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*crackle* A sound akin to static filled my ears as I found myself helplessly floating in a dark abyss. It was so dark that I felt blind, so silent I felt deaf, and all the while, I couldn't feel anything, my own mana nor my own body. -W..what...-

Trying to look around and move, I did everything I could to try and find something I could do, no matter how tiny or meaningless it was.

However, no matter what I tried, nothing changed. It was completely unlike anything I had ever felt.

-I have nothing.. no senses, no body, and no soul...- Accelerating my thoughts to their limit, I started burning through theories like igniting hydrogen.

But no matter how many ideas I blew through, none of them stuck, as if they fundamentally couldn't. -It's like I'm in a dream, but I'm fully conscious with no control over anything...-

It was as if I had simply ceased existing. -Could my mind have detached itself from my body?-

But as I thought that, a noise finally met my ears.

*tap.. tap-scratch-fwip* Through the static that filled the silence in my mind, I could faintly hear the noise of a quill sliding over paper. *fwip* *scribble-fwip*

And then, there was a voice. "How..." The word was spoken in draconic, but was far quieter than even a whisper, as if the word wasn't meant to be heard by anyone. *fw-fwip* *scribble-fwip-scratch*

As the noise of the quill continued, it ever-so-slowly started becoming clearer, only to be disrupted by the deafening static whenever I would hear another noise, from the flip of a page in a book, to the sound of the breeze or a ripple in mana.

The only way I could describe it, was it was as if I was listening to a corrupted audio file... -What the hell is this...-

*steady scribbles* *fwip* "Haah..." Interrupting my thoughts, I heard the sigh of a dragon far larger than even Hera before the scribbling suddenly paused, and a foreign voice intruded my mind as if it were my own. -{Why are the numbers wrong...}-

The voice wasn't familiar, and even the dialect was off-putting, but before I could think about it, an array of billions of atoms appeared in my head, as if I were reading them through my aura.

At first, it seemed like a jumbled mess, a field of random atoms placed with no rhyme or reason, but the longer I stared and the harder I looked, the more patterns I found. -Wait.. is this all binary?-

Finally noticing the spin of electrons, it all suddenly clicked.

It was all mathematics beyond anything I could imagine, storing entire equations and endless constants into singular atoms before quickly compounding in complexity and escaping the realm of my understanding.

From what I could infer, it was a system that, while unbelievably complicated, was also unbelievably efficient, completely eclipsing methods I used personally, even if that was because I rarely needed to crunch massive equations in one go. -But what is he trying to do?-

Struggling to follow along with the math itself, I tried to trial and error my way through it in an attempt to figure out what the numbers meant, but every now and then, I would run into some kind of leap in logic I couldn't follow.

-{I've checked these numbers thousands of times.. none of it is wrong... So..}- "Why doesn't it work?!" *CRACK* The sounds of splintering wood instantly echoed out before light finally met my eyes as if I suddenly opened them.

I was in an office lined with massive marble bookshelves, walls of glass, and statues of mythril, with tons of paper, diagrams, and unbelievably complex, traditional, two-dimensional runes.

-{Something and nothing, zero and one, positive and negative.

.. Everything in the world can be dulled down and explained with a simple sequence of yes and no's.

. so why is it the moment I add mana to the mix, it all suddenly goes to shit.

..}- My eyes, out of my control, quickly scanned over several diagrams and runes before pulling out a thin metal sheet with a rune carved into it.

-{For mana to exist independently from matter, there must be independent sequences and transitions between everything within the isolated system.

. a way for energy to flow in two directions rather than one.

..}- Injecting some mana into the rune, the metal started to glow red through the creation of fire mana.

-{So why is it that while theory and mathematics align, reality doesn't...}-

From what I could tell, the rune attempted to convert unattributed mana to fire mana, then convert it again to another type of mana, but to no avail. -Is he trying to figure out mana conversion?-

It was a realm of mana I had lightly touched on to try and explain how and why the conversion between mana types works the way they do, but after much effort, I had given up on it.

After an unbelievable amount of experimentation, I could find patterns, but I couldn't figure out why they worked or what they were doing, so I accepted the results and tried to move on. -But he hasn't reached that point...-

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To me, it was an unclimbable wall that stunted my fundamental understanding of mana.

But just because I got stuck doesn't mean everyone did.

*tap* Picking up a small black marble, my vision settled on the unfathomably intricate, three-dimensional space rune layering its interior, moving layer by layer, tracing the countless converging paths.

