*Evan POV*
The sun was shining through the open curtains of my room as I relaxed and read a research book that would give me a hint on how to get back home while lying down on my bed.
About three days had passed since the Tifa incident, and the whole thing still felt like a fever dream. So much had happened in such a short time that it was kind of hard to take it all in. Tifa was the Queen's secret daughter, Sarah was her aunt, and the guild master, whom I kind of fancied, was a slut for mana.
Regardless of what happened, I decided it was a good time to take a break, collect my thoughts, and see what I was going to do next. While I had pain immunity that could rid me of any physical and mental pain, I still needed to give some time to myself so my brain could catch up.
I had taken a small break these past few days from searching for a way back home and had just focused on completing my mansion. I grinded for materials, bought some, and pimped out the place. Now, there were paintings, way too much furniture, windows, curtains, flowers, and all that stuff. This place actually felt like a luxurious mansion now.
What else... Oh, yeah. Once I was done with my house, I started visiting the library and checking out the books. Unfortunately, despite my initial impression, not all the books in the library gave me a skill. Some were there for research, and some taught me how to use my magic or strength effectively, i.e. skills.
I categorized them both as skill books and research books so it would be easier to remember. I couldn’t read all the books at the library either, since all the good stuff was in the upper floors, and you needed to have a good kingdom's title like a grandmaster alchemist, or a master adventurer or whatever it's called, if you wanted to read those good books. The problem was, I needed to get Queen Daisy’s permission to get any title, but whatever title she tried to give me had the bad condition of serving her kingdom whether I liked it or not, otherwise, I would be branded a criminal.
I've had my fair share of being branded a criminal for no reason during the Tifa incident, so I'm good. I don't want to play around with the titles, and I'm not going to be her pawn either, so I can't get any of the good books for now. This might sound bad, not being able to experience and have the ability to do a huge variety of effective spells, but... I have a shotgun.
No amount of Houdini is gonna stop a buckshot to the face, so I'm fine with the outcome.
Let's see, what else... Oh, yeah, even though I can't get all the good stuff, I can still read all the basic stuff, and while most of them were not good, only effective against cannon fodder like zombies or slimes. Some examples of these spells are cold fangs, which form a small number of ice spikes the size of my hand and the range of about three steps forward, dealing pitiful damage, but they slow down targets, so that's nice, but then again it will only affect non-flying enemies and also if they’re stupid enough to walk into the trap. These basic spells were all like this, but there was a silver lining to all this.
The spell ‘Mana ball’ that I learned accidentally while searching for Sarah a few days ago… is actually overpowered.
What I thought was just a skill for me to throw away my mana for any mana sluts around is actually a really versatile spell that can be used for almost anything. Unlike any other spell, the mana ball spell has what I call characteristic spells that can change its complete form and make it do something completely different. I didn't originally know about this, but there were many books in the library that taught me the different characteristics in the form of skills.
These characteristics that I learned from the library are standby, attack, shockwave, range change, shape shift, and finally, skill bind.
The characteristics are pretty self-explanatory: standby makes it either stop moving or float in the air, attack makes it into an offensive spell that dishes out damage instead of regenerating others' mana pool, shockwave gives it the ability to knockback anything in the vicinity when it is used, range change makes the mana ball bigger or smaller, and shape shift can change the ball into anything I want, such as a sword, gun, or car. While I tried making the ball into a gun, it doesn't make it shoot magic bullets; only when I put in ammo does it shoot. And the car just straight up doesn't work; I can't start it up or anything. It becomes more like an inanimate object than anything else. Also, even with shape shift, the mana ball stops working after one hit, so I can't make a mana ball sword and keep using it like a main weapon since it'll break after one hit.
But the biggest thing that makes this skill the most overpowered spell in my whole arsenal is the characteristic called Skill-bind. In short, what it does is that it binds any passive skill or skill that deals magical damage into the mana ball. While this isn't that much of a big deal, I can mix in all the characteristics of the mana ball into a single mana ball at the same time.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
As an example, let's say I skill-bind the fireball spell into my mana ball. Now I can make it gigantic with the range change characteristic, make it blow up in a large area with shockwave, change its shape into a dragon shape shift, and increase its overall damage with attack characteristic. Let's also not forget that the mana ball has the n/a mana cost, meaning I can put in as much mana in it as I want, and the more mana I put in it, the more powerful that mana ball becomes, effectively meaning that I can pretty much make a planet-sized fire dragon whose explosion will destroy nearby planets.
Obviously, this is all considering I have that amount of mana. Using each characteristic costs extra mana. So let's say I make a 20 MP mana ball and skill-bind it to a fireball spell, the 20 MP will equally distribute into any and all characteristics I choose for it to have. So while it's insanely powerful, I can't do much with it unless I have a giant mana pool.
