Chapter 51 - Paint and Planning

Nate stood back amazed. Not at the painting. He was happy with it, but it was far from his favourite or even best work. No, what left him amazed was the speed at which he was able to create the painting. Art was not something that could be rushed. The time a project or piece took differed greatly, depending on the medium, the scope and sometimes even just supplies or access. A simple drawing might only take an hour but a good painting, unless you were some sort of genius or savant, could take much longer.

His painting had taken him an hour. He looked over the artwork with an assessing eye. The piece depicted the sky above the battlefield where they had saved the locals from slavery. The painting portrayed a sea of fire, within which he’d taken some artistic licence and added the shapes of birds hiding in the flames, railing against a tree of lightning that stretched to the heavens above.

He’d meant to stop there but after seeing the difference the birds of flame added, he’d taken a moment to think what he could add to the lightning tree to equalise the artwork. He’d decided a tree could bloom. It matched what Aisling had said about her Tertiary Class, Growth Mage. Even Spells Grow she’d called it. So the lightning tree had bloomed with flowers. He’d used the shape of six petaled lilies, adding jagged bolts to their stamens. In the end, it was a good painting. He liked it. He just didn’t love it. But it was only an hour spent to create it, his heightened Intellect, Dexterity and Creativity Stats all coming together to make the entire process seamless, from concept, to planning, to paint on canvas.

The act had relaxed him greatly and he sat down after checking his mana gathering runes to see how much they had recharged his mana gems. The answer was, not a lot, or more specifically, not enough. He no longer had any full mana gems to rely on for his crafting, limited to what he could manage to recharge and the fact was, while he could craft Journeyman quality Mana Gathering runes, they could not draw in enough mana for the density to rise to a level that would adequately recharge his mana gems.

As it stood, he could likely push Conceptual Material to move a Common material to Rare once per day using just his own Mana Reserve. Given the mana cost to then move that material to Epic it would likely take four days in total. That of course included adding an affinity. Legendary would take at least two weeks. He didn’t even want to think about Mythic. Months he guessed, at least at his current rate. Each of those timelines could be halved using the mana stored in the mana gems, assuming they could recharge fast enough.

Suddenly, something he’d honestly taken for granted, an unlimited mana supply, was becoming the barrier to his progress. He could see now why Aisling was concerned he could improve fast enough to be competitive in the Tournament. He was not going to use that stupidly long name every time he thought of it. For now it would just be ‘The Tournament’. But Aisling was right to be concerned. Up until now, the only barrier to his Skill development had been the amount of time he was willing to invest in it. But Skills, or at least, most of his Skills required mana. A now, finite resource.

That wasn’t to say this problem didn’t have potential solutions. He could think of three off the top of his head. The first was to leverage his wealth. He could ask around if it was possible to purchase mana. To that end he rang the small bell in his room so that one of the staff would come. As he waited, he quickly penned a letter to Aisling inquiring about if it was possible to buy filled mana gems and if so, the price and logistics. Handing off the letter to the young man who came in response, he moved onto the second option. Dungeons. The Dungeon mana density had been significantly higher than the ambient mana density around Helmfirth. That would increase the recharge rate and also the maximum mana that would flow into the mana gems.

That was another problem. He’d noticed that the fill rate for the mana gems wasn’t linear. When they were empty, the mana would initially rush in, slowing as they got closer to the mana density around the gem. It was interesting to him to see how the mana itself seemed to follow some physical principles while at the same time, had properties he could only describe as ‘metaphysical’.

Focusing his thoughts back onto the problem at hand, that meant the mana gems would refill faster and have a much higher cap if they were refilled inside of a Dungeon. The problem of course, was finding a Dungeon, but they had to tackle that problem anyway, so he would definitely take advantage and attempt to hit two birds with one stone. That was especially true since his Mana Gathering runes should work in a Dungeon, creating a zone of even higher mana density compared with the rest of the Dungeon.

