Chapter 11

Nick decided to spend time meditating early in the morning. With his improved mana control skills, it became easier for him to use active meditation. Today, he decided that he would spend his spare attribute points. But he didn't know how yet, so he would ask Alice for advice. During breakfast, Benedict took out the recording of his battle with the goblins and played it as an illusion on the wall. Many smiled and laughed at him for his foolish antics, and for allowing the goblins to surround him, father praised his bravery and a good fight with three goblins.

Alice, however, did not take it very well and sat with a nervous smile on her face the whole time. And Nick understood her perfectly well. Who in their right mind would throw a child out to goblins. After breakfast, Alice joined Nick in training with Benedict. She advised him to try to use his mana sense constantly, and he was happy to try it. His mana sense was at best half a meter from his body, and if he did not concentrate on the chosen place, he could barely see the mana. But this did not stop him from trying. The sparring with Benedict went even better than yesterday, Nick could finally sometimes guess the moment to throw a dagger at Benedict. He no longer waved off daggers as if they did not exist. Nick liked that he could more or less be a nuisance to Benedict. While working on his prediction skill, Nick decided to do movements that didn't make much sense but made Benedict pay attention to them, so he was able to almost hit Benedict with a dagger when Benedict lunged and threw two knives at him. Thanks to the throwing skill, this became very easy at a distance of up to 4 meters. After training, Nick stayed with Alice and listened to what lesson he would have today.

“Well, today I will teach you how Mages develop their willpower and mana control. Close combat between Mages is primarily a battle of willpower and aura. Mages get the Aura skill when they choose their class, Aura can be developed on their own, but it is very difficult for everyone and only a few can handle it. And if they can get the [Aura] [Common] skill, then they get another skill provided by the class. The next skill, if I am not mistaken, is the [Parallel Thinking] [Uncommon] skill. An extremely powerful skill that allows you to divide your attention and cast two spells at the same time, at the cost of a small amount of stamina. Only gifted Mages can master it on their own. Now, in close combat, a Mage must prevent another Mage from casting a spell. This is done thanks to Aura, since in Aura your control over Mana is much better. The stronger your Aura, the easier and faster you can suppress your opponent’s control over Mana. But in a duel of forces it works very poorly, it must be used very cleverly. Aura must be attacked either suddenly, or not attacked at all, but protect the structure of your physical spells."

"So you can basically ignore the mage's aura, of course it works both ways, so it's important to know physical defensive spells, or have defensive artifacts. Magic that relies more on the mana effect in such fights is not very effective, because it gives more time to the other mage to dispel someone else's spell, since such spells usually take longer to cast and require more mana."

"Okay, now you know the basics of close combat, now try to control your mana despite my attempts to hinder you with aura."

Nick simply nodded and pulled out the last of the mana he had managed to prepare that morning. He carefully took control of it and pushed it out between his hands. He immediately felt his control over it begin to weaken, he felt something slippery slipping from his hands. Trying harder and harder, he completely lost control of it.

"Hmm, you need to work more on mana manipulation, you couldn't completely control it. But it's still good for the first time. Here's a mana potion. Now you'll try to reproduce the sound of the wind again, and then you'll struggle to control the mana again."

After drinking the mana potion, Nick felt mana flowing into his body again and seeping into his mana core from all over his body. He hadn't noticed it the first time, but it was a good hint to practice active meditation. After preparing himself, he nodded to Alice and she showed him the same spell form, with all the characteristics of wisdom, he couldn't remember this spell as it had many components that formed a single whole. The force arrow spell was easy to remember, several lines that were woven into a clear sequence inside the mana ball. Nick managed to reproduce the sound of the wind on the first try, and the sound was excellent. He didn't yet understand how he was able to construct this spell so well, but he hoped that with time he would understand it. Alice nodded in satisfaction and told him to pull out the mana and practice willpower again. Nick was having a hard time, he knew that Alice was trying to pull his control along the edges of his mana cloud, which was causing his control to gradually weaken, Alice left him with a little control over his mana, and when she took control of everything, it was abrupt and instantaneous. It turned out that she gave the mage the illusion of control over his own mana, until she abruptly turned it off completely. It was clever and Nick liked it. It reminded him that the outside world was a very cruel place. And he couldn't wait to get there himself. Now that he understood this, he could resist, but still, after a couple of minutes, he gave up control. Although it was hard for him, he could fully invest his willpower. Alice smiled at him contentedly.

"Well done, you figured out my tactics quickly, but in the thick of battle, other mages usually assume they have more control over mana due to their mana specialization. This works, but only when you have aspected mana. While it may seem like I'm bragging, wizard mages are very good duelists due to the wide variety of spells they have. As a Force Mage, I'm very good at close range."

"Which mage will you face the most difficult fight?"

“Ha, Dylan, you don’t understand. Arcane Mages don’t use force, but tactics. Otherwise, it’s very difficult to defeat someone who specializes in one school of magic, even though we have more attribute points per level than any basic mage, we can’t win by force. But to answer your question, manipulator mages are the strongest against me. It takes more mana to create a powerful shot than it does to block it with water. If a water manipulator can react in time and put up a circular defense against me, I will lose because my spells need more mana to have the effect I want, if I start gathering a lot of mana, a water manipulator can definitely stop me. Earth mages are a little easier because their defense is a little slower than water mages. But if they manage to reflect my attack, I am also more likely to lose. I'm very good against wind mages, they don't have enough time to compress their mana so I can't break through their barrier, and fire mages lose to me 100% of the time, I might even be able to beat a Great Mage who recently switched to that class."

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"What about rarer mages, like saints?"

