Huh, my current storyline involves 100+ chapters. Not that it matters overly, either I finish this or I disappear.

Secondly, not going to try google docs again.

Finally, the way Jon refers to them isn't a mistake.

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While walking on the road, I puzzled over ways to use magic as a weapon. A few applications were obvious enough, by using light to blind and disorientate with the potential to focus it into a damaging laser.

But gravity magic isn't as obvious, the spells cast with it are slow to move and while I could make my club vastly heavier for a stunning blow, I would need to remove the spell quickly afterwards or risk being unbalanced to the sudden weight.

The gathering of the mana was also a pain, taking minutes just to cast one spell. But when I thought about it, I realized I hadn't actually tried storing the mana inside my body yet, I was told not to as it was unsafe. I'm willing to bet its another lie.

After checking on the princess and mercenary behind me, I started experimenting.

Now meditating

As I drew in the threads of mana I could feel my skin fizzling as they were sucked in. But unlike before, I didn’t use the mana and instead I gathered more. I was aware that what I was doing could result in ‘dire results’ as Saul had predicted, but smiling grimly I continued.

It wasn’t until I could feel the mana trying to escape my body that I stopped, and then I paused. There was no new messages, nothing indicating that I learned some new ability. But I didn’t have a clue on what I was meant to do now, and releasing the mana seemed detrimental to my goals.

So with my skin feeling tight as the mana crawled through my body, I concentrated on other thoughts as my skin prickled and itched, small hairs standing on end.

It took a small while before I noticed that I could still manipulate the mana inside my body, swirling it around and bunching it in locations as if I was readying it to cast. Moving it directly through my body made me feel sick, my flesh hurting where I forced it through and the notifications of HP lost was enough to make me stop.

Eventually I learned and soon the mana crawled through the path of least resistance. My bloodstreams. Circulating throughout my body alongside my blood, the mana flowed in a steady endless stream.

Internal Mana Storage learned

A small grin escaped my face.

NameJonathan CliffTitlesGamer, PawnLevel(10) 19 [34%]Health402/461Stamina504/505Mana274/350BalanceEmptyVIT42STR41END49AGI23DEX24INT31WIS28LUK20

The princess and mercenary still hadn’t noticed anything, and that was fine with me. I wanted to experiment some more with this and see what else I could do.

But minutes after I started to play with my newfound ability, soaking in the mana and releasing it a voice spoke behind me.

“Hey”

Sighing with disappointment, I turned around with a fake smile on my face. The princess stood there, her expression curious and the mercenary looking displeased as he stood next to her.

“Mind if I ask you a few questions?” she asked, not sensing my irritation.

Sooner I get this over with, the better. “As long as its not about the Mages Order”

“Wasn’t it the Order of Mages” the mercenary spoke, his eyes narrowed.

“Yes, it is also called The Mages Order. It is known by many names” I smiled wisely.

“Well anyways” the princess continued blithely, “Where are you from?”

“Ah well, I can’t say that”

“Why not?”

“Because it may give you clues on where The Mages Order is” I sagely informed her as the mercenary snorted.

Glancing at him, he turned away with a disinterested expression before I continued walking, at least until the next question came.

“How old are you?”

“18, you?”

The mercenary interrupted “She doesn’t need to tell you that”

“Its ok” the princess said irritated. “I’m 17”

She continued with another question immediately “What magic can you do?”

Now here was a great question, and not one I felt good answering. Best to have her to think of me as all powerful than only knowing 4 spells. Especially as I planned to expand my repertoire.

“That’s a mage’s secret” I winked, trying to seem cool.

“Riigghhtt” She didn’t seem convinced.

Before she could continue asking questions, I quietly spoke “If you don’t mind, I would like to continue my analysis of the mana flowing through the air”

Before she could open her mouth, the mercenary politely spoke “We won’t bother you again” and dragged her away.

I tried to resume my thoughts, something to do with weapons I believe. But what kind of weapons can you possibly make with light and gravity? Taking my current abilities into account, beams of blinding light for temporary blindness would be useful, and gravity magic would be deadly if used on moving objects. But the cloak takes too long to form and using it on my club is only viable if I want it super heavy which I can’t do if I want to keep my balance.

I formed a few small ideas on how to go about it, but when I eventually decided to experiment with my mana is when I remembered my earlier discovery.