-{To get to space mana via a rune, you have to layer it with thousands or even millions of other parts taken out of common attribute runes, and sequence them like a path. ..}-

-Huh?- Suddenly noticing the similarities as well, I mentally traced through the intricate rune along with him.

-{With just a few adjustments, I can even take out each layer and turn them back into attribute runes, even if they're less efficient... But why...}-

As his thoughts paused, my mind started to wander, attempting to answer the question he posed before the voice returned, but after a moment, he spoke with a deep and gravelly voice. "Is it because mana attributes are energy states?"

It was a thought I had had before but never managed to make any breakthroughs with.

However, that was just because I lacked a key piece of the puzzle back then.

The knowledge of space mana. "Space mana is the only attribute that doesn't decay with time, so that would likely imply it's the lowest and most stable energy state, while unattributed mana would be the highest..."

They were the zero and one he was looking for. -{That would mean there is a way for mana to not only decay to space mana, but also grow from it...}-

With my vision hastily darting around the room, the being I looked through the eyes of quickly picked up several runes and a block of metal while his thoughts slowly became more energetic.

-{Could the reason the math and theory works while the practice doesn't be because I'm experimenting in the wrong enviroment?

Could the 'growth' of mana be related to the 'hunger' of space mana when it's isolated from the array of space? }- (fabric of space)

*vwoop* Quickly enclosing himself in a gate using a rune, he created a small sphere of space mana before lowering the metal block into it.

Almost instantly, it started changing colors, growing brighter and brighter while the metal block looked like it was being dissolved.

It was as I expected, but after a certain point, it got so bright that it couldn't get any brighter.. and that was when it happened... *VWOOOM* An explosion of pure unattributed mana exploded from the tiny sphere, filling the empty volume of the gate in an instant.

The being whose eyes I looked through simply froze. It was the birth of mana as we knew it, a piece of insight that pointed us in the direction of the origin of mana.

However, that was where everything ended, and I once again returned to the dark abyss I started in.

*silence* It was like the end of a tape, an abrupt cut to silence. -W..what was that...- As if I suddenly snapped out of a trance, I immediately started questioning everything I just saw. -Was that some kind of vision.. or was it maybe a dream?-

But before I could deduce anything, my sensations returned in a single nauseating wave, and I found myself lying in a pool of liquid mana on a bed of deep black mythril.

*GASP-SPLASH* Jolting up onto my feet, my mind was flooded with the burning sensation of mana permeating my skin, with it crystallizing on my fur like salt from the ocean.

Without knowing any better, I had created what was akin to a nuke of mana, flooding the void with energy and getting enough mana to fill a continent in return. -But what about Father?!-

Throwing everything I just experienced out the window, I broke into panic and looked around, quickly finding that I was alone in a fairly narrow but deep pit of mythril only about as wide as the pool of mana I stood in before bolting up out of it without hesitation.

As I ascended, the density of the mana quickly started thinning but slowly stabilized at a level far above what dragons could tolerate.

To Father, who had an even lower tolerance than most, it was nothing short of a death sentence. -Please. Please. Please. PLEASE!-

Finally exiting the pit, I faintly felt a lingering part of Father's aura through the mana and looked over to see him laying on the ground not far away, still and unmoving.

It was a sight that made my heart sink. -Nonononono...- Darting to his side, I immediately set my paw on him and started checking his vitals.

But they were silent. His lungs and heart laid unmoving, just as his eyes and body did.

He was dead...

Or at least.. he was conventionally.

-It's faint, but.. is the mana being absorbed?

- All throughout his body, mana was being absorbed by each cell individually as if they each had their own tiny reserve, and when I looked at his reserve itself, while it was fractured, it was also attempting to absorb even more mana, although the mana outside was so dense it wasn't giving it an option.

-He's.. alive...- It was a thought that washed over me like a wave of relief, a disaster turned into a blessing, but at the same time, it made me worry even more. -His body is trying to change so it can sustain itself off mana, but.. he doesn't have enough aura for that...-

His reserve, while sizable for his age, was far below what was required for his body to live off aura alone.

So, in short, if he couldn't more than quadruple the size of his reserve before he woke up.. he would struggle to sustain himself and would likely, inevitably, starve himself to death. -This.. might be a problem...-

But there was a solution I already had in mind. -What if I.. forced his dragon sleep…-

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