“Aqua,” I chanted, conjuring balls of water to extinguish the small brush fire my lightning bolt had made. I methodically went to each small smoldering fire and put each one out. It was better to put the fires out immediately when they were small rather than later when they had consumed large sections of the forest.
The fires were arranged in a long line starting at the corpse of the great talpa. My spell had conjured four lightning bolts, and only one had actually struck my target. The other three bolts knocked down trees and started small fires.
A minor headache furrowed my brow. I had used more than a third of my mana reserve on that spell, and it was having an effect on me. The [Lightning Bolt] spell only used 25 mana in its base form, so I had put more than four times as much mana in the spell as was required. Rather than make the lightning bolt four times bigger, the extra mana simply created three more bolts.
Beltane did not tell me that this would happen, but that was probably because he didn’t know. I suspected that he had never used more than 50 mana to cast [Lightning Bolt] before.
I suspected that very few mages had used more than 100 mana in a single spell before. Very few spells used more than 10 mana to cast. [Wind Knife] used 5 mana, and [Water Ball] only used 1 mana. Compared to my mana reserve of 300, these amounts didn’t seem like much, but they accumulated quickly. Most mages had between 100 and 200 mana, and it took several days for one’s mana reserve to replenish.
Once I finished the task of extinguishing the nearby fires, I took a moment to focus on my body. It was a strange sensation, being aware of two small cores of energy floating inside me. I could tell immediately that my lower core was about half-depleted, and my upper core was completely full. The [Lightning Bolt] plus the dozen smaller spells I used had emptied about half of my tank.
I could tell that my upper core was about one-twelfth the size of my lower core, so I figured it must have held about 25 mana. This meant that I could only output 25 mana every ten seconds, no matter how much I had in reserve.
Even with my large mana reserve, I could only use [Wind Knife] sixty times before I was completely out of juice. If I wasn’t careful, I could use up 300 mana in a few minutes of intense fighting. Yet, as I looked around at the devastation wrought by four simultaneous lightning strikes, I realized that the firepower made up for the limitations.
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I trudged up to the fallen body of the great talpa as the blood rune inscribed on my hand faded away. My body started to feel sluggish, and the persistent ache in my back returned. I also felt a radiating pain in my back and a dull pain in my shoulder. The roll I underwent to dodge the charging struthins was a bit overambitious, even with my enhanced body.
The pain in my back guided my hand to its source, and it came away colored with my blood. One of the struthins must have raked its claw against my back. I felt around a bit more in order to determine the breadth of the injury. The back of my cloak was torn in three places, and three long, shallow cuts marked my back.
Considering the size of the creature that had cut me, the wounds were surprisingly shallow. The cuts were only about as deep as a cat scratch, and my wounds had already stopped bleeding. I wasn’t worried about the injury, but I would need to buy a new cloak.
The grazing wound must have been a function of my HP, or Health Points. With enough class levels, even a frail mage like me would become harder to kill. On Ferrum, HP manifested as a mixture of uncanny luck and increased resistance to injury. If I only had 5 HP, then the struthin’s claws probably would have killed me. Since I had 59 HP, the struthin only managed to graze my skin.
I looked at the corpse of the great talpa. Even with it laying on its side, I could not see over it. The corpse must have weighed several tonnes, and I had to present it as a trophy. I thought about going back to camp and coming back with a wagon, but that wouldn’t work either. The great talpa’s corpse was far too large for any medieval land vehicle to transport.
As I paced around the large corpse, my eyes fell upon its distinct, ridged head. There was only one monster on Ferrum that had such a distinct head shape. I thought about it for a moment. The great talpa’s head must have weighed about fifty kilograms. It was too big for me to physically lift, but I could certainly carry it with magic.
I slashed my wand downward, and a blade of condensed wind cut into its neck. Blood spurted out of the wound, but I didn’t make much headway through the neck. It was only with careful aiming and three more wind knives that I was able to finally detach the great talpa’s head from its body.
The creature’s massive jaw gyrated as its head crashed to the ground. Looking at it more closely, I could tell that the great talpa’s jaw attached much further back than I had initially realized. That must have been how it managed to swallow its prey whole.
“Laevo,” I chanted, and the great talpa’s head levitated into the air. [Lift Object] used 1 mana per minute, so I could carry the creature’s head for a bit more than an hour before I completely ran out of mana.
Dreading the long hike back to camp, I picked up my fallen cane and started trudging back the way I came. As I walked, the massive skull of a deadly beast floated in my wake.