The gate in front of Ryan was foreboding. It was old and run down, covered in rust and all sorts of grime. But it wasn't really about the gate itself, rather, it was about what would be behind this gate. Monsters that were born from the 'memory' of the animals that used to be in this place. Though, that was mostly just in regard to their appearance, since monsters were usually pretty hostile, though Ryan now knew that there were exceptions in some places, such as the Gift Shop.
He took a deep breath and pushed against the gate, making it open up with a high-pitched creak. The first ones to step inside, instead of Ryan himself, were Gaia's two sub-golems. Ryan was connected to them through the Spirit Link skill again, so he was using them as scouts. Since these monsters were apparently a lot tougher to deal with than the mascots, it was incredibly important for them all to know what they were dealing with.
This area was already pretty tough to deal with, though. Since it was made for animals, there was lots of dirt and grass and even some trees planted within the fences, and after this long, many of those plants, or even others that intruded from elsewhere, would have grown tall enough to block Ryan's sight. And that was without the dungeon's distortion of everything. With it, it seemed like Ryan was supposed to push his way through the jungle.
"Urgh... great, can't wait to be ambushed by wild monster animals... my dream was always to have my throat torn out by some bunnies," Ryan grumbled to himself, holding his shield in front of his body as he carefully proceeded forward. It was a bit tough for the sub-golems to see here, but due to their point-of-view, they had a somewhat easier time looking through some of the grasses and weeds.
And due to that, they quickly saw a flash of white and brown pass by as dried leaves and and plants were rustled. Ryan could actually hear it from all directions, as if something was surrounding him, just a few steps into the petting zoo's fenced-off areas. Ryan groaned as a bad feeling overcame him.
"Me and my big fucking mouth," Ryan immediately glanced over at Maximus, who was holding onto the greatsword Granfell again. While he would still use many of the weapons attached to Ryan's armour throughout the course of the different battles, he only just attained Granfell. So it was probably a good idea to make sure Maximus was properly used to the special effect of the sword and could adjust to it. From what Ryan had seen in the gift shop, Maximus was able to deal with it very well already, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Not to mention, Maximus was clearly just excited to use his swordsmanship to its fullest degree. Maximus held onto his sword tightly, glancing around himself to get ready for any sort of attack. Ryan was carefully watching to make sure that they could catch the actual monster that was incoming, when the sound of paws stomping the ground could be heard. Immediately, Ryan exclaimed.
"To your right!"
Maximus reacted, swinging his sword to the right in a straight, swift motion. The blades of grass around him were pushed out of the way as a crescent of aura-infused wind shot out toward the enemy. It was a white rabbit, probably three times the size of a normal bunny, with large, incredibly sharp teeth that seemed almost like knives growing out of its mouth.
That crescent cut into the rabbit's fur, though not all too deeply. It was able to draw some blood, dyeing a portion of the matted, almost grey dirty hair, a deep red. The rabbit flinched back for a moment, as Maximus' second slash reached the rabbit as well. He was closing in, step by step, as his sword was speedily swung around.
However, this wasn't the only monster that was attacking. The monsters of this area attacked in groups, and the second and third of the group were approaching just a beat after the first. From two completely different directions, at that. Luckily, Gaia was standing right behind Ryan, in range for the Spirit's Domain skill. In the worst-case scenario, he could forcefully pull the golem into her domain before any of the monsters could even get close to her.
That being the case, Ryan didn't have much time to focus on that. Another one of the rabbits was jumping right at him. With his weight behind it, Ryan slammed his shield at the monster. The weight of the impact was nearly enough to throw Ryan onto his back, but it didn't seem to have left the rabbit without consequence either. It was, at the very least, stunned for a few moments. As this happened, Ryan swung his bat down at the third of the monster rabbits. It hopped out of the way, though the solid metal bat still scraped by its leg, clearly injuring it.
As this happened, a message popped up in front of Ryan's eyes.
