Chapter 5: The magician finally escapes from the cell…tadaa!

King Of The Forest

A few minutes and the pain subsides. Still squatting, I look at my hand and see the black smog dissipate. 'I guess it's not that simple.' I reflect. 'Maybe 5-5-5 had a different type of magic I don't know of. Or maybe he used the mana to make himself stronger.'

'Maybe I can do the same.' With that in mind, I move mana into my hand but don't release it. Feeling the mana within my hand, I go into an awkward stance and hit the bar in front of me. The bar stays strong without even a whisper of movement.

'Ahh fuck.' I scream within. 'I guess that's not how it works, damn.' Shaking my hand to relieve the pain, I start to think. 'Okay let me think, ummm Oh, I could change the shape of my dark magic, maybe I can make something to cut the bars.'

With that idea, I make the black smog again. 'Lets see…. A knife.' I think but the smog doesn't follow my thoughts exactly. There's an all black object that sort of resembles a knife but it's disfigured. I concentrate more, giving it a kitchen knife's length, a sharp part, and a small blade with a rod for a handle forms on my hand with black smoke coming from it.

'Okay cool, so my dark magic is kinda like umbramancy.' I lay my hand down and the all black makeshift knife floats. 'I can move it with my thoughts but I can feel that it takes my mana.' I say while watching the blade move around in front of me. The blade doesn't wisp around like a fairy, no, it's like a baby bird learning to fly, its form coming apart as I try to move it faster. I stop the blade and try to clutch it but my fingers go through. 'Huh…don't tell me.' I wave my hand and it phases through the blade like gas, deforming it a little before it goes back its shape. A sigh escapes me.

'I guess that's why it looks ethereal. Maybe I can make it into a solid object.' I make the blade float on to my hand and concentrate on the mana in the blade. 'So it is like gas.' I focus on the mana and try to bring it together. The blade deforms and turns into a black smoky blob that gets smaller and smaller until I feel some sort of flexible bonds form in the mana. I relax and the blob immediately expands into a black smog. 'Dammit, okay one more time, I think I got it.' I focus on the black smog again and after a while it stops shrinking and the blob is there again. Still focusing on keeping the mana together, I push my index finger into the blob and it feels like putting my hand inside a thin liquid as it covers my finger.

'Okay so the mana is like a heavy gas, bring it together until the bonds form and concentrate to keep the bonds together to make it into a liquid state. I also have to think of keeping the blob together like surface tension.' I analysed the magic system of this world while looking at the blob in front of me. 'Lets see how it interacts with other objects.' I use mana to move the blob to the bars and the difficulty has increased immensely compared to moving the ethereal blade. The bonds in the blob threaten to break as it moves and I fight off the urge to push the blob with my hand because I assume it would act just like water in space. Even if I could increase the surface tension, I don't have enough focus and skill to do so.

The blob nears a bar and with a push, it hits the bar and envelops the bar like a liquid in space would but it doesn't separate into small blobs because of me retaining its bonds and surface tension.

"Hahhhh." I breathe out, now realising that I've been holding my breath through the whole experiment. The blob on the bars turns back into the smog and I let it dissipate.

'This whole thing took around 2 thirds of my whole mana. I wonder if I can use the mana around me to regenerate the one inside.'

I sit down in the lotus position and it feels weird because I'm missing a good chunk of mass on my right side but I ignore it, focusing on recovering mana. I concentrate, moving the mana around me, into me, and it feels like I'm pulling against a rock. Still, I manage, with a lot of focus and furrowed brows the mana moves towards me but it doesn't enter. It's like a breeze brushing against me. 'I guess I have to wait for it to recover on its own.'

****

It took a while for my mana to regenerate, like a long while. I estimated about more than 8 hours but it would've been shorter if I didn't continue using the mana to make shapes and objects while I was bored waiting. The lotus position, or any position did nothing to increase the rate of mana recovery.

'Okay. Just like I practised….'

While waiting and making shapes with dark magic, I hypothesized that I could make a solid mana construct and immediately tested that.

I did the same process of making liquid dark magic, creating a small blob. Thinking that the solid form would be much smaller, I increased the mana and made a bigger blob the size of a basketball, slapping it and making it jiggle to test the tension. 'Hehe.Ahem'

I focused and tried making the blob smaller, compressing it and it worked but it was still in its blob shape moving acting like a liquid in space. Interested, I poke the blob but it was much harder to push through, kinda like a super thick syrup. I could feel the bonds in the mana had increased and looking at them I had an idea. 'Strengthen the bonds.'

The bonds were flexible so I had to make them hard and rigid to form a solid but it was harder said than done because it wasn't as simple as adding mana. I had to make the bonds hard with will and there were a lot of them.

I managed to harden the bonds and in front of me was a matte black marble, floating in the air. I took it with my hand knowing using mana would be wasteful and difficult. I was holding a solid marble that I could move around and feel but like always, there was something different. It was bouncy. I figured it was because I didn't compress it enough so I stopped the experiment there and now….

****

Standing facing the bars, I take a deep breath and lift my left hand to look at my palm. Focusing I release mana through my hand and black smog comes out forming a large misty cloud that's at least 1 meter in height in front of me. 2 thirds of my mana are drained immediately."hahhh." I sigh. I turn the black cloud into a smaller but big liquid blob the size of a beach ball.

'Okay. Now compress.' I had proved my idea that the level of compression affected the hardness. So I knew what to do.

I begin to compress the liquid beach ball and it gets smaller. After coming to the size of a basketball and the consistency of heavy syrup, compression became very difficult. Come on…a little more.' I continue to compress the blob.

The blob becomes the size of a cue ball(pool) after which I'm unable to compress it any further without losing my focus and having some(focus) left over for the next step. I take a deep breath looking at the blob and let it rest on my palm because keeping it floating costs mana. 'It finally has enough surface tension on its own to lay on my hand without spilling over. I'm sure this blob is kinda like molten metal at this point. Now to strengthen the bonds.'

I now focus on strengthening the bonds and it takes much, much longer than the first time because the large amount of mana used to make the solid increased the number of bonds.

After a long while….

'Finally.' I cheer looking at the slightly smaller cue ball on my palm and I squeeze it. 'Yep. That's a solid ball right there.' Smiling, I throw the ball up and down. 'It's weird how it weighs almost nothing but it's so hard. I'll think about that after I get out of here.' I begin to shape the ball into a blade and it's harder to manipulate compared to its base form but manageable.

A much smaller knife rests on my hand, this time with jagged edges like a serrated blade. 'Let's get out of here.'Hours of cutting ensue and it feels worse because I'm not left-handed.

As I'm half way through the bar, I learn something about my magic. The construct dissipates with time. So I either have to put more mana as I'm using it or I use the construct until it dissipates then make another.

So…I chose to use the latter method because as I use the construct, my mana recovers. So I use all my mana to make a longer blade and continue cutting as it recovers.

A few black blades later…*clank*. The bar falls to the other side and I immediately squeeze through the gap because it's big enough. The bars rubbing against the wounds on my chest makes me wince but I don't stop until finally…I'm out of the cell.

'Yessssss!!!!Fuck yeah. I'm out, I'm finally out. I'm….' While cheering loudly in my head I turn right and see a scene that pours cold water on my emotional burst.

*glup*

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