Chapter 479: Counting Fractures

Milo sat in the dark for a few seconds, considering his few options and thinking quickly. He could log out of the game and leave his body here... which he deemed not an optimal solution. He would wake up either still in this cage, in a more complex cage, or dead. Dangerous as it was, his only choice was to try to use a runic formation to free himself. It had the bonus of probably killing him and getting him out of this trap. But while dying would get him out of here, he would be giving up a chance to gather information on how to deal with this new threat. He'd rather get free, and magic was the only option open to him.

He began with a simple Force Rune, imagining it forming in front of him, thinking of how his hands and tail would be filling in the details. Mana flowed into it...and it imploded, the backblast of mana hitting him like a sledgehammer. His heart missed a few beats, and he almost passed out. For all the pain and suffering, he was recovering fast, his regeneration healing him. He calculated that using this type of formation, with minimal downtime and constant agony, would take thirty-seven attempts to do enough damage kill himself. He needed to make larger larger formations, with more power, and find a better method to go that route.

He started again, this time concentrating all of his mind on one imaginary spot in front of him, carefully drawing the runic circle with only his mind. When it was perfect, he again imagined using his tail and hands adding the Force Rune in the center and control runes along the circle's perimeter. The formation destabilized quickly, and again he was treated to a dose of intense pain that left him gasping.

Reviewing, he felt that the initial set-up had worked much better, creating a basic runic circle using only math and his mind to dictate the size the size and orientation, not imaginary hands. Which...made sense. He had absolute faith in mathematics, and next to no faith in imaginary hands. He decided to continue with math and willpower alone. He started again, experimenting with different sizes of runic circles, precisely building them with only his mind. Certain sizes seemed more stable than others, Something he would investigate later. He suspected it was based on something related to the ratio of the perimeter of the circle to the square root of the amount of mana he charged the circle with. But that wasn't quite correct, leading him to suspect another variable or two needed discovering. For now, he knew what worked best in the field.

The next step was attempting to add a rune to the circle, creating the most basic runic formation possible. Unfortunately, Force Runes were difficult to use even with two eyes and three appendages to manipulate the mana. Force was held in check, then released, and at it's most basic it either broke something, or moved something. Milo didn't want to do either of those things immediately, and the Force Runes became unbalanced as he tried to hold the formation steady. Without additional engineering runes to dictate the direction of the force, the two dimensional circle was a poor tool to contain them. He began again, and instead of a circle, created a sphere.

Runic Spheres were much more difficult to use. The only formations he had attempted with them before were the two times he created the small balls of magical plasma. Those Spheres had used twenty equidistant Force Runes around the sphere, forcing the compression of mana in the exact center. Creating a small star would both get him out of this trap, and kill him. Of that he was certain. Not that he could do it without his hands and tail to control multiple formations.

It took three tries to find the proper size and mana ratio for a sphere using this method. Using the first as a template he created several more, getting larger and larger. He stopped at the point where the sphere would be big enough to encompass himself and the rock that trapped him. The larger spheres were more stable and easier to make. Harder to use though. The largest would need at a minimum twenty force runes created several at a time to keep the forces balanced. It would be the start of a lovely construct, but not what he needed right now. Thoughts rolled through his minds, testing and discarding various runic schematics. He knew that using just a Force Rune without a Void Rune to get around Newton's Laws of Physics was going to be trouble. Painful trouble. The force needed to crack and destroy this rock was quite powerful. If he was blasting away at a rock wall, he'd be using Runes of Sundering with the Runes of Force. Sundering took the force of the blast and rerouted small portions across the rockface, like a hundred chisels shattering the rock at once.

If he had more time, the problem would have been easier. But at any moment his captor could return. Discarding many complex plans and experiments, he tested something simple: a simple sphere with the least amount of Force Runes that would stay stable, two across from each other, which should keep the forces in balance. Connecting them would make a line passing through the center of the sphere. His first attempt at a small sphere and two Force Runes almost worked, but he had trouble keeping it stable as he added mana to the runes.

