After leaving the blacksmith, happy as a kid on Christmas morning, I finally stop by the ‘control’ room. The place where the main mana batteries are buried, and the control and communication gear is set up.

After a couple of knocks and they confirm it’s me, I’m allowed entry. From the outside, it just looks similar to most of the bigger buildings. Two houses patched together after having run out of the larger spaces with the guild’s business, other shops, and industry. Inside, just two meters ahead another door bars the way, along with two guards standing guard in this intervening space.

After another guard, this one inside the real space looks me over, I’m allowed to enter. The place is not too big, especially after taking a chunk of it for the lobby, but it’s about 5 meters long by 3 meters wide. Which all things considered is enough for now. In the middle of the room, I see Merlin. And to his side stands Burges, the head mage I hired.

“Nash,” Merlin starts enthusiastically, along with a small bow from Burges. “So good to see you here. I thought you would have stopped by earlier.”

“That was my plan, but I run into Alex.”

“Never mind, things ran quite smoothly didn’t they?”

“It seems so. Too bad the mana throughput is not higher.”

“We are working on it. So far all the solutions we employ to increase mana transfer rates increase manufacturing time proportionally. Inside the village, it may not be much of a difference, but better to lay a couple of redundant lines than make more expensive ones.”

“Either way. It serves its purpose for now. And the current transfer rate is what? over 40k mana an hour. That is nothing to scoff at.”

“True. Come on, we prepared the batteries for you to take.” Pointing to an open weel with a battery inside. “This bigger one, like the first one you took. And this smaller one, only 40k mana, and with the modifications you requested.”

I look at them, and just for reassurance, check one last time we are alone. Approaching the places he has pointed I take both batteries, though the second one doesn’t go into my inventory. It goes straight into my inner world on a small hole I previously dug.

Now, this small change may not look like much to other people, but with how much mana I could handle, along with my higher stats, especially the soul one, imagine what I could do?

Even if I ever came across a place where I would only be able to use my mana, or maybe not even that, it was not the norm. This would multiply my effectiveness several-fold.

Taking my concentration out of that, Merlin asks me:

“SO you are gonna come tomorrow for the attack?”

“Yep. I just wonder at how precisely they have been able to say when it will happen.”

“We got more info on the attack patterns. In the larger scheme of things, we don’t know when they will happen. Could be 2 weeks from now or a month, but in the last few days before an attack, some signs can be very specific if you know what to look for.”

“Either way, tomorrow at noon I will be here. Even if I delay I will be here for the main attack.”

“You are talking about Max’s attack? We haven’t really confirmed it’s coming.”

“Let’s just say I have a feeling. Ohh, before I forget, here.” I say while extending my arm with my old staff in hands. “Even you have something better, it may be good for your experiments, I know you are trying to make a proper wizard staff for a while now.

“Thank you, Nash, this is amazing.”

After discussing for another few minutes a few details, I start to make my track back home. Before I leave the village, I look at my staff again.

Well-made Mana Staff. Atk +4

Dexterity +2

A well-made staff made by a promising blacksmith novice with deep steel. It can transmit the mana of the owner with no losses almost instantly, allowing to cast magic at a further range.

Mana Storage: 12/12 mana.

It was almost exactly like my last one. But I don’t let that deter me. This one will be going the way as the last one as soon as I manage to make a +5 one. Not that I’m not grateful for the uses it will have, and depending on how hard is to make a +5 weapon, it might take a while. But an extra stat point and a greater attack rating would be amazing.

I think about the armor on the smithy. While it may be good to get some, and may I have the necessary money, somehow it just felt wrong. So I continued with my leather jacket for now, even if it was starting to look a little beat up.

This time on the trackback to my house, I don’t follow the same path as the mana conduit to my house, but instead, pull the mana from my new battery in the inner world. A small portal at my hand is all it takes to pull as much mana as I want, though I do limit it to about a mana point a second so I don’t use it up too quickly.

That is still plenty and lets me run at an amazing pace. I’m finished in about 50 minutes without pushing as hard as before. All it cost was about 3k mana points. Luckily I have my own arrangement with the village about mana, they actually had a small surplus. Most of it went to training the mages, but they could spare some for me. I was after all providing a valuable service carting so many tons of ore around. I was also open to deliver to other places occasionally. I just didn’t want to consume all my time carting stuff around.

At home, I go through a fairly quick routine based on my katas, It wasn’t expressly necessary, but I dedicate some exclusive time to it given the enormous benefits I was deriving from it. After that is dealt with, I open a portal in front of Aster. She got a name after I was tired to not have a distinct way to address her. And Aster loved her name or at least the mental image of light that encompassed her. That was the closest translation I could come up with.

