'This is the twenty-third pot of water I have boiled, Jian. Can you at least tell me why we are doing this?'
Just a few more, I promise, then we can move on to the rats I had you buy. Your spell-slips are really curious things, and I just wanted to know if each of them was similar. Twenty-three is a good enough sample size. Back home, each of these could sell for a spirit coin, you know?
"A spirit coin?"
About 30 gold ones, give or take, depending on the purity of the Qi inside. Novice cultivators aren't able to manipulate Qi, not in any manner worth speaking. Each one of your little curiosities could seriously injure someone who hasn't finished tempering their Body. And you can make dozens of these whenever the need arises. I am almost jealous. To get to the point, however - I promised you a spell, but I don't really understand what mana is, so I need to know how far it can go.
Zain nodded in agreement as he took another pot of boiling water off the table and set it aside.
He wasn't opposed to experimentation - the lure of a new spell was too strong! The thought of how much it would cost to buy a better spell than heat almost made him weep, but Jian had promised they would be able to make small improvements at the very least. They had formulated a plan last evening - Cultivators started with Energy Gathering - where they collected and captured small amounts of Qi into their body. This gave them no benefits at this stage but eventually allowed them to rapidly strengthen their body, and eventually 'purify' what Jian called the Spirit.
Mana was also suffused throughout the air in this world - but that was where its similarities ended. It would pass through the bodies of mages like Zain, almost like it did through air. Therefore. There was no need to hold on to mana internally. Whenever Zain needed to cast heat, he would collect a small amount from his chest, and guide it out through his hands, all the while forcing the aspect of fire onto it. Then, once it was in the palm of his hand, he would either just let it lose into the air around him, heating it depending on the amount of mana he had previously
aspected. Or, if he wanted to have it remain around in spell-slips or wards he would weave the magic through the material until it stuck to the physical structure of the anchor.
Jian wanted to see if it was possible to use a similar method to store fire-aspected mana within his body so he could then manipulate it in other ways as it exited his body. Even if they couldn't make it into another spell, it would significantly speed up his casting of fire-based spells. Even if he just had the one.
Regardless, Zain was understandably hesitant to put any amount of fire-aspected mana into his body. That was the stuff that went up in fire! So they were trying to figure out how much 'oomph' his standard casting of heat carried. The answer was, apparently that it did not carry much oomph at all.
While each pot of water came to a boil, Zain had been trying to sense the mana flow close to them. And, just like at the farm, he could notice the spell-slips pulling in mana from the environment once they were triggered. Already, they had figured out how to slow down and speed up this reaction - thus stopping the spell-slip from exploding, and forcing it to release heat at a steady rate instead.
The first few slips had resulted in water being ejected from the pot at speed as the slip would explode, and eventually, they had figured out how to maintain a steady boil. This sort of stuff was easy to do with proper warding - the sturdier materials a ward was made of would regulate mana so that it naturally flowed at a slower rate. But being able to do it with simple spell-slips that he had come up with himself was exhilarating as well.
There's no point delaying the next step, Zain. We have to try it out to see if it works!
'This is my body we are talking about, here, Mr Cultivator Sir. Just because you were able to strengthen your body with Qi doesn't mean the fire-aspected mana won't just burn my body to a crisp.'
And that is why we did the experiments to learn how to control the combustion if it happens! I'll focus on preventing any spontaneous eruptions of heat; you should focus on weaving your mana through your body. Best to start with your casting arm, I think. You're already used to channelling mana that way. You've channelled fire-aspected mana down your arm so many times before; there is no reason to be afraid!
He shook his head as he considered his options. Just because channelling mana through his body didn't harm it didn't mean keeping the volatile energy in his body would not. But, the other option was to just ignore Jian and go back to struggling every day for just one more spell, and he couldn't even know if he would be able to get one anytime soon. There wasn't any choice at all.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself. After some time, the magic flowing around his kitchen became clearer, coming into sharper focus. Remnants of fire-mana were crowding the table where the pots of boiling water were sat, and scattered all around the kitchen, as well. The mana in the air was relatively calm, in some places moving not at all.
Here we go, he thought to himself and started to draw mana down into his lungs. As it passed through his chest and down to his left arm, he did his best to impress the concept of heat upon as much of it as he could. Slowly, it passed down his arm, down to his palm, and in a sudden rush, it went out of his palm. The air was slightly heated where it passed, but there was nothing else to show for it. He slumped slightly in his chair.
"I wasn't even able to hold on to even a little bit! Where do I even begin?"
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Don't give up already! It's only the first attempt. And you do have experience holding on to mana, do you not? Otherwise, how would you weave the spell into your little slips? Calm down, and try again. But do not rush.
Zain gave only a slight nod. He wasn't going to give up after the first attempt, no matter what Jian thought. That would just have been embarrassing. As he sat up, he began drawing in mana once again, drawing it down into his lungs and out through his chest, into his arm. However, instead of sending the aspected mana rushing down his arm, he nudged it downwards slowly, aiming to have it come to a standstill as it reached the tip of his fingers.
