Chapter 49 – Inner workings

"So we've set out in the morning, and according to Grant it will be an hour at our current pace to reach Black Lake." Daria says to the group, mainly to me, Letty, and Xethu since we weren't briefed by the Guild. We are gathered around a silent, almost lightless fire made with Daria's magic not to attract monsters. "The plan is that we cull the Water Serpent population tomorrow, harvest their materials, mainly horns since they are good magic conductors, rest in the same place for the night, and retreat to Black Harbor the next day." She says and stays silent for a while.

"You don't have to take any watches, we've already got a schedule with Grant. We won't be giving you any rewards for the mission itself, though anything you collect from the monsters will be yours. Also, the group from Hunter's Guild are regular hunters on one of their first missions. They aren't full hunters yet. Any questions?" She looks between us three.

We look between each other, and I and Letty shake our heads in response, though Xethu, relaxing on Catherine's side, speaks up. "Actually, yes, are we supposed to work with them, or are we just three... or two? Either way, are we separate groups with them?"

"Technically yes." Daria nods. "I don't know the exact details related to law and all that, but the Guild asked us to accompany them for some additional reward to let them experience working alongside real hunters. But we weren't told to watch out for them or anything, so technically we're just together in the same place." Hm. I can't say Wayfarers are normal hunters, but I guess it's close enough. Maybe working alongside real hunters is a cover for working with Wayfarers?

"Alright." Xethu nods and I notice Catherine eyeing her up.

"By the way, Xethu?" She asks and the demoness turns to her with raised eyebrows. "You are a demoness like Helia?"

"Nope." She shakes her head. "I'm a Mazoku, I'm different from Helia." She glances at me and I nod in confirmation.

"I'm not sure if I said it specifically, but I'm a Primordial. According to the description I got, for some reason we are called Demons nowadays, but the original name is a Primordial." I say. "Essentially we look similar to Mazoku, but, as you can probably guess, Primordials are stronger."

"Oh, alright." Catherine nods and looks at Letty sitting on my side. "What about you, if you're fine sharing? You look kinda like a vampire. Or a banshee."

"I'm a machine. Deus Ex Machina." Letty replies simply with a small smile and Catherine blinks.

"Like, made out of metal?"

"Nope." Letty grins, glancing at me. "Frankly, I've no idea what I am made of." I can say the same about me.

"...Okay." Catherine nods, kinda put off, but regains her vigor soon after. "If you're curious, I'm a Moonlight Wolfkin. You two use swords from what I have seen?"

"Yeah." Xethu says with a nod, patting the sword in her scabbard she has on her lap right now, but Letty makes an uncertain expression.

"Kinda?" She finally says and raises her hand with a swirl of black nanobots above it, which tansforms into a number of small weapons she inspects closely, rotating them around her finger. Swords, daggers, a scythe, a hammer, an axe, a staff and much more. "I use various weapons. Swords are what I used at first, but I'm experimenting with much more."

"Alright." Catherine nods, and she is about to say something else before Daria interrupts the conversation.

"Food is almost ready." She says, looking at us from her position by the fire and a few slices of lizard meat cooking on it. "Please tell me if you aren't eating?"

A logical question with the plethora of races we have - no two people of the same race. Letty raises her hand and I'm about to do the same, but I recall what Letty said a while ago about where I get my energy from and decide to take the food. Maybe I can trace what happens to it? I'm curious.

Daria looks around, noting that only my girlfriend isn't eating, though she notices how I start raising my hand and her eyebrows wander upwards. Eh, not like it matters. Oh, Daria also isn't eating, I think? She nods and turns back to the food.

"By the way, Vulcan, what about your engineering?" I ask in the convenient pause and he looks at me with raised eyebrows... or actually he doesn't have eyebrows. With wider open eyes? "You, hm, don't look like an engineer right now, if you get what I mean."

"Good question." He nods with a wry smile. "Technically Hellcarvers are builders, smiths and engineers in one. All-rounders, generally. I'm focusing on smithing right now, because I don't know much about it. I could technically buy parts and make things from them, but I would like to be at least somewhat proficient in shaping metal before I get to that." He pauses thoughtfully for a while, glancing at Daria. "Additionally, Hellcarvers are magic engineers rather than than regular engineers, and it's pretty logical considering that mana is everywhere. I still need to learn a lot about magic, especially runes, to even get started on it."

"Okay." I smile lightly. Runes? That might be an interesting thing combined with my Primordial Energy.

