It only took a couple more hours for the two to stop, with their mana cores completely full. So they paused instead, letting the two practice their Divine Magic, ones with their main elemental affinity since their off-elements had already be fully exhausted.

Meanwhile, Louis casted ‘Zet Imaru’ a few times, but increasing their area of effect. While he had enough daily usages that skipping a night or two of sleep would be fine, it was better being safe than sorry. Besides, ‘Zet Imaru’ was having trouble healing his shoulders and thighs. He had left those areas unattended to heal the meridians within his torso and now those parts were dying.

Lovely. Only a few days of mana poisoning could destroy his body. So much for internal mana resistance. The lack of lifeblood hampered his efforts and Louis considered, once again, simply stabbing his life core to open it.

“I ran out of Divine Magics.” Hefra said.

“You have two elemental affinities.” Louis said. “I’ve only seen you use fire.”

“I don’t have many Myr Divine Magics. “ Hefra said, frustrated.

“Right, right.” Louis gathered a bit of his mana and created an alternating circles of elemental ice and physical earth. “Then it is time to practice your elemental affinities.”

“Again, no Divine Magics.” Hefra said.

Louis shook his head. “You should still be able to make fires without ‘En Xandra.’” Pointing to the ice and earth target, Louis said, “your first exercise is to burn all the earth and ice away.”

It was a bit harder than expected, since Hefra did not know how to expel her mana without Divine Magic assistance. But that hurdle passed and Hefra soon learned the difference of different fires. Her normal fires were all physical, unable to burn the ice and only the earth. With a few hints, she eventually could burn the ice, but it was unable to burn the earth. It seemed getting her to burn both at the same time was out of her abilities.

When Amelia exhausted her Divine Magic, Louis had her create water to douse out a physical fire and a mana fire. Amelia had similar troubles with the elemental fire, since the water she created spattered through it, doing little to abate the flame.

“How does water not extinguish fire?” Amelia asked, throwing as much water as she could make onto the flame. Eventually, the flame’s mana boundary was sufficiently destroyed that it went out.

“Mana fire only appears like fire, but exists from mana.” Louis said. “Magic changes reality according to your desires. You treated the mana fire as a normal flame, so you produced normal water. But elemental fire only cares about its mana source and its target, nothing more. Water can put it out, but by disrupting the spell boundary or mana source.”

“Even if true, but that takes too much to think about.” Amelia said, as Hefra stopped her practice to join in.

“Only because you are still unfamiliar with it.” Louis said. “That’s why you are practicing it individually. Use mage sight to tell the difference if you have to, mana elementals have more mana density than their normal counterparts.”

“Until when will be ready?” Hefra asked.

“When you no longer need mage sight to tell the difference.” Louis said, waving them back to training then meditation.

҉҉҉

Once dawn rolled around, Louis left for gathering once more. His mana was fully restored after spending the last few hours in meditation. His sisters were kind enough to focus on practicing elemental balancing so he could absorb as much mana as he could.

The adventurer guild rustled with commotion. So many adventurers packed its courtyard that only the edges of the noticeboards could be seen. Hushed whispers echoed throughout, repeating the same few phrases like a chant as people shouted and pushed one another for the quests.

“What’s happening?” Louis asked one of the adventurers leaving the main buildings.

“Mutts were found.” The adventurer waved his hands at the edge of his wingspan. “Giant snakes, crazed monkeys, elemental deer. Who knows what else.” The man shuddered, before leaning in close. “That’s not the real scary part – Divine Magic Bryn has fallen and all the previous divinations are worthless. The guild needs information. Exploration and extermination quests are premium right now.”

“Beast tide comes this year?” Louis asked.

The adventurer shook his head. “Off-year.” Then shrugged. “But hopefully. Could use the coinage.” Turned towards the notice boards which were now swarmed by adventurers. “Well, got to get a quest myself. May Uta’s light guide us all.” Then he squeezed himself towards the noticeboard.

How foreboding, Louis thought as he went to find his group. The adventurer guild should have already been able to predict the advent of a Beast Tide, far before Divine Magic Bryn fell. Or had its fall allowed this to happen? Hardly a good sign either way.

Finding his party this time around was harder – their normal spot had been taken by stronger adventurers. Louis moved back to the entrance the group normally left for exploration and sure enough, the group appeared like clockwork at the same time. Not alone either, for three new members had joined the crew. Louis waited a moment to approach the group, in case the three members would split off, but they did not.

The newcomer girl – the only one, yet the tallest, of the seven people – had yellow robes, fully enchanted silk with embroiders of runes to compensate for the shortcoming silk naturally had as armor. Red hair cut short, eyes green as grass and in her mid-forties – she seemed like the mage counterpart to the fighter Rael. Her two companions wore green robes that were no less enchanted with runes, but clearly denoted a lower rank.

While six talked, Rael was the first one to notice him and strike conversation. “Shin, you have arrived.” Rael says, wearing a brand new yellow chainmail vest and leathered pants, with an embroidered set of runes. His chainmail gloves still remained though.

“You ranked up?” Louis asked, doing his best to sound happy for the boy.

