Elemental Cats

Stitches took Toz's stare as the precursor of something unpleasant and quickly pulled himself together and continued moving the jellyfish meat. Since Stitches moved around and avoided catching Toz's attention, he didn't notice that Toz wasn't staring at him or about to cut him to pieces. The only thing in Toz's eyes were the stars whose light had been blocked by Stitches' head and everything else in the way.

It wasn't important what had blocked the starlight. What Toz found important was the fact that the stars still shone in the darkness of the Void. His magic was based on the fact that darkness covered everything. Despite the brightness of the stars, they couldn't match the depth of the darkness surrounding them. But Toz had forgotten that it went both ways. Just like the stars couldn't outshine the darkness, the darkness couldn't erase the light.

And that was exactly what Toz had tried doing. He tried to imitate the Void's darkness, but erasing the stars wouldn't imitate the Void. That was more like designing his own version of the Void. No wonder it took so much mana.

Although the darkness would obscure, hide, and cover the stars and their light, it didn't erase them directly. When the stars died, the darkness would bury them, but until then, the light of the stars was unstoppable. And the darkness was inevitable.

Toz stared into the Void as if he had turned dumb from the repeated shocks of enlightenment and realization. He lost track of time as he simply pondered on his new insights and thought of how to develop his basic magic into a proper spell. The newfound inspiration of the Void and its darkness was great by itself, but it would only be useful if Toz could incorporate it into his magic.

Despite how enlightening it had been and how much it had helped him, Toz didn't consider asking Lucy for more advice. Although it might help him finish the spell faster, the completed spell wouldn't be the same as if Toz had made it himself. Maybe Lucy's advice had been so vague because Lucy didn't want to interfere too much with the spell-creating process.

And despite not knowing how to progress, Toz was sure he wouldn't be stuck forever. The only reason he wasn't advancing the spell was that he was still busy comprehending the full meaning of his new insights. As soon as his mind calmed down enough to process all the new information in his brain, Toz felt like he would know in which direction to develop his spell and also how to do it.

Without changing his posture or position, Toz spent several hours processing and thinking about what he had just gained and what to do with his magic in the future. But not much changed due to only a few hours of pondering. Toz would have to devote some more effort if he wanted to improve his magic to the point it could actually be called a spell.

After Toz woke up from his dazed state, he found Lucy in his lap. Deciding that dealing with other matters could wait, Toz laid down to take a nap while petting Lucy's head and scratching behind Lucy's ears.

Stitches, who had been walking with a needle pressing into his back despite realizing that Toz wasn't staring him down, finally relaxed enough to take a breather. He and Hods had already moved almost everything into the enormous storage house, filling up a corner of it. Since it had looked like Toz was staring at them, Stitches especially hadn't dared to relax. And although he could refresh his body and alleviate his fatigue somewhat with magic, he wasn't used to such strenuous exercise and was panting as he rested against the side of the building.

Unfortunately, Stitches closed his eyes for a few moments too many. By the time he opened them again, it was night. At first, Stitches didn't react to it, but then he remembered that there wasn't a proper day and night cycle in the Void. He stopped looking for any nearby lanterns or sources of light and began panicking instead.

If it wasn't night, the only other reason Stitches could think of was that he had gone blind. He couldn't sense something covering his eyes aside from the eye patch that would explain the darkness he was experiencing.

But before Stitches could begin shouting for Hods or anyone to help him, the darkness vanished as if it had never existed, and Stitches found himself back on the wooden island resting against the storage building. The only difference from when he sat down was the young black-haired man standing in front of him.

"Am I paying you to sleep?"

"Uhm, I didn' know I was getting paid?"

"Why would you get paid for napping?"

"I meant for moving the pieces o' jellyfish. Sorry, sir."

"Aren't you getting paid in number of days you're allowed to continue living?"

"..."

Stitches scurried away and helped Hods with the last few bits of jellyfish meat.

Toz inspected the progress of the warehouse turning into wood and how well the two pirates had stacked the jellyfish remains in the warehouse. At the same time, he pondered over the efficiency of his magic. Toz's magic had managed to remove Stitches' connection with the surrounding world to some degree but not fully since Stitches could still touch and move around a little bit.

Toz had tried to tone the power down and remove the suppressive and absolute nature he had added to the darkness of his magic. He wanted the inevitable but unnoticeable part of darkness to be in charge since that would hopefully lower the demands on his mana.

The drain on his mana had indeed lowered, but all it led to was an extremely weakened version of the magic. An experienced mage or fighter wouldn't have any trouble breaking free from it. Toz's experiment at least showed him that the problem wasn't directly related to how much power he used. The only thing left to do was to continue experimenting and trying out various ways to use the magic. Eventually, it would lead somewhere.