Astrid, Hazel, and Nycteris had spent the last half hour or so taking a breather after hunting some monsters in the Fractured City. Since there was nothing to entertain themselves with while they waited, the trio sat silently, doing their own thing.

Astrid was crafting more arrows, using pieces of stone from the forest to carve them into arrowheads. She leaned up against a wall as she carefully used her dagger and shaped the stone into her desired weapon. While she did have the new quiver that allowed her to create more arrows with mana, she didn't possess of enough to fully rely on this feature, which was why she was still crafting more arrows the old-fashioned way.

As for Nycteris, he was curled up into a bat ball, lazily lying on the ground. He remained very still, only letting his breathing cause any movements as Hazel gently laid on him while occupying herself in the tavern.

While sitting around in the middle of the tavern, Hazel fiddled with her gnarled staff, rhythmically tapping on it while staring at the wooden debris scattered around them. She then got an idea and shifted her hand over to one of the wooden shrapnel on the floor.

Her eyes were trained on the chip before it began to slightly hover in the air, barely a couple of inches off the ground. With her telekinesis, Hazel raised the wood chip a little higher until it was now at least a foot and a half high in the air.

Instead of moving it around, Hazel simply let it hover them motionlessly. Her head tilted to the side as she meticulously stared at it.

“Hmm…”

With a flick of her finger, Hazel then forced the chip to rotate counter-clockwise. First slowly then began to pick up the pace until it was about as fast as a fan on the lowest spin setting. She let the chip spin for a little bit before halting its rotation and kept it suspended in the air like before.

“Hmm……”

“What are you doing?” Astrid asked, curiously staring at Hazel with a cocked eyebrow.

“I’m testing something…” Hazel vaguely explained, keeping her eyes on the wooden chip.

“Mind telling me what you’re exactly testing? Cause it just looks like you’re messing around with that piece of wood with your Telekinesis spell.”

Incidentally enough, that was what Hazel was supposedly doing. However, there was more to it than just that. Hazel wasn’t just experimenting with telekinesis, she was also discovering something rather crucial involving the spell.

And it was a rather remarkable discovery at that.

“You see how I’m simply levitating the wood chip?” Hazel asked, pointing at the shard of wood.

Astrid hesitantly nodded. “Yeah, that’s why I’m asking what you were doing with it.”

Hazel gave the dark elf a knowing look before sighing, then shifted her attention back to her wooden chip.

“I’m testing the consumption rate when using Telekinesis, and I found out something rather interesting.”

Astrid tilted her head in confusion. “And what’s that?”

“Well, for starters, the consumption rate for the spell isn’t fixed. It varies depending on how I use the spell.”

Hearing this, the dark elf’s eyes widened. “Really?”

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Hazel nodded. “Yeah. When I levitated the wood chip and kept it in the air, a certain amount of mana was consumed. But when I started to rotate it, the consumption rate increased.”

Previously, Hazel believed that spells used a fixed amount of mana since the rest of her spells were like that. Baneful Sickle, Mana Bolt, Decay, and even Mana Shield did this.

To make an example, Mana Bolt would use maybe five Mana Points and if Hazel had a total of one hundred MP, then she would be able to fire the spell at least twenty times before her mana was depleted. And the same thing applied to her other spells as well.

But Telekinesis was different. Instead of relying on a fixed rate, the mana consumption varies depending on what exactly she was using the spell for. For instance, simply levitating the chip or spinning it like a disk or basketball.

Now, that might not be significant at first glance, but to Hazel, it was. Because if the consumption rate of mana varies from her actions, then there were likely other variables involving it as well.

Like, instead of making a certain action with Telekinesis, does the consumption rate apply to something else like…weight?

Glancing around, Hazel soon spotted a piece of floor debris near her. It was around the size of her hand, making it bigger and heavier than the Chip she was currently levitating.

With a curious gaze, Hazel deactivated her telekinesis on the wood chip, not even watching it fall to the floor while setting her sights on the piece of debris. And with her hand, she used Telekinesis on it.

The piece of debris then slowly hovered in the air, floating a couple of inches to a couple of feet in a few seconds. As Hazel raised her hand to increase the height, her hand began to tremble like she was low on energy.

As she kept the debris in the air, the mage could feel her mana slowly but surely drain from her. Even more so than when she levitated the wood shrapnel. Sweat beaded down her face as she felt a slight throbbing manifested behind her eyes, pounding away in her skull as if someone was playing with drums inside.

Seconds later, Hazel stopped using Telekinesis, letting the debris fall on the floor with a loud crack. Staring at the debris, her chest heaved as she attempted to catch her breath. Her hand was placed on her head in an attempt to calm the pounding migraine drumming away inside.

“Well…that explains that,” She mumbled with a groan.

So, Weight was a factor involving Telekinesis’s Consumption Rate, which could also mean that there were likely other variables that could also determine the mana consumption.

Hazel started feeling giddy as her lips curled into a sly grin. Despite the pounding headache assaulting her senses, she was actually having fun. Learning how her magic spells worked gave her a sense of thrill, unlike anything else.

Maybe it was because she was slowly understanding how her spells work or possible that by learning the mechanisms behind the spells, she could also discover certain loopholes they possess.

For instance, when Hazel was lifting the floor debris, just making it hover for a little bit drained her mana. But when she did it with the wood chip, she was more or less fine.

This meant that lifting heavy objects drained more mana than lighter objects, but there was also something that Hazel discovered regarding this. If she used telekinesis on a light object, she could potentially keep it in the air indefinitely.

And this would be thanks to her Wisdom Stat. While Intelligence focused on Mana Capacity, Wisdom was more focused on Mana Regeneration. The higher the stat, the faster your mana was replenished.

Which led to the loophole Hazel discovered. If she found a balance between her mana capacity and mana regeneration, she could use Telekinesis almost indefinitely. It would start with lighter objects, but once she ranked up her spell and increased her Intelligence and Wisdom stat, Telekinesis could become the strongest spell in her arsenal.

She didn’t consider the concept of the loophole because of one annoying factor. The cooldown feature. A good majority of Hazel’s spells had a cooldown upon being used like Baneful Sickle and Decay.

So, technically, even if she previously discovered the loophole, it would be useless until she completely got rid of the cooldowns from her spells, and who knew how long that would take?

But Telekinesis was different. Much like Mana Bolt, it had no cooldown due to its constant mana consumption upon being used. And it was because of its lacking grace period function that allowed Hazel to figure out this discovery. That and the possibilities that the loophole provided for her.

Once she raised Intelligence and Wisdom enough, she could easily use Telekinesis without worrying about her Mana being depleted thanks to her vast mana capacity and regeneration. She could potentially use it without having to take a break.

And that…excited Hazel more than anything.

As the mage wore a wide and sly grin on her face, she then started to levitate the wood chip once more. Her eyes sparkled with anticipation as she realized her next objective.

“It’s time to see just how much potential Telekinesis truly possessed…”