They decided to camp out near the edge of the road for the rest of the evening and into at least part of the night. Jeremy woke up while it was still dark out and the moon was still bright in the sky. He unzipped his tent and sat with his legs crossed, just looking up through the trees at the bright white disk, partially hidden by the tree limbs overhead. He could not believe that it had both already been a month since magic and that it had only been a month since magic.
He grabbed his shoes and turned them over to knock out any bugs that might have crawled inside, then stuck his legs out of the tent to tie them on. Then he stood up and stretched, arms out wide and back popping. Hazel, who was on watch duty, watched him from his seat against a tree nearby. Even without the camping lantern’s light, everything was visible beneath the bright moon.
“I can take over for you,” Jeremy told him. “Can’t sleep any longer.”
“Alright,” Hazel told him. “I need to meditate anyway.”
Jeremy sat against one of the trees and crossed his legs in front of him. Conscious that Zanie and Caleb were sleeping nearby, he lowered his voice to ask the question that had been swimming around in the back of his mind since they were in the dungeon. “How come your overlay does not change in color when you make kills the way that everything else’s does?”
“How appropriate of you to ask,” Hazel smiled, “because that is exactly what I am about to meditate for.”
Jeremy crossed his arms and settled more comfortably – well, as comfortably as possible on the ground crisscrossed with roots padded only by leaf litter and against a hard, scratchy tree trunk.
“I know I told you that in schooling, we meditate after each practice session, be it magic or physical combat or anything else.” Hazel began. “This is a good habit to be in just for the mindfulness of the process, but it is not entirely necessary. Let’s say that you are not in a school setting, but in actual combat, like in the dungeon. Your focus cannot be on guiding the mana flow from your kills, so it will just level up the attributes you are utilizing the most.”
“Which is not a big deal if you want to level up the attributes you are using a lot, but if you are trying to increase something that is not combat-specific, I can see how that would be a problem,” Jeremy assumed out loud.
“Right,” Hazel unclasped his hands and held up one of the wrists to show off the enchanted bracelets on it. “So, we have created a device that absorbs the flow of mana from those kills temporarily until we are able to meditate and guide the mana where desired at a later time.”
Jeremy’s brows lifted. That would be an interesting enchantment to perhaps revisit once he finished developing the scan enchantment. He had already been thinking it might be a good idea to include some kind of guided meditation to help people with leveling, but if he could make the process even more controlled by adding something like that bracelet to it so that the mana always went where people wanted it to go, the process of leveling up could be even more accessible and efficient.
All this talk also made him realize that referring to this process as gaining experience was not quite accurate. Perhaps, generally, without the flow of mana driving things, it would be simply gaining experience. But the actual mechanics of practicing skills and leveling up attributes was simply about gaining mana, which drove one to be more efficient and experienced at something.
This distinction was especially important if he considered the fact that you could force yourself to be better at things you had never actually practiced or at rates not directly linked to how much you practiced by compelling the flow of mana into attributes. This could hardly be called experience.
“None of this is really about gaining experience, is it.” Jeremy mused. “From what I see, it is literal just mana being transferred from kills to the people nearby. I mean, even if they didn’t contribute to the kill people nearby seem to absorb mana.”
Hazel hummed noncommittally “Cultivation specifically is just a recycling. But living life in general is all about gaining new experiences.”
Perhaps this was a bit too nuanced a conversation to have through the translation spell, but Jeremy thought he could understand what Hazel meant.
“Is this what you are referring to when you mention cultivation?” he asked, “This…directing the flow of mana to the attributes you wish to increase?”
“Yes,” Hazel agreed.
Jeremy frowned. His impression of the boosts of attributes received upon leveling up was that they were an acute occurrence, not one which occurred over time like the gradual increase in efficiency at magic casting or sword sparring in general. Apparently, that was not the case if the elves believed they needed to meditate on each and every infusion of mana into the desired channel they wished it to flow through. And Hazel spoke as if the attributes leveled up gradually, so perhaps they did.
“Once I am a bit more practiced at enchanting, will you let me copy this bracelet of yours to use on myself?” he asked Hazel.
“Certainly,” Hazel said. “It might even be a better enchantment for you to practice as a beginner than your scan enchantment. It is far less complex.”
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Jeremy would bet that simply meant he was going to add a bunch of modifications once he got his hands on it. An enchantment that could control the flow on mana in general seemed like an unfathomably valuable piece of information. But, for now, just being able to level in a more controlled way was extremely useful.
Hazel said he wanted to meditate, but Jeremy couldn’t help his curiosity now that he was on a roll. “When we leveled up, we each had a negative effect. Caleb had a panic attack. I had a migraine for several hours. And Zanie – who seemed to have the least trouble – was extremely sore, as if she had growing pains. What was that all about?”
Hazel shifted forward into what was apparently a universal meditation pose, legs crossed beneath him, and hands clasped together in his lap. He no longer rested against the tree trunk for support but held his back straight and head high. Jeremy’s spine ached at the sight, but if he was going to start utilizing this process, he supposed he would have to become accustomed to such good posture. That also was apparently universally necessary for mindful meditation.
