POV : Commander Kelt Al-Pokesman

Kelt had never had much affinity with mana, and now as he watched the town smoking and crumbling, he was glad. He had no desire to bring such destruction, at least not personally. He had ordered the bombardment of the town, thinking better safe than sorry. He knew the most dangerous person in the town was likely on 4th Tier...but he never liked taking risks. With this even if there was a powerful mage present they would just abandon the town now that it had next to 0 economic power and barely a handful of peasants left. That's if they were still alive. ‘That would be a problem’

Kelt took his eyes away from the city and turned to send an order to his artillery, ‘god... I love ordering powerful mages around… haha ha’ Kelt smirked.

“Prentice, Tell ‘Mage Lord Albus Dan-Agaza Kingspell’ to fire upon the town, once he has finished casting we will march into the rubble and finish the few that survive.” ‘Never can be too cautious heh, this battle will serve as an example to strike fear and demoralize the bastards'

This campaign would be his making, his father had pulled a lot of favors and bribes to get him to put in command of this division. For someone so weak magically it was almost unprecedented, only his exceptional breeding and almost unnatural gift for strategy and pulled him to this position. They were to lay waste to most of the kingdom and then rebuild it from the ashes, because of those mages ‘you never could be too cautious’.

"Hehe, ah and bring me my flask"

Chris stood at the entrance to the blacksmith, the man himself sitting in a reinforced space next to the forge and anvil. As he walked in the blacksmith looked up and bared a 12-inch blade. He was a great mountain of a man with dirty blond hair now slightly matted with dust. His face looked too worried for such a powerfully built man, but then again, thin twigs of men could level cities at will, if they so desired. He could not judge the man.

“Whoa there, I mean you no harm. I have come only to seek materials to defend myself.” Chirs raised his hand and the 10 freshly made rings shone dully in the dim light of the smithy.

“Bah, take what ye want youngen. Will all be gone in nay few hours.” The blacksmith's voice was bitter and despairing. He lowered the blade and went back to cowering.

Chris nodded his thanks as the blade lowered and set off to the pile of metal in the corner of the shop. There was also a bucket of raw mana crystal, large lumps that would have been pulled from the ground. They were natural mana crystals, not the artificially made ones used for the blooding. The ones found in the ground were less pure and could contain harmful minerals and compounds deadly to ingest. They were mostly used to fuel magical artifacts above the owners' means or to create equipment. This pile of material brought a tear to Chris's eye, with this he might just survive.

The first port of call was improving his already made rings, the artificial mana crystals were about 5 times purer than the natural ones but the abundance of crystals here would make up for reduced quality with quantity. First, he picked up an egg sided lump of crystal and pushed a small amount of mana into it, the larger natural impurities broke the crystal into smaller more pure fragments. Picking up the half pea-sized lumps he inserted as many as he could fit into the bands of copper on his fingers. Each copper band had an artificial crustal and around the rest of the band has 9 smaller crystals embedded. They were now a bit chunky but provided a serious capacity boost for him, as long as they didn't explode. Chris reached out and touched a wooden bench.

To do the calculation if each crystal is 5 times less capacity than an artificial crystal and size difference is negligible then each ring can hold on average 5% + (1%*9) for a total of 14% of my total mana pool. I need to create a damn unit of measurement for mana that isn't so variable. Probably would have learned how to use that at the mage academy damit. So if each of his 10 rings would be able to boost his mana capacity he would be able to hold and extra 10*14%...is...140% extra mana. Well, now I just gotta enchant them, oh not looking forward to that.

It took about 15 minutes to format the crystals with the practice he had got and they turned out well, he only had to swap 2 because of lingering impurities.

‘With this now completed I can make a proper tool of magic casting, a staff. I don't know why more mages don't use a staff. It's actually very rare, maybe it's a fashion thing.’

Bending down to grab a coal shovel he considered it, serviceable he deemed and bent down to the mana crystal bucket. He would sift through the bucket to find the largest piece with as few impurities as possible. The easiest way to do this was by blasting some raw mana into all of them and picking the largest one left standing.

The result of this was a lot of mana crystal dust and a few thumb-sized crystals, not enough. This was too small, he needed something bigger, what if...he could make his own.

This had never to his knowledge been attempted before but, he had more understanding of how crystals worked, the very structure of them. You had to have a compound capable of crystallizing and then heat and cool the mixture to form crystals. With his control over mana he could influence and speed up the process by growing it from the bucket of powder.

He first heated a kilogram of the powder into a crucible, then began to add some borax for good measure, and then added the largest chucks of crystal he still had into the mix. He then extended his mana and forced the atoms in the solution to stop, this had a fast reaction and the mixture did not form growth but instead fused into a lump in the crucible. He had cooled it too fast, and yet...no this would work. As he inspected the lump with magic it was seamless crystal structure, very small crystals, very tightly woven. He took the lump out of the crucible. Large and very deep dark blue, this was unexpected. The rapid heating and cooling had created a neat and orderly crystalline structure and the minutes spent as a liquid had vaporized most of if not all the impurities.

While Chris was admiring the unexpected fruit of his labor, the object was taken quickly from his hand. He jerked his head up to see the smith, a small spark of purpose in his eye. Chris stayed silent as the smith mumbled, “Yes my last, but maybe greatest work” The great giant of a man took the giant gen weighing over 1 kilogram over to a grindstone. He touched the device and it began to spin with the aid of his magic. He put the blue lump to the stone and began to refine it, as the seconds passed more facets and edges were added to the gem. Within minutes what looked like a sapphire with many faces had appeared. It was not as refined as perhaps a jeweler could have made it. And it has lost a good 240grams from its weight, but now it would be far more efficient. It almost made Chris consider making smaller gems for his rings but there would not be enough time. The blacksmith simply handed him the gem and walked back to his spot by the anvil. Chris did not say a word, for he would not hear it.

It was complete, Chris lifted the modified shovel above his eye line and gazed at the gem at its apex, he had worked the metal of the shovel head to hold the large 760g crystal the size of about a hen's eggs into a sort of tight-fitting cage. Crude but it did little to tarnish the beauty of the sapphire like prism now reflecting light in odd ways after being modified to hold mana. For all the effort he had put into the rings they were rendered impotent before this tool. If his estimates were correct of this being almost as good as the artificial mana crystals were accurate then….funking maths.

If the artificial mana crystal was about 3 grams then the large one would be worth 760/3 = A damn fraction, well call it 253 so a whopping 4% estimate capacity being (4%*253) 1012% increase in potential capacity. Holy shit. If he ignored the slight delay it took to take mana from an object so far from his nexus it was a very impressive capacity. He had already charged his rings to capacity and had now begun flowing all of his mana into his new staff, it was hungrily absorbed about half as fast as he could put it in, taking roughly 5 seconds to deplete him. He had eaten before going to the ceremony and was still regenerating mana at a decent pace. The staff could still store 9x his full capacity, well power increase obtained.

‘Wait….h-how long had the city been so quiet for, not explosions just the soft cries of injured citizens. Ohh, shit’

Outside the city, a mage lifted his hand, a ring hazing with a blue fog.

Mage Lord Albus Dan-Agaza Kingspell of the 7Th Tier Spoke, it was old and rasping yet with undeniable power.

“[Multiple maximized magic Vermillion Nova]”

The sky turned white.