MAGUS INFINITE

This experiment took me hours, just because I had to be careful with the wielding of my Anima and carefully separating it from the lightning essence that was beginning to infuse it.

One trait about Anima for an Arcanist was that the primary essence that we control would infuse with the Anima.

In other words, they not only depended on the sheer power of their Anima and Resonance to magnify the power of their spells, but their Anima itself was being stained by this essence, and this had been happening to me without my acknowledgement.

This could not be regarded as a bad thing, but if I wanted my experiment not to be affected by any foreign energy, I would need to strip my Anima of the lightning essence that was infusing it.

Once again, I had gained unexpected benefits from the fifth Earth Gate as it had purified my Anima, stripping it of most of the lightning essence that infused it, and so it only took me hours and not weeks or months to slowly refine pure Anima from my Anima Depth.

Maybe there were other unexpected benefits to having such a pure Anima after the purification process was completed. I was sure I would be able to discover it in the future, but I made sure to gather a sizable volume of pure Anima and began my experiment.

The Anima gathered over my palm in the shape of a nearly transparent orb hovering a few inches above my skin.

I observed it for a moment, finding it endlessly fascinating that I was looking at a physical representation of my soul.

Separating a small part of the Anima, I sent it into my domain, and it travelled through it without being held back, exactly as it does outside. It was as if my domain could not hold pure Anima and allow it to circulate freely.

However, when I tried to pull back the Anima, it stopped at the edge of the domain and could not emerge. It was as if there was an unbreakable wall in front of it, and the Anima was locked inside the domain.

Pulling my Anima into my channel in my right palm, I pushed my palm into my domain and circulated my Anima inside it with no problem, but when I attempted to release the Anima from my channels to gather it over my palm again, I was not able to.

Of course, if I wanted, with my control over my domain, I could allow this to happen, but that would defeat the entire purpose of this experiment.

However, this just showed me a ridiculous truth about my domain and the tactical consequence, which I wrote down with a less steady hand than I would like, but this was mostly from the excitement running through my veins.

If I covered a mage inside my domain, then the mage would be able to circulate the Anima inside his channels, but it would be contained within him. Even if they were about to cast a spell, as long as they remained inside my domain, their Anima was imprisoned inside their bodies.

This was a rather interesting observation, and it was just another facet of my magic... Stillness, and I was understanding how deep a single shard of lightning could be explored.

∞

”Boom!!!”

A crash that shook the entire structure sent vibrations through the room, as it seemed as if an entire portion of the facility had been shattered.

Damn... this demon was going insane? Could it sense me but not find me?

”ELRIC!ELRIC FUCKING VOSS.... COME OUT THIS INSTANT AND STOP TEASING POOR SAD, I SO WANT TO TASTE YOUR BEAUTIFUL SOUL AGAIN... ELRIC!”

The howl came through the structure rather than the air. Seed’s inscriptions did not flicker. Whatever the Sovereign had carved into stone was holding against the madness of the demon... at least for now.

”YOU WERE IN THE VAT JUST NOW, I KNOW, YOU HAVE BEEN IN THAT LOVELY PLACE FOR THREE MONTHS. AND NOW YOU ARE NOT. DON’T YOU SEE THAT YOU ARE BREAKING MY HEART?

Metal folded somewhere below, slowly, the way a child ruins a toy it is holding while it cries.

”I CAN SENSE YOU, BOY, IT WOULD BE BETTER YOU COME OUT, AND I DON’T FIND YOU MYSELF, OR I SHALL RIP OUT YOUR SOUL, ELRIC... I WILL RIP IT OUT!”

I did not answer the crazy demon; I was in the middle of test four.

∞

Test four: thought.

This one was a bit tricky to run. How could I deceive my own domain into believing that I was a foreign mage trapped inside the domain?

I could not simply pretend. My domain knew me. It was an extension of my soul, woven from the same lightning-shards that I was trying to understand. It would not lie to itself.

So I did the next best thing after several long moments of thinking about this problem from various points.

I sent a small fragment of my awareness into the domain, tied to my Anima. It was a thought, unmoored from intention, drifting like a leaf on still water.

It took a while for me to figure out how to do this effectively, but again, this would not have been possible if my Anima was not so purified and my crystalline soul was extremely durable, enabling me to do things with it that I could not previously imagine.

I thought I may be delving into other occultic areas of magic due to my experimentation, but I could not be distracted enough to think of the Academy I may be emulating at the point.

When this broken fragment of my awareness drifted into my domain, I did not will it to move, nor did I try to shape it. I simply let it be.

The thought hung in the stilled space, frozen in place. It did not fade and did not grow. It simply existed, suspended in the moment of its own becoming, waiting for something to happen to it.

I watched it for a long time, and I began to see the pattern that my domain would have on thought itself.

The conclusion that I drew was that the thought was not frozen because the domain had stopped it. I had become familiar with the effect of my domain on energy and particles, and this thought did not face the sort of restriction they suffered, even though it was frozen in place. The thought was frozen because, within the domain, time did not pass for it.

It was a fascinating thing to observe in action. I knew that the final aspect of my domain would be its ability to stop time itself, and I had always wondered how that would appear.

I did not expect that the first expression of still time could be found in thoughts of all places.

If I froze anyone inside my domain, their thoughts would be held in place, and for them, no single moment of time would have passed, even if I held them inside my domain for hours.

I did not know why consciousness interacted with my domain in this manner, and I will need a lot of time to understand it. I had an intuition that if I understood the relation between consciousness and time, I may not only acquire Time Resonance, but a core truth about existence itself would be known to me.

And this conclusion almost led me down the wrong path.