Jacob looked at the Void Gauntlet. He had mapped the chaos. He understood the inefficiency. Now he had to delete it.
The enchantment was held together by those random, brute-force nodes he had identified earlier. They acted like clamps holding a pressurized pipe together. If he removed the clamps, the pressure should dissipate. The chaotic mana should leak out harmlessly into the ambient atmosphere.
It was a sound theory.
He picked up his mithril tool. He took a deep breath and centered himself. He spun his core to build up a charge of dense, blue mana.
He targeted the first node. It was a jagged knot of power near the wrist of the gauntlet.
Jacob pressed the tip of the tool against the stone. He didn't try to unravel the knot. He just flooded it. He pushed a surge of his own high-density mana directly into the anchor point.
Pop.
The node shattered. It couldn't handle the influx of superior mana. The structure collapsed instantly. The magical tension in that part of the gauntlet vanished.
"Easy," Jacob whispered.
He moved to the next one. There were six major anchors holding the messy "spaghetti code" together.
Pop. The second one went down.
Pop. The third.
Jacob worked quickly. He felt like a bomb defusal expert cutting the wires. He took out the fourth and fifth anchors in rapid succession. The buzzing noise of the enchantment started to change pitch. It went from a steady hum to a wobbling, uneven vibration.
He pressed the tool to the final anchor near the knuckles.
"Goodbye," Jacob said.
He flooded it.
Pop.
The final clamp broke.
Jacob sat back and waited for the enchantment to fade.
It didn't fade.
The hum spiked into a high-pitched whine. The central core, which he had assumed would just leak its energy out, did the exact opposite. Without the anchors to hold it in check, the high-pressure battery began to expand. It started to spin wildly inside the stone.
The Void Stone began to heat up.
"Uh oh," Jacob said.
The black stone, usually cold to the touch, was suddenly radiating heat like a stove top. The chaotic pathways he had disconnected were flailing around inside the mana field like live wires. They were shorting out against the stone itself.
The gauntlet was turning into a mana bomb.
If that core detonated, it would shatter the Void Stone. It would turn his priceless loot into a pile of expensive gravel.
"No, no, no!"
Jacob didn't panic. He got angry. He hadn't dragged this thing out of a swamp just to let it blow itself up.
He grabbed the mithril tool with both hands.
He couldn't drain the core. It was spinning too fast. He had to crush it.
He drove the tool down onto the back of the gauntlet, right over the center of the runaway core.
He didn't use a lattice. He didn't use finesse. He used pure mass.
Jacob visualized his own mana as a heavy, solid anvil. He dropped it onto the spinning, chaotic mess of the dungeon's core.
CRUNCH.
He felt the resistance in his mind. The dungeon's magic fought back. It was wild and violent. It tried to burn through his connection. It tried to push him out.
"Sit. Down." Jacob gritted his teeth.
He poured more power into the tool. He flooded the gauntlet with so much blue mana that the room lit up. He suffocated the red-hot chaos of the dungeon core with a blanket of absolute order.
The stone was searing hot now. He could smell the leather pad beneath it starting to smoke.
He pushed harder. He felt the structure of the runaway core buckle. It cracked under the weight of his will.
Shatter.
The high-pitched whine cut off instantly.
The chaotic energy didn't explode. It was smothered. It dissipated into the air in a harmless wave of heat and static electricity.
Jacob slumped forward. He was breathing hard. His hands were shaking. His core was nearly empty, for the first time since he started to learn about magic.
He pulled the mithril tool away.
The Void Gauntlet sat on the desk. It was glowing a dull red from the heat, and smoke curled up from the leather mat underneath it. The room smelled of ozone and burnt hide.
But the noise was gone.
Jacob reached out carefully with his mana field after giving it a moment to rest.
Silence.
The stone was empty. The messy, inefficient, chaotic spaghetti code was gone. The brute-force anchors were gone. The unstable core was dust.
It was just a piece of high-grade Void Stone now. It was a blank canvas.
Jacob grinned. He ignored the smell of burning leather. He ignored the sweat dripping down his nose.
He looked at the gauntlet with hungry eyes.
It was clean and empty... it was perfect.
He grabbed his notebook and flipped to a fresh page. His hand moved across the paper in a blur as he started sketching the new design. He knew exactly what he was going to put in there. And it wasn't going to be messy.
It was going to be beautiful.