In my next experiment I make a device that gathers charged mana in one extreme and discharged mana in other extreme. I spend hours using my stone shaping abilities to make a 2 meter long cylinder with a diameter of 120 cm for a volume over 200 liters and 2 discs that will hold the enchantment inside the cylinder. I enchant one disk to attract charged mana, the other disc to repel charged mana. The experiment was a success even though the effect was minimal, the charged mana disk had double the charged mana gathered around it compared to the repel charged mana disc. In theory repeated usage of this process can give us a mixture of heavily concentrated charged mana.

The next experiment is an enchantment to see if it is possible to convert energy from the physical world plus discharged mana to form charged mana. A simple enchantment to test this out, 'absorb electromagnetic radiation and transfer energy to discharged mana to form charged mana'. I nearly jumped up from happiness when I saw that it was a success. This means I can make magic weapons that do not just recharge from ambient mana but can also use energy sources in the physical world like EM radiation, heat and electricity.

Thinking about charged mana, I start question how does inner mana work? Does it recycle discharged inner mana using energy from ambient charged mana? Or something else happens?

I setup an isolated smaller cylinder of the previous experiment to confirm whether inner mana has discharged mana or not. When I am at full mana capacity the results show that my inner mana is pure charged mana. When I am not at full mana capacity I can see that inner mana presents discharged mana just like ambient mana. As I know that over time discharged inner mana transforms into charged inner mana I now question from where does the energy come from? I have no knowledge from where ambient mana get its energy, its source may be beyond my comprehension or just not visible to me at this scale from inside this cave. But I decide to investigate the source of energy for inner mana, lets see if ambient mana is the energy source. I will need a enclosed mana environment for this...

After the experiment I start to frown as I saw no interaction between ambient mana and inner mana, so the energy source is inside of me or it is some other unknown external influence. The only thing I can think of with my knowledge is the soul, I decide to ask the dragon about the soul and their beliefs.

"Soul? God?... All sentients have a soul and each race has their own God. There are also low Gods such as of love, luck, harvest, battle, beauty... The exception is the High God of Magic, mostly worshiped by magic wielders and he rewards all the races for their accomplishments in magic. After death the soul goes to the god of their belief for judgement and salvation."

This information raises my eyebrows and only serves to give me more questions. The missing information about the afterlife is one problem another is that a race can pray to only the god of their race and be judged by him ignoring the other gods, this system of gods may not condemn the killing etc. of other races. I ask in detail if my assumptions are correct and the response confirms that there are hostilities between the races. Luckily religion does not have that much of a foothold with the general populace as it is more of a guiding hand and it does not encourage actions against other races but does not condemn them either. Most people still act in their self interests, religion or no religion, some people of different races have non hostile relationships to the point, I was given an example, of a city that has multiple races as its inhabitants.

I return back to the topic of inner mana and ask from where does inner mana come from, the answer I get from the dragon is limited in information but from what he does say I gather the most likely source is the soul. Now I begin to ponder is the soul an infinite source of energy? What is the cultivation technique given to me doing then? I frown as I do not like the possibilities, I do not believe the soul has infinite energy. I have too little information but if the soul is the source of energy then recharging my inner mana using my soul does not sound so good now. What if it is finite? Will it affect my future or my afterlife? For all I know some god wants me to destroy my soul by using it as an energy source. Hell, I don't even know what is a soul or if it even exists… Still, I decide to keep this in mind in my search for strength. Asking about the lifespan of mages gives me little help, most human mages live little over 100 years some rare cases go up to 200 years. I can only guess that magic may heal the body, fix back problems, diseases and other consequences of old age but can not reverse neural and DNA degradation as that requires advanced knowledge. So my current theoretical lifespan on this world does not really differ from mine on Earth. While the lifespan of elves is 10x, a beastmens lifespan varies greatly 0.8-3x, demons 3x, fairies 5x and dragons are immortal by his words.

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As the existence of my soul is large possibility and the consequences of magic on the soul is unknown I decide that I need external sources of power. If I did not have knowledge of modern warfare I would be left without a choice but as I see it, a tank is comparable to a rank 2 mage if not rank 3 mage. First I will try to accomplish building external sources of strength such as a gun and hopefully this will not be a dead end. Otherwise I will have no choice but to cultivate to rank 3 and higher with unknown consequences on myself and my soul. Furthermore I may lack the talent to cultivate to rank 3 and it may require decades of time.

I draw up a design for a mana powered air gun that shoots carbon. In other words an overpowered airsoft gun that shoots diamond shot (balls). On top of the barrel we have the storage for the shot next to the part that will extract carbon from air and create the carbon shot, I add a small fan to the extraction process to make sure the air cycles and always has a carbon content, an added bonus of the fan is the overall higher carbon extraction speed. Under the barrel we have the cylinders for storage of the pressurized air, in total 2 rows of 6 cylinders each with a diameter of 3cm and height of 5cm.

On both sides of the barrel I mount enchanted pumps that will pump and pressurize the air into the cylinders. Near the trigger I add a control circuit which will fill up the cylinders, and when fired the gun will use filled up cylinders in series, each row gets a turn after the other. I do not feel comfortable asking the dragon for metal, so I simply decide to use carbon for constructing the weapon. I suspect a diamond barrel will be too fragile for repeated use for firing shot at supersonic speeds. The solution is to make the barrel from tightly woven carbon nanotubes (CNTW), the same goes for the body of the gun. The pressurized cylinder bodies and pumps are made from a diamond with a tight carbon nanotube weave wrapped around the body of each cylinder so even if there is a catastrophic failure it will not blow up in my face. The firing mechanism will be a semi automatic trigger which controls the loading and gas release, the pumps will activate separately to fill up their respective row of cylinders in series. The estimated fire rate will be a minimum 2 rounds in 1 second, for a total of 12 rounds in 6 seconds then fill up time of about a few minutes.

I spend a few days working on the gun, testing the pumps, the firing mechanism, the diamond ball creation system and storage. The shot has a mass of about 2 grams or my unit of measurement of 2 drops of water. I understand that diamonds are fragile, this weapon will be useless against heavy steel armor or just enchanted armor. On the bright side if the ball shatters near skin this will cause some nasty surface damage, overall highly effective against soft targets which will suffice for now. Another downside is the extremely slow production of the diamond shot so I had to compensate by making the storage big enough for 50 or so of such shot. On top I add a non magnifying sight by crossing two CNT threads within a cylinder at the front and back. By coloring the front threads one color and the back ones another I will be able to easily line them up when I take aim. As the predicted effective range of the weapon is a few hundred meters, I believe this weapon will put me in a position to be a threat to rank 1 mages or higher. I have yet to fire the weapon to not arose the dragons attention but I did a few test fires with an empty barrel, so all he sees is another of my strange experiments involving cylinders. I inscribed an enchantment on the main structure of the gun to include self repair, mana charging, mana storage and atomic bond strengthening. The overall size of the gun is probably just about the size of a desert eagle, the mass is a little over 1kg so I guess this will be my pistol and main weapon for now.