For about a month, Alice trained her strengthening emulation with Rachel. The latter had gotten quickly used to her strengthening magic and excelled at speed boosts. While using her magic, her strength was between three and four times greater than men her age.

Alice found Rachel to be a tough opponent and she was now in a bind. The reduction of kinetic energy depended entirely on the mana density of Alice’s mana armor. If the mana was sparse, it would only slow Rachel’s punches down a bit. With a high density, they would lose all their energy and their momentum. As it happened, Alice had enough mana to completely dampen Rachel’s strengthened punches. The problem was the mana that remained in her body, or rather the lack of it: pretty much all of it was used to get enough density in the armor to negate Rachel’s strikes anywhere on her body. As such, Alice wasn’t able to use her strengthening emulation at the same time. Even if she could, Alice’s speed boost would force the spell to actualize the mana layer’s position even more frequently to follow her, and it would thus be even more costly. In the end, it was either defense or offense. Against a strengthening mage who could do both at the same time, it was apparent that Alice would ultimately lose.

She could probably use her fast mana recovery spell to get back the mana she used for her armor, but she didn’t want to show too much of her magic to other people. Moreover, if Rachel saw this, she would realize that their magic didn’t actually match and she would probably get depressed.

(That’s a no-go.)

Therefore, Alice decided to use most of her mana to create an incomplete kinetic-style armor and kept the rest to strengthen her muscles. The density of the armor wasn’t enough to completely neutralize the punches, but she could tank most of their energy.

Still, they were punches thrown by a strengthening mage, and only two-thirds were negated. As such, Alice had to take on many hits equivalent to those of an adult man without being able to defend herself. This was truly painful for Alice, who had bruises almost every time she went to the Vallmonts’ manor. Lucius, the healing mage working for the Vallmonts, was exasperated.

Of course, Rachel was not mean and tried to convince Alice to let her slow down her punches, but the latter refused. After all, if she could not deal with it, it meant her magic was not that powerful and inferior to strengthening magic.

Alice’s strategy was to create just enough instantaneous power to dodge Rachel’s strikes but, even so, she never had the opportunity to actually hit back. Alice’s main problem was her mana which, even as a noble, wasn’t keeping up with her custom spells.

Somehow, she needed more mana before the fight even began.

As she thought of a way to save her mana somewhere in order to use it later when she wanted to, Alice recalled that her instructor, Serena, talked about such a thing in the past.

(That might work! I’ll ask her next time.)

***

Alice and Serena were drinking tea in the guest room of the Ravendalls’ mansion. It was currently raining, so Serena had had to interrupt her pupil’s training. Alice was taking glances at her teacher while wondering how she could introduce that subject. Mia, her maid, was giving her nods, surely to encourage her to speak up. Ultimately, Alice got the resolve and decided now was a good time.

“So, I was wondering… Do you happen to know how to procure me that artifact you talked about some time ago?”

“You will have to be a little more descriptive, Alice. I often talk about artifacts.”

“Um… The one that saves up mana?”

“Ah, that one. Only the royal family has it, so you obviously can’t get one.”

“I seem to remember that you said you had done some research to reproduce it, though.”

“I did, but I couldn’t actually finish it.”

“Why is that? How does the original even work?”

“Well, I have no definitive answer on how the real one works. As you might guess, it’s not a topic that nobles like to share about… The only thing we know is that you can put your mana into the artifact and retrieve almost all of it at a later time.”

“It does not sound that hard to reproduce, does it?”

“Sure, putting your own mana in a confined box sounds simple enough, but it’s really not. The thing is, mana decays when it's marked with the signature of a mage.“

“It does...?”

"Yes. Even worse, the denser the mana, the faster the decay. If I put your entire mana pool in a little box, I'm sure it would be lost in an hour or two."

"Huh..."

(If this decay depends on the mana density and on whether it's marked with a mage's frequency, could that decay be related to destructive interferences? Does that make mana more like a wave? Wait... Mana getting unstable the more it's condensed kind of rings a bell.)

“Does it not sound like the aftermath of my pseudo-annihilation…?”

“Mmh... You might be right. You said the generated mana was so compressed it exploded, right? Well, at this point, I'm not even sure we can call it compression... Mana is supposed to merely disappear as it decays, not explode.”

(Considering how dense mass energy is, It's not that difficult to imagine how violent the interferences were at that time...)

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“So... Do you have models to describe the speed at which mana disappears?”

“You see, that's where it gets even weirder. For a given density of mana, half of it is lost in a certain period of time. That period is a constant for that density and is roughly equal to one day if we're considering the average density of mana as it leaves the body. Therefore, if left at that standard density, this amount of mana halves itself every day. In three days, only an eighth of the original mana will remain. Weird, right?”