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[You have killed a Level 6 -Giant Rabbit-]
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Ryan glanced behind himself, seeing Maximus pull his sword out of the rabbit's throat. The knight quickly came running back at him, and Ryan immediately swung his bat toward him. Of course, that wasn't to attack him, but since the bat was filled with Ryan's mana, it extended the reach of the Spirit's Domain skill.
And so, Maximus and his sword quickly fell apart into wisps of red, quickly flowing over the bat and onto Ryan's hand. The wisps dove into his skin, and Ryan could feel Maximus almost instantly move in and out of his own domain. Just instead of reappearing in the same spot he was in before, Maximus appeared closer to the other two rabbits.
The first one he attacked was the stunned one, which was still recovering from the shield-bash. Dropping down from around two feet above it, Maximus stabbed his sword into the rabbit's back. The smell of burning flesh immediately spread out as part of the rabbit's fur caught fire, but it didn't take long until that fire stopped again as its fuel fell apart.
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[You have killed a Level 6 -Giant Rabbit-]
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Ryan grinned lightly as he watched Maximus tear his sword back out of the dead rabbit's body, jumping off of it right toward the last of the trio. Swinging the sword upward while barely in range, Maximus cut through the rabbit's snout, slashing back down immediately after. The sword was buried in the rabbit's face, though just for a few moments.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
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[You have killed a level 6 -Giant Rabbit-]
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Carefully turning the dial, Modak adjusted the values of the speaker in front of him. It was the special speaker that him and Marge had put together as a prototype. It read the pattern engraved on the mana-cassettes, outputting the corresponding sound while amplifying the imbued mana by a certain factor.
That part of it was working quite well; there was an output of mana that could be read through the sensors that they had put up in front of it. As a test to make sure that the output was actually to the correct strength and accurate to what was on the tape. Luckily that seemed to be the case, at least, so Modak was currently trying to resolve another issue.
While the strength was fine, the mana was spread out too much. The pulses needed to be a lot more refined, so that was what he was trying to figure out right now. Whether it was the strength of the electrical current, of the mana current, or the values that could be adjusted on the speaker itself, he had to test out a lot of things to see what the changes in the output were.
Though, while Modak was sitting right in front of the speaker, Marge was on the other side of the room wearing protective gear.
"Are you sure you will be fine like that? There's quite a lot of mana being thrown right at you..." Marge pointed out with a worried expression, and Modak laughed slightly as he nodded his head.
"Yes, I'm fine, don't worry. As I said before, my body completely rejects all mana, so I never have to worry about any sort of mana-poisoning," the orc explained, but Marge didn't seem fully convinced.
"... I know about mana-rejection disorder, but is that usually something to this degree? Isn't it generally that the person is more prone to any sort of mana-related side effects like mana-poisoning?"
"Hm, well, there's different forms of it, for sure," Modak explained, slowly turning around on his swivel chair, looking at the cyclops across the room, "It's a rare disorder in the first place, and the form that it takes for me is rare even amongst everyone that has MRD. In most cases, mana can enter the individual but it can't latch onto anything there or interact with the person's innate mana, because they don't have enough. That means it lingers there and can cause something like an 'infection', basically. But in my case, my body fully rejects mana completely, meaning that even if it does enter my body, it's pushed out almost immediately."
"Isn't that a little bothersome? Especially here, there's so much that needs a pulse of mana for activation. Even many of the doors do..."
Modak smiled, "It's bothersome, sure, but we're Magic Engineers. I know how to work around that," he explained, pulling out his phone.
His phone case was something he made himself with a very simply mechanism placed into it, "Basically, I created a weak, miniature-version of the mana-emitter that we're working on and placed it onto my phone case. It's just barely strong enough to activate most everyday magic items here at the tower, and I only need to activate it for a few seconds with the small switch here, so even a small battery should last for a few months."
Curious, Marge came a few steps closer to take a look at Modak's phone case, "Interesting! That does seem quite ingenious!"
