“NO! Absolutely not! I don’t like it! Why do you need it anyway? You have me! I can protect you! Why do you need that stupid piece of metal?” Shearwood yelled, as she started throwing a tantrum. “If you make anymore, then I won’t let you take any more of my mana! You can just rely on that stupid ugly metal for that.”

On the table were 2 silver gauntlets that looked like brand new polished chrome, shiny enough to see your own reflection in them. Next to the gauntlets was a mask with no visible eye-holes, and 3 dull grey mithril ingots. Kiefer laughed at Shearwood’s little tantrum, and proceeded to pick up the next mithril ingot with his mana threads.

[5 hours ago]

“I hope to god I’m right.” Kiefer whispered to Shearwood as he began pumping mana into the ingot through his mana threads.

As soon as the mithril was fused with Kiefer’s mana, it turned into a bright shiny silver colour, same as Kiefer’s threads and essentially, Kiefer’s mana. The 5kg ingot kept absorbing Kiefer’s mana for a full 30 minutes before Kiefer felt the mana flow slow down and noticed his mana dispersing out of the ingot.

Manipulating his threads like a thousand tiny silver fingers, Kiefer applied pressure on the ingot and watched as it deformed like a piece of soft clay. He immediately got to work, first pulling the ingot into rough halves, then pinching smaller pieces off.

Kiefer started by molding the finger-tips of the gauntlet, and then followed by the individual finger digits, a curved plate for the back of his hand, and lastly a wrist guard that extended about halfway to his elbows. Stopping the mana flow to these well-formed parts caused them to harden instantly.

With the rest of the ingot still soft, he pinched a ball of mithril off and started pulling it into wires. Kiefer pulled the ball first into wires, then further into thin threads, resembling his own mana threads but with a much brighter shine. He used the wires to tie the different parts of the gauntlet together to form a hard plate armour that covered the back of his hands. With the threads hardened, he picked them up and they behaved almost similar to nylon threads, if a little more flexible.

Kiefer then proceeded to make the left handed version of the gauntlet with the remainder of the ingot. After another hour of work, Kiefer finished the plate armour of the gauntlet for both hands and had about a kilogram of soft mithril left. With that he fashioned a full faced mask that resembled a bike helmet.

The mask did not have any eye holes, just a small engraving of what resembled a frowning mouth and 2 slits for the nose. However, it was perforated with numerous tiny holes for where the eyes would be, making it essentially a sort of 1 way viewing port. Kiefer could see past the mask, but others would not be able to see his eyes. There were vents near the mouth to allow his breath to leave so it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable talking with the mask on.

Finally, Kiefer proceeded to weave a glove for each hand using the heaps of mithril threads he had pre-made, and to end it all, he had sewn the gauntlet’s plate armour onto the mithril gloves. With this, Kiefer decided to take a break and realized that astonishingly, the whole process had almost depleted his own mana, leaving him with only a silver drop inside his chest.

“Perfect timing,” he thought as he put on his newly made gloves. They were cold to the touch, and fit snuggly around his hands and wrists. He moved and flexed his fingers and wrists, testing out how the new gauntlets felt. “Good, no restriction of movement. I really made it well if I say so myself,” Kiefer grinned to himself.

All the while silently watching her master, Shearwood couldn’t help but roll her eyes at her master. Luckily for her, Kiefer was too engrossed in his new toy to notice Shearwood, and being ignored was starting to make her upset.

As soon as Kiefer put on his gauntlets, He could feel the surge of mana rushing into his hands, and streaming straight up his arms into his chest. When Kiefer tried to actively convert the natural mana around him, the gauntlets started to warm up. He discovered that the conversion rate was overwhelming, peaking at around 1:30 from the original 1:1.1. This was more than 3 times as efficient as using Shearwood’s mana directly and he wondered how fast it would be to use the mithril on Shearwood’s mana.

Even then it took him nearly 20 minutes to replenish his mana, only to find that his maximum capacity had once again increased. The silver ball in his chest had nearly doubled in size from when he last checked, now the size of his fist. It was not pulsating as much, although Kiefer could still feel the occasional ripples on its surface.

