Whispers of a Dead Empire

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I pushed myself from my mana realm and opened my eyes to regard the surrounding area. Mr. Kharon was sitting at the table, reading a book. "I'm back Mr. Kharon!" I shouted as I jumped up and dusted off my pants. Honestly, I was exhausted, but I wanted to keep pushing. It would be the only way that I would get stronger.

"Welcome back, little dragon." He told me as he gently closed his book.

I nodded, wandered over to him, and sat down in a chair. I was so tired, and it got worse as I thought about it. But still, I struggled against it the best that I could. It smashed into me and sank into my bones, and with each passing second, my eyelids grew heavy.

"Are you alright?" Mr. Kharon's voice teased me from my exhaustion.

I hummed my reply as I rested my head against the table and closed my eyes. Maybe I should take a quick nap and get it out of the way. I did just triple activate my core affinities, and that requires some time for my body to acclimate. I struggled with the thoughts for what felt like an eternity until the darkness finally crept in, and I nestled into its sweet embrace.

Lights flickered around me as I floated in oblivion's sweet release. Usually, I'd practice in my soul sleep, but I was comfortable just sitting here and staring into my mother's constellation. It was such a pretty dragon if I say so myself. I stretched out and flopped around for a bit as I got comfortable. I didn't mind being in this soul realm for short periods. But any more than that, it really bothered me. It would feel cramped and like I couldn't breathe, so I would avoid it. It's why my mother's threats to send me back terrified me. But I am doing my best to be a good dragon, so she has little reason to do it.

Today was a very productive day. I unlocked my undeath, gravity, and arcane core affinities. Once my body decided to wake up, then I could go back into my mana realm and adjust my minor affinities. But I don't think that I was all that worried about it. With the arcane being one of my mains, then I wouldn't need the others. At least, that was the hope. But I would mix and match as I saw fit. I would need them all eventually, anyway.

I giggled as I rolled over onto my stomach. Hopefully, mother will be proud of me after we duel. I've been working hard to impress her. Now the next question is, how much longer should I lie here? I felt a little lazy, but I knew I needed to train before the duel.

I weighed both options equally on my mind before I stood up. I can be lazy after my mother, and I duel. In the meantime, I want to practice in my soul sleep before I wake up. This was a safe space; what I could do here was almost limitless. So, I'll take advantage of it.

Let's start with gravity, then, since it has been teasing me the most. I felt a grin cross my face as I reached my hand out. A strange feeling stirred in my chest as I tugged the gravity mana within me. It was a harsh pull, which was to be expected. Gravity didn't exist here, so my body had to spend extra mana to create it.

Violet-colored energy seeped from my fingertips and gathered into a sphere. In the ambient light of mother's constellation, the sphere seemed to flicker and pulse as it spun. Once I was happy with the size, I held it close and studied it. In mother's notes, it talked about how gravity would pull and lock objects in orbits. Namely, planets around stars.

I glanced at the night sky above me and thought about how amazing that was. There was so much potential for gravity that I couldn't wait to uncover. I turned my attention to the sphere in my hand and ran through the notes my mother gave me. Let's see. It dictates weight, so would that mean I can affect gravity in the local area and either increase the weight or rapidly decrease it? Not only that, but in the notes, it talks about how gravity affects time. So could I even become a chronomancer with it?

Something akin to an evil cackle left my lips as I juggled the ball of gravity in my hand. I will be the strongest arch-mage there ever was, and there will be nothing that can stop me at this rate. But first, baby steps. I threw the ball of gravity into the air and pulled it back with my mental hand. But as I did, a thought struck me. What if I pulled it into orbit around me? I could be like a star!

My mental hand grasped the ball of gravity, and I quickly adjusted the distance between myself and the orb. But something nagged at me as I did it. It didn't seem to fit, no matter what distance I placed the orb. It was always just barely off. What was I missing? Was it the speed? I gripped it hard with my mental hand and threw it. It shot past me and almost escaped! How dare it try to run from me?

