Elaria had made a terrible miscalculation. She had been so excited about her revelation and the implications and possibilities for her own growth that she had forgotten something crucial. In her eagerness to experiment she’d taken in as much natural mana as possible without regard for the limits of her own mana pool. If she was to use the same measures as the Chain, then the amount of the earth mana she’d drawn into herself was equivalent to around 150 points. That was just over triple what her body could handle. As the pure mana kept flooding into her body, she felt her mana veins tremble and strain.
Her body was on fire. The pain was unimaginable. Every single bone, muscle and organ was crying out as mana started to leak from her circulatory system into her physical body. The effects weren’t pretty. As the mana made contact it began to dissolve her skeleton and her muscles. Her focus was slipping. Notifications from the Chain blossomed into view one after another as she desperately tried to take back control over her mana. She would not be held hostage by power of her own making. The raw mana continued to eat away at her body, but through sheer force of will, Elaria ignored the agonising pain and set her mind to a singular focus.
She needed to find a way to release the excess mana before it destroyed her completely. Firestorm was an option, probably the quickest way to vent the surging energy that continued to push against the limits of her mana veins. She didn’t want to hurt Luna accidentally however, and there was the very high risk of completely collapsing the cavern on top of them with the explosion that would create. Magnetic Pull actually seemed like the best choice, given that it would have the added benefit of destroying a large chunk of the stonescale serpents as well as alleviating Elaria’s current predicament.
It was worth a try. Briefly shifting her focus outside her own body, Elaria took note of where the most stonescale serpents were gathered, currently barraging Luna with torrents of rock. She remembered the feel of the magnetic mana. Resonating in waves, excitable yet steady. Selecting a point in the middle of the monsters, she started to convert the raging mana into the spell. Rather than allow it to start magnetising, Elaria forced the construct to remain dormant until she finished channelling. Despite the sheer agony she was in, it was surprisingly easy to push the mana into the spell. It was hers after all, and she had complete control.
Elaria wasn’t sure it made sense, but apparently natural mana was of a greater purity than her internal mana. Not purity, but perhaps quality? Even after pushing what she thought to be around 150 mana into this colossal Magnetic Pull, her mana veins were still full to bursting and the torrential flow from her mana well had only diminished by around half. Unfortunately, her skill with mana manipulation was still rather rudimentary and she was unable to hold the shape of the spell much longer. It had lessened the pain, if only by a little, so she released her hold. The effect was astounding.
Elaria was beginning to wonder if she was an idiot. Yes, Firestorm underground was a risky move due to the risk of blowing up the cavern. Why she had thought that using Magnetic Pull would be any less of a risk was anyone’s guess. It was certainly effective at dealing with the snakes though, she idly noted while returning her focus to her still overflowing mana. Interestingly, her mana veins had seemed to have expanded slightly under the constant barrage of energy. There was less mana leaking into her body now, though the damage was already severe. Even her most vital organs like her heart and lungs did not escape the corrosion. Frankly she wasn’t sure how she was managing to stay conscious or standing. The benefit of the vitality and fortitude stats presumably.
Her mana sense informed her that there were no stonescale serpents left. Every cloud had a silver lining, she supposed. Elaria would celebrate once she was able to get through the more imminent threat of her own mana. There was still a ridiculous amount of mana cycling through her body and flowing from her mana well. The walls of the pit were crumbling as all the magnetic ores within were dragged into her overwhelmingly powerful spell, causing the stability of the cavern to plummet dangerously. Elaria vaguely felt Luna dragging her away from the walls, unable to withdraw her focus from inside her body for even a moment.
She began to weave a spell, pushing as much of the overflowing mana into the growing construct as possible, transforming the pure mana into a domed shield of rock and earth to protect the two of them from the falling rubble as the cavern collapsed. It was far larger than it needed to be to protect them, but Elaria had to strike a balance between making it an effective defence and casting a large enough spell that it would actually help to vent the excess mana threatening her life. Thankfully it did the job and her mana well finally ran dry having converted all the earth affinity mana to internal mana.
Elaria finally relaxed a little, letting her focus drop and simply falling into the warm, comfy fur of the huge wolf laying beside her. “Thanks for the cover, girl. I think I’m gonna take a quick nap, wake me up if the kobolds start attacking,” she whispered, eyes already closing.
There were tens of notifications from the Chain, but they could wait until she’d had a little rest. That was weird. Why was the nearby mana creeping towards her? Oh no. Oh no no no. It was slow at first, just a few of the excitable particles edging closer and closer, but soon all of the mana within twenty-five metres of her was rushing directly at Elaria. Specifically, her mana well. Gods damned class. Would it kill the mana to love her just a little bit less? She’d practically almost died from her misguided attempt to convert just a little of the natural mana for her own use, so how was she supposed to deal with nearly thirty times as much in one go?
Simply casting spells over and over to use it up wouldn’t be enough here. A huge Firestorm might do the job, but that had the risk of completely eviscerating her and Luna along with it, defeating the point of casting the spell in the first place. There had to be a better way to deal with it. A terrifying thought occurred to Elaria. Maybe typical mages never messed with their mana wells due to the danger and she’d committed an insanely life threatening blunder when forcing the natural mana into herself.
