I figured the appropriate reaction was mild shock and concern. Oh crap, Zoltan is missing? What ever shall we do?

Hamsik was lucky he even got a reaction from me, if I was being honest.

“Missing?” I asked. “Why?”

“Well, if I knew that, I would probably be hunting him down this instant,” Hamsik said.

“There isn’t exactly an abundance of places where a rich, noble Scarseeker can disappear to.”

“I’m aware.”

I realized I was being a bit unhelpful. Just because I had seen them hate each other, to the point they would have fought against each other if their parents hadn’t been there to stop them, didn’t mean that Hamsik was so heartless he felt absolutely nothing at his brother’s disappearance.

“I’ll try to look around and see if I can find anything,” I said. “Although, I wouldn’t count on it being helpful.”

“That’s alright. Every little bit should help. I have my suspicions on where he might be, and I’ve got my own methods of searching, but every little bit helps.”

That echoed a familiar sentiment I had been experiencing ever since I had arrived at Ephemeroth. So I nodded sincerely.

He didn’t elaborate about his suspicions and I trusted he would if it really became relevant. I asked about the rest of his family and learned it was the same old, same old. They were dealing with the fallout from the Council’s judgment in the trial as well as a noble family in their position could.

Apart from the fact that their other son seemed to be rebelling against it in his own way. I had a feeling nothing good was going to come off this disappearance.

“Think it might be better to find him sooner rather than later,” I said, not bothering to hide the warning in my voice.

Hamsik agreed with a short nod. It was probably why he had come here in the first place.

When he left, I finally winded down and went to sleep. After trying to give Enrico a hug. Sadly, I couldn’t hug light—yet—so I just had to resort to a verbal goodnight.

The next day, I focused on trying to get Threaded Reinforcement, just as I had told Hamsik. Sacrificing the Anymphea’s statements had surprisingly added a couple of days to the mana implosion timer, so I had some time. Even better that I was familiar with the process.

A while back, master Kostis had revealed how to get the necessary Augmentation at the Mage Guild. It was all about mana control. Something I sorely lacked practice in.

From what Kostis had revealed, I had so far allowed the Weave to direct my mana through my Aspects as I saw fit. This was fine for beginners such as myself. It wasn’t like I had truly been limited in what I could achieve because of my lack of control.

Nevertheless, attaining finer control over my mana itself before it got Aspected would allow me to mix and match Aspects better when I needed to. More importantly, it was the most important pre-requisite to getting the Augmentation I needed for taking care of my mana core’s threat of an implosion.

I settled down in the rear of the temple that was becoming my familiar practice spot. It was a lot less broken-down now, thanks to the new funds helping repair a good chunk of the temple, which kind of clashed with my sense of familiarity. But I would get used to it.

The problem with trying to control mana, as I sat cross-legged and closed my eyes to focus, was that it didn’t want to be controlled. I could feel the magical energy within me once again. It was like trying to tame overexcited eels. Strands flying and swimming every which way, slippery and oily and impossible to get a grip on as they squeezed out of all grasps.

I had been wondering how to resolve the issue. This was entirely a mental exercise. Or a spiritual one, rather. I needed to impose my will on my mana in such a way that I could direct it to where it needed to go without resorting to my Aspects.

Because that was essentially what the magical energy wanted to do. I had to think of it in terms of potential. Putting a jar on a high shelf gave it gravitational potential energy, such that as soon as the support was taken away, the jar would immediately start to plummet. Similarly, mana had the same kind of potential and focusing on Aspects was equivalent to removing the jar’s support.

The challenge came in directing that potential towards a different goal without relying on the handout the Weave gave through the Aspects.

Eels, huh? Slippery creatures but also living ones. I decided to focus on that analogy instead.

The whole business was starting to remind me of trying to get a small army of puppies experiencing zoomies to cooperate with me. I didn’t have practical experience in that, but keeping such a thing in mind helped me get a grip on the riotous mana.

