CHAPTER FIVE
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Denise was the first one to break the silence.
“Hahaha! You- you’ve gotta be florking kidding me! That’s what you’ve had us all practically shirting bricks over this whole time? Are you serious? What next? Is the big purple dinosaur himself going to make a celebrity guest appearance?”
Robin hated to admit it, but Denise actually had a point.
Argh! Knew I shouldn’t have bought the stupid stick.
Looking down at the gnarled walking stick the system labeled a club, she couldn’t help but scrunch her face up in annoyance. Glancing from the stick in her hands to their little intruder, her fearful resolve of only moments before was starting to feel more and more ridiculous.
“W-wait, hold on, guys. Is that a knife?” pointed out Maya.
And on second glance, yes, their adorable little intruder was also dangerously armed.
“A bit rusty though, isn’t it?” Eva put in hesitantly. “Like, I know that means it could be more dangerous, sort of, like, in the wrong hands? Like, tetanus is no joke, my uncle got it one time and he couldn’t talk for a week, but doesn’t it look like it’ll just, like, fall apart? Look, little bits are flaking off already!”
And, after making a closer inspection, Robin found that Eva was entirely correct. For the animated stuffed doll, very reminiscent of a certain brand of cartoon bear that really really cares—heck, it even had a little rainbow printed on its round white belly—had been poorly armed indeed.
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t still plenty dangerous. Don’t let your guard down just because it’s not what you were expecting.”
Robin tried to impress upon them the potential seriousness of the situation, even is she herself wasn’t necessarily convinced.
She must have done a better job of it than she’d thought, because in the next moment, Eva, with her strawberry blonde hair tied up into a pony tail, Maya, her brown eyes a shade darker than her caramel complexion, and Marlene, freckles starkly visible on her too pale, too gaunt face, each tensed—all the creeping levity abruptly vanishing from their expressions.
She hated to take that sense of security away from them, but she couldn’t help but feel like it was not a luxury they could currently afford.
The stuffed bear finally stepped fully into the clearing. Only now that it had, did a few minor details they hadn’t been able to discern from a distance make themselves known.
Three and a half feet tall, it’s bright orange fur matted and filthy—as if it’d covered itself in tree sap and rolled around on the forest floor—the stuffed bear staggered forward with an obvious limp. Rusted, eight inch long hunters knife trailing behind it—barely held in one mitten. The tip of the ruined blade digging a long, shallow furrow in the ground with an unnerving scraaaaape. The constant friction leaving a trail of rusted iron flakes behind.
And floating above its head, almost uncannily, were a series of letters.
+—|-Ailing ShareBear-|—+
•[Lvl 1]•
Robin continued to scan the tree line as the thing slowly approached. Wary of some sort of ambush or encirclement maneuver, or-!
“Oh, for the love of-! Give me that!” Denise exclaimed, snatching the stick from her hands.
Then, before Robin could even begin to protest the theft, Denise took five long strides forward, raised the stick up high, and brought it slamming down onto the head of the stuffed creature—burying its face in the soft turf with ease.
The thing began to squirm and wriggle, trying to retract its face from the earth and bring its weapon to bear at the same time. Denise’s foot snapped out and kicked the knife away. She then took a couple steps backward, raised the stick up high, then brought it down again, hard. Once, twice, three times! Until bits of stuffing could be seen spilling from its bulbous cranium in place of brain matter. The Ailing ShareBear finally went still.
*DING!*
•CONGRATULATIONS!•
You have successfully beaten back the first wave of the incursion!
Enemies Slain: (1/100)
(Bonus points will be awarded at the end based on individual contributions)
*DING!*
Though It May Seem a Thing of the Past, Know that this Enemy Will Not Be Your Last.
You sense that the enemy that now lies defeated before you is only one of many. Merely the forward scout of an oncoming incursion. You have three minutes to prepare for the next wave of enemies.
(HINT: Be sure to prepare accordingly within the allotted time! Armor may reduce the amount of damage sustained by attacks!)
Time Remaining until the Next Wave: 2:59
Robin read over the system prompt, then shot a glare over at Denise. The woman, for her part, merely blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, hefted the club over her shoulder, then arched her eyebrows unapologetically.
