Mia was staring at the giant sea serpent in front of her as she took a break. The fight was not going anyone’s way.
Under normal circumstances the death battle between Mia and the monster would have already finished in her favor but the dungeon is delaying the conclusion. The creature can absorb the stupid amounts of ambient mana to heal itself faster than Mia can actually damage it. Occasionally it manages to hit Mia with something, or the more specific the Air Bubble around her. Not that it does much. The creature has shitty control of its magic so the best it can do is try to hit Mia really hard with its body, which does nothing and just send her away for a few minutes most of the time. Time she uses to absorb some ambient mana herself.
“Alright, round 56, let’s go!” Mia says to herself as she dashes toward the monster.
Mia tried almost everything short of being eaten by the monster to kill it from the inside but something in her head was screaming that the idea was a terribly bad one. That only left two options. Outlast the monsters, something that she had full faith she could do or take control of the mana in the dungeon so as to not allow the monster to use it to heal.
Since she only had a week, fighting this monster until there was no more mana was not an option. Something was generating mana and even if they both were using way more mana than it was being generated, there is always the chance that it could start to produce more. Mia wondered if there was a hole or something that let mana out like the ones Gina had told her about.
Mia couldn’t really concentrate for long enough to take control of the mana surrounding her so she had to improvise a little. She was about to make a really big spell, the ‘traditional’ way.
Mia slowly began to fix balls of mana around the dungeon as she received the monster’s attacks. More than once she would have to replace some of these balls as the creature would hit them with something.
Mia was very thankful that her new level of cultivation, along with the wake up call she received when she arrived, allowed her to remember things better. She wouldn’t be able to remember exactly where she fixed all the balls, not that she needed to, she could sense most of them if she choose to, but being able to keep all of them in mind as she carefully made the monster attack her and send her only to directions where there were no balls most of the time helped.
Water jets, water slashes, whirlpools, tail slaps, headbutts and tentative bites from the monster came and went. Mia lost track of time and with the creature not saying a word. She was also concentrating solely on the fight. Slowly but surely, a sphere made of mana balls was enveloping the area where she was fighting. With clear borders Mia also noticed that the creature didn’t move much from a specific area so she was able to better place the mana balls in a way that they wouldn’t be hit by most attacks.
She was pretty sure that at least a day or two had passed as the first signs of hunger began to hit her. Nothing really dangerous as she could go at least a week without food. The ambient mana she was absorbing was also helping in keeping her in a good state.
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As she began to place the last of the mana balls and was ready for the next part of her plan, to link all the balls and artificially expand her mana control range temporarily, an idea she couldn’t get out of her mind appeared. She didn’t know where it came from, nor could she ponder much about it as she needed to act. Mia began to move the balls around, actually preparing a spell.
Mia knew very few configurations to make spells the traditional way. She was shown some but what she was in the process of doing was something she never saw anywhere, even from a glance.
What was happening is something that very few people even know that can happen. Divine insight. Not in a sense of a divine being giving knowledge but a person acquiring knowledge from somewhere that was touched by mana as if they were gods themselves, who could see and know everything in their domain. Hence the name, Divine Insight.
This phenomenon could only be experienced by people who are high ranking in all manner of mana use. One would have to be a true cultivator, and high-rank controller and emitter, all at the same time to have a chance of experiencing it. That and have access to stupid amounts of mana. With both requirements being met, Mia got her insight.
There was also another way for it to happen but it required assistance from powerful people.
The monster, for its part, didn’t just allow Mia to do what she wanted and began to send jet after jet of water in her direction. She on her part just bombarded the giant sea serpent with wind slashes to keep it from moving. She was using way more mana than normal. She could actually feel her mana almost reach 0 a lot of time but she quickly took more from the ambient. Faster than even the monster can.
What was before, more or less, a perfect ball made out of other balls if seen from the outside, was now a strange shape. Something akin to used gum.
Mia began to link all the balls she moved with various thin threads of mana. Once she had connected all of them, she began to prepare to activate the spell, but then something hit her. Why in the nine hells was she trying to use a spell this big when she knew for a fact that those spells are all inefficient. She didn’t even know what this was going to do and only did all of this because she felt she had to. Like it was a once in a lifetime thing. And it would be, because she would probably die if she tried to activate a spell this big. Not even she had so much mana and mana control to feed this thing now that she took a good look at it.
No, what she needed was simple. She already had the base of what she wanted. All she had to do was do what she set out to do in the first place.
Thinking about the mana inside the dungeon, inside the area where her strange spell was taking place, Mia had only one thing in mind. One thing to make sure that what she wanted would happen. “Mine!” She said with extreme conviction as she poured mana out of her, into the threads of mana.
Faster than anyone could process, mana began to pass through the threads and take control of any mana in the area around it and the balls connected to it. Mana that would be instantly sent back to Mia only to be used to send more mana, far away from her.
The monster began to panic. The mana it was using to heal itself, suddenly stopped pouring into him and now he was covered in scars. Mia for herself felt like she was being electrocuted by a very small amount of electricity.
As the creature saw the writing on the wall, it tried to leap at Mia, to eat her and finish this, but something that neither it or Mia were expecting happened. They suddenly found themselves on the ground and dry.