Mike watched and listened. As he had done for the meeting thus far. Crosse seemed to have started giving a full report on what had happened during his hunt with Connor two days prior, the day that Mike had escaped the facility.

Mike moved his mind from the unproductive thought, he had seen a lot in those days, but not enough for him to be reminiscing about just yet. He didn’t understand some of what Crosse was saying as he talked about the preparations he and Connor had made before leaving on their hunt.

Mike was curious if he was nearly at the point where he was acclimated enough to Manish to understand it for the most part. He felt like he only needed one more level in Language to get there, and maybe one more for actually being able to speak it.

He listened to Crosse telling his report for a few minutes but quickly grew distracted. It would have been dry listening even if he could understand it perfectly.

So he thought back to the ‘experiment’ he had been doing before Crosse had interrupted him. Arcane mana was somehow linked to Elemental mana. He thought about the things that he knew right now. When he channelled Light mana into the Mortal realm it began to decay. When it decayed it let off two things; Light, as in physical illumination and light energy rays, and Arcane mana.

Before Crosse had interrupted him he had been going to swap his Light Magic Skill out for Dark Magic so he could sense if Dark mana decayed similarly. He wondered if he could still do that now. His sudden stillness would likely not go unnoticed in this gathering of people, but without context, it didn’t mean much.

So he did, leaning back in his chair he sent a command to the AI to swap Light Magic to Dark Magic. The second of stillness hit him, though he had not been moving, so it was hopefully not too noticeable.

When he had control of his body again he remained still, leaned up against the back of his chair. He could sense the pouch of gems now, their Dark mana stores having been barely touched by his use of them. He felt the pouch, trying to sense what it was doing.

After he had felt the Light mana turning into Arcane mana, he had a suspicion. What if it could be done the other way? So he focused in on the pouch, using arcane logic to try and sense any differences in the Arcane mana outside and the Dark mana inside.

After trying for a few minutes he concluded that his Arcane Logic was not sensitive enough to pick anything up. Unless the pouch was absorbing more than 100 arcane mana in a short period then he wouldn’t be able to sense anything.

His still suspected though. He suspected that the pouch was turning Arcane mana into Dark mana. The mana in the gems existed in the Mortal realm, not the Aether, so if he was right about the Dark mana decaying in a similar way to Light mana then the pouch must be containing that somehow, or else the gems would all run out of mana over time.

He made a small frown. All of this was pure theory, he needed to test something. If he was right then the pouch was at least stopping the Dark mana in the gems from decaying. All he needed to do to check that was take out one of the gems.

He listened to Crosse's report of his hunt again for long enough to understand that he was now reporting how Connor and he had come across the peryton's tracks and other signs that Mike didn’t understand.

He hoped this wouldn’t seem too suspicious. He reached into his inner jacket pocket with his right hand and pulled open the small pouch with his fingers and reached into it to pinch one of the tiny gems out, he pulled the pouch shut before removing his hand, not wanting the gems to spill out into his pocket.

The only one at the table who gave him any attention as he did this was Gonal, but the grieving man seemed not to care and went back to listening to Crosse tell of his son. Mike felt a pang of guilt. He was ignoring this report because it didn’t interest him and because he knew enough of the broad strokes to get the picture, but to Gonal this had to be one of the most trying times of his life, as he sat and listened to the retelling of his son’s last days alive.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He drew back from that feeling, smothering it with his interest in the gem in his hand. He sensed at the gem, it was smaller than the one he had measured last time, only around 200 mana in it, so it either had a lower capacity or wasn’t as full as the other one. He focused on it, reading it as closely as he could with Arcane logic, at the same time trying to measure the Arcane mana in its surroundings.

As he focused on them he sensed the Dark mana fall below the 200 mark, but the Arcane mana doesn’t tick up past 100 mana density in the area just around his closed hand. Then it did. He smiled, so he was right, Dark mana and Light mana both decayed into Arcane mana.

Two points made a line. Did all Elemental mana decay like this, letting off some natural phenomenon and Arcane mana when brought into the Mortal realm? What did that say about Elemental mana as a whole? Was it all Arcane mana with flavouring added in? If that was true, then what was Arcane mana?

He had seen Arcane mana function in ways without his control. When he levelled up he had drawn in Arcane mana and it had formed into something else. It had seemed like a spell, but what had cast it?

What had the AI said in its explanation of the plunder system? It had said that Arcane mana had no elemental alignment, so when his aspects were strained, they gave the mana that his soul had passively absorbed a new alignment, one that strengthened the aspect that was being strained.

So what was this ‘alignment’? Was it just telling the mana to be something else, could he turn Arcane mana into Light mana just by imagining it? He highly doubted that and this wasn’t a place to try.

He felt out at the Arcane mana around him once more, and was able to sense it in Crosse, Gonal and the two elders nearest him, he had been mostly tuning that mana out when near others while he had Arcane magic equipped, as it had not been immediately relevant, but now he looked at it closer.

Crosse had more Arcane mana in him than Gonal by quite a margin, it was hard to get complete numbers at these quantities but as he knuckled down to do the math with the aid of the Skill he worked them out.

Gonal had around 1900 Arcane mana inside him, while Crosse’s hadn’t changed from his last measurement, though he felt he got a more accurate reading this time at about 2800. maybe it had increased a little.

The two elders were more interesting, they both had more than 3000 Arcane mana inside them. The numbers he was getting were interestingly consistent. And as he thought he felt some Arcane mana flow from the surrounding mana and enter him, integrating with that pool of mana in his head that he thought of as his Mental EXP.

When he had sensed Crosse’s internal Arcane mana before he’d had no sense of scale with which to measure it by, but now he had others and that coincidental gain of EXP. Mike sensed at his Mental and Physical EXP pools, he would have looked for his magic one as well, but he had no idea where it was.

Both pools had less than a hundred mana in them, so he couldn’t get a clear reading as to how much mana they did have, but he didn’t need that, he had another way to know how full they were. He moved his right hand into his lap, once again paying attention to Crosse’s recounting.

Crosse was now telling of their travel to rejoin Connor where he had gone to fight the tree-sap ooze, Mike was only able to tell that because he understood the words for travel, ooze, Connor, and his name.

So Mike looked down at his lap and commanded the AI to show his current Mental EXP on the back of his hand. It did, the dark lines of the tattoo fading into existence.

65%

So if that was the percent of his Mental EXP that was full... he willed it to show him his Physical EXP value.

90%

He had been getting a lot of exercise getting around this place, but not quite enough to get him to level five. He wondered if his current physical condition had any detriment on his Physical EXP gain.

With those numbers in mind, he sunk his focus into the Arcane Logic Skill, working with it to figure out exactly how much mana was in his pools. It didn’t take him long to confirm what he had already suspected, the 100% in a pool was simply 100 arcane mana.

So as he opened his eyes he was able to tell something that he had been curious about since he had learned it was a thing. The levels of the other humans. Now, the Humans in his attunement range didn’t feel like clumps of arcane mana packed into a person, no, they felt like something more holistic that told him something about them, and himself.

He could tell now that Crosse had what the AI would call an average Level of 9 and a total Level of 28, while the elder nearest him was level 10 and the one just within his range was Level 11.

Well, this would be useful.