After three hours and thirty-six minutes, we finally reached the glowing lake in the center of the crater, and it was magical with a capital M.
Too bad we couldn’t see it up close.
“You sure we can’t just get a little bit closer?” I ask Tabitha for the third time. “I don’t see anything dangerous.”
“I’m sure,” Tabitha mimes stepping forward just to bring her foot immediately back. “My skills are saying we shouldn’t get any closer.”
We were roughly 600 feet from the water’s edge, close enough that we got a good look at the body of water but far enough away that I couldn’t sense anything with my nerfed skills.
“Come on,” I practically beg Tabitha. “Give me two minutes. It will take me less than that to run over, grab a water sample, and return. You know how fast I am."
I move to step forward, only to have Tabitha grab my shoulder and yank me backward hard. She spins me around to face her, and her eyes feel like lasers as they threaten to burn a hole through my skull. “Do. Not. Get. Any. Closer,” warns me in a voice I’ve never heard before. It sent shivers down my spine and left no room for argument.
Swallowing a lump in my throat, I silently nod my head. Tabitha removes her hand from me and looks at the beautiful lake before us. "I don't know why, but my skills tell me we'll die if we get any closer," she says darkly.
I stew over Tabitha’s warning for a few seconds before letting out a reluctant sigh. If the lake was that dangerous, then there was nothing I could do about it. "At least we made it,” I force a smile which slowly turns into a real one. "We came pretty far," I note with pride.
Old man Clarkson said almost nobody made it this deep into the forest, and even if someone did, unless they were around level 100 like Tabitha or had the skills to block mana like me, there was no way a person could make it to where we are now. So Tabitha and I might be the first to stand here in a very long time, which was something to be proud of.
Sure, I still wanted a sample of whatever the lake was made of, but it wasn't like I was willing to die for it. Tabitha was pretty lackadaisical when it came to taking chances, so for her to act as she was, there had to be something perilous nearby. But what was it? Whatever it was, I couldn't see it.
The two of us were standing in a small divot to avoid the countless fish swimming overhead, but we had a clear view of everything around us. Multiple sharks circled above the lake, but so far, we've only seen them attack injured fish. Similar high-leveled creatures were swimming through the air, but all acted odd as well.
All the fish seemed to have gotten whatever warning Tabitha had because none of them swam anywhere near the lake water. It was like there was an invisible no-swim zone that they all adhered to. And that wasn’t all, either.
The fish kept their distance, but they all tried to be as close as possible without entering the invisible zone. They were all packed together tighter than sardines, yet there was almost no fighting. The smaller fish gave the larger and more dangerous magic beasts room to move around, but they were still within biting distance.
It would be simple for any of the sharks to open its mouth and swallow countless sky fish, but that curiously wasn’t happening here. Instead, it was almost like all the magic fish had signed a treaty with one another. I heard of it happening back on Earth around watering holes in Africa, but this was the first time I saw it in person.
But that begged the question; why were all these fish nearby if the lake was so dangerous? “Is it just me, or do they look like they’re waiting for something?” I point at the mass of flying fish, asking Tabitha for her opinion.
“I was thinking something similar,” Tabitha nods in agreement. “But unlike them, we can’t afford to wait around forever. We reached our goal; we need to turn around and head back,” she tells me.
“Just a few more minutes,” I plead. “If we can’t get any closer, we can at least try and find out what’s drawing the fish here.”
Tabitha frowns, but she eventually reluctantly agrees to my request. “You have twenty-two minutes. After that, we'll need at least two hours to make our way out of the crater safely, and staying here any longer would be pushing it."
"Thank you," I smile brightly at Tabitha. She huffs and turns away from me, but I don't miss the sides of her mouth curling up. I also didn't miss the slight wince of pain she tried to hide from me by turning away. The ambient mana must be affecting her more than she's letting on, and still, she agreed to stay a few minutes longer because I asked her to.
I could suggest we leave, but Tabitha would take that as an insult. So no, I wouldn't do that. And if she said I had twenty minutes, then I had twenty minutes. So it was now a waiting game, and I could only hope whatever the fish were waiting for happened before we had to leave.
The seconds slowly ticked by, and Tabitha and I kept our eyes peeled for anything out of the norm. Or at least out of the norm for where we were.
A few minutes passed without anything happening, but in that time, I could observe a visible shift in the fish swimming around us. They appeared agitated and moved more than they were a few moments ago.
Also, even though I couldn’t sense it or get any closer, I was able to make multiple observations about the glowing lake, which I suspect isn’t a lake at all. The more I look at it, the less I think the glowing substance is water, and the more I'm sure we're looking at a body of liquified mana, something up until now I thought was impossible.
