[Skill unlocked: Overloading Mana Prongs]

James pointed at the dummy and two prongs flew out. Two thick strings of mana connected the prongs to James’s hand, but after the prongs embedded themselves in the target, the strings turned invisible.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” James gleefully addressed Lunaris and Helios, and then jokingly bowed. “This is how my spell works.”

James then sent a wave of mana into the prongs, making the strings glow brightly for a second.

A second after the mana was sent, the dummy burst into flames.

“You see, the spell works sort of like a taser. Once the prongs are embedded into the enemy, I can send as much mana into it as I want. That’s the beauty it, it’s as powerful as I need it to be. If the enemy is powerful, I can pour all my mana into it. I can keep regenerating my mana, drinking potions, or even draining their own mana with my Mana Drain, and then sending the mana right back to hurt it! They’ll fry from the inside!”

James then sent a Chaos Saw at the dummy, which immediately turned red. He didn’t even use all that much mana with the Prongs, and they were already better than his saws. Even though they wouldn’t be as useful against a large number of opponents, he really needed a powerful single target spell. At least until he can grow powerful enough to use his Chaos Javelin.

James smiled and then continued. “That’s not all, by sending my mana into the enemy, it also functions as a crowd control effect. If they’re not good enough at filtering out my mana, I suspect it could even stun them! Of course, that’s assuming I have a much larger mana pool so I can overwhelm them with my mana. But I probably will, since mana pool and spell power are the only things I’ve got going for me.”

“That’s not bad at all.” Lunaris replied. “It’s scalable, so you can just pour more mana into it if your foe won’t go down. And it also plays to your strengths, since you chose to go down the … ‘unique’ route of only training your magic and gaining a gargantuan mana pool.” Lunaris chuckled. If James hadn’t developed SARM, Combat Clairvoyance and Blink, she would’ve forced him to abandon the glass cannon route. The man was too obsessed with damage and mana, even the nerdiest of researches spent some of their training efforts on building up their body, stamina and other attributes.

She thought James would eventually grow out of it. But she’d probably be a lot more concerned if she knew that James was like this even in the video games he used to play on Earth. He’d always play DPS roles. In the many years he wasted playing games, he didn’t even try playing tank or healer. Not even once out of curiosity, the thought didn’t even enter his head.

“That reminds me.” Lunaris added. “You really need another defensive spell. Don’t get too reliant on SARM. Neophyte or not, agents are as intelligent as humans. It won’t be like fighting monsters, they’ll identify your weak spots and take you down before you can react.”

“Aye, we’re not ending our training session till you learn another good defensive skill, at least on par with SARM.” Helios declared.

“I actually agree, don’t worry.” James assured them. “There were plenty of defensive spells in the book. And I wasn’t just reading these past weeks, I’ve been thinking about my fighting style a lot. Especially now that I have my two awakening skills, I’ve realized what I really need.”

In the middle of his explanation, James spaced out again. He had grown really accustomed to the arcane simulation and meditation. Which was a good thing, mostly. The one downside was that he was already prone to daydreaming and spacing out. But now that he had the arcane simulation, he would sometimes test out his ideas almost involuntarily, even dropping whatever he was doing just to space out and think about his idea while testing it in the simulation.

“You alright, brother?” Helios asked. When James didn’t respond, he grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking him.

“Ohh, right. Sorry about that, that was very rude of me. But I’ve been working on something, and I keep fleshing it out with random ideas that pop in my head.”

“That’s alright, we don’t really mind.” Lunaris said, but she couldn’t hide her concern. “But you should be careful to not make a habit out of it. The mind is a fragile thing, bad habits like this can really deteriorate it over time.”

With a sigh, she continued. “I’ve seen many older mages slowly descend into weird hermits, living in their own heads. They get so obsessed and passionate about whatever they are researching, that they start to lose touch with the real world. Some get to the point where they even forget how to speak, though that takes many years. Still, you’d be surprised how fast things can snowball. So do me a favor, stop spacing out so much. Make it a deliberate activity, like ‘now I’m going to think about this skill’, not something that happens involuntarily.”

James looked at her and nodded. Such loving concern was a warm, pleasant feeling. It reminded him of his parents, which always brought about a wave of nostalgia and sadness. But that was another world, another life. He decided to focus on the positive, he was happy to have two people that cared about him in this life.

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“Thank you for your concern, Lun. I’ll keep that in mind. I promise I’ll try to not do it as much anymore.” James bowed his head and blushed. His friends cared so much about him, and he cared just as much about them. He didn’t want to cause them any unnecessary worry.

“If you want, I can help you with that. Every time you space out, I can smack you like this.” Helios then grinned and punched James in the shoulder.

The punch, that for Helios was just a playful bump, left James’s whole arm numb.

“No, no, no! That’s fine, I’ll just use some good old-fashioned self-discipline!” James hastily replied, not thrilled by the idea of having to endure such punches several times a day.

Helios just grinned. He didn’t want to hurt James, but sometimes tough love was necessary. He had seen plenty of mages like James before. Even if they say they’ll try to not live in their own heads as much, they definitely won’t be able to help themselves.