“What?”
+++
In his original timeline, the methods used to increase one’s mana capacity weren’t exactly a well kept secret. And while, sure, there were special elixirs you could take, rare titles you could earn, and even specialized regalia for those born with sufficiently high peerage rankings, by far the most reliable and widely circulated practice was known, simply, as the “draw and drain” method.
Its praises sung by just about anyone and everyone who learned of its existence—from the lowliest of F grades to the top one hundred rankers—for one very simple reason.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Because it was something absolutely anyone could do and still see significant benefits from.
To perform this method, all one had to do was fill their mana pool to its maximum capacity, and then expend it all at once. That was it. And while this came with certain complications for those of us on the higher ends of the power spectrum—the full expenditure of an A grade Arch Magus class’s mana pool, for instance, likely packing enough destructive power to level an entire continent—the fact of its general effectiveness remained unchanged.
It was akin to flexing a muscle. The more you did it, the stronger you got. Only, in this case, the more you rapidly expended your mana, the more pressure it placed on the surrounding membrane, and, in turn, the more you could then draw into your mana pool the next time around.
The only real roadblocks to effectively using the draw and drain method, naturally, how quickly you could draw in and then drain said mana.
Without any abilities with which to rapidly expend his mana, he’d been forced to… improvise. Luckily, the [Azure Dew Collects in Open Palms] breathing manual helped a lot in both regards. The breathing method itself allowing him to draw in ambient mana far faster than he could regenerate it naturally, while the inherent nature of the manual aided in the expenditure part, if coincidentally.
Normally, the Ling Dynasty Universal Method, was meant to be used in an environment positively teeming with dense mana vapor. Once one found themselves in such a prime location, the user was meant to gather the vapor into their palms, through careful external mana manipulation, until a puddle of liquid mana had formed.
At which point one would, presumably, drink the precious liquid, likely wasting a great deal of time and mana as the majority spilled through their fingers.
It was a largely useless breathing manual on the whole, as, were you to ever find yourself in such a supreme environment, it would, like as not, be far more efficient to simply breathe in the dense vapor and cultivate normally.
Still, the method of condensing mana into azure dew, no matter how inane and ostentatious, was one that would actually serve him well here. Supplying the first lick of actual value it’d ever shown in its very short lived circulation, provided one was particularly gifted with mana manipulation, that was. Luckily for him, at least in so far as controlling mana was concerned, he still sported a certain degree of mastery—even with his talent as abysmal as it was.
In fact it was only because of his exceptional ability, that this trash grade manual could be considered remotely valuable at all. As it was, it was currently performing well beyond his wildest expectations.
Mana Capacity: 4
In only three hours he’d somehow managed to quadruple his mana capacity. Something he’d thought would take him days, if not weeks.
And as for how he’d gone about it?
Well, firstly he’d needed to figure out a reliable way to expend his mana pool manually, without the aid of an ability. This ultimately proved far easier than he’d thought it would be, though far harder than it had any right to be at the same time.
Let me explain.
In his previous timeline, he’d effectively specialized in the precise manipulation of external and internal mana. It was basically a necessity if you wished to have any proficiency in the creation of talismans—the imprinting of skills and abilities onto mana absorbent slips of paper—which had, more or less, been his specialty.
Which was why it ultimately proved trivially easy, if horrifically painful due to his complete lack of mana channels, to suck the mana from his core and divert it elsewhere. The only problem was, the entire time he was doing so, he was forced to wrestle with his own mana just to get it to submit and behave. Like he said, with his vast degree of experience, this wasn’t exactly a deal breaker. The difference between sloshing through water that rose to your thighs, and walking on dry land, essentially.
Trivial? Yes. Extremely irritating? Also yes. And he thought he knew exactly why that was.