After she comes out, others follow suit exploring the place near my house. I sit and place my hand on her head starting our communication. I don’t find out much new, she tells me of a few things that happened inside the inner world, but everything inside was within my domain. As long as I paid attention, nothing significant escaped my attention.

Still, seeing things from her perspective was wonderful for broadening our understanding of each other's way of communicating. An hour every day was doing wonders for our ability to understand each other. While in some ways, we improved a lot, some differences were more significant than just learning another language. Things that revolved around the very core of how they were, what they weren’t. But just learning the intersection of my understanding and hers was enough.

Trying to explain money to them would be an entirely futile exercise if they didn’t even understand some of its components. Though trade seemed to be starting to take hold, even if it was not their preferred mode. If they should ever be in place to start cooperating with other animals, trade could be a path. Or they would simply come up with something better than humans could understand.

They didn’t tell me a lot about where they are summoned to at night. The only thing I knew was that they never encountered other creatures besides bunnies over there.

After another half hour, I end our talk and start to prepare for tomorrow. Even if Max’s village doesn’t end up attacking, there was an attack from monsters. That was scary enough. I take a minute to dump my mana pool on a separate battery, given I will be able to absorb it back within me should the need arise.

Concentrating, I start to pour the mana out as fast as possible. Each second, as my mana plummets, I feel the mental ‘muscle’ getting stronger. I continue until almost empty, with only having 5 mana in the tank. These practice sessions were very helpful. I can use about 25 mana a second and even more if I took the mana from someplace without the limited throughput. This number was also increasing as each day goes by. My stats are part of the reason, but practice is key. I tried doing that several times a day recycling the mana I dumped into the battery, but it seems I can only exercise this specific muscle so often. Doing it twice a day seems the optimal interval.

With the last few hours of the day, I continue to prepare. I inscribe a few plates with useful tidbits of magic that may come in hand. Next, I start to work on my inner world. I have gotten a whole lot better at opening portals and sustaining the light and gravity needs for it in the last week, but I take an hour to focus on increasing my capabilities and fluidity with it. Even now, the small portal I keep open all day long is still not a fully automatic process, and sometimes it closes at night or on deep meditation sessions.

Pando’s seed doesn’t seem to care too much about the brief interruptions, but it is probably better if I can maintain it with little to no mental effort, instead of being something always draining a bit of my attention, precluding me from fully focussing on something else.

Next, it’s Pando’s seed I focus on. Mana goes out and with a few strategically placed portals, soon small roots are growing at an unbelievable rate. Three inches a second may not be the instant growth most people would imagine for plant powers, but it’s fast enough I can definitely maneuver the situation to my favor. And as long as I don’t mind the enormous mana consumption, I’m not even limited to the size of my inner world. I just need to grow a giant mesh underground over several minutes, As long as I’m in contact with some part of it, I can control the whole. But being within reach of my portals makes things more convenient.

Last, I start to work on something that occurred to me a while ago, pretty obvious if you ask me, but the usefulness is nonetheless there. When the roots reach their final size and are in place, I send some mana through the rune they formed.

The effect they form is nothing fancy, just conjuring a ball of water, but this is practice anyhow. The advantage is that properly done, ignoring the cost of growing the runes in the first place, I save a little of mana.

About twenty percent on average from my tests in the last couple of days. As long as you grew them beforehand, or you are doing something highly repetitive, the mana saving overcomes the initial investment.

Before the sunset, I head for a new place, just about 2 miles from my home. The area outside the ‘safe zone’. So far, I have only fought the wolves, and while that has been good practice, a little anxiousness, about not leveling fast enough starts to creep in.

I know that no matter how long I fight. You can only level after choosing a class, but this preparation just seems prudent. I was after all learning how to fight, something I avoided nearly my whole life.

Rage had been a big part of my make-up before meeting Pando. Even if I never let it out after the single fight of my life in first grade.

Keeping it all inside with no outlet may have avoided visits to the principal's office, but it also meant, I had no idea how to truly behave in a fight. How to manage your and your opponent's emotions to win. I had long let go of my anger, but that did not teach me how to firth, and that was exactly what I was going to do now.

I no longer spend my nights bulling the wolves but go after predators bigger than myself learning with each encounter. I had notes from a couple of the best hunters in the village, and without hesitation, I followed the tracks from the biggest animals in the most effective way possible, until I was standing before one of them.

I would start with this 600 kg panther.

---------------------

Warped Panther – Lv. 62

A panther that has been warped through unknown means.