Ed's blood boiled as he felt pure adrenaline coursing through his entire body. His instincts were also elevated due to this causing his feet to immediately jump into action.
At that same time, the many ice crystals dotted in the desolate cavern started to blow up one by one. To be specific, all of the ice pseudo mana inside of them was starting to be released in a single burst creating sturdy plumes of ice.
One such plume darted its way towards the long jumping Ed who didn't even spare it a glance before using his space hop spell. The mana in his surrounding contorted until quickly forming into a fissure in space that teleported Ed closer to the entrance.
To outsiders however it would seem as if Ed disappeared and reappeared much further ahead, which technically wasn't wrong.
'Damn it!' Ed thought as he immediately took to the ground and bolted out of the underground expanse. He could hear the sound of solidifying ice and the disappearing soft light that used to emanate from there causing him to suffer quite a bit.
'Why didn't any of you warn me!?' Couldn't they ensure a smooth transition of power? That old Herewaruk was too selfish! To leave such a bomb inside of his treasury! Ed would have to charge him some extra rent for occupying his mind for this slight.
Finally, Ed started to slow down into a jog and then stop altogether. The noise of the ice freezing over and looming ever closer had become distant. It was either that or had stopped altogether. Regardless, Ed decided to turn around and find out whether or not the boulder had any chance of surviving.
He hurried over in the now pitch dark cavern tunnel until, with his limited vision, coming across a wall of ice. It was spiky and coarse but Ed still felt it necessary to test its brittleness.
[You've been dealt damage. -7 hp]
He threw a casual punch inadvertently damaging himself as much of the force of the punch worked against him, the shards of ice ended up puncturing his unprotected fist. To make matters worse, the hole he created was not nearly large enough.
'Tsssst!' That caused Ed to quickly pull it back again in aching pain. Yet, that pain couldn't compare to the knowledge that the boulder of struggle would be stuck inside of the artificial glacier only to be found by the later generations.
'As if!' Ed was definitely not willing to give up on the boulder so easily. While he wouldn't be able to assimilate it in one or two weeks, that said nothing about a month from now.
'I'll just have to set up a formation that constantly burns away the ice' Ed could even employ Vorgarag to do this task as a means to help him get reacquainted with his memories of writing arrays.
Who knew, perhaps the remnant knowledge of Herewaruk could help Vorgarag achieve success in only a single week instead of his two to four weeks.
'Sigh… An orc can dream…' Ed knew that was borderline unrealistically. He would have to wait, and a while at that too. Fortunately, he could already see himself being considerably occupied. The knowledge he gained from the boulder of civilization was not small, he had acquired the entire thing after all.
Ed started to filter through it even while being onset by mild headaches. He needed to accommodate this new knowledge into his mind but he was running out of space.
'I need to level up again soon' The skeletons would receive a considerable memory boost whenever they leveled up due to the fact that their minds were entirely blank. Whenever his consciousness received a boost in size however he would receive his old memories back leaving little space for new knowledge.
'Wait… I- am I really me?' Ed would receive his old memories but would it make any difference if he placed those memories on another consciousness for example?
'I- I suppose I might be dead' It was very well possible that Ed's memories from his past life had somehow been acquired by the omnipotent system and it recreated him. That would mean he hadn't really transmigrated as much as he had been cloned.
'Scary' Ed would never know for sure but he would much rather not touch on the sensitive subject. On another hand, an army of Ed's wouldn't be half bad, right? Ed would be able to do infinitely more research and things.
'I'll have to add researching how memory is stored inside of consciousnesses to my list of tasks' He would put it right behind assimilating the monster encyclopedia and creating a golem.
Ed stood there for only a couple of seconds more jotting it down before turning away from the ice wall ready to leave. He saw the long winding cavern tunnel and was then reminded of something.
'I have yet to test the advanced lightning application' Ed had postponed the matter following his sudden summon and forgotten about it since. Now wasn't too bad a time, right?
He let out a short breath and stretched out a bit before closing his eyes to focus. He was hoping to find some lightning mana while at the same time being well aware that it was not much more than a pipe dream. Nevertheless, that didn't mean that learning advanced lightning application was useless.
In fact, there was a lot to learn from just the way lightning was formed. Accumulating mana and compressing it created fluctuations in space forming the basics of spatial manipulation. The advanced lightning application technique could help Ed lower the cost of using the space hop spell.
He hadn't used it very often but it wasn't that he didn't want to. It was simply too costly. He only used it to escape the fiendish ice because he wasn't planning on going into combat any time soon. Killing all of your mana in one move could only be otherwise described as foolish.
Ed focused on what might make the essence of space and it boiled down to compression.
'Let's see… I suppose the weight of the mana particles is important' Ed couldn't remember much about science stuff but he did believe that compressing large masses together would result in a black hole. He could probably only remember this due to how cool black holes were in his mind.
'It sure would be nice to have a spell like that' Ed felt that he would probably be near-invincible. Still, he knew not to have unrealistic expectations.
'Let's focus on this for the moment' Ed reeled back his thoughts and renewed his focus.
The key to compressing anything was always to make use of gravity. Or in the case of magic, whatever powerful laws bound mana together. Crystals would not form if the same elements repel each other for example. Ed, therefore, thought that a different force was at play, some sort of magical force in play.
'Let's call it… Magity!' Ed sounded the word out a bit before quickly tossing the matter aside.
'You know what, nevermind' He decided that there was nothing wrong with gravity. At most the elements were more likely than not simply light enough to float about everywhere without being significantly affected by gravity.
'Anyway, I can use this force' For example, what would happen if Ed placed lots of x particles and surrounded it by the opposing y particles, would they repel? If they would, Ed could simply focus on controlling the x particles and push them against the y particles forcing them to fuse into one another.
'Or… is that wasteful?' It might also be dangerous but Ed was not one to be wary of danger. He was willing to gamble on this. The main issue however was knowing which particles might repulse one another.
'Fire and water cancel out for example' That meant that the matter wasn't so simple. If the same elements didn't repel one another then Ed couldn't think of how opposing elements might be able to.
'Unless… the mana is alive…?' That was a skeptical point but mana did seem to, at some level, form the basis of life in the world he found himself. At least Ed couldn't rule out the possibility that even the mana in the air was a living thing.
'Wait… doesn't the mana in the air live in an eternal struggle?' Ed still remembered the contents and basics of the books the lich had provided him. The wind mana would in a volcanic area for example continue to vie for power. The elements didn't directly oppose one another so the only other answer would be repelling each other… right?
Ed felt he might be heading somewhere but then he remembered the wall of ice and his face formed into a frown.
'How can I explain pseudo-elements then?' if the magity, erm- gravity, wasn't forcing them together then what was?' Ed now had a new headache, but he knew it had nothing to do with his lack of mental gigabytes.
It turned out that no matter the world one would still be forced to suffer while studying science, or in this case magic.