Chapter 79

"World, world, world." Dylan said, sitting in a chair and tossing an apple with his right hand.

In his other hand he held the new book that Vivienne had given him. The book told how mages use will and was a more advanced version than the one he had received from Elton. He could even call it a grimoire because of how good it was. It had a lot of valuable information about using will and other useful tricks for high-level mages. For example, the basics of ritual magic, transmutation, creating artifacts, there was a lot of valuable stuff and Dylan suspected that this book was written just for him.

Dylan had been studying a lot for the past month. It turned out that classes were held 6 days a week... yes, it was real hell. For 6 days, Dylan only had time to study, eat and sleep, no rest. On his only day off, Dylan first tried to rest without thinking about magic and other classes. But then he got bored, so bored that he could sit down to study again, (despite how much he hated the idea). Instead, he decided to start pestering other Reincarnators. On his first day off, he gathered everyone from his class and went to look for Cullen.

But it didn't come easy to him, despite his Enthusiasm, no one except Liam wanted to poke him with desire. But after a series of whining, persuasion, bribery and other manipulations, everyone agreed with him. When he found Cullen, he began with a lighter and more familiar manner of communication. Cullen immediately saw through him, realizing that he wanted something and hurried to clarify what exactly.

Dylan didn't want to admit that he was just bored and wanted to piss people off, so he launched into a long speech. About how important it is to establish connections in a team, how important it is for everyone to be tightly knit, that without friendly connections and regular communication they will never trust each other, and so on and so forth. In half an hour, Dylan managed to get so annoying to Cullen with his speech (under Liam's quiet giggles) that he agreed to it. Dylan praised himself for a long time for what a great guy he was (a very cunning bastard), while Cullen gathered the rest of the group...

Thus the second meeting of the "Shards" took place, despite the general reluctance, in the end everyone liked the idea, except for a few particularly serious faces. So they agreed to meet every week in their secret club and share knowledge. Dylan really enjoyed these meetings, they were all fun, interesting, and most importantly useful. He learned several new things, primarily about magic, the structure of society and the geography of the kingdom.

As for the lessons Dylan attended, he remembered them with despair. For some unknown reason (which he could guess) all of his magic lessons were taught by Vivienne. Each time she used mind magic, speeding up his perception, and fucked his brain so that he did not lose concentration. It was excruciating, very excruciating. At some point, Dylan developed an abnormal sense of dichotomy, he admired how sophisticated and cruel it was a form of torture to an absurd degree, noting all its benefits. He liked it, but he did not like being the one experiencing it, although he understood that it was a very effective training. The strangest thing for him was that after a certain point it did not seem so hard. It was still very hard mentally, but not as much as he expected. Of course, it did not take into account the moments when extreme cruelty flared up in him in the form of a call for bloody violence, or despair. It happened, and Dylan even wanted to think that it wasn't very often (it actually was).

The rest of the lessons were much easier for Dylan, he even thought that they were not bad for relaxing. These were lessons on Martial Arts, Tactics and Strategy, Law, Geography, Monstrology, Noble Etiquette and others. There was even a lesson on "Communication with Other Races and How They Differ from Us". In general, Dylan liked these lessons, they were informative and interesting, from them he learned more about the outside world, the structure of cities, infrastructure and geography. True, in places it was very boring, but he tried not to pay attention to it.

The only thing that spoiled this picture was the Martial Arts lessons. It would seem that he could fight and learn techniques as much as he wanted, but for Dylan everything was different. Due to the peculiarities of the Ghost Blade art, he could not use very many techniques. Strengthening techniques for defense, healing techniques, techniques for accelerated stamina regeneration, and ordinary techniques for enhancing physical strength were not available to him. He knew this, but he hoped that he would be like the Reincarnator in other stories, "that the rules were not written for him and he was a genius among fools," but everything was not so, his physique had already undergone changes due to the Ghost Blade art and he could only use special techniques at the Adept stage, mainly focused on speed.

But what did it matter, he won almost all duels, opponents above his level, purely due to speed. Although he admitted that he may lack pure swordsmanship and experience. And he was lucky not to meet anyone really strong in a duel, or other reincarnators. No matter how arrogant he was, he knew that he would be crushed. So he focused his attention on another plane of battle.

...

He was currently tossing an apple, experimenting with a new spell design. He tossed it high into the air, almost to the ceiling, then touched it with his aura and activated the spell. It was his signature Levitation spell, about level 4.

The apple hovered in the air from the touch of his aura, as it should have with a normal levitation spell. But the peculiarity of the current one lies in two additional functions. The first is power from the surrounding mana, the second is the movement of the object at will, or according to specified parameters.

