Tied off for the moment, the flow of energy from the Matrix, basically half a Level every six seconds, pulsed out and deposited itself slowly into my Mana Pool.

Twelve seconds later, the blue line advanced one point.

By the Poet!, Mira exclaimed. Can this be sustained indefinitely?, she cried out in wonder.

Five points of mana a minute was a renewal rate rivaled only by the greatest of mana Formations in the Imperial Academy!

“As long as I’m not pulling on my Core, yes.” Basically, if I didn’t use the energy, it would dump into my mana pool, which definitely needed the love, considering its size and emptiness. “Let me try something else. Boquar Zhaloi!”

This would use the last of my mana if it went off... and it did. Iron scarab, mugwort clippings, amber dust, gypsum potion, willow talisman again. The spell wound about me confidently, swirling strongly as it went to work, and I could feel the motion of the mana all around me being conducted through and down into my Matrix, which promptly pumped the mana there over into my pool.

The additional mana draw was up to 1 per 9 seconds, which was an improvement from 12 seconds, if not a big one. The natural rate of 1 per minute was now 2, so I should be hauling in at least eight mana a minute.

Which, if I had plenty of time between fights, would be all I needed to stay full. How likely was that to happen?

I noted the dust on the stairs was not disturbed by the rats. Well, it was about to be disturbed by me.

I slowly and silently moved over there, setting my foot on them. They didn’t seem to be gnawed at all, and I reached down to touch them.

They had some vestigial magic in them, giving them the strength to resist time and decay. I carefully set foot on them, and padded my way around and up, noting that the marks in the wall from acid followed up...

Upstairs looked like it had once been a bedroom, given the remnants of the bed, another candle stand, and destroyed table.

Over in the corner, dusty robes and at least two skulls peeked out of a tumble of destroyed clothing. More bookshelves and books, the latter scattered, ravaged, and torn apart, acidic burns on them making the paper crumble to the touch, if the rats hadn’t gnawed them completely apart.

I went over to the dead, flicking up Vivic Darts, just in case. The two white slivers of unwhite energy revolved around my hand, fascinating Mira, who had never seen them before.

But no, the skeletons didn’t rise and reassemble themselves to greet me. I sifted through the bones, noting the layers of dust had been disturbed before, and there was nothing valuable there, likely removed by others who had come here before me.

I headed back downstairs, and the second set of large iron doors. Large iron... were they guarding against people coming in from Ispar, or attackers from without?, I wondered.

The hallway curved in an S, leading up to a pair of iron-bound wooden doors that had been mauled even more badly than the iron ones, completely shredded and only their hinges and fittings still remaining.

This room was much larger... and had multiple stone plaques and their columns shattered and fallen over throughout it, the rubble kicked around and dispersed throughout the room. There were also more of the trees growing indoors that had died, scraps of wood hurled throughout the room.

Ominously, there were areas that had been trampled on and scattered more recently, the dust thinner there, and older footprints visible... and tracks of both rats and things that weren’t rats.

There were also what looked like streaks in the floor from things being dragged, and visibly clear areas where things had been dragged, converging on a hole in the wall. Looking closer, I could see a variety of basic swords, daggers, staves, and other such weapons as might be held in hand, scattered here and there, along with some strewn arrows fallen out of a dragged quiver.

Something had come through the wall there, something using a combination of acid and something like picks to carve through the stone and force a rough passage through. It was basically man-size and high, with a rounded and narrow walking area, and something about it raised my hackles.

Which it should have, because I was very sure that a lot of the people who had come through that Portal recently had met something here and died.

There were vestiges of magic on the scattered logs, and after a moment of examination, I realized that they were roughly carved. Arms, legs, head, torso... some sort of animated Construct here, standing guard for whatever reason?

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Wait a moment. I visualized this whole small set of rooms.

This roughly carved tunnel was the only way in or out. If that was the case... how had the people who’d been in here gotten in or out?

Dimensional travel magic, or had I missed a secret door or something? Given the time and ruin, any such door should have been fairly easy to spot, even if I hadn’t been looking for it... and I still had a Vatic Gaze, and active magic was pretty visible to me at short range.

Regardless, that tunnel was the only way in or out. I considered it carefully, looked down to see my footprints in the dust, and more importantly, sniffed at the scent trail I was surely leaving.

If I retreated, if something came, it would just track me easily.

