Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6), Dakota Krout [free novels to read TXT] 📗

potent as a character level increase, but still very welcome. His fatigue vanished in a haze of delight, and he sighed happily as he read the notification.

Class experience gained: 100.

You have reached Reductionist class level 1! Congratulations! Your understanding of reduction has increased. Bonus: you are now able to expend mana with a greater throughput so as to reduce within an area of effect. The area must be within an Aspect Array. (i.e. Field Array).

“Level one, just like that.” Joe stretched his neck, rolling his head from side to side. “Sure, I need to figure out what that bonus means, but I have plenty of things to test it on.”

Chapter Fifty-One

Joe walked over to a stalagmite and extended his Field Array around the metal spire. He touched the metal and let his mana inform him of the requirements.

Item: Slag Pile.

Reduction value: 739 Rare aspects, 2,149 Uncommon aspects, 3,819 Common aspects, 7,381 Damaged aspects, 10,843 Trash aspects.

Reduction cost: 125 mana per second. Estimated reduction time required: 40 seconds.

“Oh? It gave me an approximate reduction time?” Joe was extra pleased about this small change. “That means there is an estimated cost of… five thousand mana. I can foot that bill. Let’s see; just shy of eighteen hundred mana reserved by my buffs. Let’s drop the shield… okay, that gives me enough to spare. Do I just… will it? Or push on the mana?”

He tried to push the mana, but it was even easier than that; a notification appeared as he attempted to reduce the slag.

Activate area of effect? Instant cost: 5,000* mana. Estimated reduction time required: 1.5 seconds. More or less mana may be required after initial investment. Yes / No.

The asterisk opened a sliding scale on the mana which allowed him to play with the mana investment. When he added more, the reduction time increased. When he made a lower initial investment, the estimated time went higher. “I see. Pretty user friendly.”

He put in the entire amount and started reducing. As soon as it started, he dropped to the ground and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. It felt like his spine had been pulled out through his chest, but it only lasted for just over a second.

You are unconscious! Time remaining: 5… 4…

Waking with a gasp, Joe shot to his feet and looked around, making sure that he wasn’t being attacked. Then the migraine hit. He groaned and sank back down to his knees, his normally mana-suffused body unable to bear the sudden and instant loss of his entire mana pool. Luckily, his mana was coming back steadily, and each second brought relief to his body, as if he had been starved and dehydrated, but now had a direct IV drip pouring saline into his system.

Luck +2!

When he was once more able to see through his bleary eyes, Joe inspected the remnants of the slag spike. The vast majority of it had disappeared, leaving behind a perfect slice at the base that appeared as polished as glass. He touched it, just to see how clean the reduction had been, and smiled when he felt almost no friction at all. “This could have interesting applications… no more dropping my mana pool like that, though.”

He had expected that his mana channels—which had been widened—and the fact that his mana pool had been dispersed through his body, would help him deal with the rapid drain. Perhaps it had, actually. He hadn’t lost any health, but if he’d had an enemy near him, the test would have ended in disaster. “Let’s try over there next. This was a good source of material, but I need common stuff too, right?”

Joe walked to the edge of his active ritual, and started extending the Field Array. This time, he didn’t have a set goal in mind; the Reductionist just wanted a huge area. His mana raced out of him, worming through the garbage and extending further than he had ever managed before. Just as the first mana tendril reached past the ten meter mark, the entire thing collapsed. “That’s the limit, huh? At least for what I can’t see clearly, and only for now.”

Starting again, he made sure to guide the mana more carefully, and kept it tied to himself whenever it started to waver. Just as he approached the previous boundary, he stopped and set the mana in place. “Now, that’s good, but how do I…?”

Uncertain how he would be able to reduce what was in the area, Joe paused and tried to think logically. “This… clearly this is all disparate garbage. A touch of mana isn’t going to let me identify it. To reduce things in an area, I need to use the Field Array, so that has to tie into this process.”

Joe placed his fingers on one of the mana strands and attempted to send a mana ‘pulse’ through it. The first did nothing, so he sent a second, this time trying to tie his mana into the array.

Item: Approximately 10 cubic meters of Common and below material.

Reduction value: unknown. Total mass: 5,740 pounds of material.

Reduction cost: 5 mana per second. Estimated reduction time required: 600 seconds.

“That’s ten minutes of reducing.” Joe tapped his fingers together as he thought. “Or~r~r a total mana cost of three thousand if I do it all at once? I can handle that. My mana regen won’t even notice it. Okay… area of effect, and…!”

The pile of rubbish vanished, only a few small chunks hovering in the open air before falling to the ground. Joe bent over, clutching his chest as his body once again lost a huge pool of mana. “That’s… so unpleasant! I need to figure out—oh! I can hook mana batteries to my Field Array! I don’t need to do this directly; I can practically automate it!”

That led Joe down a rabbit hole, his excitement rooting him in one spot for almost ten minutes as he plotted out what would be needed to make an aspect generator function the way