Chapter: Using Mana to punch?

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Growling Tiger focuses on channeling one's inner energy (mana) through one's channels, focusing the muscles and unleashing a powerful blow on your enemies.

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There were a bunch of diagrams and explanations that showed how one was supposed to move the mana within their body and the movements in their muscles and body to drive as much power through their body to inflict the greatest damage on their target.

"Vicious little bastards," Erik sighed as he closed his eyes, studying the movement of power in his body and then tracing it through his mana channels as the manual told him to.

Erik felt like some kind of ridiculous chicken as he was throwing his elbows out like he was in a football game.

Finally it went right as the timing between the movement of his arm and his mana matched up, a rushing sound, similar to a growl appeared as Erik's arm moved much faster.

Erik felt the power that jumped upwards, as it felt just right to him. He wasn't satisfied and moved to a tree, he elbowed it.

"Oh, shit, fucking funny bone! God damn!" After rubbing his funny bone and trying to heal it, which was having no effect, Erik finally got feeling back in his elbow.

He looked at the point of impact, there was a patch of the tree that no longer had any bark on it, otherwise the tree looked fine.

Erik changed his point of aim, remembering that right feeling, he practiced a few times, getting it down before he did it against the tree.

He hit the outside of the tree, the bark was cracked as the other side of the tree blew out in a spray of splinters.

Erik pushed on the small tree as it gave way, dropping on the ground.

"Well, okay, that's kind of awesome," Erik said, looking at the destruction.

With the information in the book it simply took what he had already, combined it together and used it in a different way to increase the overall power output he could display.

Erik continued to practice again and again looking to improve his control until he could do it easily without needing to think about it too much.

Mostly it was a lot of him smashing his elbow against trees and hissing out expletives as he struck his funny bone, again and again.

Power from the surrounding area started to gather, threads of energy started to snake across the ground, entering Rugrat's body.

His aura increased in power as he started to rise in level, his body undergoing changes.

It seemed like everything in a five meter radius was sucked up into Rugrat's body.

"What the fucks going on?" Rugrat asked blearily as he woke up, the power settling into his bones as he rose up, his bones cracked with new power as he reached out his hand.

"That's a rush," Rugrat said, moving his hands around as if he was grasping the very fabric of the space around him.

Rugrat looked up at Erik rubbing his elbow, his joy turning into a confused look.

"What've you been up to?"

"Don't want to talk about it," Erik leaned against a tree and closed his eyes, willing the screen to appear.

Rugrat didn't even have time to say anything else as a screen appeared in Eriks' mind.

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You have 20 attribute points to use.

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Erik was really feeling like he was being held back by his mana pool. His healing spells from before didn't require all that much initial mana to be cast and the output could be varied if he used more or less mana.

Though it meant that his reserves were extremely low, if he got a stronger spell then he wouldn't be able to cast it based on his mana pool. Also it was a reserve that would allow him to pump out a lot of mana in short bursts.

He placed 7 points into mana pool by itself, another 4 went into mana regeneration

Then three went into agility and strength, three more into stamina regeneration.

Erik looked over his character sheet.

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Character Sheet

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Name: Erik West

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Level: 11

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Race: Human

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Titles: From the Grave

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Strength: (Base 7) +9

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160

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Agility: (Base 6) +11

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85

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Stamina: (Base 10) +1

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165

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Mana: (Base 6) +7

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130

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Mana Regeneration (Base 4) +18

5.15/s

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Stamina Regeneration: (Base 7) +14

4.95/s

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Erik felt the new energy flood into his body as it changed.

Erik's eyes opened as he let out a breath, the air around him was disturbed with the power of his breath.

"Damn, it feels good to level up in the morning," Erik got to his feet, looking over to see Rugrat engrossed in his smithing manuals.

"So, what's the plan? You want to find out where these people are all going, or keep moving from place to place that Tommins has sent us?" Rugrat asked.