In the end, the puppies were manipulatable too. Just had to bring out enough treats and getting them to do as I wanted would turn out significantly simpler. So what exactly was supposed to be a treat for something as ephemeral as magical energy? The answer appeared pretty easily—letting them run through whichever of my Aspects they wished.

Or at least, letting them think they could.

Of course, mana wasn’t actually alive as far as I knew. There was no negotiation, no offering up temptations.

All I did was focus the tiniest bit on an Aspect, on Gravity, and take away that focus immediately after the instant my mana rushed towards said Gravity. Giving said Aspect a physical location on my body helped direct the mana in a much more real-world sense than whatever way I was experiencing it inside my mana core.

The tiny bit of focus with Gravity localized to my arm allowed the mana to thread into there with slicing rapidness. It felt strange. I was sure I felt the crack in my chest, which was normally almost impalpable when the mana implosion timer had a countdown of more than a few days as it did now, grow stronger by just a hair.

It was working, though. The more curious proof was that the same cracked sensation that normally emanated from deep within my chest, where my mana core’s physical presence resided, had now grown a tiny copy at the exact location where I had focused on Gravity.

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The mana had rushed there to channel itself through my Aspect, but since the connection was gone before it could convert into Gravity Aspected mana, it remained within my arm.

As a magical fracture.

Master Kostis had mentioned that the slightly spiky sensation was how it was supposed to feel. I felt like I was growing a porcupine inside my forearm. At least it wasn’t painful. More curious that it was called Threaded Reinforcement when it felt a lot more like fault lines, not strings or threads or anything of the sort.

He had also mentioned that completing Threaded Reinforcement should, theoretically, vastly boost my body’s capability to channel mana. One of the reasons the core threatened to explode was because my body couldn’t physically handle that levels of mana.

So, naturally, the way the Weave worked made it so my mana core would just blow up. Made perfect sense.

Whatever. It was just another thing I was looking forward to a lot. No more—or at least, a lot less—mana exhaustion was something I’d take any day of the week.

The Augmentation didn’t arrive at that singular instance of practice. I would need to keep it for some time longer, just as I had with trying to get the Concentration Affix for Flare. Probably even longer than that, considering how effort-hungry Spirit tended to be.

I practiced for several more hours, slowly making the cracked sensation inside my arm grow stronger and stronger.

It was nice to discover there wasn’t a time limit to the process. As in, reinforcing my arm with mana didn’t have an expiration date. The mana infusing my arm wasn’t going to run out. At least, not until I started using another Aspect, which promptly allowed the infused magical energy to rush out like I had opened some sort of floodgates and turn into Aspected mana.

I had only discovered that because I had tried to channel Illumination to light up a nearby brick.

Hmm, I was starting to see the challenge. Master Kostis hadn’t mentioned how to keep the reinforcement mana still locked inside my body. I supposed he had expected me to take a decent chunk of time trying to just infuse mana into myself.

Which I had. Even after several hours, I hadn’t fully managed to reinforce the threads—or thread the reinforcement?—through my forearm, much less the entirety of my limb.

This was going to take some time and effort.

I couldn’t focus on just trying to get my new Augmentation for the whole day. There were other duties that needed my attention. I had to keep up appearances as the cult leader, join and lead the prayers here and there, greet people who came to visit, enjoy meals with all the other cultists and so on.

Then there was the more administrative side of things that I needed to pore over. Continuing to keep tabs on where all the money was spent, checking to make sure they had resulted in the right purchases with no signs of corruption and whatnot.

It wasn’t bad, in large part because I could delegate stuff. Aqrea looking over the admin side of things while a rotation of Santoire, Guille, and Sreketh handling the social side of the cult business all helped take the load off me, allowing me to focus on what I really wanted to accomplish.

I wondered how things would change when I got the Aspect of Leadership that Escinca had mentioned. It was strange I hadn’t received it yet, but then, Escinca had been in the Gold-ranked evolution of the cultist Path. Path of the Hierophant or something like that.