“Huh… Are you trying to say mana has a half-life that differs for each density or something?”

“Mmh? 'half-life'?”

“I mean, what you are describing sounds like an exponential decay, so…”

“...”

“... Forget it.”

(Does that mean that mana behaves like a bunch of radioactive isotopes? Then... Is mana made of particles rather than being a wave? If it can exhibit wave-like properties, is this a case of wave-particle duality? Just what the heck is mana, anyway?)

The nature and the origin of mana truly were mysterious. It was often called the power of life since its anabolism was limited to living beings. Bacteria, fungi, archaea, protists, plants, animals and monsters all generated mana, while inanimate things such as rocks didn’t. In the mythologies and religions of this world, there were an astounding number of stories in which the gods breathed life into ordinary matter by injecting mana.

“Alright, I understand why just putting mana into a box is not enough. So, why does it work with the real artifact then?”

“Again, the royal family doesn’t want to tell us. But I have my theory.”

“Which is?”

“The real deal might neutralize the caster’s mana as well. This way, there are no more interferences and it slows down the decay of mana significantly. This is the principle behind mana potions, by the way.”

“So, you are saying that you tried reproducing a royal artifact with merely a mana potion? It sounds a bit heretic.”

“Yeah. It’s fortunate that at that time I was under Master Viktor’s wing, who swore his loyalty to the king. That sure helped.”

“And what is exactly this neutralization principle?”

“I don’t really have the right to reveal the formula but it’s a liquid that, let’s say, dissolves mana and stores it. With one or two other steps, it is possible to separate the mana from the liquid again and, when it’s done, the mana has lost the frequency it had originally been marked with. Do you know what that means?”

“... That anybody can use that mana by marking it with their own frequency?”

“Yup, precisely. In the case of mana potions, we make people drink that liquid and the mana separates from it inside their bodies. By doing so, the body automatically marks that new mana. It’s not much, but it can at the very least save people from severe mana deprivation.”

This was basically chemistry, with a touch of fantasy to it. It wasn’t Alice’s former self’s specialty, but she still was extremely used to performing experiments. The idea of assisting Serena in potion-making didn’t sound too bad, after all.

“Did you not say something about mana being lost during that neutralization process, once?”

“I… I did. At the time I researched this pseudo-artifact, I had to give up because there was no benefit whatsoever in using a mana potion as a storing artifact… Because people would have to give away all their mana pool to save up at most 20% of it, even when carefully following the flow of mana to minimize the losses. And even then, I could only make it so the period of the decay was two days because, besides what happens with that royal artifact, the neutralization process can supposedly never be perfect.”

Serena slowly raised her head and looked at Alice with a newly lit fire in her eyes.

“... With that being said, if I had a walking mana factory nearby, it might just be possible to store a great quantity of mana without relying on people being paid to have their mana drained all day long!!”

“C-calm down?”

“As I said before, with your mana-recovering spell, even without properly following the flow of mana, we could still ensure a 5% efficiency, maybe more! Not only would we revolutionize the industry of mana potions, but I could finally finish my research by successfully reproducing a royal artifact!!”

“K-keep it down! Did you not say that I should not tell anybody about my ability to generate mana?!”

“Ah, that’s true. There is that.”

“Hmph. If you truly wish to build your artifact, you can give it to me. I promise I will use it in your honor.”

“What’s that attitude now? You were very clearly the one asking me where to procure one for yourself earlier…”

“I-I need it, okay?! I might just be the only one in the world who can use it anyway, so why not give it to me?!”

Serena grinned. At last, she had found some leeway to finally negotiate with Alice. Her dream of making her pupil become her assistant was finally in the palm of her hand.

“If I make you this pseudo-artifact, I want you to conjure your ‘Ortu Solis’ or whatever every time I come here. You will put your near-infinite mana into all my stocks of potions, to the point that they will be saturated with mana. Understood?”

Alice felt like she would be losing her dignity if she accepted this offer after having refused so many times in the past. Still, it wouldn’t cost her much to do it. The spell was automatic, anyway. She would just be needed to start the spell and deactivate it. Incidentally, if Alice forgot to stop the spell for a little more than half a day, it would become a giant black square with an area of one hectare that orientated itself towards its star. This would be even bigger than an international football field. Surely, a lot of people would see this and freak out. By that time, it would have generated no less than two hundred fifty gigajoules of mana and would still produce ten megajoules every second. So, even though it was autonomous, it would still be necessary for Alice to monitor the spell.

Alice grimaced and reluctantly accepted the deal, while Serena was beaming.

The rain didn’t stop, so they spent their afternoon drinking tea inside.