All in all, Mana ball is an extremely overpowered ability, but it's also mana-hungry. It will empty out my mana pool easily if I choose to spam it.
The funny part is that all this information only cost me my hand.
That's right. Mana is volatile. Who knew?
It all happened yesterday when I was left alone in my room, completely unsupervised, and I decided to experiment with magic spells. All went well, and I recorded most of what I did just in case I forgot about anything in the future.
Everything was going well until I made a fire mana ball and thought, Wait, if I can use all the characteristics, I should be able to skill bind all the skills I have, right?
It was an amazing discovery until I actually practiced it. I tried skill binding another basic spell called Wind Cutter into the Fire Mana ball in my hand. The instant I did that, the mana ball in my hand exploded with a loud boom. I was fine, thanks to Pain Immunity, but I was inflicted with a special debuff I had never seen before called ‘Lost Limb’. I looked down at my arm, and the hand that was supposed to be there was on the floor and a bit charred.
I will say that I had a mini heart attack, but focusing on the debuff gave me instructions on how to fix the condition, which was just to put the cut-off hand back into its place for a couple of minutes. At that time, I also made the wild discovery that this world has its own set of rules, but whatever I seem to do coincides with Terraria rules. For example, in Terraria, no magic attack you do can damage yourself, but here, your own magic can damage you. So when the explosion happened, Terraria rules saved me from any kind of damage, but this world's rules still took my hand off even though I received no damage. It was a pretty cool discovery, and thanks to Emma, I didn't have to wait a couple of minutes to get my hand reattached to my arm. Though it didn't matter since my family got into my room fast, I was found out due to my entire room being painted in my blood and was banned from magic experimentation.
Anyway, that's enough about me. After the meetup between the Queens, Daisy and Elizabeth have both been working non-stop these past few days. My idea of making a common enemy did, in fact, work quite well, and most of the Elven generals volunteered to join hands with Daisy's forces to destroy the cultists. There still was some amount of hate between the Elves and the Humans, but the Guild Master Ruby had made sure that all the Humans will behave themselves in front of the Elves.
How do I know all this? Well, Lucy and Oswald started living here in my mansion so they could be close to me, and I got some information from Daisy's side out of them. Other than that, Liza, the guild receptionist, also started living here after she found out what a luxurious place this is, so I got some info out of her. Obviously, I'm letting her live here on rent. Other than that, Tifa regularly hangs around here since her kingdom still doesn't really like demi-elves, so I got some info out of her on Elizabeth's side.
Let's see… what else? I taught Tifa about the bow a bit more, I taught some recipes to the alchemist duo, I hung around with Luna and Mia a bit too…
Oh yeah, I found out that my mana is actually a bit special compared to other people here. Special in the sense that it takes a couple of seconds for me to regenerate all my mana, but for the general populace, it takes from a few minutes to hours depending on the person. Why? I don't know. I haven't experimented that much.
That's all that happened the past few days. It's all eventful, but compared to what I've been through this past week? It's nothing.
If there’s anything left that I completely do not understand, then it’s these 2 large off-white eggs that I put right beside my bed so they're still a bit hidden from anyone who’d come into my room. The eggs are as long as my arm, till my elbow, so they’re huge, like an ostrich’s egg. They also don’t exist in Terraria, so I am quite curious about them, especially since Jeff, the guide, told me that the race can rival demi-gods like the Moon lord at their peak.
Hmm, my thoughts have wandered away for long enough. I should get back to this history book. I focused back on the book, but there isn't anything in here that's worth noting, so I’m kind of just skimming through it. While I was doing that, I heard my door open up slightly, so I turned to look at the uninvited guest.
It was Luna. She was only peeking inside as if she was hoping to catch me doing something illegal. “I hope you’re not doing those magic experiments again.”
I just waved my hand lazily from my bed. “Of course not. Not really a fan of losing hands.”
“Good… I… I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” After saying what she wanted, she quickly closed the door and ran away. I can understand her worry. She was the first one to come into my room and get splattered by the fountain of blood coming out of my handless arm.
I went back to boringly skimming through the pages of this book, but I knew I wasn’t going to find anything. Just then, I started hearing some odd noises, like something cracking.
Huh?
The cracking noises were slow and quiet, but pretty soon, the noise picked up its pace.
Where the hell is it coming from?
I searched around my room until I finally found out where it was coming from.
Ah ha! Found you! … Wait a flipping second.
The noise, it was coming from the eggs I hid beside my bed. There were visible cracks on them, and the eggs were bouncing up and down a bit.
OH SHIT! WHAT THE HELL DO I DO IN THIS SITUATION!!!