"You're awfully interested in Vulcan, Helia." Catherine says with a teasing grin and I give her a stink eye.

"We're similar. I don't know any details since I'm seeing it for the first time, but his energy... actually, how is your energy called?" I look at Vulcan with raised eyebrows.

"It's Primordial mana." He replies. And sure enough, that's similar. Too similar, in fact. It's almost impossible for two energies with the same word in them to be unrelated. Actually, when I was checking my talent trees, there was this one node called Supernatual energy decomposition or something?

I stand up and walk up to Vulcan, then bop him on his arm and tell some of his mana to come to me... and a swarm rushes at me and Vulcan gasps in surprise and probably something else. Even his fucking mana core moves! What the hell!? No no no, you little shit, get back where you were. Vulcan's mana stops and reluctantly settles back in his body. Now, all the mana in this finger that's not infused in his muscles, come to me.

A small amount of mana flows to my finger from his and he shakes his hand with a strange expression, which eases after his finger gets filled with mana again.

I walk back to my seat on Letty side unconcerned about other's reactions, holding Vulcan's mana in my fingers and watching as it is worshipping me. And my Primordial Energy is basking in the attention and welcoming the mana. Hm.

"You took his mana? Your affinity extends even to that?" Letty asks from my side curiously and with disbelief.

"Yup." I nod, engrossed in the mana. "It looks as if it wanted to be with me?" Approval, confirmation, happiness. Hm. "It feels a bit as if it was an inferior version of Primordial Energy." I mutter.

Alright. One tenth from the right, separate from the rest, and decompose into what makes you up. Hm. Doesn't work, the mana can't do what I want.

So... add a bit of Primordial Energy to the mix. Now, do the same while Primordial Energy provides necessary energy. And it's going. In a short while it gets disassembled, but unfortunately I can't perceive whatever is created in the process apart from that there were some incredibly tiny particles that got almost instantly sucked into surrounding mana. Hm.

Let's take it another way.

Get a bit of Primordial Energy, get a large amount of mana from the air, get a larger amount of Primordial Energy separated from the rest. Now, disassemble the first two and form whatever is possible from what comes out, using the last one as a source of energy. I wanna see if what makes up mana and Primordial Energy individually can be combined into Primordial mana.

And it is, kind of. I watch in amazement as the first two energies are disassembled and a pitifully smaller amount of various weaker energies are created while a lot of things sort of fizzle out and disappear. It's a mix of... everything, honestly, in the color of rainbow, but at least ninety five percent of what I invested is missing, wasted. There is some Aether, a bit of that orange thing that holds islands in the air, but the majority of what's created is indeed Primordial mana, though for some reason it's in a myriad of colors and... feels? Different aspects? Affinities? Something along those lines.

So, where does that leave us? I can't be sure, because this wasn't a model example of an experiment and it was from optimal conditions for one, but I think it would be a fair assumption that Primordial mana is simply mana with some Primordial Energy mixed within. And that in turn leaves me to a very simple conclusion. Hellcarvers are directly inferior to Primordials. Or not? They have mana, after all, which Primordials lack.

Though, the problem is, what of it? This conclusion, while quite important, doesn't bring me any closer to the answer as to what the connection between our races is. Similar energies, sure, but monsters and humans both use mana and I don't see them friendly most of the time.

I sigh with a frown, looking around the fire, and noticing the group with various expressions. Catherine looking at me with amusement, Vulcan with something between a confused frown and uncomfortable grimace on his face, and Daria as if she had seen a ghost, forgetting the lizard cooking over the fire. The rest is mostly just curious or confused, except for Letty, who is half unconcerned and half curious and leaning on my side.

"Mine and Vulcan's energy are very similar. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure his Primordial mana is a combination of my Primordial Energy and mana." I say to the group, turning the rest of Primordial mana into energy and absorbing it, regaining the bit of Primordial Energy I used, and look at Daria with raised eyebrow. "Daria, our food."

"...Right, right." She nods a few times with dazed expression and turns to the lizard slices, almost throwing the skewers off the rack before she shakes her head and gets to work properly. Hm, what got her so distracted? Maybe she saw what I was doing with mana? Hard to say, but that's likely.

"Daria? Do you have mana sight or something?" I ask and she turns to me with surprise, but nods after a moment with conflicted expression. "If you wanna talk about what I just did, we can after we eat." I say and she nods once again, then turns back to the food.

