World Filter

Mark had not expected Gibby to show up for an interview with them, he was already such an integral part of their faction and Mark had thought he wanted to remain an outsider to maintain his connections.

At least that's what he said in the beginning, however, after the disaster in the underground, Gibby had a change of heart, and he was done being an ‘addition’.

“I want to throw my hat in the ring as it were. I know what you all need down to the minute detail and want to be able to do more. But for that, I need more access to your people and documents.”

Trust was not something he was lacking from them. Even Mark who had a rocky start with the man, had to admit he had grown on him. Gibby's skills and solutions to things usually helped them press through even the toughest of spots.

Having Gibby fill Chloe’s spot felt like the next logical step. Chloe had focused on strategic predictions and responses, something Gibby could make up for by simply creating an information network using their people.

Mark would have given him the job on the spot if it weren't for the fact they had a fair amount of others to go through. Which took the better part of the morning and afternoon. By the time they had finished, Mark was spent.

He had been significantly more resistant to any of Daphne's replacements, and honestly, that was because none of them could offer even half of what Daphne had.

They called it quits around four in the afternoon with nothing to really show for it. Ethel had a couple she liked but Mark was not convinced.

Mark left the room unhurriedly and slowly made his way to the clinic, by now it was well on its way. The location was already cleared of rubble by several Aura users, and casters had begun laying the foundations.

Magic could make up for a lot, but building from scratch still took a large amount of labor and resources. In turn, the speed a structure could be erected was just one-tenth of the time it normally took.

People could replace heavy machinery, while magic could substitute the materials needed.

All Mark did when he got there was go over what they had already done, and then began to create steal rods that Aura users would then bend into shape.

There were others doing similar things for other materials, but Mark had made sure they were using only the strongest stuff because of how volatile things could get out here.

Mark had gone with an almost bunker-like design in the most literal sense.

The gradual roof tapered off into an ugly pentagonal-like wall, all of which was built from concrete, reinforced with steel beams, and coated again with heavy sheets of steel. There was an outer ring where their defenders could fight from, and inside that was the clinic itself.

The better part of the structure would be sunk into the earth and the walls near the underground thickened. Getting power into the structure would be a bit of a mission but Mark figured he could make do with what they had at the moment and then perhaps install some on-site generators if they could find, or trade for them.

The building wouldn't win any pretty awards looking like a reinforced barrel, but it would be able to defend its patients, and that was all Mark cared about.

Creating and mixing the cement was taken care of by the casters as some created raw limestone, while others manipulated infernos to bake the mix of elements similar to a kiln.

Concrete was poured and then casters with [Water control] pulled the excess water, accelerating the drying process, they had to be careful not to pull too much, or risk weakening the concrete.

By the end of the day, they had the foundations and the beginnings of the outer walls completed. Mark gathered and released his Mana multiple times and when he used [Meditation], he would float up into the air so he could watch the large structure slowly come into being.

Now and then Mark would glance up at the spire, unable to avoid staring up at its gargantuan body.

While floating there, Mark would have normally checked his system, but seeing as it was not responding at the moment, Mark simply chose to play with his magic.

He felt like he was missing something when it came to [Light control] and he’d had the idea of creating an invisibility spell back at the religious district, so he decided to play with that idea.

He even knew where to start, up until now Mark had mostly used his light magic of its inherent property or as a damaging spell. But there was so much that light was capable of. For example, if he could manipulate the surrounding light, maybe he could create a cloaking of sorts.

It wouldn’t be invisibility as most people knew it, but he might be able to create a pocket where light would skirt around the space.

His first try turned out horrendously, as he promptly blinded himself with a flash of light and simultaneously caused several burns across his face and exposed arms. Mark had nearly fallen out of the sky as his vision churned with brilliant white light.

Light was a completely different concept from what he was used to. Formless, constantly flowing, yet with some substance. Just changing it like he would rock was not enough. Manipulating light he had not created, proved to be even harder as it was constantly coming from all directions.

Turing to alter it in any meaningful way caused the space around him to shift like a kaleidoscope.

Mark frowned at how precise he had to be to manipulate the shifting spectrum. Usually, Mark just outputs a massive amount of power, but cloaking itself didn’t take all that much power, it was just incredibly precise, like balancing a sphere on another sphere.

Mark had to match the incoming light and shift that exact portion to oppose it, but doing this from all directions proved to be a massive task. To make matters worse, the cloaking was completely off, at best it might be confused for a heat shimmer from a distance, but anything with half a brain would be able to tell something was off about the space.