This time, there was only a little leakage, with fire-aspected mana settling in his arm. With his eyes closed to the physical world, he could see the mana through his eyes. His body appeared mostly translucent, almost blending in with the background mana, but he could see his arm floating as if disembodied in the air. He clenched his fist closed, and watched as the mana trapped within traced the arc of his fingertips.
It was an entirely new sensation, exciting and wonderful. He moved his arm up and down, rolled his shoulders, and even opened and closed his fist, just watching as the mana followed along as his arm moved.
Stop playing around before the mana escapes! Of course, Jian was being a bore once again. He swore he could hear a scoff in the back of his head.
I want you to try and weave the mana through your bones or your muscles before it escapes. Did you forget this is fire mana you're playing with?
Zain flexed his fingers a few times to get a feel for how the mana followed his body without explicit instructions and began to attempt the weaving process as he would with paper when making spell slips. He could feel his arm through his body, but to his mana sense, it was almost invisible, as he could only really sense the concentration of mana around him. To visualise it, he would often close his eyes.
But that didn't help with telling where his bones or muscles were. Suddenly, he had an idea and began to trace the length of his arm with his right hand, feeling the skin of his arm as he touched it. I can't see the bones or the muscles, but I can feel my skin, he thought maybe I should weave the mana into my skin. I will have to stop concentrating soon, and then all this effort will go to waste.
He began to do so, following the process of how he made his spell-slips. There weren't any individual fibres he could sense as he did with paper, but as his fingers traced the contour of his left arm, he could feel the layers of skin on it. He weaved the mana into a thread and wove it in a pattern through the layers of his skin, hoping it would hold together like it usually stuck to paper.
To his surprise, it did.
He was able to finish covering his entire arm with a netting of mana before he felt like he couldn't focus anymore. There was a little excess mana left in his arm but he would deal with it later.
Jian could tell him what to do next tomorrow, right now, he was going to sleep.
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It had been two weeks since his very enthusiastic attempt at self-mutilation, and nothing had gone wrong yet. As a matter of fact, there hadn't been any drastic changes that he could see physically. He didn't feel any discomfort either, so he could tentatively label the experiment a success.
Jian had wanted him to continue the experiment, wanting to make the mana-netting around his arm finer, but Zain had held off on any experiments, his hesitance being a mixture of nervousness and his dwindling funds. Thus, weeks were mostly filled with numerous chores.
In the past five days, Zain had already fixed about twenty heating arrays, twelve kitchen stoves and four heated bathtubs. All that, and he still hadn't earned anything close to what farmer Gao had paid him for the farm. His total earnings were only a gold and a half for the last week and another fifty silvers for the week before that.
Before the farm job, Zain would have been content with this much - it was excellent earning for a man his age, and it took little time to fix heating arrays or to water rose gardens. But the farm had given him a peek of what he could earn doing larger jobs, and what seemed like a fortune before only looked like a pittance.
So, today, he had arranged an appointment with Asha. He would meet her at the library and discuss attempting to join either the city guard or an attempt at diving a dungeon. Zain didn't know much about anything related to dungeons, which is why they were meeting at the library.
If everything worked out well, they would have a workable plan within the week, and he could go back to earning at a decent pace. As he reached the large academy building, he could already spot Asha waiting for him outside.
"Hey, Asha!"
"Hello yourself. You told me you'd pay the entrance fee, and you're late!"
"Yes, I got delayed at a job, sorry! Won't happen again. Let's go in!"
"What's the plan?"
"I have booked a room - I wanted to talk about joining the guard and maybe seeing if I could get into a dungeon party - I need some money, and I've heard how rewarding they can be!"
Asha started giggling as they turned into the library. Zain paid the entrance fee and got the directions to their room - which was just a small enclosure with a table and two chairs. As soon as they walked into the drab-looking meeting room, Asha broke down into laughter.
"Shh!! This is a library! And what have I said that is so funny that you can't control yourself?"
"You! In the city guard! Mister I-need-a-cart-for-three-miles in the city guard!"
"It isn't as if you're in the guard already, that is why we are here! To research! And, keep it down I don't want to get kicked out after paying the fee. Oh, and matter of fact, I know three spells already - that has to count for something! "
"You don't need books to find out how to get into the guard, I can just tell you. Let's read about dungeons, it is the only reason I agreed to come. Hmm, that time at the farm, I saw you only use two - but it might actually help if your third one is a tier-two. You know heat is too slow, and small for combat. Show me the third one, and I'll introduce you to papa."
"Alright fine, but I'll hold you to it. Let's go find some books, and we'll return here in some time."
When Zain returned to the reading room, he had only one book with him, while Aisha hadn't found any. She instead had a journal of an adventurer with her.
"I couldn't find any books on the dungeon, but the receptionist directed me to this journal of the silver-ranked dungeon diving team led by Anna Copper-hand."
"The dungeon? Surely, there's more than one around a city this big!"
"That's the thing really, she says here that her team has uncovered the fact that all dungeons were, in fact, the same dungeon! This is quite exciting! I had expected it to be a boring read about properly stabbing kobolds or something! Besides it's a first-person account so there's so much bitching! You should read it. What did you find?"
Zain put down a book titled 'Origins of Dungeons - Oliver Kupernic'. It was a small leather-bound book, and the pages were yellowed and creased.
They sat down to read.