Half a minute later she gives everyone a slice of lizard meat along with a loaf of bread she cuts into five pieces, one for Vulcan distinctly larger, and distributes it to everyone except Letty and herself.

We start eating and I notice Crimson and Vulcan starting to talk quietly with each other, Xethu and Catherine doing the same, but I don't pay much attention to them as I focus on my piece of meat.

I bite out a piece and swallow it, focusing on my magic sense and finding the meat sliding down my throat. I didn't even chew it, cause I forgot, ehehe. Either way, I feel both in my body and with my magic sense as it goes deeper into me, and it suddenly disappears. Huh?

I focus on the place where it happened and quickly notice a faint, barely visible kind of... flat barrier? I'm not sure what it is, but it looks as if you cut off two pieces of some solid material with extreme precision and joined them together. At first glance they look like continuous piece, but on small scale you can see that the border between them is not uniform. And that border is a sphere a bit less than half a foot in diameter, sitting calmly in my stomach.

Hm. Da fuk is that? I can only assume that's where my... stomach, or however else you call it with a star inside, resides. And it's definitely possible to get inside, because even Letty's scanner managed it. Now, how to do it?

I take another bite from the skewer and watch it go down my throat, slowing down my perception when it reaches the barrier thingy. I see it touching the barrier... and it suddenly starts disintegrating into a sort of mist that disappears almost instantly just below the surface of the barrier. Hm. That's interesting. I can only assume there's some space-fuckery going on, though I have idea what exactly it means and how to go around it.

I slow down my perception to appear normal to the rest of the group and take another bite, then look inside myself and slow my perception down again. Hm. The meat bursts into particles the moment it touches the barrier, and only a moment later I'm incapable of following them.

It's like it suddenly loses integrity? And why can't I see inside? Hm. Letty said the space inside was much larger than it was on the outside, so... how does the border between normal and expanded space work?

Judging by what I see, the space inside should be stretched out and somehow made smaller... right? That sounds correct. Maybe it's range I'm lacking to see what's inside?

"Helia?" Letty says on my side and I snap out of my thoughts. Eh, I'll think about it later.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Catherine is asking about what happened out of VOW." She says, leaning on my shoulder and smirking in amusement. Oh.

"Oh, sorry." I look up at the Wolfkin, who is staring at me expectantly. "I got lost in thought. What exactly do you want to know?" I ask, biting into my skewer and the piece of bread, deciding it would be pretty rude to throw it away now that I don't need it.

"You said you had some problem and won't be coming to school, right? I was wondering what's the reason, what happened out there, if you're fine sharing. There was also that thing about a kidnapping on the news? That was connected to you, right?"

"Hm." I wonder what I should tell them. Definitely not about magic, not now. I glance at Letty on my side and see her shrugging barely noticeably. "I kinda outed myself to my parents because I didn't know they had a camera in someplace?" I begin and Catherine instantly frowns in concern.

"Are you alright? What did they do?" She asks.

"Pretty much nothing in the end, but that's because Letty got me away before mother managed to do anything." I start explaining in more detail, waving my hand to say it's not a big deal. "Mother was awful, and I wouldn't mind if GSA got her a punishment for the bullshit she was spouting, but father was surprisingly alright. He asked for confirmation about the trans stuff and all that, and I confirmed." I shrugh lightly and smile at my girlfriend. "I'm now living with Letty and I'm not going back to where I lived anytime soon."

Catherine blinks repeatedly at that and the rest of the group, apart from Xethu who already heard about it, are all more or less surprised.

"Alright, that's good to hear." Vulcan says, nodding after a while. "So we won't be seeing you out of VOW in forseeable future?"

"Probably not, but we'll see." I reply. "We'll find time to visit in a while, but definitely not soon."

"Well, okay. You'll be getting back to some of your hobbies then?" Vulcan grins.

"Probably, yeah." I glance at Letty, who pulls herself up a bit and looks at Vulcan.

"I'm an engineer, and for now we agreed Helia will be helping me a bit with what I'm doing. Apart from that we'll see, but we both have a lot of free time now. And a lot to think about." She says with a small smile.

"You won't be going to any school?" Catherine asks curiously. "Beacuse you make it sound like that."

"Probably." I giggle. "I've a demonically good reason not to, actually."

"From your tone I assume you won't be sharing it?" Vulcan asks with a small smirk.

"No, not now, sorry. I'm not sure about the details yet, and I would rather explain it properly when I have the full picture."