But at most, he could sustain this for a couple of seconds before a flash of light gave him away

So rather than making himself unseen, he turned in an erratic disco ball hovering above the construction site. There was one other problem, if one created a pocket of light where one was returning light in a particular pattern, then there would be no light inside the cloak itself. So Mark was essentially blind while inside, and expanding a construct to see beyond the light cloak would defeat the purpose if someone was sensitive to Mana.

Mark was not put off by his failure, he had worked a long time to gain proper flight, this would just be another spell he had to come at from a different angle.

That’s when Mark realized he was forgetting one of his best resources.

The online ‘spellbook’ thread.

The were bound to be a couple of solutions online as Mark was probably not the first to attempt an invisibility spell.

So still floating above the now emptying construction sight, Mark took out his phone and navigated to the thread.

The moment he did, the first thing to jump out at him was how much the thread had changed. It was obvious that people were becoming more comfortable with sharing their spell work online.

As Mark had become more busy he had only managed to pop into the thread now and then.

Eventually, the task had become too much for Sam and himself to deal with alone, so they got a team in the logistics department to manage it full-time.

The team had gone beyond what Mark had expected because he barely recognized the thread. Where Mark had written several paragraphs of simple text they had altered things the include an index for the type of spell you were looking for. After that, you could peruse all the different methods people had used to get the same outcome. All of this could be downloaded to your device as a document, so that if the now notoriously patchy signal wouldn’t work, at least one had an offline copy.

Mark whistled to himself as he navigated the section for invisibility spells. Granted there weren't as many as he’d hoped, but there were still a few that looked promising.

One that looked like it interrupted perceptions, another that used air magic to make mists and then project themself onto that mist.

Finally, he found one using light magic and it was very similar to what Mark had been working on. They had also fixed the problem Mark had found by allowing a small amount of light to faze through their cloak.

This allowed them to see out, yet still remain hidden. The problem was that it added another level of complexity, like balancing a third ball on top of the previous two. Whoever had walked this path before Mark had incredible control.

Mark copied the spell threads the spell spoke of, there being four made it doable. But the system never registered a new spell. Mark took that as he didn’t have enough understanding or that his [Light control] was enough to not warrant a new spell.

Either way, Mark practiced with the spell as the evening came to a close. He found an interesting feature on one particular try. He’d lost his patience at the frankly tiny amount of power he had to manipulate, and without thinking, flushed Mana into the cloak. What followed was a brilliant sheet of light that swept around Mark, extending out of him as though billowing on the rays of a glimmering pond.

If any people were still around, they would have seen Mark’s form suddenly swept up in a cloak of pure brilliance. The glimmer only lasted for a second or two, before bursting into a mass of colors and dissipating, but for a moment he had looked like a glowing titan made of pure light.

Mark struggled for a couple more hours, and he did manage to succeed a couple of times, even if it was for the briefest of moments. Mark attributed it to the now dark navy sky even though there was still large amounts of light issuing from the city, spire, and even the moon. It was easier to manage those sources than the direct strength of the sun. Funnily enough, it became easier to go invisible when there was less light.

Happy with his small success Mark’s mind felt at peace. Working on his strength felt concrete like he was advancing, instead of crippled by sorrow. Mark had a taste of why Jonathan wouldn’t stop moving, growing, and pursuing battle. It took one’s mind off things they could do nothing about.

Letting the spell drop he felt confident he had done all he could for tonight, if he kept working on [light control] it probably wouldn’t help much. Possibly even confuse him more.

And while he was done with that spell, Mark didn’t want to go back just yet. Thinking over his different spells, Mark tried to think how he could improve them further.

His mind was just wandering when he recalled a particular skill that held a massive amount of potential.

His Spiritual limit release, thing was, unlike the other two limit releases, the effects of this release were unknown even though the explanation of it was probably the longest of them all.

The temptation to flip the switch was there, Mark could feel it there like the other two. Ready for him to expand should he need to, but Jonathan’s words of caution stopped Mark.

He’d heard what they had to say, and to an extent they were right, trying this here and now was probably not the best idea. Worst case scenario Mark fell from the sky, but after everything that happened, this decision needed to be thought through.

Mark controlled his descent toward the ground, choosing to deal with the skill another day, perhaps when Sam was around.

Instead, Mark took a causal stroll back to their base, no cars of flying this time just a simple walk. It was time he took in the nightlife of the city, perhaps all he needed was some time to himself.