Mana wasn’t your typical substance, it was closer to energy than anything else, yet it could solidify and turn into magicite in the right conditions. However, mana was constantly shifting and moving, much like an invisible gas that was difficult to contain when it wasn't in its crystalline form. Even when absorbed into the body and converted into a person’s unique mana pool, mana was more ethereal than liquid.
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When magicite breaks down, the mana within spontaneously goes from a solid back into its gaseous form. Of course, it will still fuse with other substances, like when Sandra and I make engraving ink or when I add magicite to the forge to increase the heat of the flames, but it never liquefies.
Though I forget what it's called, I remember from my chemistry class back on Earth that some substances could rapidly go from a solid straight to a gas. I always thought that was just how mana was, but the stuff before me proved that theory wrong.
But somehow, what appeared to be a lake in front of us, was actually pure mana in liquid form. I so badly wanted to get closer and inspect this new form of mana and see how it acted as a whole, yet I couldn't.
Maybe it was for the best; I had to tell myself. The realization that the lake was probably made from pure mana came with the knowledge that I could not contain it. Traveling through the crater taught me that dense mana could be incredibly destructive. The ambient mana around the water magicite was proof that, in large quantities, mana could eat through substances, as it did with Mana Skin.
In its crystalline form, mana was easy to handle as it was nicely contained. But if you had that same mana density in a volatile form such as water, I shudder to think what would happen if you touched it. The lake of mana in front of us was more potent than any acid back on Earth, and I couldn’t imagine what you would need to contain it.
A strong enchantment could do the trick, but I'm not entirely sure it would work even then. I would need to consult with a master enchanter on the subject, and as I’ve learned, people such as them weren’t exactly the most sharing when it came to knowledge.
My deep examination of the lake made me the first to notice the change in its surface. "Something's happening,” I point out to Tabitha.
“Indeed,” Tabitha’s eyes narrow, and together we watch the surface of the lake of mana start turning violently.
There was no wind in the bubble, just mana currents originating from the lake, and they were growing more robust as it churned. Was the lake going to explode? Were we standing on a mana volcano or something?
At this point, the fish overhead were going crazy. They still weren't attacking one another, but they were bumping into and shoving each other to be the closest to the mana lake.
I glanced at Tabitha, wondering what we should do, and saw the gears in her head spinning. She was weighing our options and deciding whether or not we should cut our losses and leave. The only reason I wasn't panicking was that she wasn't telling me to run for it. If Tabitha had the time to think about what was happening, we weren't in immediate danger.
I still prepared myself to run if she ordered me to, but until Tabitha said so, my attention was on the lake of mana.
Suddenly, the lake's surface starts to boil, and to my astonishment, deep blue bubbles of all sizes float out of the churning mana. Some spheres were baseball-sized, while a few bubbles were bigger than me. They all floated in every direction, and once they drifted 300 feet from the still-bubbling lake, all the fish rushed in at once.
It was a feeding frenzy; only everything was after the dense balls of mana.
But it didn't make sense; if the fish were after the mana, wouldn't they go straight to the source? Why were they all so reluctant to get near the lake?
The sharks weren't the fastest beasts, but their enormous mouths swallowed vast amounts of mana. I watched as one dove for a particularly large bubble of mana still close to the lake. A few fish initially follow the shark as it dives down, but after a certain point, they all break away and swim back up. Alone and with its mouth wide open and many rows of teeth on display, the shark charges after its prize.
Then it happens, a strike so fast one minute the shark is swimming; the next, it’s yanked into the mana at speeds I can't even fathom. The only thing I saw was a green blur shoot up from the lake of mana.
To my side, I hear Tabitha gasp in shock. She was standing there frozen, her face pale.
"I couldn't see what it was," I mumble, a cold sweat overtaking me.
“It was a tentacle,” replies Tabitha in a voice that sounds a million miles away. She was staring at the lake with her hand on her sword, clutching it with such force I feared the handle might bend.
"Did you catch its level?" I hesitantly ask. Meanwhile, the lake was no longer bubbling, and the many fish scattered every way after eating all the mana bubbles.
“No, I only saw a fraction of it,” Tabitha tells me ominously. "But for a second, my danger sense skills rang just as they did when I saw Master fighting the dragon. We should leave now.”
Tabitha grabs my hand and practically drags me away from the now-still lake. Was she saying there was something as strong as a dragon living inside all that mana!?
