Chapter 17 - Greater sight

His body was definitely stronger than before by almost half, which was truly remarkable considering how strong he had already become. He immediately activated his body enhancement spell, tried to recall what it felt like when the water trapped the mana, and attempted to replicate the effect.

It was no easy feat but Adam eventually realized that by forming a dense magical perimeter just beneath his skin, it would act as a mana barrier for his body. It was impossible to properly cover his body in a dense layer of mana at the moment so he instead tried to localize the effect.

If he could make himself even stronger with his enhancement spell and hold it for prolonged periods, then he would likely get it upgraded to a refined spell and help him cover his whole body with a layer of insulating mana like the effect of the water.

He was now confident enough to venture further and leave behind his precious fading oasis. His extra strength would make hunting even easier and he had a hunch that he would find more mana beasts if he retraced the paths all those lizards came from. With his waterskin full of the pond's water and his stomach filled with as much smocked lizard meat as he could keep down, Adam once again left his sanctuary for the open desert.

After almost an hour of following the rough path across the wasteland, Adam came upon something new. It was a large stone outcropping and looked like swiss cheese. There were holes all over the place, some directly in the ground and others that looked like cave entrances. Most looked surprisingly round as if they had been carved by lasers.

He assumed that this was where all those lizards lived since the only creatures he had seen live out in the open were the small birds. He was eager to put his new gains to the test but hesitated to go inside. The caves were home to the beasts so they would have the advantage. Not to mention that he didn’t have a light. He tried to push more mana into his eyes but not to view mana. He instead focused on enhancing his vision without over-cranking mana sight.

It was a difficult thing to get right since he was so used to controlling his mana sight spell since he had it active almost in perpetuity. He eventually managed to give himself better eyesight but it was hard to get just right.

Mana was great but it wasn’t perfect, he could enhance his eyes to be sharper and see clearer but his brain also needed to be enhanced to process that extra information if he wanted to have the pseudo nightvision up for long periods.

He had been trying to augment his eyes to see in the dark without using the mana sight part of the spell with some surprising success. When he was happy with his current vision, he decided to see what would happen if he also turned on mana sight and was shocked at the result.

He was standing at the entrance to one of the cave tunnels as he attempted to have his eyes gleam more details of the tunnel's walls. It looked like the world was a mix of black and grey but it was enough to make out most of the important details.

When he activated his mana sight on top of that out of simple curiosity, the entire tunnel lit up in a white light. It wasn’t the flashbang effect from when he first discovered he could upgrade his eyes but rather like he was standing in a white laboratory room. His eyes were no longer struggling to see since the walls were now as clear as ever.

The ambient mana was abundant in this world and many plants and animals depend on it for survival. Apparently, it also had a role to play in the formation of rocks and caves as the stone was filled with mana.

His experimentation with upgrading his eyes also seemed to work on upgrading his mana sight as he could never see mana inside rocks before. Just as he was considering what this meant, a buzz sounded in his mind.

Adam Hartwell

Mana core: [grey - middle - (???)]

??? (???): [???]

Spells:

- [greater sight - crude - uncommon]

- [mana blades - crude - uncommon]

- [enhancement - crude - common]

(???)

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“Wait, my only refined spell is back to crude… What madness is this you evil system.”

The outrage of the situation soon died down though since he discovered how much better his eyes were. He could now seamlessly merge his sight and mana sight together but more importantly was that his normal sight was now incredibly more detailed and focused.

He focused on a spot at the end of the tunnel and was surprised that his eyes seemed to zoom in on the spot the more he focused on it. It was like his eyes had gotten a telescopic lens to be able to see further. Not to mention that he was currently looking into a dark tunnel where no light could reach.

His new augmented eyes could see mana as if he was watching dust float around in a sunbeam of a dark house. His previous mana sight let him see blurry white lights in various amounts of density. He had no idea mana could be so clear and beautiful before. The lights were dancing and swirling in the air.

His new spell seemed to use his focus as the controller to see both the mana and the real world. If he focused on the small amount of ambient mana all around him, then the detail of that mana and its true abundant quantity would come into view and block out anything else.

Inversely, when he focused on a spot in the open desert behind him, despite the light difference, his eyes adapted instantly without issue and he could see the individual blades of grass in the distance with extreme clarity despite his vision being entirely filled with the white mana only moments before.