But besides my Spirit Augmentation, I had other things to focus on. Both Flare and Illumination were in Iron, compared to the Silver that everything else was on, so I needed to prioritize them for a bit. I didn’t know what second Affix I ought to be getting for them, especially since I wanted to gain Manifestation as an Augmentation later.

That didn’t mean I couldn’t practice with them, though. Over the next few days, I focused between trying to gain Threaded Reinforcement and ranking up my two new Aspects.

The more I worked with the former, the faster I could thread the mana through me. I probably should have focused entirely on Threaded Reinforcement, but I was pretty sure that until I got the Augmentation for real, I wouldn’t be able to maintain those threads anyway.

Trying to make Concentration work faster and faster while lighting up all kinds of things in my surroundings wasn’t an entirely terrible way to pass time. Okay fine, that sounded terribly boring on paper, but something about working towards new ranks always worked as good enough motivation to keep plugging away at it, to keep working on what I believed in.

Especially since they were interspersed with little things I needed to take care of. Since I was delegating duties, I decided I might as well ask my fellow cultists like Santoire and Guille to carry out certain responsibilities outside the temple in my stead.

For instance, Santoire was happy to take a letter from me to the Ration House on Ring Three for the next week’s food order. I remembered doing the same with Aurier after getting a letter from the Elder.

On another day, I met Revayne, who was paying a visit since she was patrolling the area.

“We finally got the truth serums we needed from the Alchemist’s Guild,” she said after we had exchanged pleasantries. “So expect some development on the Scarthrall front.”

I had been waiting for news about the Scarthralls that the city guards had apprehended last week. “So you’ll be letting at least some of them out soon, huh?”

Her frown was the only thing visible with her face buried in her book. “Ideally, yes.”

“Let me guess, things are never ideal.”

Revayne sighed and looked up. “They certainly aren’t. Most of the guards are loathe to release any of the Thralls, regardless of perceived innocence, because they believe the chance for corruption is strong.”

I sighed. “I expected as much. Thankfully, there are no legal means of keeping anyone locked up because they might commit a crime.”

“Actually, there are, depending on their condition. But rest assured, it’s a lengthy process. To do something of that sort requires unanimous Council approval, and the Scarthralls certainly don’t qualify.”

I wondered what exact conditions would necessitate pre-emotive apprehending someone. It reminded me of metal health institutions and involuntary hospitalization. I had my doubts there were that sort of things here.

It was the day after I had met Revayne that I finally broke through. Early in the afternoon, I got the notification from the Weave that I had been seeking.

[ Augmentation Unlocked!

You have acquired a new Augmentation for your Spirit Attribute.

Augmentation: Threaded Reinforcement ]

[ Rank Up!

Your Spirit Attribute has risen by one Rank.

Your Flare and Illumination Aspects have risen by one Rank.

Your Path of Burning Starlight has risen by one Rank

Spirit: Silver III

Flare: Iron V

Illumination: Iron IV

Path of Burning Starlight: Silver III ]

Ah, delightful. I finally had the Augmentation I was seeking. Flare and Illumination rising another rank was just a nice bonus on top.

I was pretty cheerful the rest of the day and the others obviously noticed. Aqrea gave me a warm smile, which grew wider when I explained why I was grinning more often than not.

“Basically, I can really start working on tackling the implosion of my mana core,” I said. “And then I can hopefully stop worrying about Sacrificing things all the time to prevent it.”

Aqrea’s smile seemed to take a knowing cast as she left. “Remember you have the meeting with the other cults tomorrow, Cultist Ross.”

“Oh, right, yes. Thanks.”

I was honestly blanking on the agenda for the meeting tomorrow, and Aqrea left before I could ask about a reminder. But I had other things on my mind anyway. Regardless of what else went on at the meeting tomorrow, I was looking forward to learning more about particular Attributes and Augmentations the other cult leaders could help with.

Namely, I was planning to figure out my Fervour Augmentation and resume ranking up Ritual.