"Thanks, I'm quite proud of it as well," Modak pointed out, "Though, I just wish it helped us figure out how to properly dial in this emitter. We need to get that figured out before we can do any sort of tests or experiments on getting magical effects to pop up."
"Certainly, there's far too much loss through the emission, the mana-patterns that are created through the auditory output are practically bleeding into each other," Marge agreed, sighing deeply, "I just wish mana acted more like aura in that way."
"Aura? What do you mean?"
"Well, aura comes from the physical body, so it's a bit more 'solid' of an energy, if that makes sense. It doesn't tend to 'bleed' as much as mana does."
Modak thought about it for a few moments, looking at the machine in front of him, "In that case, maybe it's worth looking into aura a bit. Does the tower have any books on that?"
"I think there should be a few, here or there. With the higher prominence of Enhancers, a few people popped up that were interested in studying the interactions between aura and mana."
Pushing his chair to the nearby computer, Modak quickly looked at the magic tower's internal database. There was a list with all the ongoing research projects and their corresponding locations, and as Marge said, there were a few that dealt with aura. Particularly, there was one small team researching the relationship between aura and mana, and how to transfer the qualities of aura to mana or vice-versa.
"Alright, I'll try to see if they can tell me anything about that. They'll obviously know a lot about how to manipulate the properties of mana in the way we need," Modak suggested, standing up with a slight yawn. He made his way out of the lab and approached the tower's main building. Tapping his phone to the sensor next to the door, Modak activated the low-power mana emission to open the door. Ignoring the whispers and stares of the other people working at the tower, Modak walked up the stairs to the right floor, seeking out the lab in the hopes that the people working on the project were here today.
To his luck, though, it seemed like someone was there, an elderly human researcher currently flipping through the pages of a book.
"Excuse me, are you Jack Field?" Modak asked, and the researcher slowly raised his head.
"Hm? Yes, that would be me, how can I help you?"
The orc quickly approached him, stretching out his hand for a greeting, "I'm Modak Stonebreaker, I'm working on a project involving the artificial emission of mana-infused soundwaves to mimic magical chanting. It's a bit of a long shot, but I figured you might know a thing or two about manipulating the properties of mana that could be useful to us."
The researcher raised a brow as he shook Modak's hand, "Ah, I see. Well, I have been in a bit of a rut recently, so a change of pace might be quite nice. Plus, I have heard a few rumours about you as well, so I was feeling rather curious already."
"Oh... have you?" Modak asked, though he was already aware that most people had heard about the 'new kid without mana' that had suddenly joined on the tower mistress' recommendation.
"Indeed I have. I'm curious, do you truly have no mana at all?"
"... Yes, I don't have any mana. None at all, but no, it doesn't hinder me physically or mentally," Modak replied immediately, but Jack just let out a laugh into his thick grey beard.
"Don't worry, I'm well aware of that. A lack of mana doesn't influence the physical body in any particular way," Jack pointed out, looking Modak up and down, "However, I am rather curious about your capacity for aura. You see, mana and aura are forces that tend to balance each other. They can't mix together, hence why the unique interactions between aura and mana such as through and enhancer's abilities are so interesting. But in most, especially in those that aren't Awakened, lower mana means a generally higher innate capacity for aura."
Modak raised his brow a bit, "So what, you think I have a super high capacity for aura just cause I don't have any mana?"
"It is certainly a question that interests me quite a bit. So how about we help each other? I try to help you adjust the properties of the mana in your project, and you let me indulge in my professional curiosities. I feel as though neither of us really loses out here, is that not so?"
"Well, you're right with that," the orc replied. He really didn't know a lot about aura. Sure, he learned a bit more about it since he started getting closer to Yanna, but he didn't fully understand it. Maybe he could brag a bit if he turned out to have a high aura capacity. With a smile, he looked at the researcher, "Alright, let's do just that."