To his relief, he was not quite there yet. However, he would be in a few more levels. With his free stat points, he almost had enough already. Letting out a sigh of relief at the fact that he could postpone the ceremony for a little longer, he closed his sheet and shook his head at Edgar.

“I’m not there yet. I should be in a few more levels though.”

“The rate at which you cross thresholds is nothing short of astounding,” Edgar replied. “You are able to keep all of your stats relevant, not just those relevant to your fighting abilities.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if I would be better off focusing on a few. Imagine if I neglected my mental stats, and had the physical ones of something many levels higher than me. I could have been past all of my physical thresholds by now.”

“Yes, but you would have been a dumb brute, compared to the man you are now. Back on Telvaria, we call that the meatshield factor. Those who focus on their bodily strength over all else are not weak exactly, but they are known for their stupidity,” Edgar replied. “They are often manipulated by those far smarter than themselves.”

“Wouldn’t just a few points into Intelligence make up the difference though?”

“You overestimate the strength of the classes that many gain. Most classes only give stat points to relevant stats. Some even provide demerits to stats that are not aligned with their nature. In addition, only higher rank classes give free points. For most, they are stuck in the path that they have chosen.”

“So it’s not exactly their fault then,” Jonathan replied, starting to get on his way.

Edgar floated up into the air beside him, keeping pace.

“Not exactly. However, those who choose such classes are not exactly bright to begin with. Not all classes are made the same, and not all people are either.”

Jonathan gave the man a look, but he seemed perfectly happy to stand by that statement. On Earth, saying something like that would have gotten him into a lot of trouble, at least in the political environment that there had been when Jonathan had left. However, in Telvaria, it was true. There was no such thing as equality in a world where people could become akin to living gods, where the children of nobles could come out of the gate with as many benefits as could be crammed into their mouths alongside the silver spoon that they were born with.

Edgar seemed to be out of things to say, and the men simply kept walking. Jonathan took advantage of the long trek without monsters to investigate his skills. He wanted to get some headway on his abilities with mana manipulation, as well as his elemental mastery. Because both of those only needed minimal attention to level, at least with his intelligence, he could do so while walking.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

With a look of concentration, he began to weave his mana around his body. Last rank up, he had discovered the differences between his own mana and external mana. He had used the mana gathering rune that he had found to collect mana in an effort to create some sort of projectile skill. He had succeeded, but had also found out more about the nature of mana in the process.

It was a substance that could be found anywhere, but was far from homogenous. Every living being changed the mana within them as they processed it, to the point where even mana that had been cycled enough would be slightly different. People could still use that mana, but it would allow for different applications. Jonathan had used it to act as a projectile charge, as the foreign mana was a lot easier to expel. Now that he had gone beyond that stage however, he needed to find some more insights on the matter.

As he walked, he kept part of his attention on the path, and part of it on his swirling core. Edgar seemed to be doing something similar with his elemental energy as he floated through the air. The man had become increasingly fond of flying everywhere that he went now that he was Tier 2. He had not reached the point of a true flight skill yet, but he was getting close. He was keeping up with Jonathan after all.

Jonathan sighed, letting the distraction fade away. Instead, he focused most of his attention on the problem of his mana. Obviously, it wasn’t like he could rank up in a few hours. Getting to the next rank would take months even if he studied every day. He would have more time after beating Granath, but for now, he needed to level up as a top priority.

As his mana percolated within him, he kept an eye out for any monsters. The nearest city was a good way away, and it was barely visible, even with his enhanced eyesight. At his current level, he could see hundreds of miles if the skies were clear, and could make out bacteria and microbes if he tried hard enough. However, those abilities were usually uncalled for, and he had been given little reason to use them. Maybe one day he would encounter a monster that was smaller than a grain of sand, but for now, unless he took up crafting, he did not see much of a reason for it. His current path was good enough for him.

As he started to get a hold over his mana, using his intelligence to categorize the ways in which his own mana and that of the outside world differed, he was able to create a chart that plotted his progress over time. As his mana manipulation skills had increased, so had the overall density of his mana. It had been a gradual process but he was sure that a single point of mana now was greater than a single point had been when he had first come to this world. It was a result of his levels, as well as from his exploits in the field of mana compression.

In any case, it meant that his magical abilities were even stronger than they should have been. The method in which this worked was not clear enough to him as of now, but he was satisfied with how far he had come. He did not need to know every last minutia of how his powers worked to know that they did. As he explored his talents in this area, he began to get a better understanding of how much it had increased.