"I want to at least see what's going on, if we can get a few rewards then that's even better. All of the stronger ingredients usually have some kind of beast or protector, with all of these high level characters running about then it will be incredibly hard to try and lure beasts out of their homes," Erik said.

"I'm curious about what this Beast Mountain Trial is all about as well," Rugrat agreed, putting away the manual, he was already wearing his own mismatched assortment of gear.

They didn't care how they looked, only that their gear was the strongest.

"You look like a goddamn hobo that went through a tannery," Erik said.

"You look like you're trying out for the movie Gladiator and you stepped in gold paint," Rugrat said.

"Touché," Erik said.

"You know what that means really?"

"No clue, but you've got to make something a little better than this when you can finally smith," Erik said.

"I haven't even learned the damn skill and you're putting an order in? What are you, an officer?"

Noises appeared in the distance, Erik and Rugrat heard them clearly, people were fighting and moving in their direction.

Erik and Rugrat dropped into stealth and moved away from their camp, using their maps they moved deeper into Beast Mountain.

***

Elder Oui looked around, still he had not seen his niece even as other youths had made it to the platforms that were dotted around the Beast Mountain Range.

“Is something wrong, Elder Oui?” Elder Rei asked.

“Nothing, Elder Rei, I heard that your Nephew Xi Yan has joined in on the competition?” Elder Oui asked.

“Yes, though he likes to take his time, he will be here in time, I have faith,” Elder Rei said, waving off any worries he might have.

“Elders, the formation is ready to accept mana stones and Monster Cores,” an array master Elder said as he and a group of other elders had been watching the array that was embedded in the platform.

Quickly people started to organize themselves, breaking off their conversations. Those whose disciples hadn’t appeared looked out into Beast Mountain.

If they hadn’t appeared then they might be slow or they had run into some trouble. It wasn’t uncommon for people to enter the beast mountain and not make it out alive, though this mostly happened once someone entered the actual dungeon, not while they were trying to get to it.

***

“The hell?” Rugrat said as a medallion popped out of the two storage rings that he had got from the people he’d used his napalm bombs on.

The medallion indicated in a direction, Rugrat looked over to Erik to see that he had two medallions floating in front of him as well.

“Shall we go and check it out?” Erik asked.

“Might as well,” Rugrat said, they didn’t go directly towards whatever the medallions were pointing at but went on an angle to make sure that they weren’t going into come kind of ambush.

The mana in the beast mountain was getting stirred up as people passed overhead, rushing towards where the medallion was pointing.

Erik and Rugrat made sure that no one saw them as groups met one another, getting into fights or fleeing from one another.

It looked like they had all came for the same thing, but they didn’t want others to get it as well.

“All of them feel to be level thirteen and fourteen, some are a little stronger, but I don’t think that their combat capabilities are any less,” Rugrat said.

“We’ve got to take some chances or else we won’t get anywhere,” Erik said.

Rugrat looked at Erik, he could see that fire was back in Erik’s eyes, it had scared him seeing how defeated Erik looked in that hospital bed. Since Erik had come to the Ten Realms he didn’t want to stay back, he wanted to move forwards, looking to learn more and experience as much as possible.

So they moved closer to where the medallions were guiding them.

“What in the hell is going on here?” Rugrat said as a stage started to come into view, there were powerful fluctuations from the stage as well as the space in front of it as the air was distorting in front of the large group of people there.

Older people stood at the front of the stage, youths that had been charging through the beast mountains stood behind them, watching as the elders pulled out mana cores and glowing crystals, placing them into receptacles around the stage.

Erik and Rugrat's eyes glowed seeing all of that gold being poured out by these rich fellows as if it was nothing.

Runes and lines appeared on the ground of the stage, lighting up with power. The air before the stage seemed to consolidate as a faint tower appeared in front of the stage. It had ten floors that were covered in scenes of people fighting beasts with each floor being fifteen meters tall.

The surrounding area shook as the tower seemed to connect with the stage. The tower's doors opened slowly, revealing a black abyss beyond.