That brought him to his third, and for now, final solution. Improving his Mana Gathering rune. His Mana Gathering rune was currently Journeyman quality, underpinned by the Master quality Mana sigil he’d learned on a God’s research station. That meant his rune was a tier lower than the sigil it contained. Not terrible, but not great either. However, from his view, that was already an impressive achievement given he was for the most part self taught.

Under normal circumstances, he felt improving his Mana Gathering rune - of the three problems - would be the hardest to solve. Because at the end of the day, he didn’t know what he didn’t know and he was confident some of the things he did know were probably wrong or the underlying assumptions weren’t quite accurate. Fortunately, these weren’t normal circumstances.

The barrier, he thought, to understanding how to improve a rune - any rune, not just this rune - was mana dispersal patterns and how they interacted with the sigils. Normally, that would mean a great deal of trial and error, slowly working out how all the pieces interacted and gave rise to an outcome. The approach was scientific, and anyone who said science was fast was not paying attention to actual science. But he had a Skill that would solve this problem. More importantly, it was like the Skill was made to solve this problem.

He nodded to Frick as he got to work, the little Familiar floating up through the ceiling. They were going to be double dipping into his Mana Reserve, both using his Skills at the same time. But he couldn’t think of a better way to use his Familiar right now. Putting his Mana Gathering rune in front of him, he felt Frick activate Eyes of the Runic Artist at the same time as he did. Frick would float a hundred metres or more above Helmfirth, searching the surrounding areas and forest for mana anomalies.

The environment was full of mana, and like an ocean, it had flows and currents. Such that you could only see while looking at the macro, the whole. Up close the little eddies and streams were interesting but not truly revealing the nature of the overall flow. The hope was, if they could find an anomaly, it might indicate a Dungeon was nearby. A map had already been laid out on the other table in his richly furnished room, ready for Frick to mark any areas that might be of interest.

Nate ignored the tug on his mana, his own Eyes of the Runic Artist watching the Mana Gathering rune in front of him. As with all his runes so far, it was carved in what effectively amounted to two dimensions, but when the mana interacted with the geometric shapes, it created a three-dimensional dispersal pattern. This rune was made up of concentric rings with a Gather sigil at the centre, the inner rings overlaid with a diamond shape that had the sigil for Mana at each of the four points of the diamond, effectively looking somewhat like a compass. It had been enough to lift his first attempts from Initiate quality all the way to Journeyman. But it could still be better, if he could just see the problems in the design. His eyes were able to watch how the mana gathered and interacted with the rune. As he watched he made notes about the flaws.

There were three obvious flaws in his current design. Not improvements, mind you. Not adding new sigils, like the Powerful sigil, which was a pathway he had considered. These were just fixes to the existing rune structure. First, he had highlighted what the rune was doing well. The concentric ring design was functioning almost like a vortex, drawing mana in and creating zones between the rings of higher mana density. That worked quite well and was a design he kept in mind to potentially use in the future. The second thing it was doing well, was the overlaid diamond with the Mana sigils at the four points. As they intersected with one of the rings, it created areas of even higher density which seemed to be empowering the Mana sigils.

That was where he ran into his first major problem. The Gather sigil was not getting enough mana to it to empower it. Looking over the interactions he had a guess what the sigils did. They empowered the mana with concepts. His Mana sigils kept the mana itself neutral, or so he suspected. That in mind, he could add Fire sigils to try and add the concept of fire to the mana, potentially empowering the mana if it was used for something related to fire. That was likely how his Powerful Fire rune worked for example. He passed mana into it, the mana dispersed through the rune, some of it taking on the properties of ‘powerful’ and ‘fire’, which he could then unleash and wield with his Intent.

His Mana Gathering rune was getting plenty of use out of the Mana sigils, but not enough out of the single Gather sigil at its heart. The geometric shapes were doing a great job of drawing in mana but not a great job of flowing it into the heart of the rune. With that, he had one idea for how to improve the quality of the rune.

