Chapter 75

When Keith first saw the effect of Mana Battery, he thought it was unbelievably powerful. It wasn’t until recently he found that things weren’t so simple. Even if he removed the gold cost from withdrawing Mana from his Grimoire, there was something called Mana Sickness.

Keith didn’t know the specifics – but apparently, using Mana came at an unknown cost. This cost didn’t affect you unless you passed a certain limit, which Keith obviously had. That act of using 3 million Mana left him with a heavy debuff for two weeks, and now that Keith was about to spend millions of Mana again, he suddenly felt wary.

A thought popped into his head.

Yeah, he would probably spend more Mana than he did before in just a moment. In that case, what if the Mana Sickness debuff reached a 100% reduction in stats? Would his Health become 0? Would he die?

Huh.

Keith abruptly found that what he was about to do was dangerous. Should he reconsider? Keith paced back and forth for a good chunk of an hour and ultimately decided to keep one of his split minds focused on his stats. Once they dropped past 50%, he’d stop.

Feeling reassured, Keith used Mind Division until he had 15 minds, his current maximum. Then, Keith raised a hand and multicast Entangling Roots.

Entangling Roots was different from most skills. It had a special feature – the more Mana you pumped into it, the harder, bigger, and faster the roots became. Each cast of Entangling Roots summoned between 6-10 roots; with Keith casting it 10 times, there were 85 roots in total.

At first, they were small, no thicker than Keith’s arm. But when Keith pumped thousands of Mana into each root, they quickly swelled in size. In seconds they grew larger than a five-story building, twisting and creaking all the way.

Keith’s attention wasn’t on the monstrous roots growing in real time.

It was inward.

At this moment, Keith found himself as a medium of sorts – he drew Mana from the Collection Grimoire and funneled it through his body, after which the System worked its magic to make skills work. Currently, he didn’t care about how skills functioned. That was beyond him. Right now, he focused all his attention on the first half of the process.

With a million points of Mana flowing through Keith every moment, his perception of Mana skyrocketed. He had never felt it so clearly. Each point of Mana was smaller than a grain of sand, ever flowing.

Keith immediately noticed that when his Grimoire’s Mana entered his body, it changed somehow. It became HIS. Keith’s four minds shook at the discovery. Was Mana in the air ownerless? If yes, then Keith had a theory. Leaving your mark on ownerless Mana took away from your being. It was like how water could erode rock. If the process of erosion overcomes your recovery, then you’d get Mana Sickness.

Keith trembled. One of his minds berated the others for getting sidetracked. His minds communicated, and Keith realized he’d already spent 6 million Mana and lost 40% of his stats, yet he was no closer to forming a connection with his Mana.

Another of Keith’s minds cleverly informed the others to focus on the location of the Mana that had just become his. The feeling of connection was strongest at that spot. Delighted, Keith focused his attention there.

One of the minds that had remained silent spoke up. The place where Keith’s body marked ownerless Mana was under the center of his chest, right below his collarbone. From there, Keith saw a bright blue ball of Mana. Some of it formed streams that flowed throughout his body, though most of it funneled into a small red dot.

Wondering what the red dot was, Keith was just about to look over when the mind focusing on his stats shouted a warning. By this point, Keith had spent 10 million Mana and lost 70% of his stats. Time was running out.

Knowing that he had no more than 2 seconds left, Keith decisively cut off the channeling of Entangling Roots and had all 15 minds focus on the blue ball of Mana in his chest. He fully immersed his consciousness inside the ball, groping and feeling with all his power.

Unfortunately, when the Mana coming from his Grimoire stopped flowing, his perception dwindled. But Keith didn’t give up. He held tight, fully visualizing the blue ball and its streams in his mind.

When moments had passed, yet the connection remained, Keith slowly relaxed his minds. Without even thinking about it, he could instinctively feel every point of Mana moving in his body. From that alone, Keith knew he had succeeded.

“Whew,” Keith released a breath he’d unknowingly held and opened his eyes. Communicating with his Mana, Keith looked at his hand, where a pale blue glow encompassed his finger.

Overjoyed, Keith was just about to freak out when he suddenly felt the world spin. Falling over, he lost consciousness.