“You can’t just absorb more mana,” explained Jens. “Not without a skill for it, at least.”
“Well, that’s how I do it,” said Sindri.
“It’s not,” said Jens. “That’s just how you think you do it. Absorbing mana is like putting a bottle in a river to fill it up with water. The water always flows in at the same rate. The limiting factor is how wide the bottle opening is and how much water the bottle can hold. You shouldn’t be trying to make the mana absorb faster. You should be trying to widen the opening, and expand the container, so to speak.”
“That’s what I meant,” said Sindri.
Jens sighed, then leaned back in his chair and opened his book again. When Elise looked back at Sindri, she was glad she was a rabbit so he couldn’t see the annoyance that she would have been unable to hide on her human face.
She closed her eyes and focused on the mana again. Using Jens’ river analogy as a starting point, she started trying to sense the metaphorical opening where the mana was entering. It took a few minutes, but eventually, she began to notice a pattern in the way the mana was entering her body. The patterns themselves weren’t constant, but the points where the patterns intersected her body were, though it took her a while to notice that.
There were points all over her body where the mana was entering, and the way they were arranged reminded her of acupoints. The mana around her shifted and swirled like the wind, but when it hit her body, it always entered exclusively through those points. However, the amount that was entering was pitiful. There was so much mana hitting her body, but most of it was just bouncing off. If she could expand those points even a little bit, she could drastically increase her mana absorption rate.
She focused on one of them, right on her nose, and started thinking about expanding it. She didn’t know exactly how that worked, but she did her best to imagine the opening getting wider. To her surprise, that worked. It wasn’t much, but the amount entering whenever a wave of the ambient mana hit her was noticeably larger. She was about to focus on making it even bigger when she heard Jens voice from behind her.
“Stop!” he said.
She opened her eyes and saw that he was sitting up again, and looking down on her with a stern expression.
“Not the head. Not yet.”
“...Okay.”
He nodded, then went back to his book.
Elise closed her eyes and focused back in on herself and the mana flow. It took a couple minutes for her to return to the point where she could feel the acupoints again, and when she did, she was half-disappointed to find that the one on her nose had shrunk back to its original size. She didn’t know why she wasn’t supposed to use the ones on her head, but Jens’ expression had been enough to keep her from trying again.
She selected another point, this time on her sternum, and worked on widening that one. After a few minutes, the flow of mana into it was at least tripled. She decided that was enough for now, and that she would move on to another point a few inches below that one. When she did though, the one above it started closing up again. She quickly moved to stop it, but the inflow had already been halved.
She expanded the first point back to its original expanded state, then tried working with the one below it again, though this time while holding the first one open. Her attempts were relatively unsuccessful. In the end, she was able to get both points just a little bit more open than they were originally, for a net benefit that was significantly less than that of opening just one as wide as possible.
By this time though, her mana was nearing full again, so the inflow was diminishing all around. When she opened her eyes again, Sindri was swinging his axes in slow motion at the dummies, and making sound effects with his mouth as he pretended to chop them into bits. Behind her, Jens had fallen asleep, and one of the guards was trying to convince the maid to blow in the wizard’s ear while the other tried to convince her not to.
How long was I doing that for? she thought.
She watched them all for about a minute before clearing her throat. The guards and maid immediately snapped back to attention, and Sindri faltered on his swing before sheathing his axes and turning back to her.
“So, your mana is full again?” he said casually.
“Yes. How long was I like that?”
“‘Bout a half hour,” he said. “Give or take. Ready to get back to Mana Control training?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then get to it.”
Elise spent the next half hour doing the same drill she had before with {Magic Missile}, though it was much more frustrating. The rapid progress she had seen the first time was starting to slow. She understood why, and that she wouldn’t become a master in a day, but in the back of her mind, she had also been hoping that somehow, she was some kind of rare prodigy who was able to master it in a single night.
When she ran out of mana again, she could hear Sindri’s stomach rumbling, and she realized that her own stomach wasn’t still either.
“I’m getting hungry,” she said.
“Me too,” said Sindri. “I was about to say that we should take a break for dinner. You read my mind.”
He started walking toward the stairway, then froze and turned back around with a look of suspicion.
“Did you read my mind?”
“No,” said Elise quickly. “I can’t read minds. I just heard your stomach grumbling.”
She wiggled her ears for emphasis.
“Right…” said Sindri, looking like he didn’t totally believe her. “Well, let’s go then.”
