40 grams of Juniper, Morgan poured handfuls of the black berries into the jar until the scale stopped at 40. A cinnamon stick, she broke it in half and dropped it into the jar. 30 grams of orange peels, she picked up a few oranges and peeled all the skin until the scale increased by 30. 10 grams of lemon peels, 10 grams of lime peels. She did the same to lemon and limes, now the bottom of the jar was filled with all sorts of peels and berries. 2 star anise, 10 grams of cardamom seeds, 1 sprig of lavender. She followed the recipe to the letter, finally filling the jar up with 750 milliliters of a 95% alcohol spirit. She close and tightly sealed the jar before lightly shaking it's contents.
"How's this"
Morgan held the glass up to Elizabeth who was sorting the higher drawers. She tucked her hair behind ears and glanced in the jar.
"Looks good, nice peeling" she smiled "Don't worry about being super accurate, this is just a fun experiment. A little variety between batches could be interesting, I'm still tuning the recipe after all."
Morgan felt an odd tingling sense of pride and accomplishment from Elizabeth's praises. For the next few hours, the two worked in a comfortable silence, occasionally broken up by Elizabeth's soft humming. Morgan's shelf was filled with different jars of fermenting goods, gin; ginger beer; vinegar; sauerkraut; kimchi and many others. Normally all this would be mass produced, however the technology in Afterlife hasn't completely caught up with Earth. Although plenty modern engineers have been invited to Afterlife, the access to raw materials, tools and other things aren't there. The knowledge and understanding is all present, however starting from scratch is harder than expected. Plus with all the other materials which exist in Afterlife, in combination with the use of magic and other skills, technology could take a different turn in Afterlife and thus engineers wish to take it slowly and explore what is possible. There are no large factories and sweatshops to make the things we had in modern society. However, simpler things like screws, planks, nails and cups have been made by wizards simply shaping it out of the the earth.
"Morgan come here look at this"
Elizabeth said while smiling and waving something in her hand. Morgan dried her hands off on her pant legs and crouched down next to Elizabeth.
"Give me your hand"
Elizabeth placed her hand out palm up, Morgan reached out and placed her right hand in her grasp. Suddenly, Elizabeth slipped a dark glove onto her hand. It had a soft yet slightly metallic texture, on each of the knuckles and second finger joint were pearly white chitinous shell like things. They flexed and shifted around as she opened and closed her hand.
"This, is a glove woven from small small onyx shavings. It's technically a metal gauntlet, but woven into a comfortable glove. And these" she tapped the white shells "Are made from frost giant bones. Super durable and flexible, they're like little pieces of armor on top of armor. Adds a little umph if you punch anything. Now try and insert a little bit of mana and clench your fist"
Morgan circulated her mana and sent it into the glove, a frosty white glow leaked out and gathered in her fist. When she clenched her hand into a fist, the glove stretched and covered her entire arm up to her shoulder. It looked like the black fibers sank into her skin and slithered up her arm, it's entire length was now covered in onyx. The white shells expanded and shifted up to her shoulder, elbow, wrist and other joints. She loosened her fingers shook her arm a bit, everything was stuck in place; it felt like the sleeve was completely melded with her arm, though it didn't feel uncomfortable in anyway. She retracted her mana and the onyx retracted back onto her hand, the white shells shifted back into place and shrunk back to their original size.
"I noticed you've been struggling with the strength of your attacks since your body can't handle them at 100 percent. With this, you can probably throw your spear up to 4 or 6 times stronger than the maximum your body could handle before. Onyx is a super absorptive material, if you fall and punch the ground when your entire arm is covered, it will absorb all of the force and allow you land softly. You can also use it like a shield against blunt strikes like the frost giant's punches, though I'm not sure just the onyx will fair well against sharp slices and jabs, so those bone plates are for reflecting blade strikes. Think of them like the ceramic plates in Kevlar armor."
"I-I don't know what so say Elizabeth"
Morgan looked stunned, this type of armor would normally cost an absolute fortune. She reached out and wrapped Elizabeth in a tight hug, who let out a soft 'ow' before patting Morgan on her back.
"Just think of it as payment for giving me company, I couldn't ask for someone better to live with."
She unwrapped herself from Morgan's strong arms
"Oh yeah and don't worry about your hands getting all sweaty and stuff like normal gloves. It's well ventilated so air can easily flow through, you don't need to worry about sweat and rashes and that sort of thing. Though you might get a weird tan line if you keep it on all the time."
Morgan motioned for Elizabeth to follow her outside and test the glove, she smiled and stood up, wiping off the dust on her bottom and her knees. They walked out around to the back of the building, there used to be another building there but it was torn down so Elizabeth bought it. The two haven't decided what they wanted to do with it but for now it was just an empty lot. Morgan stood around 5 meters away from the back wall of their house. She flexed her fingers and mana coursed into the glove, the black fibers snaked up her arm and wrapped around her shoulder. She decided in her mind to call it glove form and sleeve form. The air around her arm shivered as more and more mana was pushed and infused into her arm. This was the same amount of mana she used to throw the spear into the frost giant's eye. She decided it was enough for the test as she didn't want to punch a hole in her house. But also just in case for safety, she stepped back a few more meters.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She swung her arm a few times and loosened up the muscles in her back and neck. With her arm pulled back, she stepped forward with her left leg and swung her arm full force down at the ground. A loud explosion could be heard as her arm displaced the air with a violent force. Before her hand even made contact with the ground, it cracked and split apart. A huge blast of wind rocketed back at Morgan, throwing her a couple meters in the air. For a couple seconds, Morgan flew, simply from the force of her punch. Though she was unprepared, she twisted her body in the air and landed on her feet. Her arm felt a little tingly, but other from that it just felt like she punched normally. Her arm was still intact, so that was a very good sign. The ground around her formed a ring where the concrete at the edge lifted up, the center was crumbled and sunken.
