After checking all her skills, Hera wasn't able to find any differences in her skills or spells, with one notable exception.
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Mana Recovery (Rank 5)
Improves your natural mana recovery. This effect increases as the mastery of the technique used to create the skill increases. The skill increases your passive mana recovery.
By activating the skill, you can recover mana at an accelerated pace. However, if the skill concentration is broken, you will be unable to recover mana actively, and your passive regeneration will be cut in half for 30 minutes. The amount recovered by the active effect increases significantly with the mastery of the technique. The user has a natural affinity for mana, that will increase the amount recovered by this skill
Passive Recovery: 1 446 mana per second
Active Recovery: 2 301 mana per second
Mastery: 43%
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Her mana regeneration shot up like crazy. Before, it would take her almost an hour to recover all her mana while she was concentrating, but now, that should be closer to twenty minutes. Not to mention that even if she was interrupted, she would no longer stay without mana. She also noticed that if she was using her old technique of cycling her mana, the active regeneration would get closer to twenty-five hundred. It's been a long time since she tried to advance her mana regeneration and mana sense in general. Now that she had this tile, maybe it was time to chase that again.
With that out of the way, Hera started casting a few spells to see if there was anything different. At first glance, everything was the same. Her floating lights were around the air, no different from what she expected. But as time went on, she was able to notice some things. First, it was easier to control the spell. Moving them around was supposed to be like moving a balloon. Sure it wasn't a lot of work to push it back and forth, but it still took a conscious decision, like putting on socks. But now, it was closer to moving her arms or legs. It was more of a matter of wanting to change their location, and they would move. Another difference was that, instead of it being just a ball of light, the dancing lights looked more solid. It was similar to the basketball of energy she saw through her snakes, but it was far from that more real-than-real appearance.
Helena was close by when Hera was casting her spells, and she realized that all the magic coming from the Empress was very different from what she expected. Being a very experienced mage and giving her enough to study, Helena could tell when a spell was using the right type of mana or when it was going through the change of elements during the creation of the magic. Her own shadow spells would have that same reaction when created. Yet, now every single spell that Hera was casting shared that feeling. It was as if it didn't matter the element. All of her spells would behave as if they were under the effect of the [Synch] mage skill.
After hearing that, Hera even tested the cost of her spells, but they didn't seem to be different from what she was expecting. It could be that her spells were stronger than before, but it wasn't like she had the tools to test everything right now.
While that was happening, Shane talked with Adriel about her legacy. She didn't want to spread the word, but after her blunder, it was better to come clean since they were still stuck here and had to work together to get back. Blue, Alex, Bonnie, and Mylo were to the side, discussing what they could do to pass this test. Some time passed until Helena and Hera decided they couldn't get any more information about the title and joined the group trying to figure things out.
Blue and Alex had found some text on one of the sides of the mountain. When they touched it, a notification appeared with the translation. Oddly enough, it had only a couple of lines, despite the text covering a large piece of the wall. It read.
'That which remained locked may show you the key.
You start at the beginning and head towards the sunset.'
Mylo found more buildings with Shane, but there were no pictures or anything anywhere, and all the structures were completely empty. Unfortunately, no one else found anything, but all the indications pointed to the item they got from the other challenge. It had to do something related to what they had to do here. As they discussed that, Hera also realized that the carving of the golem she saw in the cave was carrying the box they saw in the Cratic Island challenge. She pulled the crystal leaf she got from there and assumed the same position the golems had, with the item on top of her hands. Just doing that didn't seem to be enough. Nothing was happening, even when she tried to focus on the item. She couldn't feel anything coming from it.
"Tell me again, what was going on in that part of the cave," Bonnie asked.
"There were a bunch of sparkly particles, almost like fireflies floating around," Hera explained.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Right, and were they doing anything weird when they passed closer to the engraving?"
"I… don't remember," Hera focused too much on the well she found, and everything about the engraving itself was more or less a blur. And now that everyone knew how risky going there was, she was hesitating to go there again. Even if she overcame the pull of the pure mana and got a title, she had no guarantees that she could survive another encounter.
"I do," Nimbus stepped up, "Right around the box, the particles were spinning around, almost as if they were in a whirlpool or a vortex of some kind."
"A whirlpool?" Bonnie stopped to think for a moment, "Would you say it's similar to that painting we found by the side of the building?"
Nimbus looked at her, "Now that you mention it. It could be. I mean, it still doesn't feel right. What we saw in the cave was brighter and somewhat peaceful. Those paintings seemed to be something dark and violent."
