Damn, that took a lot out of him. He was now firmly of the belief she might actually be stupid. The idiot didn’t trip, she clearly almost stepped off the elevated stage on her own. Without thinking, he activated the completed rune and reached out and grabbed her. Even though he quickly let go, just like with the switch, any interaction with the outside world takes up so much mana. The mana he can house is extremely miniscule, and most of his mana comes from actively gathering it. In a sense similar to breathing, he instead gathers mana in artificial breaths.
He doesn’t get to keep nearly any of that mana, and instead it is how he can use his mana body. Earlier, he had already used up nearly all his mana. Right at this moment, he was running on empty, finally with this, he just used the last bits, only leaving enough to keep himself awake for a few more moments.
He would have to quickly find a way for this idiot to bind with him before he passed out. With a serious face that was about to start to lose its shape, he studied her. Ah, through a cut in her shirt he could see blood starting to leak through the bandages, looks like she triggered a trap down one of the side paths. Judging by the fact the arm was snugly tied to her body, it seemed it wasn’t a simple injury. As if noticing his gaze, she soon realizes what he was looking at a bit before noticing the blood that was leaking through the bandage.
Because of the old man, she was able to figure out his body is made of mana. When he was teaching her magic or mana control, he would sometimes send mana into her body and gently help fix mistakes in her channeling. It was that gentle feeling she got when he grabbed her arm, maybe because of that she figured out why he never showed up before she came to the pedestal.
Of course this is just a guess with the evidence before her eyes, but from the looks of his mana body, when he interacts with the world it uses up a lot of mana. Not only are his features, that weren’t very easy to see in the first place, getting blurry, with even more time that goes on they’re starting to turn back into rolling fog. It is kinda creepy to see features on a face turn into fog but knowing that it is because he helped her from falling and that was the likely cause, gave her a slight sense of urgency.
As his face could no longer be made out, he used her arm to point at her arm. Before his face turned into fog, he had been staring at it. Looking over, she was able to see blood was starting to leak through the bandage. This made her nervous, as it was possible that she had lost too much feeling. It was already a struggle.
Without wasting much time, she ignored the figure that was turning into fog as she unwrapped her wound. Seeing that it wasn't the worst case scenario, she glanced back to see the two barely visible legs turning into fog as the last of his strength was used to once again point at her arm before pointing at the handle of the sword. With the pudgy fog limbs, there was not much definition in the gesture, so she couldn’t be completely sure of their meaning.
Unfortunately for her, he was gone before he could clarify anything. The fog started to become invisible as she felt the mana being absorbed back into the sword. After that, she couldn’t feel any differences. The room became quieter and the emotions radiating off the walls started to make a comeback. It wasn’t obvious before, she couldn’t be completely sure, but it was very fishy. The emotions in the presence of the mana body had lessened by a great degree. So much so that she didn’t feel anything and had her attention completely swallowed by what was in front of her.
If it was truly that way… that would mean that the marks were being suppressed by his presence. This made her thoughts go crazy with possible theories. That was until she became so distracted she forgot about her arm. What if they were suppressed because they were absorbing more emotions from the source…
Only once a drop of blood dropped from her elbow onto the ground did she get pulled from her thoughts. The nick was still being held together by the mana, and she wasn’t too weak to feel it. Instead, her rough actions and the increase in her heartbeat when she almost fell caused the rest of the wound to get aggravated. After wiping up some of the blood, she was able to put new wrapping on.
Looking down at her bloody hands, she couldn’t afford to waste her water to clean her hands. Looking back between her arm and the sword. She didn’t know what he wanted. She was resting on the pedestal and hadn’t gotten down. Even so, she didn’t immediately approach the sword, but for one reason or another the emotions from the wall were weaker in this spot, so she was using this short refuge to think.
Remembering the darkness she saw before she entered the room, even if he looks weak, he shouldn’t be. While it is worrisome why he appears weak when he isn’t, if he wanted to hurt her, there is probably nothing she can do. He could have let her fall, this had a good chance of causing her mana to weaken or dissipate. Allowing her wound to worsen, increasing the likelihood of bleeding out. After this last episode of evolution her premonitions seemed to give her a stronger warning without even entering any meditative state, she could feel a constant wariness being near the sword.
Wiping her hands on her pants, she was able to get most of the blood off. She finally reached out and lightly touched the handle of the sword. Almost disappointed there was no reaction. In fact, as she grabbed it, she felt nothing. Though even she wasn’t sure what she should feel. Tugging lightly, she couldn’t get it to dislodge from the stone.
Without another avenue, she had to stop. Looking at the sword, it was about what you might expect from a third-rate apprentice. While the metal looked complete without any obvious faults, the sword didn’t have much meat. Just looking at it reminded her of those small paring knives found in a kitchen. It was longer and larger, but even with that profile, the blade didn’t have thickness that what a weapon that size should be.
Not willing to get overly touchy with the sword, she couldn’t be sure. Except, it did show that there were very small scratches on the surface. They were as thick as a hair, but without closer inspection, it was impossible to know the exact detail if it was or wasn’t a crack in the entirety of the blade itself.