Dylan nodded contentedly, noting the success. The spell had worked, more or less as he expected. He just needed to figure out how well he had done it. Touching it with his aura once more, Dylan set the trajectory of the movement by pouring his will into the apple. After which it immediately began to spin and fly around the light crystal in the ceiling. After a few turns, it hovered in place, just as Dylan wanted.

"It remains to be seen how long the spell's durability will last, but I still worked hard on the mana efficiency." Dylan said, putting his hand to his chin and staring at the ceiling.

As Dylan watched the apple, he began to think again about the spell's structure and what improvements he could make. His own mana was originally used to create the spell's structure, but the surrounding mana was used to create the levitation and movement itself. In his opinion, this was a rather clever move, but the best part was that at his level, few people could repeat it. First of all, because his mana power was higher than most due to his high willpower stat and perhaps something else. But of course, because the spell was very complex.

Now Dylan was faced with the main question of how long exactly it would work. Of course, the problem was not the lack of surrounding mana, but how strong his mana was and how strong the structure itself was. After all, the power of his spell was spent on using the mana of the surrounding world, it was not free at all.

"Oh, how nice it would be if everything was so simple... Well, I'll have to spend some time like this. It will be useful to evaluate how the spell decomposes in order to use it on myself in the future... How boring." Dylan muttered, straining his mana sense and concentrating his aura on the apple.

So he continued to watch until 10 minutes later the apple fell to the floor and broke. Touching the apple with his aura, Dylan tried to gather his remaining mana, but all of it had already lost its power and dissipated into the surroundings.

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"Well, that's good." Dylan said as he stood up from his chair and raised his arms to stretch his back. "The spell was as good as my mana power allowed. So, 30 mana cost me about 10 minutes of levitation without commands, and if it moved, the spell would have ended faster. Ah, how difficult." Dylan sighed and walked over to the apple to inspect its insides for mana overload.

Picking it up from the floor, Dylan carefully split the dented apple in half with his hands and began to carefully examine any changes. Not seeing anything remarkable, Dylan brought the apple to his mouth, sniffed it and bit into it. As soon as the apple was in his mouth, he felt a slightly strange taste, but deciding that he should feel everything for sure, Dylan swallowed it.

The apple entered his stomach and he did not feel anything unusual. Judging that it received a slight mana overload, Dylan was satisfied. The apple grew in a region with a normal mana concentration. So it was safe to use this spell on himself, because the mana conductivity of his body was much higher, especially for his own mana.

During his time at the academy, he realized that everything he poured his will into could better withstand mana overload, especially his body. After conducting several experiments, Dylan estimated that in order for him to begin to experience mana overload, he needed about 3000 MP in a limb. This was a lot of mana, but it only worked if he constantly poured a large amount of will into that part of the body, if he stopped doing this, his muscles, bones and nerves quickly began to degrade. It was about the same with world mana, he could hold 2000 MP in a limb by constantly pouring will into it.

Due to this, his body now constantly has a large amount of mana inside, about the same amount as his core holds. And yet he did not feel bad at all.

Looking back now, he laughed at himself. Before, he was really afraid of getting mana overload during meditation and never tried to give it his all. Now, he had perfected his meditation skill to new heights, using his will and a few clever tricks he learned from Vivienne.

Greater Meditation of Will [Rare+] Lvl 220 - By collecting mana from the environment and simultaneously pouring your will into it, constantly circulate it throughout body until it loses its world signature and acquires yours. Collect this mana around your mana core and pouring will into it, you significantly increase mana regeneration by 35-55% of the mana recovery stat.

But it wasn't something truly special, he still lacked the skill and knowledge to advance meditation to the next level. Although he had already managed to receive several [Special] meditation methods from Vivienne. However, each of them was still unavailable to him. One required creating a permanent mana grid in the core, something like a spell or enchantment. The design was feasible for him, the problem was that in order to create it, very strong mana was needed. Which he would not have for a very long time, of course there were methods to increase the strength of mana, but again, either they were too complex or had a bunch of other drawbacks. The second method consisted of truly subtle spells for collecting and improving the mana core. But they were so complex and short-lived that Dylan did not even try.

Stopping thinking about it, Dylan sighed and threw the apple pieces into the trash and wiped the floor. Taking out the academy card, he saw that he still had a few hours before the meeting of the fragments. Therefore, he decided to take on his most promising project, namely, the creation of a skill for strengthening due to mana.

Over the past month, he had read many books on the subject and received many tips from Vivienne. He even had several books that had excellent spells for body enhancement, even with percentage increases. But there was one problem, due to his body type, not all of them worked correctly, or effectively. At least not as well as he would have liked.