“Master, what are you going to do with the rest?” (Sher)

“I don’t know. I had thought I would need all four to make the gauntlets alone, but it would seem that with my method of crafting, there were no wastage of materials and a 100% absorbtion of mana into the mithril armour. That’s why it was so efficient. The book in the library said even the best made magic armaments only had 5 to 10% mana absorbtion, but was still considered good. I wonder what kind of monstrosity I just made. “Kiefer laughed at himself, only now starting to realize how abnormal he was.

“Well, if I have this much, I can probably make a full body light armour. What do you think Sher? Maybe I’ll start with a breastplate next.” (Kiefer)

Shearwood was about to nod her head and agree with her master when it suddenly dawned upon her.

“NO! Absolutely not! I don’t like it! Why do you need it anyway? You have me! I can protect you! Why do you need that stupid piece of metal?” Shearwood yelled, as she started throwing a tantrum. “If you make anymore, then I won’t let you take any more of my mana! You can just rely on that stupid ugly metal for that.”

[Back to Present]

“Sher why not? You know I will still need you even with this light armour on. If you let me make this armour, I promise I will go look around the city later for thugs for you to eat. Will that be enough?” Kiefer tried bargaining with the little child, with the promise of sweets later.

“NO! I don’t like it! If u wear that armour, I won’t have a place to sleep anymore. It will be hard and cold and uncomfortable and I don’t like it. And besides, you can make a shield or something else, and you have your mana armour to protect you. So why do you need the breastplate?” (Sher)

“It’s ok, trust me.” Kiefer reassured Shearwood as he began making his breastplate. It was completed within 3 hours, with most of the time spent on pulling more mithril threads and weaving them to make a strap and a belt.

The breast plate was made in 2 halves, one for the front and the other for the back. The back piece fit nicely to Kiefer’s body, while the front piece had a section in the middle the shape of Superman’s logo (Without the S) that was protruding out by about 5 cm. This gap between the armour and Kiefer’s chest was meant as a space for Shearwood to sleep in. Seeing this, Shearwood was satisfied and finally smiled for the first time since Kiefer started making the breastplate.

Kiefer had torn up the mage’s robe that he had acquired from the convoy and lined the inside of the breast plate and sewn on with mithril threads. The mithril threads had been woven into a flexible strap used to join the 2 halves over each shoulder. There was a latch at each side to secure the breastplate in place. The whole piece was crafted from 1 ingot.

With the 2 remaining ingots, Kiefer worked through the night to craft mithril boots and leggings, along a small rhombus shaped shaped shield that he designed to attach to either of the gauntlets. The shield was 60cm in length and 30cm wide.

When the sun finally rose, Kiefer had completed his new mithril armour and decided to go down for breakfast before taking a short nap. He had completely forgotten about his ‘routine’ to run every morning.

Waking up 2 hours later, Kiefer donned his new armour, with Sher snuggly seated inside, and headed out of the city walls to test his hypothesis.

“On hind sight, I probably should have just crafted a small shield to test it out first. If it does not work according to my predictions, I would have wasted one night and 4 mithril ingots on something that I probably wouldn’t need.” (Kiefer)

Holding the small diamond shield up in the air using his mana threads, Kiefer instructed Shearwood, “Sher, fire your beam at the shield. Make it small, I don’t want to attract too much attention. Let’s see if this replenished my mana.”

On his command, Shearwood floated out of his breastplate, looked at the shield and reluctantly fired her red beam, only this time, it wasn’t the 3m monstrosity she usually used. Instead, it came out like a small laser cutter constantly pounding on the silver diamond shield.

The shield shook while it was being attacked, and Kiefer could feel is almost empty mana pool being refilled. It would seem that Kiefer’s hypothesis was correct. With a higher percentage of mana absorbed during the crafting, the mithril could convert foreign mana into the user’s at an exponentially higher rate. With Kiefer’s crafting method, the mithril with 100% mana absorption could essentially nullify incoming mana, and feed the user’s mana pool.