“I did, but the others have simply taken out their battle gear.” Rael said, presenting his companions like a display. “We got here a bit earlier and heard about mutt sightings. We plan on going a bit deeper into the Borderlands to scout and fight. And we got another group to be safe. You up?”

Louis simply looked around. The baseline of the party seemed to be some balance between the elderly couple and Undal, the middle aged man. Rael seemed the weakest due his age, but his new rank up put him squarely average of the party – a single rank higher than what Louis pretended to be. Due to all the new gear the party had, genuine armor as they easily resisted some mana Louis threw at them, they now were two ranks ahead of him.

Louis activated mage sight, looking at the newcomers. The four, fancy gear or not, Louis felt confident in handling, barring a series of mishaps and underestimations. Adding three more people would seriously jeopardize those odds. A light blue around surrounded all seven of them, most of it concentrated around their equipment rather their own mana reserves. The elderly couple had the weakest life aura around them, followed by Undal and Rael. Yet, although the three newcomers had the strongest life auras, suggesting higher ranked mages than their robes seemed to indicate, each was riddled with an injury. The woman hurt both arms, a man injured his chest and the last somehow injured his head.

“Well?” Rael asked.

Louis wanted to reject, but his dying body pushed him to take a risk. “Sure,” Louis said, ensuring that both groups remained on the same side of him. The newcomers ignored him, and he was fine with that.

As many as eight hundred people flooded into the Borderlands. Not all of the people were adventurers – porters, guides and more could be seen travelling with adventurer groups, some as big as twenty. Riveta’s walls only had ten entrances, so when people actually stepped into the Borderlands, it was more like a trickle into a delta.

The group hung closer to the middle of the pack as they ventured into the Borderlands. While scouting and fighting were apparently the goals, gathering came to a very close third, for the groups stopped a lot. The three newcomers seemed to well-practiced in gathering alchemy ingredients, especially in mana-related ones, which complemented Rael’s party well as they tended to leave those ingredients by the wayside.

Louis wanted to squeeze in and gather some ingredients, but he did not want to be flanked by people he hardly knew and trusted even less. So he began walking around the perimeter of the group, picking valuable items, like truffles and ginseng, as well as alchemical ingredients as he pleased. Having so many adventurers gathered to explore the Borderlands created a human wall warding off the dangerous threats. So despite the fact that his illusionary robes granted him no defenses, Louis was relatively safe to do so.

Gathering food was the first thing Louis had to give up to do this. While he wanted to feed kids, he wanted to live more. Plus, with the way the group was walking, there was very little chance they would make it back into Riveta before nightfall – which meant spending the night out in the Borderlands. Fun. Would have been nice to know before entering the Borderlands.

As the sun began to set, the adventurers going on exploration quests had disappeared into the depths of the Borderlands. The human wall of defenses no longer worked with the groups so finely spread out, so Louis once again simply resorted to the occasional lifeblood plant and the more common food. Undaunted, however, Louis began trading materials with the party – especially during dinner. While food alone, especially on the first day of the trip, was unable to sway anyone to relinquish their valuables, it made them more susceptible to trades. Truffles for some mana restoring alchemical ingredients. Avati leaves for some lifeblood plants.

Night presented Louis a new set of challenges – gathering became more dangerous as well harder, as some magical plants either hid or entered some defensive mode at night. But beyond that, Louis was experiencing a giant problem: his illusion lit up the night. Louis did his best by keeping near the campfire and dimming his illusion.

That meant taking the first shift, and as many shifts until he finally left the Borderlands. Instead, Louis turned to his collection of lifeblood plants. Altogether a princely sum, but any potential buyer was on the other side of the wall and even a million diamond coins would be useless here. So Louis began eating the lifeblood plants one by one. This method gave less lifeblood than trading for life crystals, but who was he kidding? He had yet to obtain a single life crystal in the past few days.

Rather than let the pitiful amount enter his life core and be locked away effectively forever, Louis began healing his feet – not just coalescing scabs to prevent himself from bleeding out like before, but treating the small tears ridden within his feet and layers of skin, then working his way up. In order to keep up with the mana and healing demands, Louis consumed the rest of the food he gathered and mana replenishing plants. A lavish expenditure, but better than meditating and letting his guard down.

“So many ‘Zet Imaru’.” The only girl in the party, Rimara if Louis eavesdropped correctly, asked. She soon took a seat across from him. “Is that wise? The fights might not break out until tomorrow or the day after.”

“Practice makes perfect, and I was caught unprepared.” Louis said, continuing with another ‘Zet Imaru’. His feet had healed and Louis moved onto his thighs, which had now blackened like charcoal. Scrapping off bits of his thighs in front of Rimara was out of the question, so Louis healed the interior of his thighs first. “Besides, I am not the healer of the party – your friend seems to be more qualified.” Louis got up, then walked a bit into the darkness and dispelled his illusion. ‘En Meng’ to see if anyone was following or any dangers, which were negative for both, thankfully.

Back to healing, Louis thought in the comfort of darkness. He needed to find some stimulants tomorrow or the day after. His body would not take much more beyond that otherwise – and even if he could, his magic would suffer.