Tabitha doesn’t stop pulling me until we’re over a mile away from the lake.
“And you’re sure it’s that strong?” I ask after Tabitha finally lets go of me. She was still pale and was breathing heavily from rushing us away. “Are you okay?” I ask, seeing more sweat than usual on her face.
"Fine," Tabitha rubs the sweat away in a bid to act strong, but as soon as she lowers her hand, I can see more moisture gathering.
“Are you in the second phase of mana poisoning!?” I ask, remembering the symptoms.
Tabitha doesn’t answer me, but her silence speaks words.
"We need to get out of here,” I say worryingly.
“That might be for the best. The heat is getting to me, and one of my skills stumbled while we were retreating," Tabitha finally admits.
“Do you need me to carry you out?” I quickly offered; I felt terrible that I had kept Tabitha here longer than I should have.
“I can still walk on my own; let's just keep moving," she instructs. “It was the mana given off by the lake,” Tabitha tells me as we make our way outside the crater. “My defenses were holding up fine until,” Tabitha pauses, searching for the right words. "Whatever that was," she gestures toward the lake behind us.
"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" I ask again.
At first, Tabitha doesn't say anything, only walking faster. I’m about to ask a third time when she finally answers me. “I just entered stage two; my skills are unreliable, not gone,” she growls in annoyance.
I don’t say anything further, choosing to keep an eye on our surroundings, so we don't run into anything by accident. I'm sure Tabitha could still defend us if needed, but that would only aggravate her condition.
“If only I knew we were coming to such a place,” she grumbles under her breath. I only hear her because I'm close enough to react if her movement skill gives out, as I wasn’t sure if whatever skill she was using was solely stamina based or a mix of both.
I take it Tabitha means she would’ve brought a piece of enchanted gear meant to block out ambient mana. She makes similar comments under her breath a few times, but I choose to pretend not to hear them. Tabitha was in visible pain, even if she tried her best not to show it.
It takes time, but by avoiding anything above level 50, Tabitha and I crawl out of the crater in a little over an hour. The whole time Tabitha refused any help from me.
We didn’t stop until we climbed over the crater's edge and slinked our way back to the buried building we had used as our camp the last few nights.
As we approach the building, I nervously glance at Tabitha. Now that we were back outside the crater, I had full use of Sense Mana again, so I knew our camping spot was still empty, but that wasn’t what I was worried about. "Do you need to be farther away from the crater?" I ask. I don't mention it aloud, but I could see the mana built up in Tabitha's body. She'd have died from the pain if she were a weaker person.
“Here is fine,” Tabitha once again wipes the sweat from her face. “Can you take the first watch; I need to meditate?” She asks me, sounding extremely tired.
“Of course; leave it to me,” I tell her.
Tabitha nods once before jumping into the hole under the root, disappearing from sight but not from Sense Mana. She shifts around at the bottom for a minute before her mana silhouette takes up a meditative posture.
All I wanted to do was nap, and the day wasn't even halfway over. Throwing my full bag to the side, I hop up and take a seat on the root shielding the corner of the exposed building.
I double-scan our surroundings for anything dangerous, and afterward, when I'm doubly sure there isn't anything around, I go over our adventure in the crater in my head. At the same time, I try to purge some of the extra mana from my body. I had resisted it better than Tabitha, but I wasn't far from entering stage two of mana poisoning either.
While I try to force the extra mana out of my system, I go over all the materials I gathered, the magic beasts we ran into, and the sight of the lake; I go over everything with a fine-toothed comb.
Finding out that a magical kraken was living in the center of the Endless Forest was big, but while scary, it wasn’t something that affected me directly. I'm sure Pacore will be excited to hear about it, but he already had one giant sea monster to worry about, so I doubt anything will come of it any time soon.
No, instead, I focus on what I learned about myself. I was still missing valuable skills for one thing, and I learned I might need to adjust my weapons. Both required us to head back to the village, but I couldn’t help but think I would be missing out if we did that.
I wanted to go home, but the crater was the perfect place to train Sense Mana and Mana Skin. Both options had their merits, and it was up to me to decide.
"Sorry, everyone, wait just a few more days," I say to myself while looking off in the direction of home. When Tabitha finishes meditating, I'll ask her if we can spend a few days on the crater's edge. It was relatively safe there and had enough mana for me to experiment with.
Then there was that patch of dead forest. I saw it again while we were leaving the crater, and for some reason, it called out to me.
A few more days, that’s all I need. Because if the crater taught me anything, it's I must improve my skills further. Good thing I never shied away from hard work. I only hope my family understands.