Spirits of Mana

Taking a step back and folding his arms Samuel agreed, a 'blood oath' sounded safest. "I hope you wont excuse me then for taking a blood oath as well!" He openly admitted and Alfrith did not complain, she simply went ahead and made the blood oath without hesitation.

A quick process that bound her blood to the spoken oath. Children of Mana were extremely honorbound creatures, an oath taken would not be broken easily. Wether that was because of the existence of blood oaths or not was maybe not so irrelevant, but it was nothing that Samuel cared much for.

Although he could appreciate the meaning behind words he did not let those words entrap him. He had perhaps picked up such tendencies from his prior training and as such did not trust anyone easily without probable cause.

Samuel was brought out of his train of thought by Alfrith speaking to him. "Very well. If you please sit down I will extract some blood and that will be it." He did as she instructed and sat down on a chair she had tapped with her hand.

He wasn't quite sure what to expect when she mentioned 'extracting blood' but she proceeded to take out a weird cylinder. Alfrith seemed to notice his silent question and smiled, "They are called syringes, and they are great for storing blood and medicine!"

"This place has taught us a treasure trove about medicine. Even though we only seem to know the basics so far... Their basics easily outshadow our old basics by hundreds if not thousands of years."

Samuel could tell she really burned with the subject as she spoke about it with great excitement. A quick sting followed by her drawing some blood and seemingly labeling the blood after putting it in a glass vial.

"Well this will probably take some time for the tests to complete! So you are free to do what you wish in the meantime!" Alfrith's excitement was uncontainable at this point as she was almost jumping up and down. Samuel simply shrugged and looked at Vaz who had fallen asleep.

Vuldara and Zalbas had also decided to leave them and said that they would meet up at a later time.

He rolled his eyes and decided to go for a walk, rather than walking all the way back for no reason he took to the left as he walked out the room. Towards the collapsed tunnels, he felt as if something was calling to him from there - or perhaps it was just his own curiosity.

Leaving the happy scientist and his sleeping friend in peace he continued to walk down the corridor. Where some lights seemed to flicker from time to time, it gave him an unsettling feeling as if something would jump out of the darkness that came with the flickering.

He used mana to enhance his senses, and took a deep breath and looked at the world with his eyes shining bright with mana.

He could see the collapsed rubble in front of him as clear as day, but his eyes could also see past the rubble and allowed him to see further into the facility. His eyes helped him penetrate deeper down and he tried to mentally map out as much as he could before it started giving him too much of a headache.

Sharing his sensory intake with Shakkai allowed her to essentially create a map from his eyesight inside their mindscape. "Good job!" She complimented, "I think thats the first time we have strained it so much."

Samuel nodded as the heavy beating headache slowly subsided. "Any plans on how to get through safely?" Shakkai asked curiously. "I mean I have a few things I could try... But I doubt you would like them!" Samuel grinned.

Shakkai sighed and opened up like a mental image they both could share. She then proceeded to pinpoint where the rubble was more supported and stable and where it was unstable.

Samuel added x marks on their mental map where the bad spots were. "I don't think it will be easy to break through that considering how unstable it seems to be." He spoke while looking at the several dozen x marks he had made.

They went over a few plans while hitting their heads together, "But what if we do that..? No then it will blow these points! Ok but what about? How about we just break through it all then? I don't see a better solution."

If one was to stumble upon Samuel at that moment they would think it was just an insane man speaking to thin air. While a serious back and forth conversation was actually taking place.

Samuel sighed after another few scenarios crumbling and leaned down and then noticed the metal plated floor. "Metal?"

"Wait? The floor further back wasn't made fully out of metal like it is here!" He exclaimed in surprise and Shakkai made an "Oh" sound. Samuel smiled while looking ahead, "I think I have an idea and it might just work!"

"Wait! Whats your plan- Ah I see!" Shakkai also grinned.

Samuel took several deep breaths of mana and started gathering it in his hand. For several seconds he gathered pure mana and kept it steady in his hand to the point of starting to sweat from the amount of raw power he was trying to keep steady.

"Breakthrough!" He shouted and released the power forward in a straight line. The pure force cleared debris and rubble alike as it blasted through, Samuel who was not quite finished took a really quick breath of mana and slammed the wall next to him.

"Stop!" The magic travelled through the walls all around where the rubble had just been cleared and everything froze still. Some of the new rubble that had started collapsing instantly froze in place.

Shakkai quickly jumped out from his Shadow in her usual dragon shape. She quickly chanted and black smoke formed all around the hallway and travelled from top to bottom in small lines. She then slammed both her claws hard into the floor.

Several earthly pillars shot out of the metal floor shoving much of the metal plating on the floor into the roof. Stabilizing the corridor quite well. Meanwhile Samuel was sweating droves from the overexertion, but he kept his spell up until she was finished and when he did let it go, Shakkai had just about finished.

They both stood still for a while to see if their combined effort would work. It felt like the world stood still as they waited to see if the tunnel would collapse again, but as the seconds started passing by and nothing happened they both exhaled.

"Fine craftsmanship if I do say so myself!" Samuel broke the silence while Shakkai returned into the shadows. "For now it will hold but we will just haveto see..."

"As long as we are careful it should be fine, besides... nothing further down seemed to be collapsing." Samuel couldn't help but smile.

Samuel carefully walked past all the pillars and made sure not to touch any of them as he walked through the remade makeshift corridor, when he got to the other side he had to navigate through all the debris that had survived his energy blast.

It just seemed to have scattered further down the hall making it easy to pass, although a bit bumpy. Then suddenly a loud whistle like noise ocurred in his head and he felt the calling grow stronger, he instinctively grabbed his head from the loud surprise.

As the noise subsided he kept his pace going forward, and while the noise returned in waves he simply supported himself by leaning against one of the walls from time to time.

As he ventured deeper within the facility he finally came about the first crossroad where the corridors split off into two additional corridors. However he felt the calling and decided to follow it and went straight forward. Something was calling him and he couldn't be stopped, even when the noise in his head grew so strong it blocked everything else out.

He could hear nothing except the whistle and the calling, as he almost groggily on the verge of passing out kept going. At one point he started falling forward but in the same moment he put forward one foot and held his balance while inhaling a lot of mana.

It gave him temporary clarity, and somewhere along the line Shakkai had tapped into his senses and realized why he couldn't hear her anymore, so she was using her power to give him some strength.

Samuel didn't know how many doors and corridors he passed by, but eventually he did reach the end of the same corridor where a large door was stood blocking his path.

He instinctively reached out his hand and the door suddenly hissed as some steam was released and the door slowly opened with a light turned green atop the door.

All Samuel heard was mumbling echoes as he collapsed into the room, dozing off into darkness.