“Okay system, I take that back. This is so much better than the refined spell”

He noticed that the rarity of the spell had moved up from common to uncommon but didn’t know what that ranking system was based on. He was alone with nobody to compare his status with and no standard knowledge of magic. One certain thing was that the uncommon spells were so much more powerful than the common ones.

He now didn’t think that refining a spell was as important as developing rarer spells since the stark difference between his refined common skill and a crude uncommon was enormous. This only left him with one common spell and that was the enhancement spell.

He believed that recreating the effect that the water had was the key to upgrading that spell but that would have to wait as he now had no reason to drag his feet any longer and headed into a random cave.

Getting lost and ambushed were his two main scenarios to avoid so he carved arrows into the walls the best he could with his blade claw. These claws had served him well but they were starting to struggle against the mana-infused tunnel walls.

Adam once again tried to coat the clade of his weapon in a protective mana coat and this time, it worked quite well. He didn’t want to blunt the blade by scraping it against the wall and fusing a mana blade onto his weapon was actually doable now with all his upgrades. It wasn’t something he could fight with yet and required a lot more mana than it should but it at least helped carve his markers on the walls as he navigated the large and snaking tunnels.

He hadn’t seen any defining features or signs of unusual activity in the tunnels so he simply kept going in random directions whenever the tunnel split off.

It was after over half an hour of carefully navigating the tunnel as it went up and down that he finally heard something in the distance. The tunnels weren’t rounded like the entrance but more like mining shafts, with fairly even sizes but it looked like it was dug out by a giant worm since it turned and moved in a seemingly random direction.

His upgraded sight was a little more magically draining than the previous version but he was still able to replenish his core rather fast down in the tunnels, meaning he could keep it up indefinitely and it would only eat up about a tenth of his mana. That left plenty for fighting or running away in the case of trouble.

With his blade out and to the ready, he quietly crept forward toward the strange sounds coming from further down the tunnel. When he finally laid his eyes upon the beast, a shiver traveled through his entire body. A large tarantula spider was in the process of fighting a large armored lizard.

The winner of the fight wasn’t obvious to Adam as he observed the scene. Both creatures were red cores and moved with tremendous speed. The spider didn’t use any webs but instead navigated the large tunnel with its eight strong legs that all had spikes on the end. It seemed to want to corner the lizard who was far larger than the grey cores Adam had seen before and a lot faster too.

The fight went on for a few minutes until the lizard decided that fighting the spider wasn’t worth it and managed to run away. The thought of killing the winner in a surprise attack in order to obtain two red cores was now completely shattered as Adam made his retreat away from the scene before the spider decided he would make a good snack.

He went down a different passageway and this time he was in luck. An insect-like creature similar to an ant was making its way towards him and it was only a grey core.

Activating enhancement and summoning a mana blade, he engaged the creature as soon as it got close to his intersecting tunnel. The grey-cored creature was about the size of a pony with six legs and two powerful-looking mandibles.

He sent the white blade flying straight for the ant's head as he emerged onto the creature's path and started to charge it before the spell even hit its target. The giant insect reacted in time to avoid the fatal blow to its head but the mana blade still caused serious damage to the side of its face.

Before the creature could process the situation, Adam was upon the injured and disoriented beast and rammed his weapon into its neck. He yanked it down and across in a smooth motion in an attempt to swiftly decapitate the creature.

He was partially successful but only managed to sever half of its neck before his claw blade shattered and a powerful bite attempt from the insect forced him back. He hadn’t realized how tough the ant's skin was before but it was too strong for the magically lacking claw blade he had gotten from a black core creature.

Its attempt to run away with its head barely attached to its body was a massive failure as it simply bumped into walls and ran in circles before it inevitably died.

He lamented the loss of his blade claw but still had his last one left. He decided not to use it as a weapon but simply as a carving knife. Extraction of the core was surprisingly difficult since its skin was so tough. He debated simply absorbing its mana directly from its corpse but decided against it.

He already had a portion of his mana core in constant use simply to see and the amount he would absorb from this creature would be diminished even further if he didn’t extract it. He also didn’t know if he was alone here. It made a loud shrieking noise when attacked and sent several rapid clicking noises when it was on the verge of death.

Not wanting to be swarmed by an army of angry giant ants, he simply applied the same method for carving the markers on the wall to the tough shell-like skin of the dead ant. He grabbed the small grey core and made his way out of the tunnel as fast as he could in order to avoid any potential trouble.