"So, what if we try to replicate that? Maybe using some sort of spell to make a small hurricane or just gathering something with the item in the middle," Bonnie suggested.
"Oh, that's easy," Blue smiled and sat down in the same position as the golems beside Hera. Soon she started to create a small hurricane using her legacy with the sand magnet that she got from the challenge right in the eye of the storm.
Seeing that, Hera decided to try something similar. But instead of using a spell, she would just try to move the mana around her crystal flower to go inside it. It wouldn't be the first time she tried to control mana like that, but without using an actual spell, it had never worked before. Closing her eyes and focusing, the Empress tried to expand her senses and feel the surrounding mana, just like she did when seeing through her snakes in the well. In there, it was easy to do that. There was such an overwhelming amount of mana that she could feel it in the hairs in her arms. Here, things were different. When she started to focus, looking for mana, she was saddened. Not because she wasn't able to feel anything but because she felt so little that it was like looking at a wasteland after just coming out of a lush jungle. Each speck of magic in the air was so small and so far away from each other, and they seemed so lonely. She steeled her heart and tried to expand her perception by using a mix of her pulse spell and her improved sense of magic.
The moment her magic hit Blue, she saw a large amount of mana moving in front of her, and it was increasing. However, the odd part was that all that power wasn't from Blue herself or the environment. It was coming from somewhere else. The sparks of mana were appearing out of nowhere and joining what was being created by her legacy. She could also faintly sense the rest of the group around her. Or, at least, it was faint now that the signal she got with her pulse was already vanishing. Trying again, she did the same thing, focusing on the people around her. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and looked to the side. Not because she managed to see something from her friend but because her pulse was able to catch the connection she had with her court.
Closing her eyes once again, Hera reached out and touched the link between her and Ooze. She didn't use any mana, she just placed her fingers in the web-like structure, and the chakram responded. This time, both Hera and her blade felt more at ease. It wasn't uncomfortable or weird; it felt natural to them. Letting go, Hera decided to pout this part of her discovery aside. She already got a lot for herself, and everyone was expecting her to try to help with the challenge.
Focusing again on the crystal leaf in her hands, she tried to pull the mana towards it. Little by little, Hera managed to pull the small specks of magic in the area towards it. Oddly enough, the more she pulled, the more mana would appear. Almost as if they were hiding and only coming out after being called. However, it wasn't like the magic that Blue was using. This felt more natural, while the mana being pulled by the legacy felt like it was being brought from somewhere else.
She noticed some parts of the flower had small openings where the mana could gather and enter the crystal. Almost as if they were veins or tubes. Changing her method, Hera started to put even her own mana inside the crystal. Now, the flow of mana became faster, and since the Empress was pulling the mana in a non-violent way, the crystal leaf wasn't harmed. It simply absorbed the energy and grew larger. Once she felt she had gathered enough mana to fill up the entire crystal, Hera opened her eyes.
She could now see swirling energy inside the leaf on her hands. That mana seemed to be forming letters, but not only were they alien and unknown, but they also changed constantly. Yet... Hera somehow understood it, not like she could read it, but the word that it was trying to form jumped into her mind.
"Xey'lyon," Hera said out loud.
Everyone turned to her, and Bonnie asked, "What?"
"I don't know. I was trying to put mana inside the leaf, and now it's like this," Hera showed the crystal leaf to the group. They could all see the energy inside it, but no one was able to understand the words.
"Ok... but how did you come up with that word?" Shane asked.
"I don't know for sure. I was looking at it, and it just appeared in my head."
"How can you be sure that is the name?" Mylo asked.
"I don't. It just felt right."
"Can I?" Helena reached out to the crystal leaf. Hera flinched when seeing Helena's hand suddenly appeared in front of her, but she nodded and gave the mage the crystal flower. While she continued to explain what she did with the item. She tried to help everyone do the same, but Helena came back a few minutes later, "Say. When you say 'Xey'lyon,' Do you mean it starts with X, E, Y?"
Hera looked at her and thought for a moment, "Yeah. I think I do. Why?"
"Ok, I figured it out. These words that keep changing will cycle through different languages. Eventually, they will reach something we can understand. I stared at it for a while and saw the first three letters," Helena explained.
"Really?" Alex asked.
"Yeah. I think that everyone can find the names of their items if we do it like that," Helena nodded.
"Ok then, let's keep going. Like this. Hera, do you want to go to the pagoda and see if this is it?" Shane turned to the Empress.
"Sure. I'll be right back then," Hera smiled and walked off towards the pagoda where they were supposed to speak a name. If everything went well, they would be one step closer to getting out of this room.