Dinner was held in a large, but plain dining hall on the lowest floor of the castle above the training grounds. It was lined with tightly packed stone tables and benches, and reminded Elise of her middle school cafeteria. She was doubly reminded of the cafeteria by the clusters of dwarves with trays of food chatting amongst themselves.
When they entered, all the conversation ground to a halt, and then started up again as whispers. Sindri led them down to the other end between two of the long tables until they came to a buffet-style counter loaded with food. As they walked, Elise inspected all the other dwarves in the room to confirm her suspicions.
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
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[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ Royal Guard of the Forgotten Kingdom, lvl ??? ]
[ {Inspect} has leveled up! 33 -> 45 ]
Well that just feels like cheating, she thought when she saw how far {Inspect} leveled.
However, while she continued to use it on the rest of the dwarves in the room, she did not receive any more notifications.
System, why can’t my {Inspect} level past 45?
“Skill levels have maximums based on the tier of the species or class of the user. You are in the third tier, so the maximum skill level is 45.”
Why 45?
“The maximum level is 45 because that is the same as the combined levels the user will have earned when they complete the third tier.”
Most of the dishes seemed to be just different variations of the same mushrooms and meat combination. Their forms differed greatly, but not so much in the smells. It smelled good at least, but based on what Elise had seen so far, she was wondering if the dwarves had anything to eat that wasn’t that mystery meat and those mushrooms.
The maid prepared a plate for Elise and for herself, while Sindri and the other two guards got their own food. The whole time, the rest of the dwarves in the room weren’t even trying to hide how much they were staring. Their expressions ranged from curiosity to hostility, but none of them did anything but whisper and scowl.
Elise’s group picked a spot at the end of one of the tables about as far away from any other guards as possible. There was some chatter while they ate, but Jens had put away his orb, so she couldn’t understand any of it. It was only when they finished eating did he resummon the blue sphere.
“So,” said Sindri. “His Majesty told me that I have to teach you, but I’ve already given you a pretty good lesson today, and now we’ve all had a good meal, and usually, this is when I’m done for the day. So what do you say we call it good and have a nice, relaxed evening?”
No, Elise thought.
She didn’t say that out loud though. She wanted to learn more, and practice more, but Sindri clearly didn’t want to teach anymore, and the way that Jens, the guards, and the maid were looking at her, they didn’t want the lesson to go on any longer either. Besides, she had gotten enough to practice on her own already. {Magic Missile} wasn’t her only spell.
“Alright,” she said. “Thank you for the lesson.”
“Great!” said Sindri, standing up. “Well, in that case, if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading home.”
“I’ll be leaving as well,” said Jens. “Hurry up and learn the language so I don’t have to waste any more of my time on this.”
He stood up and followed Sindri out the door, leaving Elise alone with the maid and the dozens of guards that still remained in the room. One of her guards was already done eating, but the other shoveled a few final bites into his mouth before they stood up and Elise was escorted back to her bedroom.
When she returned, she realized that she had made a mistake in her impromptu planning. She had wanted to practice with {Prehensile Vines} in her room, but the floor was made of stone. She wasn’t sure if she could make them grow at all, and if she could, wouldn’t that crack the floor? The entire city seemed to be made with some kind of stone magic, but they still probably wouldn’t be too pleased if she visibly damaged the castle. And she couldn’t ask the maid for a box of dirt or anything, since she couldn’t speak Dwarvish yet either.
She tried meditating for a bit longer to open up the acupoints, but since her mana was full already, it was really difficult to tell whether what she was doing was working. She couldn’t actually feel the acupoints widen, so she just had to gauge by how much mana was flowing in, and while that wasn’t 0, since the mana was always moving, it was too little to make for effective practice.
She tried to fall asleep instead, but that didn’t work either. Her mind was too active.
Should I try {Prehensile Vines} anyway? she thought.
It would just be a little crack, probably, and it would be something they could patch easily with magic. Probably. Then again, it might also be a very bad idea. She had barely managed to convince them to let her sleep alone in her room. If she put a crack in the floor on her second night, that “privilege” might disappear.
I can just train my other skills then, she suddenly thought.
Sindri had said that all the stats could be trained. Her physical ones were bad, so she was focused mostly on mana, but if she couldn’t train her mana, she might as well get her body as strong as it could be.
She used {Leap} to get out of bed, almost smashing her head against the ceiling, and then as soon as she landed, she used all six of her {Dart} charges, by which point the {Leap} cooldown was over, and she could use that skill again. She continued for about ten minutes, using her skills whenever they came off cooldown until her legs were screaming at her to stop. She rested until she thought she could go more, then jumped around until her legs were truly dead and she decided to give up.