So if he had to smack him every now and then in order to keep him from that fate, then that’s what he’d do. Maybe he’d even manage to convince him to train his body that way. Nothing like a few punches to make you think that stamina and toughness are important attributes.

“Ok, so tell us, what was this idea that made you space out?” Helios asked.

“I’ve been thinking about my awakening. It felt so underwhelming at first, but it definitely had potential. I just had to put in some effort to uncover it, it’s all a matter of mindset. The reality is that I have two powerful skills. In and of themselves their power isn’t immediately apparent, but that’s on me to fix. And the fix is synergy! And that synergy will come from the very thing we were speaking about. Defense.”

“Oh, so you thought of a defensive skill?” Helios raised his brows, intrigued.

“Yes! Think of it this way. I have two skills, one that heals and buffs my friends by sacrificing my own health, and one that makes me much stronger when I’m low on health. So I’ve been thinking. These are risky skills, but how can I make them useful? And the answer is damage absorption!”

“What, like a barrier or shielding spell or something? Like the ones Lunaris was casting on us.” Helios asked.

“Yep, but obviously I’d need something a lot more powerful. And …” Mid-sentence, James spaced out again.

Helios waited a few seconds, and then punched him in the arm again.

“Oh, sorry. Actually, thanks for that punch, sometimes I find my spacing out annoying as well. Anyway, I think I’ve got it. I’ve got the defensive spell I need!” James grinned.

“All right, how does it work?” Helios asked with a grin, ready to punch him in the shoulder again if need be. He didn’t take pleasure in hurting his friend, but instilling some discipline in him could be fun.

Noticing Helios’s grin, James straightened up, suddenly a lot more aware of his surroundings.

“First of all, I’ve actually thought of another use for the Overloading Mana. Actually, it’s also related to Mana Drain. You see, there are two prongs, right? As such, I can make one of the prongs suck mana out instead of sending it in. And through the connecting string, the mana can flow back to me. Or I can even cast the spell twice, one for extracting mana and one for blowing them up with mana. Though casting two sets of prongs will probably cost quite a bit of mana.”

“But foreign mana needs filtering, you shouldn’t depend on it during fights. It can even hurt you!” Lunaris interjected.

“I know, and usually you’d be right. But these past two weeks I didn’t only read your book, I was also on the Aetherweb a bit. Since my build is centered around having a lot of spell damage and mana, I’ve been reading more about mana in general. And I’ve actually figured out why I’ve been able to filter foreign mana so well.”

“Really? Why? Tell me!” Lunaris asked excitedly, with glee in her eyes. Her scholarly mind craving knowledge. She was very knowledgeable, far more so than James, but even she didn’t know everything.

“The reason is the size of my mana pool. Since I’m investing so much into my mana pool, it’s bigger than the average. And the regeneration speed is higher too. That makes it so any mana that enters my mana pool can be refined much more easily than it is for other people. It basically dilutes any foreign mana, and quickly makes it my own.”

“That does make sense. But it still has a limit, otherwise no matter how much you dilute it, it’s still going to pollute all your mana if there’s too much foreign mana.” Lunaris replied.

“That’s true, but therein lies my idea. Instead of exclusively using my own mana for the barrier spell that will protect me from damage, I can feed the foreign mana directly into the barrier. Foregoing my mana pool entirely! So I can just steal as much mana as I find comfortable, and put any excess into the barrier!”

“That is pretty good! If it actually works out, I’ll be very impressed.” Lunaris said contemplatively.

Helios was being a lot more reserved though. “It does sound very powerful, but you need more, brother. Agents are no joke, you saw how powerful they are. Now imagine fighting a dozen of them. We don’t know what awaits us, you need more defenses.”

“You are right, but I think I’ve got it covered. That was just the first synergy. What I really need is to synergize the barrier with my awakening’s skills. Double synergy!”

“Really? How do you plan on doing that?” Hearing that there was more to the plan, Helios was a lot more impressed.

“I benefit greatly from being low on health, right? So I need a really strong barrier that can keep me safe while I’m at low health. But what if I had a barrier that also benefitted from me being low on health?”

“I don’t like the idea of you being low on health at all, but I see what you’re saying.” Helios nodded approvingly. “You’re a glass cannon, so a few good hits and you’d go down anyway. But if not only you yourself benefit from low health, but even your barrier is enhanced by you being low on health, that’s like double dipping!” Helios understood where James was going with it.

“Exactly! My Chaotic Healing spell takes me down to low hp and then heals and buffs others. But what if I used all that sacrificed health to actually make my barrier much stronger?”

James spaced out again, but this time around Helios let him be.

“After this is done, we really need to wean him off this habit. Otherwise he’ll turn into my uncle Ned. I don’t want to punch him, he’s my brother! But I have to make sure he doesn’t turn into you know what.” Helios said with a frown. He cared about James just as much as Lunaris did. He just showed it in a different way.

“Ned? Oh, you mean the one who talks to himself?” Lunaris asked.

“Yep, that’s the one. It started just like this. Researching magic all the time, getting really into it, and then the bad habits start piling up till they lose their mind.”

After a few minutes, James snapped out of his daydream.

“I’ve got it!”

[Skill unlocked: Chaos Barrier]