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He tried again with a larger sphere, managing to keep it stable for a few seconds. Skipping the next few sizes, he moved to the largest he could make. It was stable on the first try, and easy to control. Holding the construct firmly in his mind, he added another force rune to the center, unpowered with mana. Everything went bad at once and the construct destabilized. Without the additional control of hands and tail, and the ability to see the mana in the construct in front of him, let alone the lack of engineering runes, it was simply too hard to keep the multiple force runes stable. And this type of failure was painful! His body was aching now, and without his incredible regeneration he wouldn't have stayed conscious.

The thought that Force Runes couldn't be used immediately led him to experiment with other runes. He again went back to the smaller spheres, seeing if he could keep them stable as he added a third rune. A velocity rune failed immediately, directing the force of the other two runes in a random direction. But Sundering was interesting. He was imagining that the sphered was directly in front of him, and as the Sundering Rune gained power from the two Force Runes, the rock encompassed by the sphere began to crack in a few places. It was very subtle, and without his special Stone Sense, he would never have noticed. The sphere became unstable after a minute, but slowly, and Milo controlled the reaction, cutting off the flow of mana and minimizing the damage to himself. His next test was going to be a larger sphere directly in front of him, that would cut away some of the rock between him and the open space he could sense nearby...but he knew suddenly that he'd run out of time.

It was a small sound, a scrape of stone on stone, but it let him know his captor was nearby. And maddeningly, he smelled cheese! A very good cheese with a subtle aroma of nuts and chives. He had a hard time getting all of his minds to focus with that smell in the air. What helped was the memories of the Slaver Mage taunting him with cheese as he lay starving in his cage. That was not going to happen to him again!

He focused completely on constructing his next formation, which would either free him or kill him. It called for the largest Runic Sphere he could construct with himself inside the volume of the sphere and the center only a few inches in front of him. Two large Runes of Force provided the power for a Rune of Sundering. His practice had paid off, and desperation focused his mind as the construct formed and was stable. Without stopping he fed mana to the perimeter runes, and the sundering effect began.

Rock cracked along natural fissures, and those fissures branched out and created a spiderweb of smaller fissures. Within two seconds the sound was a low growl of rock shattering. Along with that was the pain of Milo's bones breaking. He was in the center of the formation and there was no way to differentiate between hard rock and hard bones. Like the rock, he was accruing small fractures in all of his bones. One part of his mind focused on dealing with the pain, and the rest continued to feed the formation that would free him one way or another.

His bones were harder than the rock, strengthened by the runes he'd gained from the Bone Beasts that had carved the deep caverns and created much of the Deep Down. His regeneration was in overdrive trying to deal with the fractures and keep him from becoming a sack of pudding. His soft tissues didn't like the effect either, but were less affected than his bones. He'd felt the first crack in his tibia immediately, then a break in his skull. Part of him that he couldn't shut off began to count. Sixteen...Seventeen...the breaks came faster in both rock and himself. Fifty-seven...seventy-two...one-hundred-six... The skull fractures were the worst, and he felt his concentration waver for an instant, but he recovered and doubled the amount of man going into the formation.

Rock began to shift around him, and so did his trapped body, bringing new agony. As his mind counted fracture number three-hundred-twenty-one the rock at the edge of the formation and next to the open area gave way. Gravel and sand pouring out into the room brought him along with it. He lay still, the incredible pain paralyzing him, and the smell of cheese driving him to madness. Moving now would cripple him, he needed time for his regeneration to knit his fractures. His armor was helping to keep him stationary. It had suffered less than his bones, made to absorb such damage. He knew he should get up and prepare for a fight, but he couldn't. Even raising an arm to cast a spell or launch an attack was beyond him.

Then, he heard another sound. Then a second. So soft, like someone moving with stealth. The smell of cheese grew stronger. He prepared for the worst...

...and was utterly flummoxed to hear Ringtail say, "Would you like some cheese? It's very good."