Taking out the [Nascent Maple Spirit Sword], Dylan walked to the middle of the room and took a stance. After making a few trial swings with the sword, and then a few full-fledged movements and feints, Dylan was ready for serious training.

At first, he decided to use several techniques to see what he should aim for. Starting to circulate stamina throughout his body, Dylan activated [Ghost Awakening], [Parallel Thinking], and [Accelerated Perception]. Assessing how the world had changed and how much stronger he was, Dylan swung his sword, with a loud sound of air being cut. Using the technique "Ghost Touch Sword", Dylan became even faster and made several consecutive swings, with several movements against an imaginary opponent, so that the sounds of the wind began to form the beginning of a melody.

Dylan, carried away, began a real shadow boxing match against an imaginary Benedict, attacking with a rhythm that only he could hear, dodging potential attacks, changing the distance for a strike, and making feints that flowed into an attack. Each swing of his sword was precise and fast, and his movements were perfectly honed. He moved so fast that to others, several swings of the sword could merge into one. The only thing that gave away this ghostly touch, the unmistakable melody of many sword swings.

While in this state of flow, Dylan activated the mana enhancement spells stored in his body and poured his will into them to use them in bursts instead of techniques. Every time he did this, the wind melody would be interrupted to be continued by the next technique, but Dylan did not stop. He continued to strain his body and expend as much stamina as possible for greater strength and speed, sometimes replacing movements with activating spells. As time went on, when using spells instead of techniques, he would make more cunning movements that went beyond the Phantom Sword Style. These movements were slow, but unlike normal movements, they had a large amount of power. When he used this strike, it would instantly be replaced by the [Ghost Flicker] technique and a phantom touch to stun first with strength, and then extreme speed impossible for someone at his level.

Continuing to further develop the skills of mana enhancement, Dylan tried to make them faster than the techniques, or at least match them, but it was impossible. Mana enhancement aimed at speed was inferior to the techniques of the phantom sword by several times. But still, in some ways it was useful after a month of training. Activating mana enhancement strengthened his constitution, so that he could withstand more phantom sword techniques. Also, with the help of spells, he could strengthen his body, even take sliding blows from a sword, absolutely without injury, and what is very important, his blows became stronger and were more deadly despite the shortcomings of his constitution.

Now, while fighting the shadow, he tried to combine spells and techniques to achieve the best of both worlds, but so far it had little success. The only thing he could use at the same time was a constitution strengthening spell to use the Phantom Sword techniques more powerfully. The spells "Ai Durability Enhancement", "Kido Slash" and "Therissan Acceleration" when combined with techniques either caused significant damage to the body or had no effect at all.

Therefore, during the battle, he tried to change them, understand the timing and come up with a solution. For this, he activated [Parallel Thinking], trying to change the spells, during the break in using techniques. By pouring will into the spells, he achieved a lot of, slowly choosing his new style to create a new skill that combines everything.

Dylan plucked up his courage and simultaneously cast the spell "Therissan Acceleration", "Aya Body Strengthening" and activated the "Ghost Touch" technique. They all synchronized as he took the next step and swung his sword. From the outside, it seemed perfect and even a little faster than some techniques, but on the next step, Dylan's leg buckled and he fell to his knee, letting out a groan full of pain. Putting his left hand on the floor, Dylan tried to get up, but his muscles were so sore that he did not put any effort into it. Letting go of the sword from his hand, Dylan tried to lie down carefully, his balance shifted and he fell to the side, cursing in pain. Having moved his body to a comfortable position, Dylan lay on the floor and suffered from pain.

Well, at least I got some speed boost this time. The spells and techniques were synchronizing normally, but after the first step, they started to clash with each other, tearing my body apart. Bitch, I still have so much to figure out, how am I supposed to even use spells that improve perception and speed of thought? I'm really going to die, damn it!

Dylan thought as he activated the ring to get the healing potion. With his hand shaking from the intense pain, he could barely pull it out and open it with his finger. Turning over, Dylan drank it and almost choked. Lying on his back and observing his body, he realized one extremely painful thing. There was a lot of mana in his body and several unused spells. He also drank a healing potion, but in fact it was alchemically enhanced mana from processed magical plants. And before that, he was also subjected to a lot of stress due to the use of spells.

Dylan suddenly touched the sword and began to draw all the mana from his body into it, simultaneously pouring a large amount of will into his body to survive the mana overload. He certainly wouldn't die, but it would be painful.

Barely, but he made it before the potions started to take effect and heal his body. When the effect wore off, Dylan cursed and remembered that he could still get mana overload from healing potions, or mana restoration.

"How damn stupid that was!"