Jim stared at Bishop Carl, a mixture of surprise and amusement on his face. "The Christmas Bowl? You want me to… compete?"
The Bishop chuckled. "Indeed. We believe your unique skills, not to mention your… unconventional abilities to wield holy power, could give us a much-needed edge."
Jim considered the offer. While he wasn't exactly known for his piety, he did enjoy a good challenge. And the prospect of utilizing the Garden of Damien's unique flora for the competition was intriguing.
"What kind of competition is this, exactly?" Jim inquired.
"It’s a tournament series. Four representatives from each region are randomly assigned to have matches daily. The Christmas bowl will start in one month. I will contact you the three days before we depart"
Jim grinned. "Depart. Where are we departing too?"
The Bishop beamed. "Its in the holy kingdom of Damien located in the central plains. I will inform the Archbishop of your decision and begin making the necessary arrangements. In the meantime, I encourage you to explore the garden further. You may find some inspiration for the competition amongst its flora."
With that, Bishop Carl departed, leaving Jim alone in the eerie beauty of the Garden of Damien. He spent the next few days exploring the garden, meticulously observing the strange and wondrous plants. He discovered a vine that glowed with an eerie light, a flower that emitted a calming scent, and a moss that seemed to absorb and amplify any sound.
The possibilities were endless. Jim began to sketch out his plans, his mind buzzing with ideas. The one thing that was unexpected is the amount of holy mana in the garden. There is a vast amount of holy mana but there is also something else mixed in the deeper parts of the garden. Curiously Jim wanted to know what kind of mana is located in the deeper parts of the garden but his intuition stopped him from moving farther in. He could tell that the deeper the garden is, the more volatile the holy mana behaved. Jim created a clone body for Jake to control as he wanted to study the holy mana at the church as well. Jim was able to that the holy mana here utilizes the light element more heavily than Jakes holy mana. If he had to guess, the composition of light, fire, wind is structured differently from Jake. Jim needed to understand the holy mana structure himself in order to utilize the holy mana like Jake. He even thought that understanding the process would improve and maybe learn a new mana sword technique. Currently, Jim was limited to neutral mana to either spin to create a mana sword or vibrate to increase the penetration power. His application of mana was limited and he wanted inspiration from holy mana.
As Jim was walking around the garden, he stumbled upon monkey fighting in the garden. Jim kept his distance and watched their fight. Two monkeys were screeching for a couple of minutes. All of a sudden, one monkey created a mana spear. Jim was shocked at this occurrence. The other monkey created a mana sword out of thin air. To create solid holy mana swords and spears out of nothing shocked Jim. Adding aura to weapons was a common tactic starting at tier 4, but no one ever managed to create actual aura weapons prior to this.
Jim was stunned. The sight of the monkeys wielding pure mana weapons had shattered his preconceived notions about the limits of mana manipulation. He had always believed that creating solid objects from pure mana was beyond the realm of human possibility.
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He spent the next few days observing the monkeys, fascinated by their agility, their ferocity, and their uncanny ability to wield mana with such precision. He noticed that the monkeys seemed to draw their mana directly from the environment, absorbing the ambient energy and shaping it into weapons with incredible speed and accuracy.
The monkey with the spear created some distance and started creating 10 spears around the original spear and threw it at the other monkey. Jim’s jaw dropped as he knew how hard it was to maintain 1 mana weapon but to create 10 in an instance was unheard of. Even among tier 6 players, only the top players could create multiple mana weapons let alone in an instance. As the spears arrived closer to the sword monkey, the sword monkey swung its mana sword at only one of the mana spear shattering it. The remaining 9 mana spears pierced the sword monkey; however, no damage was done.
Jim pondered an illusion with light magic, how interesting. Mana could also be used like this. As Jim continued watching, the sword monkey sliced three times in different directions nowhere close to the spear monkey. Jim was confused as there was no point in randomly swinging the sword that way. However, as soon as he thought about it, the three sword waves suddenly switched directions multiple times moving in an irregular pattern but ultimately landed at the spear monkey. The spear monkey was flew across the forest until it hit a large tree. Jim couldn’t follow the monkeys as the mana was too dense there.
Watching the fight brought inspiration with lots of things he wanted to experiment with. Jim walked back to where Jake was meditating and started theory crafting. Crafting mana sword illusions and switching directions in the middle of an attack was things he did not think of.
Jim, inspired by the monkey's astonishing display, started meticulously analyzing his own mana flow. He focused on refining his control, striving for the fluidity and precision he had witnessed in the monkeys' movements. He practiced creating small, ephemeral constructs – shimmering butterflies of light, wisps of swirling mist – honing his ability to shape and manipulate mana with greater finesse.
He began to experiment with illusions, drawing upon the lessons learned from the seemingly illusory spears. Previously, he was adept and moving mana but shaping mana was more difficult. Needles were easy to shape and were his bread and butter as a shape to control. Creating a sword of mana was much more difficult to create but he doesn’t have to fill the sword with mana. Instead, Jim practiced controlling light refractions to create a hollow sword mana. This was much easier to control as it was like controlling a beach ball compared to a basketball. Swinging around a beach ball which was essentially weightless was much easier that swinging a basketball around metaphorically. Jim was able to control 5 swords as a distraction to be used in fights. Now he could focus all of his efforts on what the sword monkey was doing.
From his initially memories, Jim analyzed the mana patterns the sword monkey used. He remembered the area around the sword monkey had almost like a static field around it. Some moments, the mana moved in one direction, other times, it moved in another direction. Almost like the wind was blowing left then right. Jim realized that might have been something similar to a mana zone. The way it uses a mana zone is to control the mana in a zone without moving the mana. That way, when someone enters the zone it feels like they would have to walk through water creating a resistance or drag slowing them down. The monkey was much more innovative as it moved the mana in a zone around it causing the mana blades to move and turn sharply making it unpredictable. If Jim can control this than he can cover not only his front but also his back creating a perfect defense. Jim started practicing moving his mana in a zone over and over for the rest of the day.
In the deeper parts of the garden, the young monkeys and a few senior monkeys watched Jim and was impressed that a human was able to copy their techniques fairly quickly, The senior monkey were less impressed as this was only rudimentary techniques. The monkeys soon retreated into the garden.