"Pfft, holy mages, it's the same as me, but with healing magic and worse. I would have a chance to defeat them somewhere around 3 to 1 in my favor. And that's taking into account their knowledge of me, because few holy mages know how to use holy magic for prediction magic against humans. They have a different specificity. And so they fought me with force constructs, just like me. Okay, start meditating and restoring your mana, and I'll watch you."

Nick began trying to replenish his mana reserves, much like a mana potion did. He would pour ambient mana into his body until it barely held, then draw mana out of his body, but only the mana that wasn't fighting him for control. He would then surround his mana core with this mana and wait, while moving the ambient mana through his body, much like blood circulated.

"This is actually very advanced. You emphasized this by seeing how mana potions work. I haven't told you how mana potions work, so listen up. The principle of mana potions is actually very simple, they purify mana so much that it is converted almost immediately, it is limited only by your Mana Output and Mana Regeneration stats. The potion causes the mana in it to replace the mana inside your body, and the mana inside your body with a large admixture of pure mana is sent to your core, where your original mana is diluted. This makes the spells you cast become much weaker, and so they are only used for training, or as an emergency item. If you drink a lot of mana potions, the mana it sent to your core will heavily burden it until your mana regeneration stat drops completely and the core cracks. Having your core crippled is practically a death sentence. for a mage, only arcane healers or someone from the very top of the church can cure him. And even then, you are unlikely to be able to fully restore your mana core. You will lose many mana capacity stats. If you did not know, then after you gain a large amount of mana in the stat, the mana core is physically formed in your stomach and grows to a certain threshold. This threshold depends on your body size and then, in order to increase the mana volume, mages need to be able to compress the mana inside their core to the required threshold. It happens that a mage with, say, a mana reserve of 50,000 MP cannot fully actively restore it because he is not able to shove new mana inside his core, or, conversely, it happens that one of the young mages suddenly decides that he is the smartest and shoves more mana into the core than it can handle, as a result, he either cripples himself or kills himself. The only thing that can store mana is our body and soul, but their energy capacity is small compared to the mana core. So remember that when the mana core stops growing, your mana stats will strengthen it so that it can withstand more mana pressure and not burst."

"Thank you, Miss Alice, for the warning."

“Returning to your meditation technique, this technique is standard for all mages, so the skill may well rise to [Rare] level in the coming years.”

"Is it really that simple, Miss Alice?"

"Yes, it's that simple. But to bring meditation to the [Special] level, a mage needs a really advanced technique. That's why it's not revealed to mages, and maybe even to Great mages. In general, few people have this skill, although it's very useful. The Great Meditation [Rare] skill increases mana recovery speed by 10 times and in addition adds +1-50% to the recovery speed from this. That is, if your mana recovery speed is 1 per hour, then with all this it will be 15 mana per hour, with active meditation. In fact, with your skill, you can get the same increase of up to 25% if you try and perform this technique correctly. But do not forget that meditation will work as long as there is the surrounding mana in the required amount."

"Miss Alice, do you really not know a better meditation skill? Or someone who does?"

"Many meditation techniques are additionally built for their bloodlines, where each mage has an aspected mana core. Therefore, these techniques cannot be discarded and used by anyone other than the bloodline or another aspected mage. As an Arcane Mage and someone who did not grow up in a noble family, it is difficult for me to find or develop the technique myself. And now after my lecture yesterday and today's lesson, you must choose which mage class you want for yourself. Of course, I will not allow you to choose a normal mage class."

Nick answered Miss Alice with a smile.

"Don't worry, Miss Alice, I don't want to be a mediocre mage. I want to become an Arcane Mage like you, but use more schools of magic than you do."

"Hmm, I didn't expect that answer. I thought you wanted to become a water mage."

"No, you're not entirely wrong, that would be my next option. But being a secret mage sounds better and safer."

"I agree, the magic of divination has saved my life so many times that it is impossible to reach my level at a young age just by shooting pigeons."

"Who were you hunting, Miss Alice?"

"My toughest fight was against another water mage, he was a little higher level than me, but considering my complete incompatibility with him, I decided to run. I flew for a long time on power spells from him and covered myself with a barrier from his attacks, where at some point I was lucky to hide behind the corner of the mountain, where I prepared the strongest spell I was capable of. At that time, it was a level 4 spell "Spear of Power", as soon as he jumped out from behind the corner, I used the spell closely and was able to break through his defense. A little more and I would have been left without mana at all. I was just lucky then that the mage underestimated me. The second time was when I, together with a group of adventurers, was hunting a rare monster of lvl 400. But as it turned out, this monster was [Special] lvl 400. Half of the team died, and the monster eventually died from poison and heavy blood loss. "It was a special kind of poison salamander, so they are not known for their strength and speed, but they have Regeneration [Epic] and Poison [Epic]. We were lucky that the salamander had no resistance to our poison, and its regeneration was ineffective against it. It took a lot of wounds and poison for it to die. But it was a very difficult fight, I was not at all suitable for it, and I was only taken because of my divination magic."

"That's sad, Miss Alice, I wanted to ask you, can you melt the stone with a power spell?"

"Haha, you are a smart boy. Where did you read that? I can do it and I use it often. Only it works well against very hard and durable objects, against the salamander it was very ineffective and also dangerous. Against water mages it is useless, even though it is a 5th level spell, any water mage can either take more water under control or cool it instantly. And the steam explosions are very unpleasant. With that, we will end today's lesson, I will go."

"Goodbye, Miss Alice."

Nick remained sitting under the tree and began to think through a strategy for fighting the water mage, being a force mage.