Is this what Knights and below deal with all the time? I had no idea! Gah! This entire experience- it’s miserable! How does anyone go on like this?! As if the mana is obliged to listen, but only does so reluctantly. Now I understand what they meant when they said it was harder for those below the Lord rank to treat with mana. I’d thought they were merely exaggerating, but this…
As it was, even with this handicap, if he’d wanted, it might have even been possible to push the mana through his pores and out into the world. Although, with the creature’s constant vigilance, he didn’t dare make a spectacle of himself. Instead, he’d done the next best thing.
He’d pooled the extracted mana in his mouth.
Condensing each depleted mana pool into a tiny bead of dew, which he then swallowed, nearly completely replenishing his mana pool in an instant. He said nearly, because, no matter how efficient he was, there was always some mana that was going to be lost in the transition. Although, with nearly 95% efficiency, it wasn’t as if he could really complain. Taking around half an hour for him to make up that final five percent through breathing alone.
Of course, this left him in a state of near constant mana exhaustion—a nauseating cocktail of physical fatigue and impenetrable brain fog, both overshadowed by the mother of all headaches—though it wasn’t anything he hadn’t experienced before.
Once, he’d been forced to fend off a C grade horde of desert scorpions, entirely by himself, and with tank effectively on empty. Half starved, extremely dehydrated, on barely two hours of intermittent sleep, and without a single drop of mana to his name. Fourteen days he’d spent racing across those dunes, doggedly pursued by millions of those accursed scorpions, before finally stumbling upon a safe zone oasis. Compared to that harrowing experience?
This much was nothing.
Although it did have the rather unfortunate side effect of making him completely oblivious to the outside world—it taking all his concentration to maintain his focus, not to mention his consciousness, through the waves of mana exhaustion. It was to the point that he didn’t even realize an incursion was in progress, until it was almost too late.
+++
Robin brought her club down onto the skull of the blue furred ShareBear with all her weight. Reeling back, she managed to stomp its face into the turf, before she was forced to yank her leg away. Rusty blade whistling past where her knee had just been.
+—|-Ailing ShareBear-|—+
•[Lvl 1]•
+—|-Ailing ShareBear-|—+
•[Lvl 1]•
+—|-Ailing ShareBear-|—+
•[Lvl 1]•
“Aaargh!” Denise screamed, chopping the head right off one of her assailants, eliciting a fountain-spray of stuffing. Clearly she was putting that rusty hatchet she’d appropriated to good use. “There’s just no end to the forkers!”
And indeed, they had to have killed dozens by this point, and yet still more appeared to be limping out of the tree line.
At least their levels haven’t increased, though I fear that may only be a matter of time.
“Right! Everyone, what’s your status?!” Robin called out, punting one of the forkers back into the forest, even as she danced away from the deadly swing of a second.
“Aye aye capitán! All’s good over on my end!” a panting Maya announced.
“Y-yeah! All’s good! But, um, are these things, like, ever going to stop coming?”
“Hah! That’s what she said!” Maya exclaimed.
“What? Seriously? What are you, like, a twelve year old boy?”
“Eh, you just don’t get humor.”
“I get humor! I mean- I have, like, a great sense of humor. It’s just it wasn’t that funny.”
“Sounds like something someone who doesn’t get humor would say.”
“I have a perfectly fine sense of humor! I-!”
“Girls! Could we maybe focus up a little please? You know, on the fuzzy little kinder-demons currently trying to chop all our heads off?”
Robin leapt back from another sloppy swing, bringing her club around like a base ball bat to brain the cheeky forker.
Nice! Right between the eyes!
“My bad Misses R,” called Maya.
“Yeah, apologies Miss Smith. It won’t happen again. Promise.”
“And Marlene? Haven’t heard from you in a while. What’s your situation?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Marlene?” a hint of anxiety entering her tone.
To which a half whimper, half whine—coming from the back of her throat—was the girls only response. Now well and truly concerned, Robin risked the briefest backwards glance.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Marlene’s side of the clearing had been overrun by the little demons. Her school uniform was splattered with blood from numerous shallow cuts, but that wasn’t the most concerning thing. She’d nearly been pressed back to the center of the clearing. A choice few of the monsters skirting around the openly weeping girl entirely. Ignoring the wild swings of her club, to get at the helpless children they were meant to be protecting.
Robin swore.