Chapter 39: The Absorption Problem
Training Vex was like trying to teach a forest fire to be a candle.
Jake worked with her every morning in the Academy’s reinforced training grounds—a section of the floating island specifically designed to withstand magical catastrophes, which happened at the Academy with the regularity of weather.
“The key is intention,” Jake said, dodging a wave of accidentally released stellar energy. “You need to decide where the mana goes before it decides for you.”
“Easy for you to say! You just… make it! I’m trying to not absorb the entire island!”
She wasn’t exaggerating. Vex’s absorption range expanded with stress, and stress was a constant companion at a school full of mana users who flinched whenever she walked past. Her maximum absorption radius, when panicked, was approximately 200 meters—enough to drain every enchantment, ward, and magical system in the Academy’s central complex.
Which she did. Twice. In the first week.
The second time brought down the Academy’s levitation array. The entire floating island dropped forty feet before the backup systems kicked in. Professor Kael (the bearded one) had to be talked down from a ledge—not because he was suicidal, but because the gravity fluctuation had launched him there.
“We need a different approach,” Null said during a team meeting. She was fully recovered now, her void-form solid and sharp. “Trying to suppress her absorption is like trying to stop a river by yelling at it.”
“What do you suggest?” Lyra asked.
“Don’t suppress it. Channel it. Vex absorbs mana—fine. Give her a purpose for the absorbed mana. A direction. Right now, she’s a container filling up with no drain. Give her a drain.”
Jake considered this. “Like a battery. She absorbs, stores, and then… releases on command?”
“Exactly. And who better to teach her controlled release than someone with infinite mana?” Null looked at Jake. “You’ve spent years learning to channel unlimited power. Teach her the same discipline, just in reverse.”
It took three weeks. Three weeks of daily sessions, magical mishaps, one accidental thunderstorm (inside the dining hall), and a incident where Vex absorbed so much mana that she briefly became visible from space.
But slowly, it worked.
Vex learned to absorb with precision—pulling specific mana signatures instead of everything in range. She learned to store it efficiently, compressing absorbed energy into dense cores that she could hold without strain. And she learned to release it—not as an explosion, but as a controlled beam of concentrated power that combined every type of mana she’d absorbed into something entirely new.
They called it Synthesis. Vex could absorb fire mana from one source, ice mana from another, and release them as a combined element that shouldn’t have existed: frozen flame, burning ice, or a dozen other impossible combinations.
“She’s not just a sponge,” Jake told the Academy faculty during a progress review. “She’s a prism. Light goes in as white—it comes out as a rainbow. Mana goes in as separate elements—it comes out as something new.”
Vex demonstrated by absorbing Jake’s mana (which she could now do selectively, pulling only what she needed instead of everything), combining it with ambient elemental energy, and releasing a beam of synthesized power that punched a perfectly circular hole through the training ground’s reinforced wall.
The faculty stared at the hole. The hole stared back.
“Impressive,” said Professor Kael (the former Eraser), who was the only faculty member unsurprised. “She reminds me of myself. Before the… unpleasantness.”
“You erased civilizations,” Epoch pointed out.
“I said before the unpleasantness.”
Vex grinned. For the first time since arriving at the Academy, she didn’t look afraid of her own power. She looked excited.
Jake recognized the look. He’d worn it himself, once, when he first realized that infinite mana wasn’t a curse—it was a gift. The difference between a disaster and a miracle was just intention.
And Vex had very good intentions.