Magnus soared through the sky, his Takerth Academy robe whipping violently in the wind at his speed. As he flew, he lifted the bottle in his hand to his lips, taking deep gulps of water. The bottle itself was shaped like a Coke bottle, though it wasn’t made of glass or plastic. Instead, it was an unnaturally smooth, dirt-brown rock.
I knew earth elementrix had to be good for something other than making walls and chucking rocks at people.
One of its biggest advantages was that anything created directly from transmuted mana was automatically clean. Ice formed this way was the purest possible, and even a bottle made of rock remained uncontaminated until something tainted it. There was nothing better to make utensils, plates—really, anything meant to go in someone’s mouth.
So when Magnus finished the last drop of water, he simply let the bottle go. It tumbled behind him, plummeting toward the ground before breaking apart into condensed mana particles. By the time it reached the surface, it had already faded back into the natural flow. Meanwhile, he bit into the last of the jerky he’d brought from storage. Not exactly a balanced meal, but lately, hunger wasn’t much of an issue for him.
It was strange. He knew he’d gone long periods without food and should have felt the effects, but he didn’t. Even now, after finishing the jerky, he realized he felt completely full, just from that and the water.
Huh… maybe it’s just because of how my body works now? I mean, so many energy-consuming functions—blood production, oxygen processing, temperature regulation, even movement to some extent—have been either enhanced or outright automated. It makes sense if my body just doesn’t need as much food to keep going anymore.
The theory floated around in Magnus’s head for a while before something in the distance caught his attention.
“Oh, there it is.” He spotted his target below and began his descent, dropping quickly before slowing to a glide just a couple of meters above the ground. He landed with barely any impact.
“Man, I made a mess.” He rubbed the back of his head, taking in the scene before him. He stood at the edge of a cliff, overlooking an enormous crater—a nearly sheer drop that curved inward, forming a massive, kilometer-wide hole. This was the result of his attack collapsing the magma chamber in on itself. Jagged rock spread in every direction, and frozen rivers of molten stone crisscrossed the terrain, remnants of the heat that had long since faded.
Turning his gaze beyond the crater’s rim, he found not a single blade of grass. Ravines of varying widths stretched outward like cracks in shattered glass, their depths pitch-black and unmeasurable. The force had stripped the earth bare, leaving behind nothing but scorched rock and layers of ash.
Hard to believe all of this came from me using [Velocity Breaker—Lance] while buried hundreds, maybe thousands, of meters underground under who knows how many tons of rock. Yeah... I’m definitely banning myself from using [Velocity Breaker] if anyone else is around.
He didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if he’d used it above ground. Unlike the standard [Velocity Breaker], the lance variation focused its destructive force into a single, concentrated point, firing it straight at a target. Meanwhile, the regular version unleashed chaos in all directions. The lance was perfect for eliminating a specific target from a distance, minimizing collateral damage—at least until the beam hit something.
“Well then…” Magnus placed a hand on his chin, scanning the wasteland.
“Guess I should start by filling in the crater.”
•
The next few days passed in a flash—at least for Magnus, who, as usual, fell into a bit of a routine.
First, he'd wake up and go through the usual motions of living, namely eating. Since Mia had given him access to the storage room to stock up, getting food was as simple as pulling something from his storage ring every morning. Thanks to the fact that he didn't need much—or could even go days without feeling a hint of hunger depending on his exertion—what he'd originally packed as a couple of days' worth of rations for his return to Arlcliff City had stretched into potentially lasting weeks, maybe even a month.
After that, he'd head out to the courtyard, where Gerald would already be waiting.
Their daily sparring sessions—six hours straight—had become the highlight of the past few days. As expected, Magnus’s improvement over that time had been rapid. At first, he was just learning to read Gerald’s fighting style, still in the process of analyzing, copying, and optimizing techniques. But by the next day, his ability to refine and improve himself had nearly doubled. What started as winning once or twice out of every ten rounds quickly became three or four—of course, that was without weapons or Gerald using Aura.
By the third day, he could analyze and refine a technique to near-perfect efficiency for his use in just minutes. At that point, their matches became an even split—five wins each—and the same held true on the fourth day. It never went beyond that because Gerald wasn’t a static opponent. Though his improvement was slower than Magnus’s, he was still adapting. Every time Magnus leveled up, Gerald adjusted in turn, using his own experience to anticipate Magnus’s moves, countering them in ways that forced mistakes, stalled momentum, or led to outright losses.
