Chapter 47

I spent most of my time in the library going through the three books back and forth. I first used the first hour to go through the first book to get a pretty good idea of what kind of knowledge to expect from the two companion books, and where exactly to find what. Then I slowly went through the second book, browsing for shields that either looked cool to me, or I happened to notice a desirable property in their description. Then I would go back to the first and third books for more detailed information on the particular properties listed and how to go about creating that kind of shield.

By the time my five silver-hours came to an end, I had a splitting headache again, was thoroughly confused by everything I had read, and I had come to the conclusion that I needed to look for a book to take notes on, a notebook. The fact that Xan had commented about me taking notes meant that they were available, and maybe easy to get my hands on one of them.

I also realized that I had approached the three books the wrong way, I should have focused more on understanding the first book better before diving into the second one. In my defense, with how close the competition was, I didn’t feel like I had the time to take it slow with the books.

But in the end, it wasn’t in vain. Not only did I gain more in depth basic knowledge about shields, I also got a very welcome notification, the first in a few days.

‘{Congratulations, the Attribute [Intelligence] has leveled up!

[Intelligence: 29 -> 30]}’

As far as I knew, [Intelligence] hadn’t leveled up at all during the Baronies. At the time, I had been so busy trying to win my fights to give it any serious thought, but there were two weeks, eleven days to be exact, before the Counties officially began, I had the time to think about it. Especially since I did want to be more than an average Mana user.

‘Clare, what is wrong with [Intelligence]?’ I asked as I walked out of the library.

‘In what way?’ Clare responded.

Interacting with Clare always left me feeling like I was actually interacting with an actual person, like there was another person at the other end, and they were the ones coming up the replies that I got from Clare.

‘Is it not the Attribute responsible for my Mana Pool, or Points?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Then does it leveling up mean that my Mana Pool has also increased?’

‘I would think that was obvious.’

‘A simple yes would have been fine, you know.’

‘Then our interaction would become monotonous.’

‘You do not have to be so high and mighty about it.’

‘I will try to keep note of that for future reference.’

I couldn’t believe what I was actually arguing with Clare about, their personality!? I was getting distracted by trivial things again. I cleared my mind of those thoughts as I got back to what I had been perplexed about.

‘Anyway, does me learning new things mean I have access to more Mana? What exactly is Mana Pool?’

‘Mana Pool is the amount of Mana that can safely be kept stable inside your body.’

Stable? Did that mean there was unstable too? What did that mean exactly? Kaboom!? I hoped not. As much as I wanted to unravel that, there was still the issue of my Mana Pool growth. I shelved that for later, if I ever remembered.

‘Clare, we will talk about that part of stability later. I still do not understand how me reading and understanding things helps increase my Mana Pool, should actually working with Mana not do that?’

‘Gaining more knowledge helps you better be able to keep the Mana in you stable.’

‘But why am I not aware of me keeping my Mana stable?’

That would have been the first thing I noticed if I had to keep the supposedly unstable Mana stable within me.

‘It is an unconscious thing, the same with your heartbeat for example. It is something you have no control over, normally.’

‘So, you are saying that I could gain control over keeping my Mana stable?’ I asked in excitement. It should really have been worry, for someone who wasn’t exactly known for their responsibleness, I shouldn’t have been excited about that.

‘After gaining the necessary knowledge to do so, and through a lot of training.’

‘So if reading only helps me learn how to keep more Mana safely stable, how does my body gain the capability to store more Mana?’

‘Through training.’

‘What kind of training?’

‘Working with Mana.’

‘Like using it for Skills and such?’

‘No, working with Mana.’

‘What does that even mean?’ I asked perplexed, and in mild irritation.

Clare went silent for several seconds, and when they finally replied,

‘This is not something I can help you with.’

Of course not. I should have expected that, either Clare really didn’t know any simpler words to use to explain that to me, or the old restricted information issue had reared its ugly head again. But all that new information had left me very confused about [Intelligence].

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‘Then the Attribute should not be called [Intelligence], now should it?’

‘The Attributes are the relics of an old system from bygone eras.’

Eras? Plural? I decided to ignore that, completely.

‘It is a bit misleading. It should probably get changed to something that suits it better.’

‘Your input has been duly noted.’

‘Is it going to change anytime soon?’

‘I highly doubt it. You are not the first person to point that out.’

‘Of course, I am not.’

As that topic came to a close, I was finally able to give my surroundings a careful scrutiny after walking what I assumed was aimlessly for some time.

“Heee! What am I doing here?” I asked loudly.

I had somehow made it outside the gates of the city, which left two glaring questions for me; why had I walked outside the city, and how exactly did I know where the gate was? Last I checked, I didn’t know that.

‘I would think you were going to train outside the city.’

‘How do you know that? I did not know that, and I am me.’

‘It was an easy assumption, per your prior routine.’

I quietly resumed my walk on the road leading out of Choska City; I had had my suspicions that Clare had more access to my brain than they claimed to, if that wasn’t confirmation, I didn’t know what would be.

But I came to stop almost immediately when I realized a glaring problem with my plan, getting to the side of the road to allow a passing carriage through, there was no forest anywhere near the city. The land itself was relatively flat, allowing me to see from horizon to horizon, with stretches of cultivated fields the only thing to see.

I guess a city the size of Choska needs to feed its people.

But where was I supposed to go for my core training? Most of my training was embarrassing to watch to say the least, besides, I didn’t like being around other people while I tried to train myself new things. Polishing up my Skills was one thing, but initial Skill training was a no-no for an audience.

