The caravan is essentially what the name said it is, a group of carriages, travelling to a similar location in a group, in order to improve safety and chances of survival. It also allows trades to occur during the trip, just in case people have forgotten essential supplies.

Anyways, the registration of this caravan is at the northern gate of the town, while we entered the town from the western gate. We need to register our goods we are carrying, as well as the number of people travelling, with the guild, since they will be the ones in charge or guarding us.

On that note, when they say 'guarding us' they only mean keeping watch during the nights for monster, and nothing else. The actual guarding of one must be done by one's self! So they just take money and go on night scout duty? What a rip off!

Anyway, that was all I heard from the driver on our way to the caravan. He also told me his name was Ainz, and he has a granddaughter who was the fiancé of a city lord's son, but due to some accident, the heir to the position of city lord was lost. And the one responsible for making her a widow, took her has his bride as compensation, and now she is married to a knight of justice, under the king Erigor of the Krothgaurd kingdom.

...

"We are here to register ourselves for the caravan!" exclaimed Ainz, as he passed the fees to the spectacled man at the desk

"Ah, you are just in time, we were about to pack up and leave. Ok so are you carrying any goods?"

"No, just my customers" said Ainz as he pointed at us.

"Alright, then 4 people, including one unconscious and one carriage driver. Ok, you can go on in and join the rest of the caravan. Currently, there are about 17 carriages, most of which are merchant carriages. 2 of them are passenger carriages including yours, and one of them is for the adventurers accompanying you. Good luck on you journey, and may Kain bless you all."

Apparently, most of the people in the Krothgaurd Kingdom, and its allied forces worship the god of the sky, Kain. Legend has it that initially, Thy all worshipped the god of strength and valour, Brut. But since the empire took over, they forced the general public to follow the Kain. Rumours say that some secret communities are still worshipping Brut, going against the entire empire!

And we were off, on a 4 day long journey, to the capital.

...

It has already been an entire day, and now we have set up camp for the night, a little while off the main road. I have learned a lot of things while experimenting.

Firstly, I tried to force some of the surrounding mana into my mana pool, but that almost caused my mana pool to break! I tried my best to heal the crack, which were fixed, after forcing my mana to condense into a single spot, at the crack, sealing it permanently, one crack at a time. Once I finished that, I realised that Krog was also using mana at the time. And so I spent some mana in the form of a healing spell meant for stamina, on the entire caravan. That depleted almost 1/2 of my mana! Anyway, then I absorbed as much surrounding mana as I could, and my mana streams were damaged, just like Krog's. That was terribly bad! While I was trying the same process of healing on my mana streams, it hurt like crazy. Each time I concentrated my mana, my hand at first went numb, but a second later it felt like something within every cell of every bone and every muscle in that area was being crushed, and then reformed, over and over again! I had no continue this process for nearly an hour, and Krog began to worry.

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"Jon, are you alright? You are sweating like a morse!" For those who don't know, a morse is a 4 meter large pig, whole meat is considered a delicacy in Taberna.

"No, I'm fine. I will be meditating for a while, just keep a lookout on things for me and Shem."

"Leave that to me!"

With this, I tried to do the same process, but with a few changes. I tried to, during the first attempt, reduce the amount of mana I remove from my mana pool. During the second attempt, I tried to reduce the mana I sucked in from the surroundings. Two thing happened during these attempts. Firstly, both the attempts did indeed reduce the amount of damage my mana streams received, I mean mana channels. I like this term better, it reminds me of those cultivation novel that I loved so much. They were my go to option when I was bored of work and Divinity. Anyways, the second thing was that, although the pain was there, the time it took to complete the repairs to my channels was far lesser now. I finished 2 cycles of this crude cultivation method within another hour!

It was now lunch time, but none of the carriages stopped. All the carriages had packed lunched, and so did we. While enjoying the food from the inn, preserved in ice magic, I noticed something odd. One of the carriages were giving off a large amount of mana, a lot of which was moving towards me. However, it was soon retracted, possible after seeing that I noticed I was being spied upon. That was probably the level 3 mage Ainz was talking about.

Anyway, It is not like he would want to harm me, right? Just in case, I spent some mana on a detection and ward spell, which will tell me is some unknown object, being or force, like mana enters it. It will also keep unwanted surveillance magic out, and block their vision. Handy isn't it?

There was one last thing I wanted to try. What would happen if I completely empty my mana, and then replace all of it? And so I tried it, keeping some of my mana in its original form just in case of emergencies during this process, or any unforeseen circumstances. I then spent all the rest on lowering the blistering heat of the afternoon sun, by calling on some clouds to block the sky, and creating a light breeze both inside and outside my carriage, both frightening most people, and alleviating some of their tiredness from the long journey. But I had only spent half of my mana, So I spent the other half on random buffs on the horses on all the carriages, as well as friction reduction on the wheel and axels of the carriages. Then I quickly absorbed all the mana in a 500 meter radius! Then, something unimaginable happened. A muffled thud came from my body, before I could feel it. Another centre of something illusive being formed above my mana pool. It was not quick solidified just yet, but it was present none the less. This process also didn't require me to fix my channels!

After a full body check-up using my mana sense, I figured out two things. Firstly, my mana had grown to an insane degree within an hour's time! When I cultivated the first three times, the combined effort resulted in my mana increasing by 1% of what it initially was. I seems that the more mana you have, the less effective the mana is. However, now that I seem to have formed that illusive pool, my mana has skyrocketed to about 2 times what it initially was. Which means I should have enough mana to rival that of a level 4 mage! My mana seems to have also developed to be more potent, not by a lot, but enough to make a difference in battle. Lastly, my channels seem to have improved greatly, and now I can call upon my mana, filter it and release it more easily and quickly. This means that I can effectively spam level one spells like candy on Halloween, endlessly. Well, not exactly, but you get the point. I can overwhelm opponents of my level with just sheer volume of spells.

The other thing I discovered is that my physical body has improved. greatly! It has improved to the point that instead of needing mana to jump 3 meters, I can do it with raw muscle power, and instead of infusing mana into my bones to support mana strengthening, they have become strong enough to support themselves for regular level one enhancements. My speed and reflexes, along with the speed at which my mind works has also greatly improved.

Well anyway, I now have a very unstable cultivation method!! I just need to experiment some more before I can give it to Krog and Shem. The reason for this, because I want them to live as long, if not longer than I do!

...

"Anyway, I have the rest of the trip ahead me, I'd better get some rest!" I said as I went to sleep

...

The next morning, a loud bang wake up every one!