I pulled it back and studied it once more before returning to my mother's notes. Maybe the answer would be in there somewhere. Let's see here, it says that gravity attracts objects to the center of an object. So, that means I would need to create a second ball of this stuff and place it within me if I wanted it to orbit me. But didn't mother say that all objects create their own gravity? So why did I have to make another gravity orb to make it work? Was she wrong?

No, Mother is never wrong. Maybe I'm just messing something up. I sighed as I slightly tugged on the ball of gravity and pulled a portion of it away before pumping it full of mana. While I could have spent extra mana to create a separate ball of gravity, I took the cheap way and used what was existing. It was a running problem with some mages since creating something from nothing required using an obscene amount of mana. So traditionally, from what the books told me, many mages and Elementalist carried around something relating to the elements they had affinities in, so they could keep their mana costs in check. But the best part about gravity is that it exists almost everywhere. Which also gave me another idea that I'll test once I figured out how to make it orbit me.

I turned my attention to the second orb and pulled it to my chest. The second the sphere touched my chest, a strange feeling came over me. It was a tingle unlike any other, as my body felt different. It was a feeling I couldn't describe as my mental hand slipped away from the orb and sank through my flesh with no further prodding. I was both weightless and the heaviest I had ever felt. The very act of trying to breathe felt difficult as my body greeted the foreign substance. But something nagged at me, telling me I was on the right path.

I fought the panic that was trying to well to the surface as I closed my eyes and focused on the sphere as it slowly pushed through my chest. My body yearned to take a deep breath, but the further the sphere traveled, the harder it became to breathe.

But just when it became unbearable, a strange buzz came over me, and all the pressure crushing me fell away, and I sucked in a mouthful of that sweet air.

I eyed the annoying words that only seemed to appear when I was in here. It seemed wrong how they just floated above my eyes, and no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to get rid of them. How dare they have the audacity to tell me what to do? I skimmed the words before I averted my eyes. It told me what I needed to know. Now it can leave me be.

I glanced around and saw that the orb I had left outside was slowly rotating around me. I felt proud that I figured that part out. Now, the next thing that I needed to figure out was what the gravitronic points were that those blasted words mentioned. I placed my hands on my chest, focused inwards, and could feel the pull of gravity radiating from within me, clawing at everything around me. It felt greedy like it didn't care what was in its grasp because everything belonged to it. I nodded my head in approval once I made that revelation. Since it was mine, and it wanted everything, that means that I wanted everything, and those words couldn't be more accurate.

Now the next question was, how do I change gravity? I focused on the point inside of me, fed more mana to it, and found that the call of gravity only increased in strength, but when I restricted how much mana I pushed into it, it decreased a bit. This was interesting. Maybe that means I could increase the weight of my physical attacks and make them hit harder. There would be a lot of testing once my physical body wakes up.

But now that I have the other ball orbiting me, I was curious about something. The biggest struggle that elementalist struggled with was their affinity and its availability. To summon something from nothing costs a large amount of mana. Even more so if it's a minor affinity. So what if I use the pull of gravity to keep portions of the affinity close by?

It made sense, and keeping the ball of gravity here didn't seem to cost me any extra mana, nor did having a point inside of me. The only time it seemed to cost me anything was when I actively used it.

I tugged on my mana pool to get an idea of what I had, which, while I had a large pool, summoning the gravity ball for the first time, ate a large portion of it. At most, I could only summon one more element before I fell under the halfway point. I wouldn't go any lower than that, however, since that is when mana sickness comes into play, and I really didn't want to have a headache for a few days or the fatigue that came with it.

So, what element did I want to summon first? It would have to be a significant affinity of mine since anything more than that would overeat my mana pool. So, why don't I summon some arcane, then? The undeath would wait a bit since that would be my little secret. Once I was finished with my testing, I could take a nap here, and when I woke up in the real world, my mana pool should have recovered enough to keep expanding my skills before my duel.