A kilometer or two might make me an indistinguishable figure, making it hard for people on the road to figure out what I was exactly doing, but I would need an area that wasn’t cultivated. The things Mana could do would leave a cultivated field completely ruined.

As I was about to turn back into the city, someone behind me asked, “Are you lost child?”

From the tone and the form of address, it was clear what kind of person was talking to me. I was partly of a mind to walk away from them, pretend like I hadn’t heard a word they said. But before I could make up my mind, they turned in on me, coming to stand in front of me.

It was an old woman, with the typical white-grey hair and such wizened old skin it had turned leathery. She had two very obvious blackspots on the sides of her face, one by each eye. Her back was stooped a little, leaving her with a posture that threatened to topple even with the slightest of breezes, she was even swaying on her feet as she stood there.

“Hmm?” she asked after our staring contest stretched to uncomfortable levels.

I was about to dismiss her before I realized that I had little to lose by telling her. “I was looking for a place to throw Mana balls, but it’s all fields out here.”

“Are you one of them competitors?” she asked, giving me a scrutinizing appraisal.

“Something like that,” I told her. Even though I was actually participating in The Grand Competition, sometimes it didn’t feel like I was a competitor, more like a pretender to the title.

The scrutinizing look slowly morphed into something akin to pity, before she shook her head and looked one way, then another.

“An hour-walk that way, you’ll find a large stone to the left of the road,” she said, pointing to a branch of the road that led away from the direction we, Xan and I, had come from. “Take the foot path to the right for a half kilometer, there is a grass field that hasn’t been cultivated for a while now.”

“I don’t think anyone will mind,” she added, as an afterthought.

“Thanks,” I told her, but she was already walking away, leaving me perplexed. I was used to the old people wanting to talk for long when they got the chance to, especially to the younger generation.

I began my journey on a fast pace before switching to a fast run when I remembered how little time I had left for the day. I didn’t know whether the gate-guards would prevent me entering the city at night, and I didn’t want to risk it.

It took me less than half an hour to make it to the grass field. It looked like a farm that had been left furrow for too long, and with the absence of domesticated animals to feed on the grass, it had completely taken over. But looking closely, I noticed that someone must have harvested the grass at some point very recently.

I was scared that it might still be someone’s, so I decided to just work on the shields I had read on. I realized that I could have done that at my own room at The Competitors’ Inn. But then consoled myself with the fact that I wouldn’t have had that run if I had stayed in my room. I decided to have a much more demanding run on my way back. For compensation.

I began with the simple shield I had learnt on my own. I wanted to feel the difference between the shields, if I successfully created one of the new ones I had read about. Gathering the Mana and activating the Skill felt like an old habit of mine, so smooth and effortless, I guess that subconscious controller was really a thing.

It had been a while since I last used it, and with my current level of advancement in wisdom, I could already feel a few areas where I was doing things wrong, inefficiently, leading to wastage of Mana. I tried to correct those mistakes, but that turned out to be a hard task to accomplish. Every time I tried shaping the Mana to fit what I thought would be better, it would always snap back to how it had been before. After a few failed attempts, I gave up on it.

I moved on to the simplest of the shields I had read on, it wasn’t exactly the simplest I had seen in the books, but it was the simplest that offered the kind of protection I was looking for, Mana protection. The idea, theory, behind shielding against Mana was first being able to make Mana express itself tangibly without it taking form of an already existing component. So, nothing like fire, water, etcetera. That was my issue from the beginning, the only Mana expression I had achieved were my weak shields, the rest of the Skills I had involved Mana expressing itself as something else.

For something to be tangible, it had to have mass and occupy space, in one way or another. Mana, sadly, didn’t have mass as far as I knew. Maybe there were advanced books that would later tell me that it did, but the few that I had read claimed that it didn’t, but occupy space it did. The little physics I could remember talked about how what we thought was mass was just bundles of energy, or something like that. I really was butchering physics, but in my defense, I hadn’t crammed anything prior to my death. Not that it would have stayed, what with the rude awakening I got.

With that in mind, I pictured the energy needed to slash through an imaginary opponent in front of me, gathering the Mana I felt would be necessary, coalescing it in my right hand, before pushing it out as I swung my staff out at an arch.

Nothing happened, at all. I waited belatedly for something to happen because I had felt the Mana leave me, and my Status showed clearly that I had used up Mana, but nothing happened.

‘Clare, what happened? Something should have happened, I know it should have,’ I complaint to the one person, thing… Daimon that I knew could have an answer.

‘Your staff is a poor conductor of Mana.’

The statement was so simple, and devastating. What did Clare mean my staff was a poor conductor? I had been using it ever since I learnt how to use Mana, and everything worked just fine. And I told Clare that.

‘That is different from what you are trying to do now. Expressing Mana in its raw form means being as efficient as you possibly can. Your body has Mana channels that Mana uses, your staff does not. When the Mana reaches the staff, it struggles to get through.’

‘What about my other Skills that I use the staff for?’

‘You do not. You think you do, but you do not.’

That left me flabbergasted, I had been doing things all wrong the whole time. That wasn’t exactly true, I had been doing things right, I just thought about it all wrong. Did that mean…

‘Did the subconscious controller thing compensate for me?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about [Staff Shield]? Surely—’

‘You use the staff as a reference for how you want the shield to work, but nothing really goes through it.’

It was the first time I was learning that there were poor conductors of Mana, at least I thought it was. Looking back, I couldn’t even tell whether the Skills were really beginning to express themselves at the end of the staff or it had just looked like that to me. Just how off was I?