Gryn was the first to wake up once again, followed by Carth and Layla, but even then the stew had been long since finished. By the time everybody was awake and had some, Carth was already eating his third share and might possibly get on my nerves with his bottomless stomach. This stew was meant to last while traveling, and the initial portion was very generous- this was just unheard of.
I considered making a bread for him to stuff his face with, but instead took the opportunity to simply go out and gather more herbs and foods to add to the pot. The others all planned to explore the surrounding areas- which I had already done- to look for anything interesting or to hunt. There was likely to be little of interest, but the hunting would probably be good.
Even if I had just last night taken out a large troop of arnid drones, that just meant they were the most numerous or prevalent predators in the area. There were still far more creatures than just them who were probably lurking about for a chance to get at my array. If not for the damage such experiments would surely have on the ecosystem, I would be capturing random animals to put in the array and see what variations take place.
It was obvious that the mechanism I had created was not something that should be wide-spread common knowledge. The implications just on trade goods for magical materials would be an astounding drop with overstock of this or that.
Not to mention all of the mana in the field came from somewhere else, depriving the freedom from 'free trade'.
Not only was this something that did not belong in the hands of a child like me, it was something that could undoubtedly be weaponized. Echoes and wisps were just the common embodiment of living mana, there were many more things of greater power and intelligence that could come into being. Even now I was running the risk of several inadvertent summons.
The chances of spawning those things in these areas, though, was relatively low without intentionally meeting the right circumstances. If I was to run and echo spawn long enough, I would probably probably summon much worse than the previous abomination. Most of which I could dominate and turn into familiars, but it was either too risky, not worth it, or plain illegal to play with.
All of this crossed my mind as I mashed up the remains of iramana plants I had brought to camp with me, but I still added it and several new blocks of super heated imbued granite to the cistern in the middle of the fall.
After only a few minutes of cooking and breaking down, I opened up the falls and left the array. The effect was nowhere near as dramatic as when I was playing with the alignments, only a slight thickening of the visible mana. I doubted this would do anything to the spawn rate but it would still increase the size and quality of the next few wisps at least.
Most of the wisp collection for now was handled by the younger archers, using their own wisps to draw out and then kill the spawned wisps. Doing this was a good way to raise their new magical pets as well as a good way to stretch their 'magic muscle'.
Normally, a wisp was almost as inactive as echoes and floated about seeking the mana of wild sources and only after feeding would they show any real signs of life but fluttering about the area.
In order to fight with basic energy attacks without letting them eat the other wisps, they needed to be fed constantly from their owners. With people who naturally did not have much magical inclination or ability, this was a solid way to build the foundation for future magic use. Especially for kids.
Until later in the afternoon, I let them literally wear themselves out until the wisps would no longer leave the food source of their bodies. Around this time was when the others finally returned from hunting. I was not surprised by the fact that they encountered several different animals, but I was surprised to find Gryn slowly healing a severe bite wound through palm and thumb.
This bite had come from one of several large ferret or wolverine type beasts. Their bodies were a long and sinuous three feet without counting their tails and they stood an average of two feet tall. They were almost half my size.
They had long and narrow faces like a rodent with two massive pairs of front teeth like a rat but surrounded on either side by relatively short fangs. They were a carrion scavenger and cannibalistic, as rodents were known to eat even each other, but they loved magic as much as everything else in the world. With such a strong and toxic bite, it was no wonder Gryn's hand was still partially crushed.
The wound even took me several minutes to slowly coax into regeneration after taking him into the energy field to purify it, but after that he just set back to work in camp after a brief thank you. He seemed upset about something, but it certainly was not the injury.
Alongside four of these giant rodents they had also acquired the bodies of half a dozen large flying insects. These giant dragonflies who were not much shorter than the rodents were inherently magical variants of another mundane insect. Their numbers, however, were astounding.
Even though their carapaces were at least twice the tensile strength of the arnid drones, the mountain birds would have surely picked them off long ago. If they flew low enough to avoid detection from above, beasts like the rodents and arnids would get them.
It was almost sad to see so many killed at once, but the were done cleanly in a surprisingly preservative fashion so only the head and connecting segments were damaged. The gossamer wings whose filaments could be used to augment metals with magic were entirely whole.
Even the gossamer of the wings could be powdered into a weaker replacement for stardust in many potions, but it also served its own purpose in an insecticide.
The problem with the insecticide was that, on its own, it would attract small game magical creatures, so it was used in addition to simple fluids from larger beasts to make a general pesticide. However, for a young and budding group like my brother's, the gossamer was a perfect bait for magical creatures. Hopefully, they also planned to hold onto their carapaces for future equipment like they did animal hides.
I was in charge of taking apart the insects, for which I had to carry them away from camp. It was a simple process of projecting my magic into their bodies and scooping their insides out onto the ground. A quick flush of magic water and they were relatively done.
For the sake of traveling, though, the wings and legs had to be removed from the empty cases and then the wings had to be broken down. The filaments were given a simple wrap of large transmuted leaves, but the wings took up the last few of my large bottles like the one full of lichen. The long narrow bodies were simply strung together and the first was stuffed with the legs and bits of enlarge grass for security.
By the time I was done, the rodents whose only value were in their hearts and hides were already spitted and roasting whole over the fire. Just a few minutes and I could have had the bodies butchered down to their rib racks with everything else sliced in sheets of fillet for pressing and drying around the fire. Those rodents could have been their traveling food for their next outing, but now they were being spitted high to dry cook whole as if for sale.