That, in itself, worked to Magnus’s advantage. It was like a company developing a firewall and then hiring hackers to find vulnerabilities. Every breach they exposed got patched, and in this case, Gerald was his hacker. In the first five matches of the day, Magnus would almost always win, but after that, Gerald would shift his tactics, forcing Magnus to adapt all over again. Even so, Magnus could confidently say his [Combat Assistant] was a complete success. In just five days, he’d reached a level where he could handily defeat someone of Gerald’s skill—already an impressive benchmark.
More importantly, this issue of opponents adapting wasn't a long-term concern. In real combat, he wouldn't be constantly rematching the same person, giving them time to adjust. And if he ever did run into someone capable of changing their entire fighting style on the fly during their very first encounter?
Well, at that point, he probably shouldn't have been fighting them in close quarters to begin with. He had other abilities for a reason.
After all of that—plus the occasional help with Mia and Marcos’s various tasks—Magnus’s biggest job of the day was fixing the valley. Surprisingly, it was easier than one might think, especially when you had the physical strength to move mountains and an effectively endless supply of mana to work with.
For the first three days, he focused on creating massive mana constructs that functioned like gargantuan plows and then pushed them around with [Self Body Puppetry]. As arduous as it sounded, in honesty it was more boring than anything else.
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Compared to the massive, luminescent structure of pure mana looming over him—a towering presence equivalent to a five-story building—Magnus was small. Yet, with every step, he effortlessly pushed the plow forward. It scraped across the ground like a broom, smoothing the earth as it gathered thousands upon thousands of tons of rock and dirt. The grinding sound of shifting earth filled the air, rolling over itself with each motion. The vibrations rattled the ground beneath him, making it impossible to ignore.
Eventually, Magnus had Basker play music just to drown it out.
"Almost there..." he muttered, eyeing the massive, semi-translucent mana structure in front of him and the towering wall of ashy dirt and rock just behind it. If the plow vanished, he'd be buried in an instant—not that it would hurt him, but it was still something to avoid.
Finally, he reached the edge of the crater. A thunderous boom echoed as the collected debris spilled over the edge, tumbling down the steep drop. A thick cloud of dust surged into the air, settling only after several moments. When the dust finally cleared, Magnus dispersed the mana construct and dusted off his hands with a sigh.
This is going to take a while... If only I could make a couple dozen of these and have them move on their own... But that won’t be possible until I start compiling the rules behind Adept-level spells in the Magic Simulation Space.
One of the more fascinating things about magic was how much mana control and magical knowledge influenced its effectiveness. The raw power and speed of a spell depended on how much mana was poured into it. Mana was the fuel for all magic, and while mana control and magical knowledge allowed a mage to maximize efficiency and minimize mana costs, things became far simpler when an abundance of mana was available.
Technically, Magnus had an endless supply—but only for casting spells. The spells themselves still had limits on how much mana they could handle, even with modifications. The only way around that was to either apply Adept-level enhancements to Apprentice-level mana formations or find another method of generating force.
For now, Magnus had to rely on the latter.
By crafting massive mana-plow constructs and using [Self Body Puppetry], he could push them forward manually. If the constructs tried to move under their own power, they would just collapse under the strain of both moving themselves and pushing thousands of tons of rock. But by handling the force himself, he only needed to focus on keeping them stable.
I guess it’s not that magic itself is weak.
His thoughts drifted as he stared over the edge, down at the scattered debris.
Both magic and aura operate on a far more fundamental level than most things in this world. But unlike aura, magic, and spells are so much more complex. That’s why mana shields and constructs break—not because they’re weak, but because they’re naturally unstable. I suppose in that case, mana formations are kind of like Jenga towers; it's just that each one is unique and built in a specific way.
As Magnus drifted deeper into thought, he gradually rose into the air before flying off at a steady pace. Below him, his eyes scanned the landscape. Large swaths of land stretched out, flattened and scarred with deep trails where something massive had dragged across them—clear signs of his earlier bulldozing efforts. Now, he was searching for another spot to continue plowing.
Eventually, he found one. With a single thought, another massive plow made of mana materialized in midair. At his command, it came crashing down like a guillotine, slamming into the earth below.
The impact sent tremors through the ground as the plow buried itself deep. For a moment, the entire construct wavered, its shape becoming unstable. Then, as it reached the right depth, it finally settled, solidifying into place.