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No matter how she looked at it, this was not a finished product. Still, by that admission, it would be safe to say this entire place wasn’t a laboratory. The room she was in had damage in a series of marks numbering five a set throughout most of the room. The door had a large hole, even the rest of the structure was damaged. Judging by the cracks in the wall on the other side of the door, the lights probably stopped working when that happened. Even the trap leading her here, that too was something that went against the common rules that were known by even children.
She now feared that if she tried to force the sword out from the slab of stone, it was stabbed into. It was more likely the sword would break into two before being released from the stone. No matter what, she couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to do. A normal finished product was just a snatch and scramble item. You could hear a number of rumors of explorations done in secret, then rushing to Mercury City. Once at the headquarters of the Adventurer’s Guild, they would sell the item.
Many of these rumors spread as the finished products struck before they could make it to Mercury City. All one needed to do was inform the leader of any branch of Adventurer's Guild, and they would send an elder to retrieve it. And still rumors speak of most trying to rush to Mercury City. Many might think they were blinded by greed, but history told a different story.
Villages, towns, even cities had been struck by a series of incidents that could all be drawn back to a finished product as if an item made by a devil enticing conflict more escalating than the last. Because of these rumors, it wasn’t like finished products weren’t common knowledge. Only master dwarven smiths actually got access to the finished products in exchange for making a replacement item. Because of the popularity, pictures of them do exist. No matter how she looked, this thing was not anything even remotely close to a finished product and was clearly a scam.
Having sat back down, she tried to think back to the only recognizable aspect of the finished product. Looking back at her arm, she had tried using that specific arm first. Though he wasn’t really pointing at the arm, in fact he was pointing more towards the shoulder where she was starting to bleed. She originally thought he was telling her to treat her wound before taking the sword and leaving. As for where, she was hoping more than expecting something to change once the sword was claimed.
With nothing coming to mind, she started to get distracted as she let her mind wonder. As she did, she happened to look down at the old wrapping. It wouldn’t be very good to leave it sitting around. She could use a little bit of magic, but she was by no means a mage. If someone did come later and find it, she didn’t know enough about magic to know if her blood could be used to track her down. No matter how cursed a finished product was, it didn’t change the fact it was very valuable. In fact, it just made it even more valuable to some.
As she put it all back into her rucksack, she got more frustrated with her current situation. Grabbing the sword, she was going to attempt pulling it out with a little more force. As she reached out she had forgotten to clean her hands as the second she made contact with the handle she could feel a gross squishing in between the sword and her hand. When she went to release the sword, she very quickly realized she couldn’t.
Almost just as quickly, there was a soft rumbling as the air starts to shake. Even more so, as the elevated stage started to crack, it becomes obvious that something was built with the stage on top. Once the cracks reach the slab, it quickly came to an end as a large mass of mana started to bleed through the cracks. The mana was different from anything she had ever felt before.
While the thickness and purity can tell you the difference between grades, this mana has other elements in it that come from something else. The purity and thickness is not to be belittled, though, the thickest and highest purity mana she had ever felt was from the old man. This mana was above that by a good margin. The mana snaked up the slab onto the sword before binding her hands with a physical sensation, as if set in stone she could originally wiggle her fingers, however now everything was completely unmovable.
As the mana started to diffuse itself, she was finally able to feel a devastating amount of arrogance. She was familiar with this feeling, when she provoked the dragon blood in her body she saw physical changes in her eyes. She kept her eyes closed when she probed dangers around her, as it could hint to others it gives her access to blood magic. Furthermore, she could feel a similar arrogance infused into her blood when she uses blood magic. The arrogance in her blood magic came from the dragon blood inside her.
It was said that dragons are extremely arrogant, to the point their magic gives off a condescending feeling when used. Part of her studies with the old man talked about how different traits inside mana can tell you about the individual that produced the mana. So at what level would the being be that had such pure arrogance that just being in proximity caused her to feel like she was looking down on the entire world.
She knew this was not her true feelings. She was simply too weak and couldn’t stop the mana from overwhelming her and influencing her very thoughts. It was exhilarating as much as it was horrifying. Luckily, as quickly as the stone was set, it started to dissipate as the mana stopped gathering and slowly started to get used up for its true purpose. Soon she was able to see a visualization of the spell being cast.
Only someone extraordinary when one looked at an entire race, or even the entire world, could cause such aspects to happen when they used magic. If she had to guess, she would say the latter, as the person in question had stored their mana for an unknown amount of time before it was activated to cause this visualization. By this point, the picture was finished being drawn.
With her hand at the center she was able to see that her hand and sword met, in the picture it was a shore of a lake. The water was still, and it was surrounded by a forest. The entire image was moving as wind blew, and tiny waves were created on the water as the tree branches would lean to one side. It looked so real, she couldn’t help but imagine a breeze as it swept out of the picture. When the water returned to its former stillness, she was bewildered by the fact she felt completely calm looking at the picture.
In a corner was the corner of a house. She couldn’t see it at first, and once she did, she noticed it was only a tiny corner. Once she saw it, she couldn’t look away from it. Though, this didn’t change the visualization from doing its job before following its nature process.
She had no idea how long she had been standing there when the image started to fracture as it broke down into tiny pieces, as they too soon broke down even more completely. In the end, the picture turned into small pieces of sparkling lights as they lit up the surrounding area of the stage. Once they drifted off a fair distance, the light would be snuffed out as the light was forever gone.