The Mana Quotient upgrade was as painful as it was expensive! Not only did it put his guts and spine into a strain, but it also affected his brain, since intelligence was primarily located on one's brain! Timothy felt as if a viral virus was attacking his nervous system, he felt dumber by the second once the pain intensified, but he didn’t fear such foul effects per se, because he knew that they were temporary.
Timothy endured the pain for a whole hour, and at that point, the pain threshold was too high for him to handle, so he fainted. Fainting was one of the best things that could happen to him right now, because the pain he felt while unconscious was reduced by at least a third! He got a bit of peace like this.
The upgrade was lengthy, because it would ultimately make him different from most mages. As a fish, he would end up being almost godly after this upgrade, and if he chose to shift into a mammal again, then he'd be one of the most magically fluent mammals within the Fintelus’ Apprentices realm of mana! It was worth the struggle, it was worth the hours of pain he endured.
[Upgrade complete! 33,000 system points remain in your sum.] The system beeped.
Tim woke up at the crack of dawn, and then he groaned. “It’s over, then…?”
“Is what over?” Arvena suddenly asked him. She was awake, and bright as a button.
Timothy didn’t answer her, and he wasn't planning on sharing the truth, rather, he just started taunting the other. He taunted her, with a couple of tough questions that were masked by his lazy groans.
“What do you know about MQ, woman? You know, Mana Quotient?” He asked.
He expected a short, questioning answer, but that was not the case, Arvena started blabbing about mana even more than she usually did. “Mana Quotient determines how great of a mage you can become, and back in my town, it's actually traditional to test one's MQ annually! Though he refused to tell how he did it, our local shaman knew how to test everyone's MQ, and we had a couple of youngsters who started out with a score of 100 points! A king recruited them, and although our town hadn't seen such geniuses emerge ever since, we still weren't off so bad. The average MQ in our town is 30 points for young mages, and 120 points for the average, grown up mage, hence, we were one of the few towns who were tasked with dismantling Psidium Mana pools back in your universe.”
“Jesus! The concept of MQ isn't unheard of in your universe, then?” He followed along, and then he taunted. “Don’t ask me now, but I managed to get my MQ to 300 points throughout the night.”
“I won't ask you how, because I know it's bullshit. You couldn't possibly score 300 points, especially overnight, you’d be incapable. I've seen you fight, kid, your MQ is up at 150 points at most, and it won't change anytime soon.” She bit back.
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Timothy liked a challenge, so although he had a few other upgrades to buy, he decided to put those aside for now. Instead, he invited the team to go out, and hunt for food, because he was hungry, and he was sure that his friends were hungry as well. Aside from that, he also felt competent to try out something new!
They slipped through their bony bunker, and started observing their surroundings. Tim didn’t want to spend too much mana on hunting, and he didn't want to shoot at any creature that was potentially hostile either, furthermore, he did have an ulterior plan in mind regarding hunting!
They spotted a giant tuna fish close by, and although the name ‘Giant’ was alarming, it was unlikely for this encounter to be dangerous, as most tuna fish didn’t possess a honed mana quality. They were very fast swimmers, however, so they had to hit the fish hard before it swam away for good - They had to be quick to secure this decent, huge meal!
“Do you wanna see a neat trick, Arvena?” He asked, with a taunting tone.
The other was not amused, but she did nod in confirmation. Timothy then slowly summoned two balls of light in front of him, one of the balls had a light-blue color, and the other had the shade of a withered crimson leaf.
Then, he introduced. “These are two of my abilities, Arvena, which are the Nerve Shaker ability, and the Rotter Bite ability. I'm holding their very essence in my mental grasp, and now, I can either choose to get rid of them for good, or merge them into a greater power, muhuhuhehehehehe!”
“Almost everyone can merge powers, and oftentimes it's useless to merge them.” She argued.
“I can merge them without your little spoken-word spells,” He smirked, and so the other started getting nervous.
Spoken-word spells were one of the main ways to do complex things, such as power-merging. One would have to beg the gods through such a spell, and oftentimes, decent results were not guaranteed, and in this particular case, it was unheard of to merge powers without a spell!
Timothy started doing the latter, regardless of what anyone might think. He commanded the two bits of light to mix together, and they continued mixing for about ten minutes, until they assumed a single, light-purple color!
The floating ball of light then floated into his body, and granted him access of use. He could summon a new ability now, he decided to call it the Withering Shaker ability, and its use was very self explanatory!
Timothy then attacked the tuna fish in front of him, and he didn't crank this new ability to the max, because it wasn’t necessary to do so. It only cost him three-hundred mana points to shoot it, and paired with the fact that he didn't pay a button for the power-merging process that he just did, this as well might be one of the cheapest attacks he unleashed ever since he stepped into Valporovus!
A beam of purple light headed towards the tuna fish in front of them, it traveled a hundred meters in a flash, and hit the target successfully, in turn, withering most of its nervous system! This was one of the most brutal abilities he had, and the system immediately stated that it was considered pre-necromantic too, so he was very excited to have it under his possession!
“I believe you now,” Arvena said, and she tried to hold in a nervous fart.