As Magnus descended, positioning himself behind the plow, he let his thoughts wander while music played softly in the backdrop of his mind.
Just like a Jenga tower, which has no real structural support, all it takes is a single shake of the table to bring the whole thing down. The same goes for mana shields—if you hit them with enough force to destabilize their mana formation, they’ll shatter.
It wasn’t that mana itself was fragile—just like the wooden blocks in a Jenga tower weren’t inherently weak. The problem lay in the structure.
With better mana control, it was like upgrading from a limited set of sixty wooden blocks to hundreds of different sizes and shapes, allowing for a stronger, more efficient design. A well-built tower required a much stronger shake to topple it. Likewise, a properly cast mana shield, created by a mage with refined control, could withstand far more force before breaking. That was why, without siege-level weaponry, most normal people stood no chance against a mage hiding behind a well-formed shield.
Thanks to my [Arcane Matrix], which is built on the Magic Simulation Space, my mana control has long since surpassed the Apprentice level—pushing up to one hundred and ten percent, if I had to put a number to it. My magical knowledge is also effectively perfect at the Apprentice level, thanks to the Magic Simulation Space. I can deconstruct and analyze almost any Apprentice-level spell down to its most basic components. But the real issue… I still don’t have enough data on how Adept-level spell formations differ from Apprentice-level ones.
At the end of the day, no matter how intricate the design, without the right knowledge and experience, it was still just guesswork. Someone could build a Jenga tower that seemed stable and didn't collapse easily, but a trained engineer would be able to spot the flaws instantly. That same engineer could construct an even stronger bridge using a simpler, more effective design. That was why magical knowledge mattered more than just having vast mana reserves or high-level mana control.
Letting out a quiet sigh, Magnus pressed forward, activating [Self Body Puppetry] as he pushed the plow ahead. The ground rumbled as dirt and rock piled up against the massive construct, rolling up in waves as Magnus began to carve through the earth once more.
Knowledge is power, after all. Which means... the first thing I’m doing when I get back to Arlcliff City is visiting the Mage’s Adept Compendium.
•
Year 348 of the Great Sundering Era, 2nd Month, 1st Day of the Mistveil Cycle.
Four days had passed since Magnus began sparring with Gerald and working to restore the valley. Now, with just one day left before Mia and her platoons set off on their journey back to Arlcliff City, his work was nearly complete.
The sun hung high in the sky, nearing its zenith, with not a single cloud in sight—typical weather for the region. The area that once looked like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption had changed significantly. Though there was still no greenery, the scorched, lifeless earth had been cleared away, replaced with nutrient-rich soil that would support new growth in time. The massive ravines had been forcibly sealed, and the kilometer-wide crater—deeper than it was wide—was now completely filled.
Hovering in the air above the former crater, Magnus looked down at his work with a satisfied smile. It wasn’t perfect—just a massive hole filled in—but that was all that really mattered.
It’s only a matter of time before life starts growing here again. I didn’t clear away all the ash—volcanic ash is a pretty good fertilizer if I remember correctly. Now I just need to flatten everything out.
With a wave of his hand, rows of mana constructs formed in the air above the crater. Their design was simple—giant squares arranged in a grid pattern. They didn’t need to be anything fancy for what he had in mind. One after another, the floating squares shot downward, slamming into the ground with heavy, rhythmic thuds. Dust flew into the air with each impact, the earth trembling beneath the force.
Like a giant hydraulic press, the constructs pounded the surface, methodically compacting and leveling the newly filled crater. Thanks to the Command Console relying on visualization, Magnus could cast spells anywhere within his line of sight, a range no mage below the Master-level was capable of. The only limitation was that his mind couldn’t handle maintaining tens of thousands of spell connections at once, so he worked in increments.
Even so, within the hour, the job was done.
Floating down, he landed on the freshly flattened ground, tapping his foot against the solid mixture of countless minerals that had been unearthed from the explosion and scattered across the land. A deep, satisfying thump echoed beneath him.
"Perfect." He gave a nod of approval, surveying his work. Over a kilometer of land had been restored—cleaned, leveled, and prepared for new life. Millions, possibly even billions, of tons of material had been moved. Back on Earth, a project of this scale would have taken years.
Magnus had done it in just a few days.
Well, that’s that.
He exhaled, more so out of habit, as he stretched his shoulders, and he turned to look in the direction of the distant outpost.
There’s nothing else keeping me here now. So I guess once I say goodbye to everyone, it's time I head back to Arlcliff City.