Melinda wanted to heal old age, Erwin immediately became interested, and started drawing up plans for her to try and attack the problem. Most of his ideas had been fueled by the suggestions of Baxter, but Erwin came up with a few points that were new to Melinda, and she was happy to workshop them with the higher-Tiered man.
The session ended when Erwin became more enthralled with the black goop that her Concept left behind when used on a rift monster than interested in her Talent.
- Writer
