Beginner mages are advised to choose the spells Strike Bolt and Basic Shield as your hand spells if you plan on engaging in combat, either hunting in dungeons or duelling. For coastal protection, you should go with Starbeam instead of the shield, as magical protection is entirely useless on that front.


    <hr>


    "The normal procedure for doing this is to make your imprints stable to a ten minute duration. If you can sustain the drain without the imprint destabilizing after that long, you''re considered capable of moving on to the next preparation step."


    Raina frowned down at her imprints. "They won''t last even a few seconds, let alone minutes."


    "Not yet. But this is just background information still. The second step, once your imprint is stable, is to increase the mana density of your manabody."


    "Strength exercises, increase its capacity. Which also takes months."


    "Exactly. But the one thing Nuprima is best at is pressure. You must have already noticed the strain of maintaining your form?"


    "It would be a good place to exercise magically even without any of your cheating tricks."


    "A lot of tourists come here for that reason. My cheating tricks are incredibly dangerous. But when used effectively, you can use Nuprima to normalize your manabody at an incredibly high density. The challenge is to keep it under your control rather than letting it slip."


    "Then it''ll collapse and you have to start over. Which we don''t have time for."


    Jair grinned and hefted Maelstrom. "We can start over without losing months of progress, and we have plenty of time. The point is, the constant strain you''re under to maintain the outward pressure of your manabody against the outside, you''re going to have to balance and invert it throughout the process. We will be gradually letting Nuprima take over the mana density of your manabody, but that means that if you maintain your standard outward pressure, you''ll explode it instead."


    "That sounds like it would be a relief. To treat it like any normal atmosphere instead of this weight trying to crush me... why are you shaking your head?"


    "Because you can''t just let up on the outward pressure. You also need to hold inward pressure. Otherwise the whole thing will equalize and the boundaries dissolve. Like how you need to hold the stability when leaving an oasis and heading out into the desert."


    Raina exhaled with relief. "Okay. I can do that. It''ll be hard, but—"


    "Before you go thinking this''ll be easy, that''s only one part of it. The background to the rest of the process, which will be ongoing throughout."


    Raina blinked. "Ongoing? I thought stabilizing your manabody was a prerequisite step."


    "It is, for standard practice. We don''t have time for that, so we''ll be doing them all at once. You''ll be drawing the imprints, retaining and pressure-adjusting your manabody density, and re-sealing the manabody incisions made by your imprint drawing simultaneously."


    Raina flopped back onto the ground and stared up at the moon above them. "That sounds impossible. Any one step is going to be..." she swallowed and leaned her head up to stare at him. "Weeks if not months of effort to perfect."


    "Yes."


    "And combining them together will take even longer."


    "Yes."


    She lay back down again, groaning. "I really am going to hate myself, aren''t I?"


    "Yes. And hate me too. If you''re still sure you want to go through with this, I will not let you stop. You''ll want to, probably beg to, maybe attack me. Not sure, haven''t tried it with anyone else who could time travel before, but that seems likely."


    He certainly would have, if there were anyone else he could blame for putting himself through this. As he pushed himself in every possible way, beyond limit after limit only to find there was another barrier beyond which even he could not break. If he''d been any less spiteful toward his own weakness, he probably would have given up a thousand times by now.


    "I thought you considered murder attempts the equivalent of a friendly greeting?"


    "I didn''t try to refuse you the chance. If you want to kill me, go right ahead."


    "And if I need to stop and go somewhere else for a few months before getting back to it?"


    "No. We will do this and then we''ll stop. Once it''s done and the results are evident. Otherwise, you will never be able to force yourself to commit to it again."


    "Never is a bit extreme."


    "You still don''t understand how difficult this process is. There''s a reason elven grandmaster mages still take months for a single division, deep meditation supported by their entire communities as they gradually split off their next layer. And that''s without the pressure of the moon trying to crush you, without trying to add new imprints at the same time."


    "We''re cramming months of progress into a single day."


    "Each step would take months. Prodigies can do the whole cycle in a year. Most people take a decade, and of those who succeed in performing a full manabody split, the majority never do it a second time. If so many people can''t bring themselves to try again after a success, how would anyone convince themselves to go through it again on a failure?"


    Raina sighed. "Point made." She sat back up and started to brush the snow off her back before it melted. "I hereby grant permission for you to refuse my refusal to follow through on the awful thing we''re about to do to ourselves."


    Jair handed her the crystal. "First step is to finish the anchor imprint. Most people wait until they have a full set before dividing, but technically you only need one. This will be easiest because the imprints are already started, but it''s still going to be tearing gaps where the ambient mana can push in. Unless you have practice with manabody manipulation already, there''s no way to prepare you for this apart from saying ''start drawing'' so I won''t try. I''ll be right here."


