"We need to gain some distance from here," I told her. "Scavengers will pick up the scent soon enough and we don't want to be here when they do". I wasn't too worried about the animals of the desert, few things big enough to challenge a mage and a group of skeletons, even a low ranked one, existed in a place so devoid of things to eat.

No, it was those Kobolds we'd been planning to attack that worried me most, they had keen noses as a nasty habit of eating anything that smelled good enough to eat. And when you're a kobold, everything smells good enough to eat.

I packed up my own small tent, gathered up the supplies and looted the corpses. I packed most of it onto the skeletons but ordered her to grab a smaller sack.

She immediately complained, "Why don't you just raise one of them to carry it!?"

All four skeletons turned to look at her and I narrowed my eyes. "Because you don't have six holes."

That'll shut her up.

It worked too, she grabbed the pack and began silently trudging forward. Not actually the reason, I mean what even were the fourth and fifth holes? Ears? I guess so. I'd need to remember that too because once she got forgot her fear long enough to say whatever stupid questions popped into her head again she'd probably ask.

Here I was I'd killed a hobgoblin in single combat, then killed the traitor that tried to betray me, commanded undead warriors, taught her how to wield the power of mana and instead of being awed WHICH SHE SHOULD BE! All I got was whining! ‘waaaah, why can't someone else carry this, waaaah'. Go ahead and try managing an army of undead in an area so devoid of mana grass doesn't grow you, ungrateful bitch!

I stomped off towards a large rock formation jutting out a few miles off. With a bit of luck, we'd make it before the sun fell and the few animals that were big enough to make a meal of us came out.

After a few minutes of walking and cooling down a bit, I considered again. Perhaps she wasn't impressed because she didn't know how amazing what I'd just did was?

It wasn't entirely implausible. Not with all these stupid cheating Chosen ruining it for everybody else! I mean let some village herder get picked by the God of goats as his chosen or whatever and suddenly he wakes up the next morning and easy as can be goes and builds a temple to him single-handed. Of course, people find out about it and now suddenly that's just a thing mages do! As if drawing on the energy of every goat in creation to make buildings out of nothing is to be expected! Suddenly anyone that doesn't make the walk to town easier by moving a blocking mountain out of the way isn't worth talking about! Stupid cunts couldn't count to eleven with both hands and a dick but they think they know everything there is to know about manipulating the energy of creation.

Alright so then I'll explain the Laws of Mana to her. And assuming she is at least slightly smarter than the skeleton beside her she'll realize how lucky she is and stop asking stupid questions. Problem solved!

I began speaking "Every being is composed of mana of varying types bound together. We all grow in strength by condensing that mana into greater and greater concentrations so you can perform greater and greater feats. You did that when you made the air in your lungs into a thick fog." I let her ponder that statement for a moment then continued on.

" In normal circumstances mana is concentrated most at the center of your being and is weaker both the further away you go and where exposed to air which is where some of it tends to be pushed out of the higher concentration in your body and into the lower concentration of air around it, like in your lungs. This is why being cut open is generally bad and can be especially bad in areas of highly concentrated mana. If the mana that sustains you leaks out faster than you can replenish it, you'll die."

She joined in then, "The air in my lungs seemed denser than my body though, even before I tried to condense it?"

She's curious then, curious is good, I can work with curios.

"The ability of organisms to bind their own mana together and hold it there against the pull of the outside world or to even leech it from the air is determined by how much you can concentrate your mana and it also determines how quickly you could recover mana lost in use."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"That still doesn't explain why it was denser at first and then weaker" she interrupted.

I glared at her and she shirked back. That was enough to satisfy my desire for obedience for now and I continued.

" In normal circumstances, it's difficult to gain any real strength just existing. Killing creatures though is unique, the moment something dies all the mana bound up in it is released and it saturates the air with so much mana that the normal flow is reversed. The air containing a person's released core is so rich breathing it in causes it to flow into your body instead of out. That assumes, of course, enough mana is released into the air to be more concentrated than what is in your lungs already. No point in killing bugs, you could spend all day slaying ants without ever increasing the concentration of mana in the air to more than what's already inside you. If however, you kill something strong enough or enough somethings or even just wound it badly, breathing it in will compress your core forcing it to take in more mana. That's super condensing your core. After a while, the mana in the air is dissipated and shortly after most of what you'd gained leaves in reverse. But a very tiny portion stays each time you super condense your mana because you get just a little better at holding it all together. That is one of the ways you grow stronger."

I could see the questioning look on her face, but she was pensive now about asking anything.

"Go ahead," I said in a slightly annoyed voice, though in truth I was a little excited by her eagerness to learn. Assuming I could avoid being betrayed by her, she might be the perfect cover for my rather glaring weakness.

"There are other ways to get stronger?" She questioned.

"Eager I see. Well, don't plan a re-ordering of whose in charge just yet girl. There is no easy secret to getting stronger unless you've been hiding from me your one of the chosen of Baal and a hundred men are sacrificed alongside you every day to keep the mana in your air ever dense. In which case you can plan your rebellion for just a few suns from now. But otherwise, it's work, hard work or at the very least it's easy work but it's going to get someone killed and hopefully it's not you."

She waited, impatiently but waited, admittedly I suppose I did have a flair for over-explaining things and seeing she'd contained her desire to once again point out I hadn't answered her question I continued on.

"Mana is energy, you can strengthen the mana in your arms and legs and other physical areas through contracting and expanding them. In expanding your muscles you create a little more space for mana that flows naturally into it from your blood and by contracting it the mana inside becomes a bit more condensed than normal if it can't escape when you contract. Over time it can have the same effect. Lifting a heavy weight forces you to surround the muscle with more mana to have enough energy to force it to contract and it's this outside mana that keeps the mana inside from escaping when you contract. With the right amount of weight and effort it can't escape before its super concentrated a bit. However, this uses up a lot of mana in forcing the contraction and you have to keep resting and increasing in weight to get stronger." I explained.

This was all pretty confusing but she seemed to be taking it well, a good sign.

After I'd waited a moment she must have felt safe she wasn't interrupting me and said: "what about us, can we get better at using Necromancy like that?"

"Ha! Ten minutes in and you already fancy yourself a Necromancer. Your about as likely to wake up a Necromancer tomorrow as you are a virgin."

I didn't know people came in a color that pale. This was fun.

I continued explaining "Most beings contain mana through largely physical means, Mana is real even though most can't see it. As such it tends to stay in you for the same reason your blood does. Every time you fill your lungs you try to draw mana from the air and every time you breathe out if you have more than you could take, a little mana goes with it. An infant can grow this way pretty quickly but your gains just through breathing taper off pretty quick from taking days to taking months to eventually years to be noticeable. a mage is someone that can compress and manipulate nearby mana without using a physical container to hold it in, they just tell it to do things and it does them."

Though what I didn't say was how they did that. And for good reason, it still wasn't understood how, or at least not by me. I was VERY curious, If I could figure that out I'm sure I could greatly increase my abilities.