In answer to Jeremy’s question, he responded, “When you break through a level in your cultivation, there is a…ah, you put it well, I believe – a growing pain.”
Jeremy frowned harder. Growing pains generally implied that it was happening very quickly, all at once instead of gradually. But if the mana flowed into the attributes over time as Hazel seemed to be implying, then there would not be any growing pains. The creation of a ring was not just a place marker in a gradual process, but an actual breakthrough and sudden jump in abilities as well.
It seemed to Jeremy that it would only be necessary to do this active cultivation at the time of the breakthrough, rather than throughout the process. If the mana flow into the attributes did not gradually change their actual effects, but only had an impact in one single burst once it reached a certain point – like a cup on a hinge being filled that would only tip and pour into a basin below once it overflowed – theoretically he could move that mana from one place to another since it was just being held.
He said as much to Hazel, who unfolded his hands, braced them on his knees, and tilted his head to the side in thought. “I have never heard of it put that way.”
“If that is the case,” Jeremy asked, “Would it be possible to adjust the enchantment so that instead of directing the flow of mana from each kill into the device and then into the desired attribute, you could just let it build up naturally and then move it to the desired attribute just before or as you are leveling up?”
Hazel hummed, still looking off to the side through the trees.
“That would be much more efficient,” Jeremy continued. “Then you wouldn’t have to meditate so often, but only as you are about to level up.”
“If,” Hazel said with emphasis, “that would work, you would have to get the timing very correct. One of the advantages of using this enchantment,” he held up his wrist, “is that it prevents you from breaking through in the middle of combat, so that you can do it in a more controlled and safer environment. The negative effects are greatly reduced under mindful meditation as well.”
Jeremy imagined leveling up and suddenly having a migraine that made you blind during the middle of a fight would not be advantageous. “I’m not necessarily saying that you wouldn’t use that enchantment to break through in a controlled manner. I’m just saying maybe its not necessary to use it until you are ready to level, then if you added to the enchantment so that you could move all the mana accrued in different attributes to where you want it for the leveling process and then inject the last little bit stored in the enchantment’s crystal to actually trigger the break through, it would be a lot less work over time.”
Hazel shook his head and turned his eyes on Jeremy. They were filled with a bit of indulgent disbelief, as though he was looking at a child, and Jeremy suddenly wondered exactly how old Hazel really was. He hardly looked over than thirty, but in so many legends, elves could live millennia. Perhaps there was a grain of truth in those legends.
“Efficiency seems to be an ideology for you humans,” Hazel said, not judgmentally, just as though he were passively observing the fact. “I’ve told you that we teach meditation in school not only because it is the basis for our cultivation, but also because it encourages mindful living and closeness with the flow of mana.”
“For this reason, meditation is also the preferred practice even for those at very high levels of cultivation, and this enchantment,” he gestured to his wrist, “is simply a crutch that is only used in situations where it is necessary – such as in battle. There are many, in fact, who forgo it completely, preferring to cultivate by natural means along, regardless of the consequences.”
Jeremy thought that was pretty stupid of them if it ran the risk of causing a disadvantage in the middle of combat, but who was he to judge an entirely different type of being’s spiritual beliefs and religious practices.
“But perhaps for humans who are only just forging a relationship with mana, utilizing an enchantment would be a resourceful method of cultivation.” Hazel acquiesced. “There are many other worlds and many other beings who all cultivate in their own ways, and none are objectively incorrect.”
“I take it you are not as religious as some of the other elves?” Jeremy asked.
Hazel shook his head with a small smile. “I am spiritual, but religious – no.”
Organized religious practices versus personal spirituality seemed to be a schema that existed in every world. Jeremy ran a hand through his hair and sighed up at the moonlight filtering through the trees.
“Perhaps I could even come up with an enchantment that would move the mana from the crystal or the unwanted attributes to the desired attributes in place of meditation entirely,” he posited.
Hazel chuffed a light, and murmured, “blasphemy,” under his breath before settling back into his pose for meditation. Jeremy chuckled in response and fell silent, losing himself to his thoughts as he let Hazel get on with his practice. There was a small stream of mana from the bracelet around his wrist into the elf’s overlay.
Jeremy wished that he could see the attributes with his Unique Personality Trait so he would be able to observe the mana flowing into them instead of the overlay in general. He would have to focus on leveling up in hopes that his next breakthrough might allow him to do just that. And one way he had found to practice without making a bunch of ruckus while casting a bunch of spells, was to enchant.
There were no scrap boards here in the forest, but there were plenty of sticks. So, for the next several hours, under the bright, milky moonlight, he carved the bark off them and practiced the fire-starting enchantment as many times as he could. Eventually, Caleb’s alarm went off and he stumbled out of his tent to take over the watch. Hazel had long gone to sleep and Jeremy did the same, crawling back into his tent to rest for the remainder of the night, replenish the mana he used while enchanting, and dream about meditation, enchantments, and cultivation breakthroughs.