She was disappointed at how little training she could do. She got another 3 levels each in both skills, but she could have done so much more if her stamina wasn’t so poor. She lay in her bed trying to fall asleep again until she decided that she couldn’t and that her legs hadn’t been punished enough. She was forced to stop just two minutes later when she felt like she was risking injury.
Is there anything else I can do? she wondered as she lay in bed.
Damaging the room would be bad. The way she was practicing {Magic Missile}, it was doing nothing to the dummy, but she wouldn’t be surprised if the dummy had extra durability enhancements that the walls of her room didn’t. {Prehensile Vines} was out because she couldn’t damage the floor, and {Sudden Growth} wasn’t viable either, since there were no plants in her room to make grow. She might be able to shoot some missiles into the air out the window, but Hallbjorn said there would be a guard stationed below watching the window, so that wasn’t a good idea.
It looked like she really was just going to have to wait until the next day and ask for a box of dirt or something for her room. Unfortunately, while practicing {Leap} and {Dart} tired her body out, it had done nothing for her overactive mind. She tried every trick she knew to get herself to sleep, but none worked.
Ultimately, she decided to return to her mana meditation. In keeping with Jens’ analogy, she had been practicing widening the mouth of the bottle before, but she didn’t practice expanding the bottle itself though.
She entered the same meditative state as before, where her other senses were dulled so she could focus on mana, and set to trying to figure out how to increase her capacity. At first, she just tried what she decided to term “the Sindri method” and “just focused” on increasing her capacity, but of course, that did nothing. Next, she tried honing her senses more. She vaguely heard the ding of the System as her {Mana Sense} leveled again, but she still couldn’t sense anything useful.
She could roughly locate her acupoints, but aside from them, the mana within her, and the mana in the room seemed to swirl around at random. The only difference was that the mana inside her was much denser. She imagined herself inflating like a balloon to hold more mana, and while it was mildly amusing, it didn’t help either.
She heard another ding from the System, and her sense of what was happening inside her became a bit clearer. She noticed that while the mana within her body was generally denser than what was outside, there were also differences in density within her body, and it was the opposite of what she would have expected. The mana on the edges nearest the acupoints was actually the densest, while what was in the center was hardly different from what was in the air.
Why is that?
She focused more, and when the System dinged again, she finally started to get an idea of what was happening. It wasn’t the center of her body that was lacking in mana. It was 3 particular points in her body that were lacking in mana. One was in the center of her chest, right next to where her heart should have been, one was further down on her belly between her hind legs, and the final was in her head.
She focused on the one in her chest first, trying to bring it into focus in her mind. While it wasn’t a physical object, she noticed that it seemed to have acupoints, just like the outside of her body did. However, not all the acupoints let mana in. Some let the mana in, but most let it leak right back out. She knew enough about physics that that didn’t quite make sense, but mana didn’t really obey the laws of physics, so she didn’t waste any more time worrying about it. Regardless of how it worked, it was much easier for mana to leave this area than it was for it to enter, resulting in a much lower mana density.
She needed to try to fix that. She was certain that this was what Jens had meant when he talked about “expanding the container.” With this at least, the mana flow was constant, even when she was full on mana, so she could practice indefinitely.
The first thing she tried to do was close up one of the points where mana seemed to be escaping from the region. After a few minutes, she managed to turn the steady flow into a trickle. The effect of this success was almost imperceptible, but she thought she noticed the mana in that region getting just a little bit denser.
She tried holding that point shut while moving onto another, but like with the acupoints, as soon as she put anything less than her full focus into holding that point shut, her work started to become undone. Still, she didn’t stop, and worked on trying to hold two of them shut at once. She didn’t know how long it took, but after a lot of frustratingly slow progress, she managed to get both points to about half-shut. She tried to press on with her efforts, but soon found that her focus was slipping, even without adding any additional stress.
I’m getting tired, she realized.
She tried for a few minutes longer before a yawn broke her concentration entirely. She was a little disappointed at how that practice session had ended, but she was also satisfied with how productive it had been. Even with Sindri and Jens’ very vague instruction, she was making a lot of visible progress, and that was promising. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and mana couldn’t be mastered in a day either.
She went to bed thinking pleasant thoughts about how nice it would be to master mana, but the pleasant thoughts did not translate to pleasant dreams. Instead, she dreamt of the warg.