    "Not going to do it yourself?"


    "I will. Once we''re ready to do it for real."


    That more than anything else sobered Raina. That he would not even demonstrate prematurely. She took a breath, nodded, and pulled free the left sleeve of her protective outfit. She shivered as the frozen air of Nuprima brushed her bare arm, clenched it into a fist and rested her forearm across her lap securely. She flexed her hand, glanced at the paired forearm imprints, then back to her hand. "Where should I start?"


    "Not with the hand, unless you''re absolutely confident in wanting it as your anchor. It''s a lot more sensitive."


    Raina nodded. She took another breath, then pressed the crystal to her arm. Then gasped and flung it away with a sharp cry, clutched her arm to her chest.


    "Raina." Jair took her shoulders. "It''s alright. Breathe. It''s just your manabody. Hold it together. Don''t let it collapse."


    "W-what—what is this?" She could barely breathe. Her voice trembled, further distorted by the protective faceplate. "I don''t—" Then she doubled over with a silent gasp.


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    "That''s what the atmospheric pressure does when it finds an opening. The first thing you''ll need to master if we''re going to do this is looping that power flood back out and using it to seal itself."


    It was another several minutes before Raina could talk coherently, and when she did it was with resignation. "I couldn''t, the whole thing collapsed."


    "Pretty normal for a first try. Did you manage to integrate the mana influx at all?"


    "No. I had no control at all. It just kept coming and coming and the imprint tore and..." she shivered and stared down at her arms, now bare of even the partial imprints they''d spent the past weeks obtaining. "I''ve never felt anything like it."


    "Welcome to secret overpowered cheating techniques 101: it''s going to be painful and difficult. Last chance if you want to back out."


    She paused, still staring at her bare arms, then slowly shook her head.


    Her fists were clenched tight, both the gloved and un-gloved, bare arm tight to her chest, but gradually she calmed. Breathing deep, she finally swallowed and nodded. "I think it''s dispersed."


    "Then let''s try again."


    <hr>


    Once she could manage the initial incision of the imprinting''s beginning, there was continuing the pattern to be done. It had to be done incredibly slowly, even more slowly than Jair would be doing, since the primary difficulty would be managing the amount of mana flooding in from Nuprima''s atmosphere.


    She had around forty seconds from first opening to losing control, and a further two minutes until full collapse if she couldn''t get it back under control. With a longer imprint line, that happened even faster. When she first tried to make a full stroke at once, the entire thing dissipated in seconds.


    "Very slow. Just keep it steady and stay focused on holding the power where it belongs, and sealing the imprint as you go."


    That took countless hours, and then countless hours more as they moved from the initial line to the intricate patterns.


    Jair started on his own once she was getting along reasonably well, since the end goal would be for them to finish simultaneously, but had to do so from a position where Raina couldn''t see him since she invariably tried to imitate his speed and had nowhere near the experience to handle it.


    He could probably still get to three layers while she finished her first.


    The process grew more and more frustrating with each failure, since it was almost impossible to resume an imprint midway. Even Jair would invariably wobble at least a little when reverting into an in-progress line.


    Time disappeared in the endless cycle. Try and fail and start over.


    But each time they got a little further, a little closer, and the frustration of failure grew softer with repetition. It was inevitable, do your best, try again, see how far you can get.


    Not that the path was smooth. Sometimes she made a mistake sooner than before, or her hand slipped, or she just had to stop and scream for a while, but overall the early steps went almost universally just fine and the later ones moved faster and faster. She still wouldn''t be close to his speed even at her best, but for someone who''d only started this morning she was coming along incredibly well.


    One good thing about reverting the same hour over and over was that the weather was entirely predictable. She started to automatically shift her shoulder to block the wind at just the right moments, lean back against it when it gusted particularly heavily, and continue the line with slow continuous pressure.


    Another good thing about the constant reversion was that they didn''t need to worry about their physical requirements. Their lifebodies didn''t have time to grow hungry however many weeks or months worth of time passed. They would be just as strong at the fiftieth try as the first, weariness only mental with no tangible detrimental effects.


    When they finally got Raina''s anchor imprint fully finished, she just sat and stared at it with her breath held for almost ten minutes, waiting for something to go wrong and it to collapse on her, before turning to grab him with unrestrained ecstasy.


    "We did it! I did it! Look!"


    Jair jumped up to dance around with her, hiding the flawed imprint from where she''d disrupted his flow. He was on his third by now, and Storm Strike wasn''t so essential that he would make her do it all over again to preserve it. He could add it to a different layer. Not all of them had to be perfect.


    As long as hers were, that was all that mattered. He''d come this far without any imprints at all, he could go without one or two per layer if that''s what it took.


