As annoying as it felt to just sit around and do nothing while precious seconds went by, Theo wasn't really in a position to move.
Standing at the very nexus point of the central-most formation, he acted like the very brain of the whole conduit, controlling the rate at which mana flowed through it.
'I know this makes me sound conceited… but this really is one hell of a waste of time.'
Producing spirit stones in the way Theo did right now was anything but efficient. The only reason why he chose this specific method, this set of nested formations and those materials to craft both the arrays and the spirit stones with was because he had no other choice.
Theo's trip to Vistra was for the very sake of obtaining the resources he needed to improve parts of this process, resources he could craft himself from what he could find back at the sect.
By all means, it felt like being an engineer with the history of spearheading the industrialization effort suddenly finding himself stranded on a bountiful yet underdeveloped island. On one hand, there was an abundant amount of any resource an engineer like that would need there, but…
How does one go around crafting steam engines without properly refined metals and metal-working tools? Heck! How does one build a wooden shed for a workshop without the advantage of nails in place?
By all means, just like such a theoretical stranded engineer, Theo had to speedrun the tech-tree of modern magic, going through the ideas, formations and technologies so obscure, hardly anyone ever used them anymore.
'Back in my old life, the question on how to go from nothing to a proper magic would be like those random and improbable thought exercises at mage school, designed not to provide an answer but to teach the kids the mental discipline necessary for approaching problems.'
Quickly reaching the point of getting bored, Theo could see his thoughts wandering off any topic of importance and just freely floating in his head, creating random commentary on his situation.
Thankfully, for how inefficient, hard to set up without any tools and limited in its scope his formation was, it didn't take all that long for it to finish the job.
"There's still a certain kind of beauty to stuff used by the ancestors of mages' ancestors, huh?" he muttered as he let go of the control of the formation, allowing the tiny amount of mana necessary to control it to slip, killing the flow of mana within the formation and the mana-attraction power of its nested, petal-like arrays.
'And one part of this beauty is how I don't need a whole separate formation to keep the mana contained!'
Theo brought his hands up, stretching his arms, his shoulders and even his stomach as he interlaced his fingers and then brought the open palms of his hands as far up as he could.
With the desire to yawn quickly dying out, replaced by the pleasant warmth of his muscles getting warmed up, Theo shook his head before lowering his arms down and then looking around.
'Still, no witnesses,' he thought as he doubled down on the look by giving the whole area around him a quick sweep with his mana sense.
Being the genius he was, his attunement to the natural fluctuations of mana was on a whole other level, likely a courtesy of his inability to wield great magics forcing him to grow increasingly intimate with its tiny flows instead.
A skill he developed simply because he had no other choice in the past but to perfect all the tiny wisps of mana he could push through his mana-gate had now turned into a powerful tool that allowed Theo to confirm an extremely important detail - so far, no one appeared to take notice of his shenanigans!
Done with the sweep, Theo turned his attention back to the very core of all that he did ever since he came to an unexpected stop, only about half an hour deep into his supposedly half-a-day long journey.
And there they were, sitting in silence in the middle of the petal-like arrays that had now turned into inactive pools of mana. The crystalline stone deprived of their impurities, with their outer skin polished away, leaving nothing but their mana-rich insides behind.
'I wonder if those could even classify as low-grade spirit stones,' Theo thought as he beckoned at the now shiny stones, bidding them to fly over before stashing them all away in the very same pouch that Narmidor threw at him back at the sect, finally replacing the ordinary stones within.
"And now that we are done here…"
After giving it a moment of thought, Theo gave up on wiping his formations clear. There was no need to manually do so when he was still hoping to use them in a moment, and the after-effects of what he was planning to do to catch-up on his schedule would do a better job at removing any evidence than any attempt to do it by hand could ever do.
'I've always wanted to try it, but I've never been able to actually use the warding spells on the level necessary to prevent an instant death,' Theo thought, grinning to himself as he picked up the most random of stones from the ground…
Before using its sharp edge to cut open the palm of his left hand only to squeeze out several drops of blood from the wound next.
By no means was a mage's blood a good conduit for magic. Heck, even the pebbles picked straight from the road could do a better job at it, serving as mere anchors for the flows of mana that cut straight through the air itself.
But that was all for a local, stationary formation. And what Theo was planning to do next was anything but stationary.
"Beggars can't be choosers, so you've gotta make the best of what you've got, huh?" he muttered to himself as he started to draw complex patterns on his skin, using his very own blood as mere ink.
Roughly twenty-to-thirty runes painted all over his body later, Theo fixed his clothes he had to take down to complete the job before shaking his head and then double-checking that he was still in the very center of the now inactive formation.
'Between the way in which cultivation reinforces one's body, the protective spells and the magic dampeners…'
For a moment, Theo's expression wavered, revealing how even after all the ample preparation, he couldn't fully shed away his fear.
The method of travel he envisioned had already claimed scores of lives back in his old life, after all, all within the very first instant of it activating.
But it just so happened that neither now nor in the future could Theo afford to waste time on lengthy travels.
'A man has gotta do what a man has gotta do,' Theo thought before gritting his teeth and then reactivating his formation…
Only to then wipe away the nodes that connected the petals to the central ring, near instantly draining all of the mana still stored in the nested arrays, drawing it all into the control circle.
'Go!'
With a mental command, Theo finally unleashed the true might of the modern magic, abusing his now healed mana-gate to power-up two massive glyphs that, in turn, took control of the raging sea of mana within the formation.
Whoosh!
A set of two shiny, immaterial chains materialized in each of Theo's hands only to shoot out and anchor themselves into the ground. For a moment, it made it seem as if Theo turned himself into a prisoner, chained to the ground in a way that should prevent him from ever leaving the spot he was standing at…
But no.
This was merely the first step.
One that Theo followed by taking a literal step back, stretching the chains of light that he held in his hand while feeding them more and more mana from the now dying formation.
Theo then took another step, warping the length of his chains even further as if they were made out of rubber.
Step.
Step.
Step.
The space all around the chains started to crack and warp, reaching the limits of the magical pressure it could handle.
Then, Theo took another step, pushing beyond the limits of space's resilience. From that point on, he didn't need to move at all, but the chains in his hands continued to stretch out.
This process, even with the use of the glyphs, had its limits. And as the mana within Theo's formation quickly started to run dry, he could only close his eyes and whisper a silent prayer to whatever deity watched his efforts from above.
The mana in the formation ran dry, killing the force that kept pulling on Theo's chains.
Snap!
Bouncing back, the warped space collapsed, near-instantly shooting Theo forth.
With his legs leaving the ground, he could do nothing to stop it when the chains continued to decompress all the way to the point where they returned to their original length…
Only for the glyph to break, releasing Theo from his bounds and shooting him out at some insane speed into the air.