Thanks to the wonder of stats, her brain was running at almost five times the speed it had done when she was a regular unimproved human back in her old life. Even then she was struggling to come up with an idea of how to use the thousands of points of mana she was about to gain once her mana well started to convert the incoming natural mana. She felt a pulse of energy from her pocket and was reminded of the mana core she’d obtained by defeating the little stonescale serpent earlier. Maybe it would be useful? Elaria tried to send some of her own mana into the little grey sphere, but it refused to move.
Desperate, she tried a multitude of ways to get the mana core to somehow respond. It had been pulsing with energy in response to the overwhelming flow of natural mana, so surely it should be able to do something to help her out. Attempting to ‘activate’ the core with her own mana, pushing some of the natural mana towards the core, casting one of her skills at the core - all yielded no results. A sensible person, which Elaria seemed to be less and less these days, would have then ignored the mana core and gone back to brainstorming solutions to the rapidly approaching mana torrent.
Elaria’s decision, borne of desperation and fatigue, was instead to take the mana core and toss it into her mouth, biting down on the glassy ball with a satisfying crunch that shattered it into little shards that looked like they should be absolutely slicing her tongue and throat to pieces, but actually went down rather smoothly. The mana core was warm and tasted strangely of cinnamon. It didn’t provide any mana, bless the goddess, as that would have compounded the incoming problem, instead she could feel a new energy, not quite mana but weirdly similar, flooding through her body and actually starting to repair the damage that the leaking mana caused previously.
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Perhaps due to the mana core only being common grade, the healing effect stopped after a few seconds having only restored about half of the bone and muscle that was destroyed. With no other ideas springing to mind, Elaria decided to finally check the notifications to see if any of the stonescale serpents that she’d obliterated with the colossal Magnetic Pull earlier had dropped a mana core, only to be shocked senseless by the sheer volume of blue boxes that flooded her vision.
Due to your actions your skill has evolved!
Mana Sense -> Advanced Mana Sense
You have defeated Stonescale Serpent x23
+1253 XP
Heavy Stone x23
Stone Scale x9
Stone Fangs x2
Mana Core (Common) x3
Mana Core (Uncommon) x1
You have levelled up x2!
+2 stat points
Due to your actions you have earned a skill!
Mana Conversion
Due to your actions your skill has evolved!
Mana Conversion -> Advanced Mana Conversion
Due to your actions you have earned a skill!
Earthen Shield
Erect a defensive barrier of earth that protects the caster and allies from harm
That was… interesting. Elaria immediately invested the stat points into intelligence, getting her to a total of 10 points in the stat, which provided another exponential jump in her mana pool, as well as her mana regeneration, although the latter was really not very beneficial at this moment in time. She could now store a total of 66 mana at a time, which normally she’d be ecstatic about, but the extra twenty or so points would barely make a difference when her mana veins were about to get flooded with thousands of points worth of the stuff.
The healing effect of the mana core had given her the start of a plan, but with just the three common cores and the single uncommon mana core, she was unlikely to be able to heal the damage that the sheer volume of mana would cause to her body, unless the jump in potency from common to uncommon grade was ridiculously high. At the very least, she could start by funnelling as much mana into her body as the healing would allow and then hope a better plan came to her. If all else failed, then the kobolds were about to receive a rather fiery introduction to the girl who’d invaded their home dungeon.
Upon releasing her Earthen Shield, as the Chain had named it, Elaria noticed that the collapse of the serpent pit had revealed a huge stone gate decorated with intricate carvings of kobolds of all the myriad varieties. At least she knew where to aim the Firestorm if her slightly less trigger happy plan failed. Luckily for her, the four mana cores were pulsing similarly to the one in her pocket and she was able to locate them easily with her Mana Sense. Advanced Mana Sense. Were all her skills going to change names constantly as they improved? That would get really annoying to keep track of, especially if it happened in bursts like just then.
The first bit of pure mana flowed from her mana well, just a trickle at first, but given that it was produced from a single particle of the earth affinity mana, that was enough to show just how much was about to flood out. Elaria grit her teeth and sat down to prepare for the searing pain that was to come. As the first bits of mana leaked from her mana veins and started to dissolve her body once more, she bit into a second mana core, barely halting the corrosion for more than a second before it continued at a greater intensity. Not good.
She swallowed the third mana core, then the fourth, yet the deluge of mana showed no signs of slowing and her body was in an even worse state than it had been from the first attempt at mana conversion. The uncommon core was much tougher and took a few heavy bites to crush. It went down smoothly however, this time tasting of nutmeg. Elaria wondered what a rare grade mana core would taste like. Cardamom? Cloves? The effect of the uncommon grade core was wildly stronger than the common grades, actually fully restoring her decimated body and holding back against the tide of mana for nearly ten seconds.
It wasn’t enough. Elaria guessed she’d thrown about eight hundred points of mana into herself and yet the endless flow from her mana well showed no signs of slowing. All of a sudden, there was a wave of mana that pulsed from her spine and she noticed the bone had begun to glisten in a gentle blue hue.