    They spent several minutes talking, stretching, walking around—jumping and dancing in Raina''s case—in order to give him a solid reversion window that he could clearly envision and not accidentally revert them into the initial process.


    They went up to the overmount to chat with the harpies for a few minutes, further cementing the moment as distinct, then headed back down/up to the inverted peak of the undermount. They each chose a new mana crystal, since the first had been worn down and drained in the process, then got started on the next imprint.


    The exhilaration of the first success carried them through several more false starts and reversions before it all dulled back into the familiar cycle of struggling for a little bit more progress each time. Or, if not every time, at least pretty often.


    After they finally finished Raina''s second imprint and Jair''s fifth, they paused to go have a late breakfast. The amount of manabody exercise they''d been doing over the past few hours didn''t translate to much on any layer but magical, and sitting in place wasn''t particularly straining physically, but the sheer passage of time did require them to pay some attention as the day progressed.


    "Do you hate yourself yet?" Jair teased as Raina picked out their menu back at the dome.


    "Oddly enough, no. Not yet."


    "Not yet, really?"


    She looked down at the two imprints on her arm, which was beginning to regain some of its normal color now they were inside. "Not any more."


    "Did I miss an existential crisis in there somewhere?"


    "More than one, I think." She laughed it off, running a finger along her second imprint again. "It''s fine, I didn''t want you to see."


    Jair considered arguing, but decided to simply nod. She was certainly entitled to maintain her dignity.


    Was that what this would have been like for him, if he''d not been alone? If he''d been able to describe what went wrong and be offered a path to the solution, instead of simply throwing himself against it again and again until he broke through...


    "What''s that smile for?" Raina demanded.


    Was he smiling? Was that why his chest felt light and his heart warm? "Nothing, I''m just happy for you. You''re doing so well, coming along so fast. We''re really going to do this."


    "It''s amazing!" She held up her arm, showing off the imprint again, then drew Tempest and activated the spell.


    Fire rushed down her arm and flared up around her blade, a line of ember-orange surrounding its edge.


    "One morning! You remember how weak this was yesterday? And now it looks like I''ve been imprinting for months, not weeks." She gave the flaming blade a sweeping flourish, trail of fire flowing out behind it, imprint alight. "I could keep this up all day. It''s amazing."


    "It really is." Somehow, seeing her success seemed to validate every terrible moment he''d spent in piecing the strategy together inch by painful inch. Destroying his bodies over and over until he got it right... and now all that effort was saving Raina years of struggle herself.


    She could put in the effort knowing she was on the right path, that it would definitely be rewarded when she finished.


    Jair had tried teaching people in the past, but without the ability to learn from their mistakes it was an exercise in futility. He could revert himself a thousand times, but no matter what he said it wasn''t enough to convey the necessary understanding.


    This was different. Raina could learn and they could adjust and she could repeat it immediately with direct feedback from both her own body and Jair''s experience.


    Raina giggled and poked him with her spoon. "Were you going to eat, or just grin dopily at me all morning?"


    "I can eat later. The morning only lasts so long."


    She laughed. "I never imagined it could be this easy."


    "Most people would consider what you''ve been through this morning anything but easy."


    Raina waved it off. "Sure it was uncomfortable at first, but that''s just when I didn''t know what to expect. Being able to finish the spell in one go is so satisfying."


    Can''t possibly be as satisfying as watching you be so happy about it, he didn''t say, only watched with pride and satisfaction. She''d worked so hard, with such focused determination.


    Finally, all the obscure things he''d learned were able to be useful for something other than stored away in case of emergency. He could see how much it meant to her, and it brought her that much closer to being able to survive on her own without him needing to even consider looking over her shoulder every moment for a snapvine or a stray vylix.


    She could take care of herself. She wasn''t weak, she wasn''t ignorant. Only young and untrained yet. But that was something he could help with. And she was eager and determined, more so than so many others.


    Stubborn, loving, protective Raina. Finally able to be the one who could pursue her advancement on her own, not one who had to be always looking out for him. For her family. For anyone and everyone except herself.


    She could do whatever she wanted here, choose her path and lock it in with no outside influence having any say in the matter. No looking back and double guessing. And she dove into it without more than a moment''s pause.


    "I love you so much." He said it without thinking, a response to the vast swelling of pride and happiness and relief and so much more. He''d worried that this might break something in her, but couldn''t deny her the opportunity to try, and yet she survived and pressed through and seemed to be handling it all better than he could ever have imagined.


    She blinked up at him, the grin stretching even wider across her face as she reached across to grab his hand. "I love you too, silly. You sure we can’t take a bit of a break before getting back to it?"


    “As it turns out, I think I can trust you to come back to finish.”


    <hr>