A secondary diamond overlaying the first, but with a Gather sigil at each of the four points of it should create a more even distribution and help draw mana towards the heart of the rune. He’d need to add a Mana sigil to the centre of the rune as well, as he didn’t want it to gain another aspect. Finally, he needed to connect the sigils that would be in the centre of the rune to help create a vortex. That way, the entire rune should function as a layer of vortexes, pulling everything towards the centre, building the density of the mana to even higher levels.

A notification had gone off in the corner of his vision but he ignored it as he activated Runic Creation. The wood the rune was carved into was of Epic quality, which meant that altering it with Runic Creation was not going to be cheap, even with the mana cost reduction from the fact that the Skill was already level eighteen. It was liable to tap out his remaining mana but that was fine. It was all part of the plan.

The modifications were slow as he overlaid the wood with the projection of the new rune. Painstakingly using mana and the modification ability of Runic Creation, he carved the new shapes and sigils into the rune. When he had finally finished, he saw another two notifications go off in the corner of his vision. He ignored them for the moment, expending what little of his mana remained using Eyes of the Runic Artist to assess the changes. It was as he had suspected. The Skill almost felt like a cheat. Because he could literally see what was happening, it was easy for him to work out the ‘why’, and then improve on designs. All that he needed was time, and mana.

With a satisfied sigh he opened up his Notifications.

Congratulations on creating a Mana Gathering Rune (Master Quality).
Your achievement has been recorded.

Runic Knowledge 15 > 18
Runic Creation Level 10 > 11
Eyes of the Runic Artist 13 > 14

Walk your Path. Reach your Goal. Become One with Mana.

Happy with his results and the new rune, he placed the Mana Gathering rune in an empty metal bowl, before laying a handful of empty mana gems on top of it. He’d leave those to start refilling while he and Frick tackled the second half of their plan. Dungeon hunting. As he sat by the bed, refilling his mana reserve from the other mana gems scattered around the room and sitting next to his lesser quality Mana Gathering runes, he felt his stomach grumble. It was almost lunch time. That worked out well. He’d have a quick snack and then he and Frick could go investigate any anomalies, so long as they were within a few hours walk of Helmfirth.

He’d considered taking Kiri with him for the Dungeon hunt but had thought better of it. Right now she was significantly weaker than him, to the point where she’d slow down the search. More importantly though, her time was better invested in training. While she might not be able to level at the moment, using his Mana Exclusion rune to prevent the ambient mana from allowing her Class Core to reach level one and offer her class, it did not stop her from levelling her Dual Daggers skill. Or potentially even gaining other Skills if she showed competency.

From what Frick said that should improve her chances of getting a higher tier Class. So it was training for Kiri and he would handle the Dungeon hunt. Enjoying some lunch in the taproom of the Oaken Ring he tried not to laugh as Frick pretended to eat, making a mess on the table while other patrons looked on in horror at the blue goblin. He could let his Spirit have its fun, after all, wandering almost aimlessly in the woods was likely to be anything but.

*************

Xalvoloth stepped out of the portal, breathing in the untainted air of this realm. It took a moment as it felt the System Contract slide into place. As the contract was finalised, it felt its form begin to shift. Its horns retracted into its bald pate as black hair grew out of it. Its purple skin rippled and became a pale white. The only original feature that remained when the transformation was done was its pitch black eyes, no pupil or sclera present in the pits of darkness. That was not a problem. It could cast an illusion over them to appear normal. A human form. It had taken them before. As always it appeared androgynous in human form, much like its actual species.

Then came the second part and this one made it angry, albeit helpless against the System, after all, it had agreed to the contract. Binding strings of mana coalesced around its Class Core, an additional layer between its mana and the power in its Core. Xalvoloth felt its power suppressed and took a moment to gauge the impact. Peak level thirty. The contract limited it to that when dealing with the target of the Systems ire. It could only use more of its natural power to defend itself if discovered. It snorted, the sound very human for a creature that was distinctly not. It would not be discovered. The air shimmered and it vanished. Its target was not close, but it could sense them, far off in the distance. The hunt had begun.