This area of the map was almost entirely a beach, with palm trees dotting the landscape and soft sand covering the ground. Felix laid down in the sand and was tempted to read through the book he had just gotten, but instead pulled out the D tier mana cube and opened it. He simply had to touch the cube for the screen to reappear.

[D - Epic] Skill Test Cube: Mana Control

Congratulations!

You have completed a Skill Test Cube: Mana Control

Would you like to open the cube?

Yes.

No.

Yes.

As soon as Felix answered, the cube vanished and in his hands lay instead, a book.

[D - Epic] Odamoran's Spell Formation Primer

A book detailing the basics of spell formation written by Odamorn.

The book was incredibly heavy, weighing multiple hundreds of pounds if Felix had to guess. The cover was dark treated leather inlaid with blue spell diagrams, though not any Felix recognized. He tried creating one in the air to cast it, but it didn't seem to do anything so he assumed they were decorative.

I think I'll start with Mind, Body, Mana because it might be able to better inform me about what spells I want to craft and how to craft them. Hopefully it also talks about mana in general.

Felix swapped the books and cracked it open. The text inside appeared to be hand written with a quill as the slight depression of a writing utensil was visible in just the right light. Either it was the original, or The System had created a perfect replica, to Felix's eye.

Mana is widely considered to be one of the fundamental building blocks of the universe. It is ever present and infinitely useful, furthermore, it exists within every single thing and is a part of every single living thing. Even those that have evolved their race into one without a mana pool, will have some amount of mana that responds to their will so that most enchanted items remain usable.

Despite these facts, the interactions and the study of it's existence within us in comparison to the rest of reality is considered to be a niche subject with minimal uses. This is demonstrated perfectly by the grade and rarity of this very book. I originally wrote the draft for this book intending it to be the peak of my own grade with a top rarity. I had even collected the rare materials that would comprise the pages, binding and cover for the final product, when The System, in it's infinite wisdom, declared my entire life's work to be of the E grade, with a Special rarity.

I have since reevaluated and acquired simple E grade materials for the final product. I once hoped for this to be the pinnacle of me, my greatest accomplishment and my legacy. I still hold on to this hope, but now I hope that instead of the highest of academia finding value and continuing my work, I hope that this information is accessible to anyone who might seek it out. I hope it brings value to one beginning their own journey in some way. Ironically, as I write this, I am starting to think this may be even more fulfilling to me than what I had initially set out to do. Good luck, and should you, the reader, find this around the ??? integration and should you find value in my research, come find me at ??? if you can. I would love to hear about your journey.

In order to keep this book in the E grade and the rarity relatively low, I have opted to remove the specifics such as individual names and locations from the case studies. I hope that this does not detract from the lessons. I have left the date of writing as well as my likely location as a desperate hope that someone might tell me they found this book of value.

Felix read back the last two sentences twice to be sure.

Were parts of that redacted? Why? How am I supposed to find her now? Not that I have a strong urge to do so, I still feel like it would be nice to tell her I found it valuable if I ever came across her. Maybe I could have sent her a letter or something. That must be a thing, right?

Felix couldn't come up with any valid reasoning so he shook his head and refocused on the book. The start of the books actual content, after the forward was labeled, "Part 1."

Within the bodies of all living things lives a pool of mana. This mana belongs to the creature it resides within and is in some ways, attuned to them. This is technically incorrect as mana cannot be attuned to a sentient being, but it is more receptive to that creature's commands. More accurately, the mana has an affinity for that creature. The mana all around us, is more fickle and harder to control. It may or may not listen to the command of a sentient creature, most often it will follow the general command but deviate in the specifics. This does not mean it will cast a different spell, but rather that the aim of the spell might deviate from the intended target, or the spell form might fail.

You might be wondering how one could have possibly tested this, which is an excellent question and transitions us nicely to our first and shortest case study.

A few years ago a group of Caster derivatives wanted to cast a massive spell that one of them had created and managed to add to their Spell List. Unfortunately, the amount of mana required was astronomical, so they embarked on one of the most dangerous experiments I think I have ever heard of. They created a ritual to pour mana from multiple mana batteries to fuel the Caster standing in the middle. These Casters were unpracticed in ritual creation and hasty in their execution. The mana batteries shattered in the middle of casting causing the ambient mana and some of the mana from the onlookers to be sucked into the ritual fueling the spell being cast in the middle.

Unfortunately, due to the motley of mana being funneled through the caster in the center, the spell ultimately failed. Fortunately, it did not fail violently, simply being slightly off from the desired effect, which with a spell that massive, rendered it unusable. The ritual they designed was later used to study the effects of pulling ambient mana into a Caster to replenish their pool as well as the odd effects of doing so too quickly. Luckily, none of the oddities are permanent as simply waiting a day or so will cause it to be indistinguishable from the mana that normally fills one's pool.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

My working theory, having tested this myself, is that the mana within an individual's mana pool listens to it's host. It is in tune with their will so to speak. When their intent is made clear, it responds, at least much faster and more accurately when compared to ambient mana. Unfortunately, the value of this discovery is not terribly useful as using ambient mana in a spell other than a ritual or enchantment is nearly impossible and essentially useless outside of research purposes.