Playing with it, I soon found that the mana stored inside my body didn't seem to be a specific form of mana, though conveniently it turned into other forms easily which was fine for my purposes. When I depleted the mana by casting a few spells experimentally, it drew in the surrounding mana floating through the air without any conscious effort required by me.

I tried to speed up the recovery with a conscious effort to take in the surrounding mana, but discovered that the speed barely increased. It was pretty interesting.

We soon reached a clearing and the mercenary spoke up behind me “We are taking a break”

As the mercenary opened his pack, he glanced at me. “We are not feeding you”

I snorted, “No need” as I opened my inventory.

The looks on their faces as I took out food was hilarious, and my stock as a magician just went up. “One of my magics” I grinned.

Currently my inventory contains the following

Laptop

45 Special Magazines

21 Fantasy Novels

Satchel containing Blood Gem, Crystal of Resonance and two empty bottles.

30 Salted Pork

8 Oranges

52 Water Bottles

Blooded Club

Tent

It wasn't mentioned before, but a few days after the outpost incident my club changed its name to Blooded Club, despite my never having heard of that name before. But the description didn't indicate the appearance of any special features beyond 'Has a chance to inflict fear' which is reasonable enough. After all, I hadn't had the chance to wash it yet. At least it's no longer sticky.

I was starting to run low on both oranges and meat, but it would still last me a few weeks. In regards to the water, as I drank I placed the empty bottles inside the satchel and when encountering water I'd refill them and place them back inside my inventory. Basically, my water supplies were second to none.

Later we reached a small town where the princess asked me if I was willing to cover the costs of the inn. She gave the excuse that I was the newest member of the party and we all need to support each other. However I declined demurely stating I preferred to sleep outside. However she continued to insist and the mercenary himself tried to guilt me into coughing up the money. He hinted heavily that I was the reason they slept outside last night, but that wasn't my fault. Finally, I caved in and admitted I had not a single penny.

The mercenary grunted in disgust “Of course. Why would I expect a mage to have money”.

Moving inside the Inn, the princess looked at me with pity in her eyes as I stood outside. But I didn't particularly care. She may be a princess and inherited a throne, but her life is at risk and me? I'm just a random stranger tagging along.

The next morning we left the town and continued travelling, both of them didn't seem as hostile towards me as yesterday, but the mercenary still refused to allow the princess near me. She didn’t like it, but I was thankful towards him as I was working on creating my own spells.

Unexpectedly, creating spells was not easy. When I followed Saul’s instructions to casting spells I had learned them without hassle, so why was I having trouble making a focused beam of light?

My gamer ability refused to cast a spell I didn't register, and so I was forced to manually learn the spell before it could be automatic.

Was the only reason I learned the other spells so fast because I had it described to me with instructions? It seemed so, and self research wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. The mana storage was very convenient, but I could already tell I had assistance learning it.

And so I tried to experiment with the mana, concentrating it on my finger and trying to shoot it out. But each effort was met with failure as it spluttered or deformed into a shapeless mess. It seemed a impossible task.

The hours passed as I focused on the mana, recasting it over and over. I was seeing small signs of improvement. But only to the stage where I could stabilise it for half a second. This was far too slow.

Watching my back as we travelled, finally the princess broke away from the mercenary and approached me again.

“How long have you been travelling?”

“A long time” I answered absentmindedly

“Weeks? Months?” she persisted.

“Months” Perhaps if I focus the light mana into a tunnel of formless mana, and use that..

We watched the light overflowing from my finger for a second, before I sighed in failure.

“What else can you do apart from magic?”

We stopped walking as I paused and gathered my thoughts, I couldn’t tell her to push off but I needed time to focus on my magic. This was pretty important to me, especially if I'm meant to defend her from danger. Feeling very irritated I sighed.

“I can use a club, and I’m pretty good at it. But I really need to focus on my magic. The past few months were devoted to finding you, and until now I had no time to study"

Hearing my tone, the princess went quiet and moved back with the mercenary. I heard him mutter something but I didn’t care. I wanted to get this over with.

Two and a half weeks passed as we travelled, eventually they started covering my costs of food as well and in return I stored both their backpacks in my inventory. It took a week of failures and small successes until I could shine a beam of light. However the beam of light wasn’t as strong as I wanted, it was useless for blinding and shining it in someones eyes could make them flinch, but it wouldn't impair their vision. At best it was a flashlight.

