Chapter 39

The following lunch turned out to be the most delicious meal Keith had ever eaten. Each bite of chicken exploded with tantalizing juices, the seasoned corn popped with flavor, while the mixed salad contained the freshest fruits and vegetables. Even Keith’s drink, a simple lemonade, contained an addicting sweety taste. While eating, Keith was astonished to find he gained several points in Strength, Vitality, and Endurance.

When Yara saw Keith, Annallee, and Elora’s expressions, she was pleased to say, “Arya, one of the servants, is a grandmaster chef, so you should expect this meal to be the standard while living here.”

“Amazing!” Keith had to give it to his Grandma. How many could say they had a personal grandmaster chef to cook all their meals?

Lunch lasted over two hours, with Yara spending most of that time getting to know Keith, Annallee, and Elora. Markus and Mariane mostly kept quiet. Only after asking a gazillion questions did Yara look at the time and say, “Ah, unfortunately, I’m required elsewhere. Keith, Annallee, Elora, it was great talking with you. Let’s plan for dinner tonight, okay?”

Yara quickly left without waiting for a response. Markus coughed and said, “She always does that. Don’t mind it.”

Taking Yara’s lead, Keith, Mariane, Annallee, and Elora stood up to leave to check out their new home when Markus suddenly called out, “Keith, can I speak with you privately for a moment?”

Keith froze and sat back down. Once everyone left, Markus looked at a ring on Keith’s finger and sighed. “I heard you’ve been using a Mana Reactor?”

“Uh, yes?” Keith nodded. “Zeidrick whipped up a cool weapon for me that uses it.”

Markus scratched his cheek while gazing at Keith. “I know that your Grandma gave permission for you to use it, but are you aware of how valuable they are?”

Keith recalled what Zeidrick said. “Sorta. There’s only ten, right?”

“Correct.” Markus folded his arms. “Think about it this way – there are about 2,000 Rifts in our Innate Dimension, and we’ve been harvesting resources from them for five hundred years. Although most of the materials are used up, the military has still steadily accrued a significant stockpile. After millions of hours of labor, we filled hundreds of warehouses full of ore, herbs, and monster parts. But to create those ten Mana Reactors? It consumed 95% of everything we saved up.”

Markus paused and gave Keith a deep look. “Those Mana Reactors are things of miracles. They are the bedrock of our military: secret weapons capable of mass destruction or impenetrable defense. Do you understand?”

Keith listened to everything silently as he gazed at the Pocket Dimension ring he’d worn for several months. From these few hours since meeting Markus, Keith felt like he had a good understanding of his Dad, so he knew what Markus was implying: letting Keith use the Mana Reactor for his personal use was a massive waste and a disrespect to all the people who contributed to its creation.

When Keith first got the Mana Reactor, he didn’t think much of it, but after hearing how much effort went into making them, Keith suddenly felt deeply ashamed of himself. How could he hog something so important without paying any sort of cost? It didn’t take him more than a moment to come to a decision. Even if he couldn’t use the orbs to farm massive amounts of gold, Keith still took off the Pocket Dimension ring and handed it over to Markus.

Markus wore a huge grin. “Thank you, Keith. You made the right decision. How about we meet up after dinner to create a training program for you? I won’t be stingy with the rewards.”

“Sure.” Keith stood up to leave. “I’m going to go unpack now.”

Over the next few hours, Keith made himself familiar with his new home, sighing multiple times as he did. Without the Mana Reactor to supply Mana, he couldn’t farm massive amounts of gold.

Now Keith’s only hope was the Mana Battery function his Grimoire offered. Sadly, the price was way too expensive and not something Keith could afford without saving for who knows how many years. However, there was another problem. How was he to gather enough Mana to make use of the function anyway?

Although Keith set it up so that the Grimoire collected his Mana whenever it was over 90%, it wasn’t nearly enough to consistently fuel the orbs. The rate he could supply Mana was incomparable to the Mana Reactor.

But what if there was another way?

A few months ago Keith researched Mana and learned a great many things. Something almost every industry used was Mana Arrays – a complicated inscription that passively gathered Mana from the air. Keith had a crazy idea. What if he collected a Mana array? Would his Grimoire passively accrue Mana or would it simply turn into an item with CV? It was an answer worth finding out.

Since it was still around an hour or so before dinner, Keith went to find one of the servants under his Grandma. To his delight, they accepted his request and completed it within fifteen minutes, although it left him completely broke. Now, in the front yard of Keith’s new home was a freshly created Mana Gathering Array. Before attempting to collect it, Keith took a glance at its information.

[Legendary] Mana Gathering Array

Description: Passively gathers 500 Mana a minute and stores up to 100,000 Mana.

Mana Currently Stored: 0/100,000

Durability: 100%

Amazingly, the array gathered Mana hundreds of times faster than Keith’s natural regeneration, making it well worth the price. For reference, a Mythic Mana Gathering Array gathered 1,000 Mana a minute, while an Epic grade gathered 250, and a Rare 100.

Now it was time for the moment of truth. Keith took a deep breath and focused on the array, and said, “Collect.”

There was a familiar flash of light, and then the array was gone. Delighted, Keith quickly opened his Grimoire interface and noticed a new section underneath the Mana bar in the energy tab.

“It worked!” Keith exclaimed when he found that the Mana box was generating Mana every minute. With the experiment a great success, many plans began to form in Keith’s mind. For the first time, he wondered if he was too hung up on making the orbs work. Nothing was stopping him from casting skills himself, especially now that he could effectively have a bank to withdraw Mana from.

Better yet, if he did it that way, he no longer needed to spend an absurd amount of money withdrawing experience from the Grimoire and could just collect it from monsters normally. Then, Keith could use the freed-up funds to withdraw Mana. Additionally, that meant he could finally level up his skills, allowing him to fight higher-level monsters.

The more Keith thought about it, the more excited he became.

Interestingly, he didn’t realize that the reason he wanted the orbs in the first place was to avoid confronting monsters himself. But after killing so many monsters, what happened with Cami, and meeting Rhea, he no longer considered it a problem.

He was slowly but surely maturing.