In fact, after thinking about it, they seemed to have experience with these creatures. In which case, how did Gryn get wounded? One of the others probably made a mistake that Gryn covered for even though the older kids had been the ones hunting.
More than likely, he was probably trying to show off for Hilda and ended up looking bad.
For a moment I started to think about when I was that age on the cusp of puberty and trying to gain the appreciation of the ladies, but then I was blindsided with a mix of unpleasant flashbacks and sudden reminders that I was currently a giant five-year-old.
Since I had yet to go to sleep and everybody was back at camp, I decided to go ahead and call it quits for the evening after turning in the empty carapaces.
Morning seemed to roll around too soon for my body because it weakly responded to getting up with a vague since of fatigue. Pushing through the exhaustion brought to my inexperienced body, I got up and started going through the motions of my early martial arts training as a morning stretch routine. After a few rounds of slow punches and sweeping kicks, my body was much more awake and relaxed.
The sun was already to a point where the steppe was cast in a dark shadow from above but still illuminated by the array and ambient light. Of course the others were all awake as well and sitting around the array. From the way they were talking about it and how their own wisps constantly prowled about the array it seemed like they had made a game of spawn killing.
Little did they know, today was the day we pack up and set out. My mother's original expectations were a nine or ten day trip, we would be lucky to make it back in under two weeks. The last thing I wanted to do was upset my mother who would make it impossible for me to go out again.
"Guys, I have good and bad news," I say loudly as I walk over to where the others were gathered around Gryn's point of the array. All joking stopped as they looked over at me while I was eating a bowl of mana stew. "Bad news, it's time to break down the array and start heading home. Good news, we're going to feed the array to our wisps."
Carth looked the most unhappy about my news, whether good or bad, but after hearing about our wisps I at least had his curiosity. The others were also more interested in the wisp aspect. Eman and Layla even looked relieved.
When nobody actually said anything, though, I was actually somewhat relieved and said, "Now that we all have our familiars and a couple of bottles of stardust, it's time to pack this up. For the past few days, it has been sucking up a large chunk of all the mana in the Gilded Gorge area. Not only is that bad for the environment, if a strong enough mage followed the draft back to us we could get in serious trouble."
After giving them a brief but harsh reality, I say, "So, I'm going to transmute that pile of rock into a single crystal and break up the array while draining it into the crystal. After that, I can use the mass amount of mana to feed both you guys and the wisps. Imagine a super strong wind blowing right through you, that's what this is going to feel like and the longer you last the more energy becomes imbued into your bodies.
"This can also raise your Willpower by a few points, but the longest you guys can safely hang on even with the wisps as a conduit is one or two minutes," I carry on quickly, making sure they were aware of the downside. "Your wisps will soak up even more mana than you, but I will be monitoring this to keep them from literally popping. After this, until you show your parents you have them, I don't advise any of you to take them out of your bodies."
Even as I was taking a breath briefly lecture them on the evolution of these creatures, Eman quickly stood up for attention and asked, "Why can't we show them to anyone but our parents?"
Actually a little surprised by this question, I say, "Because… well, I didn't say only your parents. I said not to take them out UNTIL you show your parents. Which you almost absolutely have to do. Once these guys reach a point where they can generate a physical presence, you'll need help in caring for them that I can't constantly provide. They even need to eat certain vegetation like the iramana petals.
"As you are, now, you can certainly provide the food stuffs yourself, but depending on how they evolve or how you want them to, they will need more than just petals. Plus, they'll develop a conscious mind and will need training."
"What do they turn into?" Gryn asks curiously even though he probably already knew. He probably also knew that was the point I was trying to get back to.
Nodding my head to buy time for recollecting my thoughts, I say, "The first step in any wisp process is to grow into a big ball of energy and then condense itself into a tiny ball of energy. Once it had condensed itself, the wisp will develop an outer body of energy around its new core and this body can be concentrated into a tangible substance.
"At this stage they develop a mind and in the wild they will copy things like plants or animals that they see. As familiars, we can somewhat control what they generate as a body- especially if you already have living pets. When a wisp begins creating solid parts or a whole body, it becomes known as a mana spirit and once a mana spirit decides on a body it will begin generating that form at all times.
"After a while, it no longer needs to consciously maintain form and transitions into an almost living being. In the wild, mana spirits themselves are rare because wisps are blind deaf and dumb but when they become a living entity they can become very powerful. The true power of the wisp is that it can continue condensing its core all the way until it solidifies into an esper.
"If we can make our wisps condense multiple layers in a single core, it will be exponentially more powerful than the common mana spirit or esper. This recycling of the array will be our jumping from wisp to mana spirit in one go. There should even be enough spare enough to continue maturing them after we've mana cleansed your bodies."
Carth, probably the most secondhand knowledgeable about magic because of his and Hilda's friendships with Gryn, quickly asks, "If we're doing this through our wisps, is that going to do anything to us?"
"Do any of you have preexisting affinities for magic?" I ask curiously, looking around to meet everyone's gazes even though I already knew they did not. "This mana cleanse through the wisps will give you their elemental affinities. Since many of your wisps have mixed affinities, you will acquire 'lesser' affinities- this simply means you need both ambient energy of that element and your own energy and not one or the other. Since everyone has two or more wisps of combined darkness affinity, you should get a normal dark or even death affinity. For someone like Hilda, she will get whole versions of both her parallel wisps."
Eman was about to pose another question but I quickly said, "Yes you can gain more affinities with more wisps but you can only mana cleanse once in this fashion, we don't have time for more collecting, and my mom is going to be really mad if we actually take two weeks to get her five-year-old home from Gilded Gorge."
*