Chapter 180: Concealment Spell
Duly noted, host. It would be my pleasure. Aegis responded efficiently.
Back to the concealment spell...
A good concealment spell should mask your presence totally – sight, sound, smell, and even radiation coming off your body as heat. There are champions from all corners of the universe who have surely evolved to better sense any single one of these.
"That seems like a lot. Would I be able to run all of that constantly without feeling strained?"
That remains to be seen, host. But regardless if you can’t, the spells should be created anyway.
If it comes to the worst and your ALU can’t handle all the calculations without strain at one time, then you can select which of the four you want to conceal whenever appropriate.
"Sounds good." Zephyr nodded. "I’m guessing we’re starting with sight."
Yes, host. That is the most obvious aspect to conceal.
And to do that, you need to understand light, and how it works.
Think of light like extremely tiny bouncing balls — photons, host. Every surface you see is just light bouncing off it and into your eyes.
Your skin, your clothes, your hair... they all bounce light differently than the desert floor.
That’s what makes your figure stand out in the distance — what makes people actually see ’you’ and not the desert.
If you bend the light bouncing off you to mimic the way it does the desert floor, then to any eye, you’re just another part of the sand and the red rocky earth.
It would be the best camouflage. Like a mirror taking on whatever is in front of it.
Visualizing this might prove difficult for you since you do not really have a frame of reference for it. It might be hard to picture light differently from what you know.
"Well, we won’t know until we try, no?" Zephyr chuckled, about to start, but Aegis simply continued, wanting to give Zephyr the full picture before he started.
Sound on the other hand is way easier to mask.
"It’s just vibrations in the air..." Zephyr chipped in. He already had this knowledge.
Yes, host. Every breath, every step, every movement you make rattles the air like ripples in water. Oscillations of particles caused by vibrations.
Which means, if you make a counter-vibration at the right frequency, you can cancel out all of the sound waves.
With your magic, you can cast a field that absorbs and smooths out those ripples before they spread, flattening every wave till perfect silence. Essentially, a constant noise-cancellation field just like your mana field.
"That one shouldn’t be too hard..." Zephyr rubbed his chin in thought. His ALU should be able to react and make the precise calculations required for counteracting each sound wave with an equal vibration.
From his experience, his ALU was good at that. Back in the sandstorm it was able to make the minute, quick adjustments required for him to ride the wind currents despite how extreme and volatile it was.
For smell, just think about it as particles drifting from your body into the air. Sweat, oils, your breath... they are all tiny chemical trails.
Predators — or in your case, Monsters, and Champions with a strong sense of smell — track their target by following that trail. To mask it, all you need to do is be conscious of it.
Create a spell that redirects the smell instead of letting it trail behind you.
If you control the airflow tightly around your body, you can steer that trail of particles upward, dispersing them high up harmlessly into the hot desert air where they will vanish faster — somewhat like a chimney.
"Also easy..." Zephyr waved a hand dismissively, "What about ’heat radiation?’ Haven’t heard of that one before..." he asked.
It is fairly straightforward. Everything with warmth gives off energy as heat radiation. Monsters and Champions that see heat don’t look at shapes, they look at contrasts — a hot body against a cooler background.
You obviously cannot stop radiating heat except you are dead, but there are ways to mask it. One of which is by spreading it out.
During the day, you don’t need to worry much. The desert is already hot enough that your heat signature would be masked naturally, but at night when it gets cold, you can create a spell that would act as a layer surrounding you at all times.
Its only purpose would be to reflect heat to the point where your contrast is so low, it looks like you’re also a part of the desert night.
"This one isn’t a field..." Zephyr muttered. "I was thinking I’d be able to merge everything into one single spell afterwards."
Nothing wrong with making it two spells, host. Your mana node can handle it.
"Yeahh" Zephyr drawled, already visualizing the concealment spell, starting with the light aspect.
He held out his hand, using it as the test medium.
He pictured the hot desert sun reflecting off it as little balls — particles, as Aegis had described.
He frowned deeply, scrunching his brows as nothing happened for the first few minutes.
"Gyaaahh" he let out a deep breath, releasing the tension he had built up from exerting himself.
"Aegis was right... this is hard," he huffed, taking a breather before going again.
’Little balls little balls little balls, photons photons photons—’ he kept muttering in his head trying to visualize as vividly as he could.
It wasn’t until after nearly ten minutes of repeated trials that something finally happened — despite the fact that at some point, Aegis had unwillingly sent Zephyr an image depicting the interaction between light and sight, dancing around the limits of his User Privilege Level.
It started off as a flicker at first. Color was the first thing his attempt affected. His hand flickered between the multitude of colors it had — the different shades, contours, markings, splotches — and a single golden color.
A triumphant chuckle escaped Zephyr’s lips as he finally grasped the concept.
He held the spell effect in place, watching his now all-golden colored hand with intrigue.
It still stood out against the more red-golden rocky terrain of the desert where he was. But it was a start. At least he could do something now.
He held the hand far away from his body.
"It could still pass as a rock from a distance." Zephyr chuckled.
But he wasn’t satisfied with just this. The camouflage would fall apart as soon as one got closer.
What he wanted was something that even if within a few feet, an enemy still wouldn’t be able to pick him out from the surroundings.
He placed his hand on the ground, focusing now on getting the color, the shades and textures of the desert floor right.
The hard part of visualizing the spell itself was done, so this part was fairly easy. He didn’t even have to do much, he just sent a general idea of what he wanted to his mana core, and he could already see the effects of his ALU executing his intention.
"Whoa..." Zephyr marveled at the fact that he could see the effect in real time. Reducing contrast, tone, too much red, too much golden, wrong shades, too plain, not enough texture...
His ALU was making minute corrections, adding and subtracting effects as he watched.
Until eventually, it got exactly what Zephyr intended, down to the last detail.
"Sheesh..." Even Zephyr couldn’t spot his hand anymore.
He could feel that his hand was placed on the ground, but there was a disconnect between what his eyes saw and what he felt, giving him a weird feeling.
"This is damn good."
.
.
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A/N: I will be launching another book on the 5th of October, which is next month. It will be my entry for the Rising Stars competition (this year’s themes are Supernatural or Cyberpunk) that runs from October till January on webnovel.
I’ve been building the world for a while now, taking what I’ve learned writing Mana Processor into the new book, right from the start. So I hope when it releases, you all can show some support there just like you have for Mana Processor. And hopefully I can go on to win!
Mana Processor also continues uninterrupted. I will be writing the two books concurrently, so there should be no cause for alarm. We’re just getting to the main parts of the story where a lot of things will be revealed and Zephyr gets into the radar of... 😉