A blinding stream of blue-white light thundered noiselessly past me, the entirety of the normally placid mana artery compressed into a furious torrent- no, a beam- through a space the size of my head.

  I reached into the space with tongs of Lihzahrd Brick, the nigh-indestructible material faring far better than my arm had when I’d reached into the stream without them. My hand throbbed as I clacked the hinged tongs, the absurd amount of mana infused into the flesh from the brief contact still battling against my equipment’s attempts to heal the cracked skin, then reached into the light and felt around, quickly finding what I was after and drawing it out.

  As I pulled the obsidian chunk from the beam, mana -now pure white- flooded out from it, momentarily obscuring it from view. There was a sudden sharp crack, followed almost instantly by the sharp clattering of obsidian fragments embedding themselves into the mana hardened stone of the walls, more than a few pinging off my armoured form.

  I sighed. Another failure.

  It seemed that pretty much anything that I placed into the blinding beam of mana simply exploded due to the massive mana build up inside it and subsequent pressure differential once removed, rather than transmuting into a new material or being reinforced into a stronger version of the material as happened with more gradual mana infusion.

  I sighed again and walked back from the viewing window through a short tunnel to the wall, gripping one side of a loop of chain hanging there and hauling it down arm over arm, the >-< shaped mana funnel made from carefully shaped Lihzahrd Brick steadily irising back flush to the walls, the viewing window moving towards me as the tunnel through the funnel shortened. The mana artery expanded back to its original dimensions the instant the funnel was clear, similarly to gas expanding to fill its container, some of the flow starting to pour through the window. I checked to ensure it had closed up properly then flicked a switch to actuate some blocks, covering over the mechanism and viewing window.

  This was actually my second iteration on the mana funnel- my first lacked the second chevron and well…

  When the iris aperture was closed to minimum for the first time, the mana blasted through the small hole and then expanded rapidly to fit the suddenly much wider space. A vortex of mana had formed all around the opening, rolling back under the shadow of the aperture, back up to the narrow main stream, then back behind the sheer wall of the aperture, gradually building in intensity. It had reminded me concerningly of my lifeforce countercurrent and had given me a very bad feeling, so I had opened the aperture and let the flow of the mana artery straighten itself out.

  The addition of the second chevron allowed the mana to expand back out more gradually and thus avoided forming vortexes.

  I was absolutely certain that the beam through the fully closed iris could kill me, especially after I reached into it to pull out the test piece I’d put inside and half flayed my arm, so I wasn’t taking any chances.

  As for why I had built it- that was for two reasons. The first was to test material limits, as with the plain piece of obsidian earlier- it was the substance I’d tested the most due to obvious applications towards strengthening the tower. However, while it sat towards the top of the list of materials able to survive mana overcharging- just below gemstones and the upper end hardmode metals- it was nowhere near good enough to handle something wild like tilting the mana beam up the shaft into the Tower. Not that I would anyway, mana arteries are kinda important in keeping the continent’s environments stable.

  The second reason I’d built the mana iris was for future application to something else I was working on, though it was nowhere near good enough for that level of intensity.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  For the past week I had been diving deep into mana circuits, and had learned a fair bit.

  Mana circuits are made by catalysing an alteration in the material of the item using mana and lifeforce to permanently alter the conductivity during the forging or reforging process, creating patterns of energy circulation. A bit like engraving in three dimensions inside a material but without damaging it.

  It required some careful energy manipulation to make them smooth and without the slightest deviation and thus get the highest efficacy from each circuit, aka the higher qualities of equipment modifiers, sort of like doing one of those puzzle games where you move a hoop along a wire track without touching it, but inside out. The perfect carvings I had made of various items’ mana circuits using my Laser Drill and Hand of Creation were of great help practising this as I could trace the hollows with my mana without worrying about ruining an item I had spent time and materials crafting. It was possible to reforge items by ‘wiping the slate clean’ and remaking the circuit, but that carried the risk of damaging the physical material and thus needing another step of the crafting process to be redone to repair that too.

  The effect and efficacy of a mana circuit was determined by three things: the quality and nature of the materials the mana circuit was carved through, the shape of the mana circuit itself, and the quality of the mana circuit carving.

  However, some of my equipment had similar or near-identical effects but were made from different materials. By comparing the different mana circuits, I was trying to deduce a mana circuit for a material that had no equivalent within my item stockpile.

  In this case I was trying to take the sunlight stockpiling feature of the Shiny Stone, modify it for use in obsidian, and convert it to stockpile mana instead. Accessories power themselves by connecting to the user’s mana and lifeforce circulation; and magic equipment -like a sword which fires projectiles- power themselves by stockpiling and hyper-efficiently using ambient mana, but the Shiny Stone is one of a few more unusual accessories which charge themselves differently- it uses sunlight. I had no particular reason to try and do this modification besides experimentation and learning my way around mana circuits, but I had thought that reason enough.

  However, now that there was a small mound of failed constructs in the crafting room, and another small pile of swept-up fragments from ones which had gathered energy unstably and exploded, I was stubbornly refusing to just give up. Especially when the solution was right there but I just couldn’t get it! I had adapted the sunlight stockpile into obsidian with a bit of inspiration from a Lava Charm- the sunlight leaked out instantly which is what I had expected would happen- but getting it to work with mana instead needed a… a twist that just wouldn’t come.

  So instead I was trying to cheat by using more powerful obsidian to suppress the instability in the gathered mana, but that hadn’t borne fruit, as evidenced by the most recent hail of high velocity shards.

  I sighed and headed towards the Lihzahrd door between the test chamber and the pipe to the surface. Beside it sat a mannequin; I gave it a distasteful glance.

  Since the beam from concentrating down the entire might of a mana artery was so dangerous, I had made a shield and set of armour from Lihzahrd just in case I fell in.

  Just looking at the thing made me feel nauseous; the one time I’d put it on, my depth vision reflecting off the inside of the shell and distorting into a dull kaleidoscopic whirl had me fighting to not hurl inside it’s closed mask.

  Suffice to say, I wasn’t planning on putting it on again, instead relying on fully manifesting my Solar Flare Armour to provide a protective barrier. The only part I was using was a full articulated and sealed gauntlet-armguard combo which would sit overtop the Solar Armour on my tongs arm- and that was because of the previously mentioned arm incident. I dropped the gauntlet on a shelf next to the mannequin alongside my tongs.

  As I touched down gently on the glass floor above the pool, still cracking with small golden lightning from the Rod of Harmony, something irregular caught my attention. While there wasn’t anything directly in sight, I’d figured out by now that this feeling was my subconscious being my attention to something see by the layers of my depth vision I mentally filtered out to allow for normal vision. I activated my depth vision fully- just outside the door under the short triangular roof stood an absolutely drenched figure. He wore a thick black cloak with hood up to keep the horizontal rain out, a spear held at ease in his hand despite how he was being given an evil eye by Karma.

  I crossed the floor to open the door, sticking my head outside to confirm what I had already seen.

  “Steven?” I asked.

  The guard captain raised his head, water dripping from the rim of his hood, and gave me a wide grin.