You have learned the spell Light Beam

INT +2

WIS +4

I wanted to brag and show off my new spell, but our relationship was a little awkward. Less than two weeks after meeting them, they realized that I didn’t know as many spells as I had proclaimed.

As the princess had said, it was obvious after watching my expressions as I practiced the Light Beam spell. Although it looked to be simple, I looked really pleased. And it wasn’t just that, when she confronted me my expression gave me away. Since that time, I felt awkward talking to them. She seemed to have warmed up to me however, which was probably why the mercenary permitted me to stay.

Working from what I had learned from the Light Beam spell, I was now working on a focused version of the spell with a stronger light. Progress was slow, but it was still progress.

To relieve myself from boredom, I occasionally tried different forms of gravity magic. This was somewhat easier, but far slower to use. While light mana was easily maneuvered into position and constantly seeked to scatter while shivering rapidly against the constraints, gravity mana oozed, finding weak points in concentration and proving slightly more difficult to hold in a specific shape.

I didn’t learn anything from gravity mana yet, but I had high hopes.

It was three weeks since I had joined them that something happened, and by that time I had long stopped paying attention to the forest. Besides, the mercenary was doing that already.

It wasn't until the mercenary hissed "trouble" at me until I noticed our predicament.

Out of the forest stepped three men, and while they were dressed simply the colors of their clothes were muted browns and greens and the expressions on their faces were of gleeful smiles. They carried two swords and the third had a polearm. Just to make sure it was clear what was going on, their names told me they were bandits.

Han lv. 5 Bandit Captain

Sam lv. 4 Bandit

Solomon lv. 5 Bandit

By mutual agreement, the princess stepped between us as we drew closer as a group. The mercenary drew his sword, and it wasn’t until the mercenary murmured to me that I saw the other two men in the bushes, crouching out of sight as they watched us. The second I saw them, their nametags appeared.

Alison lv. 4 Bandit

James lv. 4 Bandit

An ambush.

“Where’s your stuff?” the captain asked curiously, but not waiting for an answer he continued.

“No matter, place your sword on the ground. Drop a coin purse and move on.” the captain instructed, his behavior cool and collected.

"And if you resist.." he threatened vaguely..

“Think of her before you resist”

Normally I would feel completely confident in my abilities, but with the rift stats sucking and the need to protect the princess..

The mercenary didn’t even wait for my opinion before asking the captain “I need my sword, how about I throw my purse and you leave us alone”

The captain grinned “Deal”

I felt rather disappointed with the outcome as we moved on. I knew why the mercenary had backed down, but I couldn’t help but think I would have won. Their levels were far below ours!

The mercenary spoke quietly behind me “We are not fighting a losing battle, especially when our mission is to escort her”

I didn’t say anything. But he could still sense my disappointment.

“Can you fight” he demanded, “Can you take on a group and walk without serious injuries while protecting someone?”

We walked on silently, he wasn’t expecting an answer but still seemed to be rather upset I had wanted to take them on.

“You’ve never even addressed us by name” he continued, his voice getting upset. “You know our names, we know your name. But despite that, you’ve never ever addressed us by name."

He seemed to be getting upset.

"You talk down to us”

He really seemed to be upset, has he been bottling up his anger?

The princess grabbed his shoulder “Calm down” she whispered. But he shook her off angrily. “He’s looking for trouble” he protested, his face scowling. “He wanted to fight them, even though they had the numbers and would win. Even when they offered to let us go he wanted to fight!”

He was seriously getting on my nerves. They both were.

My eyes narrowing, I spoke angrily “You think I want to guard you?”

The mercenary seemed to find this personally offensive, but that was his business. I was really starting to hate the way he disregarded me. Snarling, I hissed at them "I was forced into this, forced to fight a battle that wasn't mine"

Pounding blood and sight full of rage, my hands formed into fists as I looked at the mercenary in anger.

The mercenary looked ready to fight, and it was only as the princess interjected herself between us that I took a deep breath and walked away. I couldn't afford to fight them.

I knew that I had said too much, the princess looked deeply unhappy. But I was far too upset to consider their feelings, and he was her business.

I really want to get out of here. I can't control this mana, my research is getting me nowhere. This entire trip is getting nowhere.

That damn god is forcing me into this.

Doesn't consider me, doesn't care about me. Using me for fun.

Can't fight him, Can't escape him.

I feel depressed.

I want to go home..