"And you're saying I can do 4 or 6 times this power?"
She stared at Elizabeth in awe, the sleeve retracted back into a glove. Elizabeth placed her hand on the ground, the concrete shifted and turned back into a flat surface.
"Wow you're strong, I'm glad I made something you liked."
She smiled as she walked around Morgan, softly grabbing her biceps and shoulder muscles. Morgan jokily flexed her arm with Elizabeth's hands wrapped around it, Elizabeth gasped, genuinely impressed.
"My my, I should get you to help around more. What are you focusing on with your training now days?"
"Mostly mana circulation stuff, I use a lot of augmenting for fighting so I need to make sure I have a big enough tank to fuel all the augmentation. Oh and also generally toughening up my body to both take hits but also handle the hits I can give."
Elizabeth nodded in thought
"I can help you with that, my special class poltergeist doesn't actually allow me to control telekinesis it just unlocks telekinesis as an independent skill outside of mana manipulation. I had to actually learn to circulate mana and use it properly. I can help you mana stuff if you need to."
"Oh really? This isn't something I can say no to."
Morgan smiled
"Well then, come on. There's no time to waste."
Elizabeth motioned for Morgan to follow her,
"Oh right now?"
"Yeah come on!"
Elizabeth playfully half-dragged Morgan back to the house and into their living room.
"Come now, sit down"
She motioned for Morgan to sit on the carpeted floor in front of the couch. She then sat down across from her on the floor with her hands out for Morgan to hold on to. They sat cross legged, hand in hand. Morgan suddenly felt a soft stream of mana coursing from her one hand through her body to another, it went through passages which she never felt before and suddenly it was all gone.
"Did you feel that"
Elizabeth softly said, sending another stream of mana through Morgan's body. Morgan nodded.
"Now try and open all those paths again with your own mana, feel the width and range of the mana pathways. Not every one is the same size, so you need to learn which ones will be the most efficient."
Morgan took a deep breath and slowly circulated her mana through her body. She closed her eyes and envisioned the blue energy snaking through vein like tunnels in her body, connected every fiber of her being to her mana core. While she focused, Elizabeth's soft voice entered her mind
"There are three measurements of mana, the color of your core, the purity of your mana and the amount of mana you can have stored at one time. Since the intelligence stat only increases how fast you gain back your mana, all these three measurements have to do with your own ability."
Morgan's mana core was a light blue color, it was quite low on the scale but enough to do basic augmenting. Human mana cores follow the spectrum: Violet, Blue, Dark Blue, Light Blue, Cyan, Green, Light Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, Grey and White. So far, there are only a few white cores in Afterlife. People at the Violet stage can get by if they learn every single mana manipulation skill but White cores can be incredibly powerful simply with the base level spells. So far, Morgan hasn't done much training into the wizard skill tree as she's focused mostly on melee weaponry. However after watching watching Nathan fight by augmenting spells and magic into physical attacks, she realized it was a good way to use her mana since she wasn't using it much anyways.
Morgan stretched her mana until it filled every single mana passage she could find, they spanned different diameters and lengths. Though there were yet some mana passages which Elizabeth's mana passed through but Morgan could not reach. Elizabeth softly placed her hand in the center of Morgan right where above where her mana core would be. A soft stream of beautifully pure mana poured into Morgan and slowly spread through the passages, her own mana slowly following the pure white energy as it course through her body.
[Mana circulation proficiency increased]
Morgan's mana passages never felt so clear, she could already feel her mana core expanding and brightening. Since she was making so much progress in a short time, she might as well go all out she thought. She pulled all the mana in her core and started pushing it around and through all the passages she just opened, she felt the tips of her fingers tingle and the surface of her skin heating up. Her mind was completely focused on circulating and absorbing the mana in the air around her. So focused that she didn't noticed Elizabeth strongly shaking her and yelling at her to stop.
Suddenly, Morgan's mana core erupted. The light blue shell broke apart and a new cyan core exposed itself in her mind's eye. A huge blast of energy knocked Morgan backwards and into the couch, it also threw Elizabeth back into a wall. A stream of blood burst out of Elizabeth's mouth as she focused on creating a barrier and slowly pushing the energy back into Morgan so she could absorb it. Letting it all leak out would be a waste and if she managed to absorb it all it would greatly help her. Morgan was in a trance, she felt the energy around her violently coursing into her core, slowly building strengthening it. And finally it was gone, Morgan let out a huge sigh as the large amount of energy settled down in her body.
Elizabeth let go of her barrier, she was completely out of breath. A small stream of blood leaked from the corners of her eyes as waves of pain shook through her body.
"Good job Morgan"
She softly said, as she slumped into Morgan's chest, her face quickly paling.