[E.M.Supreme] Chapter 7 – Experiments and Testing Grounds

Mark stared as the two orbs slowly grew closer and closer. Lightning flashed between them, flashing his eyesight with pure bright white and blinding him in pulses. 

Each orb was rumbling like thunder and shaking dangerously.

He came to a final conclusion before they touched one another, an obvious one that should have been clear to him the moment he thought of this ridiculous plan. Alas, he hadn’t had the forethought to consider that two supercharged, compressed, balls of his crazy amounts of mana would not have been a smart idea. 

Oh shit… 

“S-Stop! Wait!” he shouted trying to prevent them from reaching.

It was too late. He couldn’t pull them apart no matter how hard he tried to fight against their momentum. No boost in manipulation would have prevented this either. 

The orbs screamed like banshees as they touched–

All the noise cut off instantly. They joined one another in forced silence. 

Mark let out a sigh. 

Nothing bad happened at least. Just a tiny scare.

Mark tried to let out a nervous laugh, but found himself mute. He shouted and yelled, yet not a single sound escaped his mouth no matter what he said or how he said it. The system refused to respond and show his status page. The world around him froze. He could see the ash in the air stick in their positions as though they had been drawn on a painting. 

The color of the entire room turned blue in a wave. 

Red.

Yellow.

Pink.

White.

The central point of the two orbs started to spin lethargically, stealing the colors that flashed from the world. Fissures and cracks in the air appeared around him that vibrated chaotically for a few seconds before disappearing. Others in different areas replaced them. 

Whatever it was turned black–

Mark saw it shatter as it ran out of energy. 

A rush of sound blasted his hearing, causing ringing sounds in his head. Turbulent pockets of wind spun and threatened to collapse the dungeon floor and the cracks in the air all vanished, nowhere to be seen. 

Everything returned to normal including the colors of the world. 

“System?” Mark said out loud to test if his voice hadn’t been stolen from him like the colors had for a brief moment. 

Status Page ~

Name - Mark (Tanner) Stevens

Class - Endless Mage Supreme - Absolute Level

Level - 61

Attributes - 

Strength - 12 (3999)

Dexterity - 9 (3999)

Vitality - 3999

Endurance - 3999

Intelligence - 12 (3999)

Wisdom - 9 (3999)

Mana - (∞)

Skills Unlocked - 

Mana Manipulation - Level 71

Elemental Manipulation - Level 60

Mana Negation - Level (∞)

Domain of Mana - Level (∞)

Spatial Inventory - Level (∞)

Mark let out a long shaky breath. He felt a tremendous amount of anxiety slowly seep out of his limbs leaving him fatigued and lethargic. There was that fear that whatever had happened with the two orbs would have ruined his system. 

It was good to know that it doesn't affect it, even if it prevented him from pulling it up when he tried to bring his status page mentally. 

He stowed away this attack for the future, but next time he would add just a bit more mana.

Mark didn’t want his new powerful attack to run out of steam right before it exploded or cause massive damage. Would be a waste otherwise. 

Not that he was going to test what it could do. 

Just a back up plan in the worst case scenario or if he saw a Royal Knight. 

Mark laughed already imagining what he would do if he saw one. He would announce who he was and what his class meant to the world, like some hero of old. They would try to fight him and in return he would drown them with fire and mana. More than anything they have ever seen before. More than what they could handle too. 

Skill Upgrades!

Mana Manipulation

71 -> 99

Elemental Manipulation

60 -> 99

He blinked as a skill upgrade notification interrupted his fantasizing of how much he would destroy any Royal Knight that appeared. 

Oh wow… 

Nearly destroying himself and the dungeon had some significant advantages it seemed like. Mark had gained more levels in both elemental and mana manipulation than clearing out an entire dungeon floor just from the one attack and his attempts to control it. Had he been just a bit more insane and with about a dozen more screws loose, he may have been wild enough to try it again. 

Maybe it would push through whatever was stopping his skills from passing level 99.

I have so much to learn.

Everything around him only pressed how little he actually knew about the world around him and how the system worked. Mark hadn’t even known that skills stopped at level 99. Or maybe it was a bottlecap? Was there something he needed to break through or did he just need to keep using them and they would naturally do it? Or did they stop growing after reaching that level.

He allowed himself a few more moments before zoning back in. 

There were still issues to solve, both long term and short term that would decide his fate if he failed to figure out. 

It was the difference between becoming a hermit that lived in the mountains and fought off dragons for meals or living a relatively decent life as a hidden power house. Establishing a family, allies, friends, and more that he would want.  

The second option he had thought of seemed like the only thing that made sense to him at the moment, yet it was just as unrealistic as his first idea. 

If this had been an option, then every mage under the sun would have their own personal mana pool outside of their core. 

No one would ever run out.

…Or worse, some machivelion villain would force people to fuel his external mana pool for him. Creating an entire factory of mage slaves just to make him the most powerful magic user on the planet.

W-wouldn’t that make me the most powerful mage on the planet then? How much mana do I have? I doubt any of the mages in town have anything close to what I do. Right?

Mark had melted the very first floor of a dungeon that should have been impossible for him and anyone else back in town. 

Yet, he hadn’t noticed any difference in his core to indicate he was running low on energy. 

If anything, he felt more energetic now and that was after the initial blast, losing control during his tests with [Mana Negation], summoning three orbs total, and whatever his latest failed experiment had been. Was his core a bottomless pit or did it just replenish faster than he could use it up?

Not that it mattered at this point. 

Mark felt for his mana core one more time, summoning another orb. 

He let it hover around him for a few seconds in case it was still affected by his last attempt to merge two of them. 

When it didn’t, he got straight to work. 

Mark closed his eyes and felt for his inventory. The emptiness that filled it. It felt kind of similar to the way [Mana Negation] covered his core, but looking from the inside out. Whatever entered was sealed in unless something from the outside prompted it out. 

No matter how hard he tried, the inventory would escape his senses after a few moments without anything in it. 

So he grabbed a rock and threw it in. 

This time he had a focal point he could focus on and keep his attention locked. 

Good. Now let’s see if I can somehow stuff this orb in it. 

He pressed the orb into the inventory and immediately felt a slight blow back. Mark fueled the orb’s momentum to overwhelm whatever blowback mechanism prevented him from getting close. At some point he reached an equilibrium. So, he added more to it until he broke through and slammed into an invisible barrier that blocked the orb and made the world flash in abrupt, shocking pain. 

Mark grit his teeth and scrunched his eyes closed to not lose focus. Something told him he had reached a point of no return, either he succeeded or something horrible was going to happen. It fueled him to push forward.

The barrier cracked.

His orb vanished. Core emptied of almost every ounce of mana within it. 

Mark screamed as all of his energy disappeared into nothingness and pain greater than anything he could handle flooded his senses. Vertigo assaulted him. He didn’t even recognize when he had fallen to his back until he opened his eyes in torturous pain. 

He had no clue how long it lasted, but it felt like forever until everything calmed down enough for him to able to think an feel anything other than abject torture. Completely dry of any mana in his entire body. 

The edges of his vision swam in darkness.

A system notification appeared in his vision just as he lost consciousness.