Chapter Eleven

John layed in bed waiting for the sun to get high enough he couldn’t justify staying in bed any longer. Then he went through his standard morning routine, before going on a standard patrol, and preparing for a standard dungeon raid the next day. That got him through to dinner where he saw Sam and Camille. He joined them and said

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. After a month of this shit I’m not sure I can remember any emotions other than exhaustion and boredom.”

“Don’t be too negative. We’ve got a raid tomorrow right. That should spice things up a bit.” Camille said

“They used to spice things up, but since it's too risky to explore the deep parts of the dungeon until we’re tier two it feels like we're closer to glorified gardners than adventurers.”

“Stop bitching about it. Everybodies bored. At least for us we have an out. When the supply ship gets here we’ll all get to try and level up. If that’s not good enough for you you must not care about being an adventurer much.” Sam said.

“Your right, sorry for complaining. It's just the constant work combined with Olivia always being busy has got me down a bit. I’ll make sure to be more chipper when we go on our raid tomorrow.” John replied.

Then he got up, said goodnight, and went straight to bed. The next time he opened the eyes the sun was shining and he was nearly late for the raid on the dungeon. He jumped up and ran to the edge of the settlement where Sam and Camille were waiting. They hiked to the dungeon quickly and got to raiding as soon as they got there. They breezed around the now familiar traps and managed to harvest a decent number of blood river flowers from the shallow parts of the dungeon. Once that was done they headed back out. They were just about to exit the dungeon when a drybold came running out from behind them. They drew their weapons and were about to attack when the drybold spoke.

“The Holy Tree wishes to trade. Are you willing to complete tasks for more flowers?”

After hearing the question and realizing it was Mav all three of them put down their weapons. They looked at each other in silent consultation and then John spoke.

“I’m not sure if we will have the time to help. Next time we come we’ll have an answer for you.”

Mav nodded and said “Decide quickly. Holy Tree considering making offers to others.” before walking back deeper into the dungeon.

As soon as they got outside John turned to Sam and Camille and said “Looks like we might finally have something interesting to do. This will probably be able to net us enough blood river flowers that Olivia will cut us out of the patrol rotation.”

“That would be nice, but don’t get your hopes up too high. Until that settlement is gone we need all the patrollers we can get.” Sam said.

Then they talked casually until they got back. They went straight to Olivia’s office and knocked on the door, but she was in a meeting. After that they agreed to meet up and talk with her when she was free in the morning, and then went to sleep. When they woke up in the morning they forgot all about it. Shouts could be heard all across the settlement John rushed outside and looked around to try and find out why people were yelling. At first he didn’t see anything, but then he realized most of the sound was coming from the port. He rushed over and found a massive ship in the bay. It was nearly twice the size of the supply ships that had come in the past. He got closer and found that goods of all types were being unloaded. There were weapons, food, barrels, chest, and more coming out in a steady stream. He went up to get a closer look. Then he ran into Sam and Camille.

Camille ran up and hugged him and said “It’s finally here! Lou says he can have the chamber set up in a day. I'm going to go prepare for my breakthrough!” Then she ran off

John turned to look at Sam and saw that she had a wide grin on her face. “Once we break through to tier two we can show up the dungeon and the blood mages” Sam paused for a second before continuing “On top of that it looks like they really went all out on this one. There’s enough arrows that I won’t have to carve my own for a while, plus I think I saw a few barrels of booze. Things look to be getting interesting again.” Then she ran off just like Camille had.

John took one more glance at the everything that was being offloaded, and then he went to find Lou. He found him at the adventurer’s guild directing carpenters to put together a building that he was hoping was what he would use to break through.

As he approached he called out to greet Lou before asking “So is this going to be the break through building? Sam, Camille, and I are all waiting eagerly for our chances.”

Lou looked up from his blueprint and said “It's called a mana focusing room, but you can call it a breakthrough building if you want to sound uneducated.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Ok. When is the mana focusing room going to be done and where am I in line to use it?” John asked

“Luckily for you, your third in line. Only Sam and Camille are in front of you. All three of you should get the chance to use it tomorrow if everything goes according to plan. Now get out of here and let me focus on getting it set up.” Lou said as he waved John away.

The rest of the day went agonizingly slow. Every free moment was spent thinking about how the breakthrough was going to go and what to do afterwards. He moved from that slow day, to lying awake in bed for what felt like forever before drifting to sleep while still thinking about breaking through. When morning finally came John bolted up, rushed through his morning preparations, and ran over to where the mana focusing room was being built. When he got there Lou said “I see you're eager to get going. I’m setting up the room for Camille right now. You can wait out here and observe until it's your turn.