Regardless, I needed time to get mana back.

Hmm, this might be the time to try Meditation. If nothing was coming, nothing was coming. If it was, it wouldn’t hurt if I had more mana to deal with it... and got some defensive spells of my own up with.

Currently only had Force Armor and Shield available for defense.

I withdrew to the far wall and a cul-de-sac behind arches in the corner, an area as far from that tunnel as I could make it. Thinking about it, I burned a Wizard Valence I, and Summoned up a Phantom Servant.

It wasn’t very strong, but it didn’t have to be. I bade it start stacking up all the pieces of shattered stone into a rough low wall, then start stacking the construct-pieces on top of them. All I wanted it to do was slow something down a bit, and in the dark, it shouldn’t even see this.

If it was working with infravision, I would still stand out, but the mounds would break up my outline until it got closer.

If all it brought me was a few seconds, that was enough.

As the Servant got to work tirelessly carrying pieces of shattered plaques over to stack up in an arc around me quietly, I sat in the corner and got to non-work.

Bring everything into serenity. First time, on a twice-new world, new body, former owner now a part of me, sure, serenity, harmony, flowing, drift and yet be aware of everything.

Mira was sitting there watching my internal bars and clock, and immediately noticed the incoming manaflow was increasing as I relaxed and opened myself to the stuff. Further juiced by the Iron Mana Renewal spell, the base one point per minute doubled to two, and increased to about half another point, doubled by the Mana Renewal to a total of five a minute, the three per six seconds staying steady and stable.

I reflected that I could do better than a Cantrip rate of speed if I got a Reserve working. However, that was a lot of rep counts away.

So, rep counts, yeah, gonna have to work on those. And see if mana could be used to renew Spell Slots. If so, that was a huge game changer. Lots of rep counts really fast, plethora of lower-level spells.

Of course, it all depended on exactly how pricey Valence spells were versus those Cast from a Pool like this.

10 mana a minute. A half hour and I’d be right as rain.

The Servant mounded stuff up in front of me, and I sat there and drew mana in.

Looked like Meditation increased the default rate +1 per ten points of the Mediation check over 10, as I should be hitting a 24 or 25. Good to know for the future.

---

The Iron Mana Renewal spell faded away just about as my Pool topped off. The mounds from the Servant were knee-high.

The spell cost twenty mana, and seemed to last about a half hour. It would pay for itself in normal use, barely, but really only in Meditation was it worth it to Cast. I didn’t know what the Copper version of it would do, presumably triple the speed for 30 mana, but until I knew I could get more scarabs, I was going to be leery of Casting III’s, and I didn’t have any Silver scarabs for IV’s.

I was on a new world, and didn’t know when Natural Renewal was going to hit, and couldn’t reset it until it did.

I made a loop of the mana coming in and fed it back into the Valence I I’d spent on the Servant.

I was ready to take it down at the first hint of mana burn, but there seemed to be no problems. Whatever was done to the mana in the pool was enough to pump back into my spent Slot, ignore the Burn on it, and fill it back up over the course of a minute.

I noted that The Rules were indeed Different Here, wondering how that was going to change everything. About ten mana to refill a I for me.

If I dropped in and out of Meditation, that was at least fifty basic reps an hour, enough to satisfy a lot of Reserve Counts in only five hours.

The major roadblock I was looking at was that I needed II’s for even the most basic Meta rep counts. Five hundred reps of a spell for an Efficient spell with Metas attached, five hundred reps of a Metamagic Feat on different spells to make the Feat Practical.

Being a powerful spellcaster took a lot of time, and a lot of rep counts. This Pool method would allow me to shortcut a lot of that, getting back to the proficiency I could remember Aelryinth having, but it was still days, months, and years away.

I was going to be spending a lot of time getting mana back. A lot of time doing rep counts, and a lot of time increasing my Reserves, just so I could do it all faster.

That said, I needed to take an inventory of what components for Mira’s magic I had, and how I was going to get around the need for them. I did not want to be stuck gathering and making my own, although that was a possibility.

I quietly pulled out her components satchel, a fairly hefty leather carry-bag with a lot of intricate loops and pockets in it, made to hold components securely and to protect them from jostling. There was a faint amount of magic running through it to that effect.

I untied it calmly and flipped it open, and something loose in there that was shiny blue dropped out.

I caught it reflexively, frowning, and lifted it up to my eyes.