Kiefer only had a hunch on this concept, much less a hypothesis. And he had gotten the idea from a children’s storybook. The hero in the story was presented with a large mithril tower shield crafted deep by the titan Grandu himself inside his shell. With the shield, the hero was able to withstand the demon king’s magic attack and finally rid the world of the most evil being.

Elated that his experiment was an overwhelming success, Kiefer decided to tackle his next problem – Magic. He had seen this world’s mages cast spells, he had tried to imitate the incantation, but nothing had worked for him. Kiefer did not enough time to read through the book on introductory magic in detal the last time, so he decided to pay the library another visit.

Heading back to the inn, Kiefer ate a quick lunch, changed out of his armour and strolled towards the library. Shearwood was left in the inn, allowed to go out if she wanted to under the condition that no one sees her. While she had argued that if she ate anyone who saw her, then no one would have seen her, Kiefer immediately rejected that notion and had to add a clause that said no killing of people.

“This isn’t right.. there must be some sort of mistake. These are fundamentally wrong even in the most basic level.” Kiefer cried softly, frustrated that he was going nowhere with the basic introductory to magic. Kiefer had always viewed mana as a subatomic particle that carried mass, but according to the book, mana was a form of energy that could be manipulated by beings with innate affinity.

“I had always assumed that mana particles would be classified as Fermions, but this book says otherwise. There’s no way magic being taught to mages for generations could be wrong, but I know that I’m not wrong either.” Kiefer kept trying to logically analyze the information.

“And it doesn’t help that I can’t understand these basic runic incantations either. I thought the geezer said he had tweaked my brain to understand the languages of this world.. I guess he must have conveniently ‘forgot’ about this one.” Kiefer started cursing under his breath at the balancer. Just remembering that voice made his blood boil.

“It’s not impossible though. Mana is, after all, not from earth, so maybe the classification system from earth doesn’t apply here? If Light has particle wave duality, where it can be both a particle and a wave depending on which property is being tested, maybe mana can do the same.”

“The mass can be converted to energy by nuclear fusion or fission, according to Einstein’s equation E=mc2. And the easiest way to observe energy is in the form of thermal energy, by vibrating the molecules. The book also mentioned that the fire element was the easiest and fastest to learn. So maybe I’ll try that out first?”

Kiefer concentrated on releasing a few mana particles in front of him, and pictured in his mind the destruction of said particles and the agitation of the surroundings. He watched as the few silver sparkles disappeared into nothing, with no visible result.

“Maybe it’s too little?” Kiefer conjectured while summoning a new batch of mana, this time forming a hazy smoke above the table. With a thought, he did the same to this batch, destroying them instantly. The result was instantaneous. Kiefer felt a hot blast of air in his face that made him close his eyes, and then reopened them to see the “introductory to basic magic” book on fire.

Panicking, Kiefer immediately threw the book onto the ground and stomped on it a few times, extinguishing the flames, not before the bald old man came over and said “You are going to pay for that, aren’t you?” Reluctantly, Kiefer surrendered over 1 gold coin which made the old man’s face light up like a Christmas tree. At least he has a half burnt book to prove that his theories were right and that this world’s understanding of mana is severely limited and erroneous.

Trudging back to the inn, dragging his feet, Kiefer suddenly changed his mind and headed back for the city gates again. By now, the guards were no stranger to Kiefer’s weird habit of going out and returning with nothing. Seeing Kiefer head out a second time this day with a long face, the guards tried to cheer him up.

“Look up boy! I’m sure this time you’ll catch something! The people at the guild can be real asses huh!” yelled one of the guards. They had assumed that he was leaving the city on assignment from the guild to gather or hunt something. None of them had remembered his face from when he rode the tarsus in on his first day in Alluviate.

Several experiments and theories were running through his head as he took his time to walk to his usual secluded training spot. The sun was too hot to be running and Kiefer didn’t have his mithril armour or Shearwood around to replenish his mana. Considering that he will be destroying plenty of mana particles, he wanted to conserve as much as he could.

There's a few terms in this chapter i hope it doesn't deter any of you from reading any further. sure there will be more in future chapters but I will try to use them in moderation. Unless you guys like it then I will pile it on like there's no tomorrow. JK.