He watched as Lou brought in crates full of cores into the room, stayed inside for a while, and then repeated the process multiple times. After around an hour had passed he didn’t pick up another crate when he walked out. Instead, he called out to Camille

“Come on Camille. Everything is ready for your breakthrough.”

Camille stood up from where she was sitting and walked in while looking nervous. John said “Good luck.” as she walked in. Then she closed the door to the mana focusing room. John sat back in his chair and waited. For about thirty minutes nothing happened. Then the concentration of mana started to increase rapidly. He could feel the mana emanating out of the room and as the amount emanating increased the wind in the area started to come in gusts and bursts instead of the gentle breeze it had been. Then the mana started to condense just as rapidly as it came out. It was pulled back in through the walls and the wind disappeared with it. John couldn’t sense any mana in the area at all. Another thirty minutes passed and then he heard a yell from the inside. He jumped up and started to rush over, but was stopped by Lou. Before he had any time to argue the door burst open and Camille stepped out with sweat on her brow and a wide smile on her face.

Lou was the first to speak “Congratulations. Becoming a tier two wind elementalist isn’t anything to sneeze at.”

Camille responded “Thanks so much for setting everything up.” She took a few steps forward and sat down in what had previously been John’s chair. Then she said “Now if you’ll excuse me I think I’ll feel better after a nap.” her eyes started to close and she said “You guys better break through. It’ll be boring to be tier two by myself.” and then she fell asleep.

Lou looked at her and then turned to Sam and said “prepare yourself. I’ll get the room ready now.”

Sam turned to John and said “gods. She just had to make the pressure even higher. I can’t even complain to her about it since she went straight to sleep afterwards.”

“Just think of it as her being encouraging. We both know she wasn’t trying to stress you out.” John replied.

After that they just chatted. John made sure to keep the conversation light to try and get her relaxed and ready to break through. Before long Lou walked out of the room again and said “Ok Sam. Everything’s ready for you. Get in there and get to tier two.”

Sam nodded and walked forward. As she got to the door John called out one last bit of encouragement, and then the door closed and her breakthrough began. This time the mana started emanating out more quickly. It had been just a few minutes since she entered. The mana coming out this time was even more intense, but did not come with the accompanying wind this time. Then just like last time the mana collapsed back towards the mana focusing room. No mana could be felt in the surroundings and no noises were coming from Sam. John waited for thirty minutes wondering if everything was going to be alright, and then Sam exited the room. She looked even more exhausted than Camille, with a pale face and hair wet from sweat, but just like Camille she had a big smile on her face. He rushed over and asked

“Did you do it Sam? Are you tier two now?”

Sam nodded and then said “I see why Camille went straight to sleep now. Best of luck.” and then she collapsed in a chair and closed her eyes. That left John sitting alone as Lou worked to set up the room for his breakthrough. He tried his best to stay calm. Taking deep breaths and thinking of all the preparation he had made for this moment, but when Lou walked outside and gestured for him to enter and start his breakthrough his adrenaline spiked.

He was still taking steady steps and breathing deeply, but his hands were tingling and his heart was pounding. He walked into the room and closed the door. Looking around he saw a single table in the center of the table for him to lay on. He sat down and examined the rest of the room more closely and saw that each wall, the roof, and the floor had runes on them. Those runes were linked to all of the cores that he saw Lou bringing into the room earlier. Once he finished examining everything John took one more deep breath, and then he laid down, closed his eyes,and used his mana to activate the runes.

It took a few seconds for anything to happen, then runes started to glow and mana started to flow out of the cores at an astonishing rate. When he was outside he had been able to tell it was a lot of mana. Now that he was inside the room he knew that was an understatement. It felt like he had ended up in an ocean when he was expecting to be swimming in a pond. He remembered what Lou said about forming his core. He just needed to activate the formation and then direct the mana towards his desired core location while preventing it from tearing his body apart.

He didn’t specialize in any unique technique so he decided to place his core near his heart where it would provide a general boost for his entire body. He directed all the mana there while taking his time to make sure he avoided damage. As more mana came in he repeated the process more times than he could count, and then a problem occurred. When he tried to pull more mana in to solidify his mana and finished building his core it didn’t come as readily as before. He waited a second, and tried to pull more mana in, but the same thing happened. He opened his eyes and saw that all the runes were glowing even brighter than when he started, so he brought all his will to bear and tried to bring in the mana he needed.

Then one of the runes cracked. It lost its glow and John had to struggle even harder to bring mana in. He kept trying. He gritted his teeth and pulled. Not allowing the mana to leave. Then a second rune cracked. Then the third and fourth shattered. John felt the mana start to slip away. Then the fifth and sixth runes exploded. With no runes to help the room fell into blackness and John lay on the table as he felt all the mana he had painstakingly brought into his body fade away.