Felix finished the first chapter which went on to discuss some of the possible effects of ambient mana on spell casting, mostly consisting of altered aim, which Felix had personally experienced. Once he had finished, he sat himself in a meditative pose and held the book in his hands. He entered a meditation and created a vortex of mana to regenerate his own mana pool. Now that he understood what was happening with his mana when he did so, he felt much more comfortable using it. Unfortunately, he found that he couldn't pull the book into his Meditation's Soul Space while he was focusing on pulling the ambient mana.

Once his mana pool was full, he easily pulled the book in with him, which was now completely useless. He didn't even need the physical book as he had a copy in his mental library from his Scan Literature skill. He still enjoyed the atmosphere of the beach and the setting sun though, so he continued to read the physical book in reality.

Our next case studies explore attempts at unnaturally or forcefully, depending on your own philosophical view, expanding the mana pool of sentient beings.

The first one, in a similar fashion to the last case study we just looked at, involves the use of a ritual to force mana into a being in an attempt to stretch their mana pool. A ritual was set up to have multiple other individuals pour mana into it and force that mana into a singular target. In this case, the subject's mana pool expanded past it's limit but quickly leaked or dissipated out of them. No matter how many times it was repeated, the subject could not hold onto the extra mana within their pool. On their status sheet, the number increased past the limit but still displayed their maximum, verified by multiple observers.

No permanent effect was found on the subject at any point afterwards. Their mana pool returned to normal and they did not seem to suffer any notable side effects from the experimentation.

A later case study performed the same experiment but this time the sources of mana were rotated out to maintain the increased mana in the subject for an extended period. This experiment managed to successfully increase the subjects mana pool by 0.25% by flooding them with 200% increased mana for about a month. Maintaining the increase required around 6225.6% of the subject's maximum mana to be forced into their pool over the course of every day.

Due to the ridiculous cost for meager returns, this method has not been used extensively as far as I have ever heard. Were there to be a more effective method of flooding one's pool with mana, such as a specific environmental situation or unique dungeon, whomever encounters such a thing would be strongly encouraged to take full advantage.

The most common method of increasing an individuals mana pool outside of their statistics and skill that continues to be used extensively to this day, is soul cultivation.

Through specific soul manipulation techniques, often dubbed cultivation, a sentient being's mana pool can be permanently expanded. This is a well known phenomena that has been well recorded multiple times. It will often result in a specific racial trait or skill being unlocked, but not necessarily. This method is often slow and cumbersome, but it is known and cheap.

This well known phenomena does point to some interesting theories however on where the cap for an individual's mana pool comes from. This implies that it might have something to do with ones soul in some way or another, though it is possible the soul cultivation is having an unknown tertiary effect on another aspect of a sentient being that results in their maximum mana pool increasing.

Felix continued to read through the case studies in the rest of the first part of the book. They explored the rather mundane and uninteresting effects of thick and thin mana environments on sentient creatures of varying reliance on mana. They also had some horrific experiments where creatures of varying mana reliance were force fed mana, with some of them exploding and others evolving and upgrading their race. Although miraculous, many of the race upgrades resulted in the creatures slaughtering the researchers though. The final section of the first part of the book, which Felix found particularly interesting, was an anecdotal reflection of sorts.

Looking through all of the case studies in this section, one would be correct in wondering, why the effects of similar experiments varied wildly from one to the next. Unfortunately, without measurements or even anecdotal notes on the mana being used in the experiments, all we can do is wildly guess and conjecture. Most of these experiments happen as the result of a particularly ambitious group of individuals and none of them have been overseen by a proper research body. Some of these experiments must have happened at larger and well established institutions, likely with a plethora of recordings to make informed conclusions. Unfortunately, this information is usually tightly guarded. It is my wish to one day explore and hypothesize upon the results of said experiments, should I ever be allowed to read about them.

The rest of the first part of the book was an appendix of sorts to the first part with random individual experiments listed. These were uninteresting and simply included for reference, similar to a textbook. They consisted of the interactions between every imaginable part of a sentient creature and mana. Hair, eyes, bones, muscles along with every other part Felix could think of had some note, experiment or case study. He understandably skimmed through this section as the majority of it was irrelevant.

It did remind him of something he had neglected for a while now, his hair. It was getting to the point where Felix couldn't ignore it any longer. He pulled out the Uncommon Frost Dagger he hadn't had a chance to list at the auction house yet and did his best to shave his face. Luckily, the hair seemed to grow with him, as he grew more durable so did it, meaning it wouldn't fall off or singe too easily. However, the hair at the ends were grown when he was much less durable, meaning the hair was much harder to cut close to his face. It took him a half hour and much blood to finally be happy with the result and luckily, the cuts sealed themselves very quickly with his vitality.

He wanted to shorten his hair, but he didn't have a good way of doing so at the moment without looking ridiculous. He decided he would get someone else to do it, or go bald if it got too annoying. Luckily it wasn't too long yet, it was growing faster thanks to his increase in stats, but not exponentially so. It was only growing a few times faster than normal if Felix had to guess.

The sky was just beginning to fully darken so Felix quickly completed his nightly ritual of approving the expenditures in the town. The longest he had gone since the last time he forgot was 48 hours when he was staying awake that long in the puzzle dungeon, which wasn't ideal but also wasn't nearly as bad as the week or so where he had forgotten in the first quest dungeon.

With that done, Felix shut his eyes and fell asleep on the beach beneath the stars. . . . . .