I wake up to the moonlight bathing my room in its silver glow. I only slept eight hours yet I feel completely refreshed. Once again, I am thankful for my mana enhanced body.
I consider for a moment going back to sleep and waiting for the sun to rouse me, yet it is but a fleeting impulse. I climb out of bed careful not to wake the mana beasts sleeping scattered around my room. Only Noir is awake, she looks at me with a bord expression before returning to her grooming.
I consider waking Bu, but seeing how at peace she looks sleeping in her nest on the dresser I decide against it. I don’t need her for this anyways.
I make my way into the hall cushioning my footsteps with wind magic and muffling the little sound I still make. The top floor only has 3 rooms, 2 on the far side and my room on the other. The two are suppose to be for my kids, thinking too far ahead on the builder’s part if you ask me.
On the third floor, 3 rooms line each side of the central hall. Meant for my servants, France had slept here before he got married. Now Ken and Gerald each have a room on one side of the hall, Jill’s room on the other. The 3 remaining rooms sit empty, waiting for more servants I don’t want to hire.
As I pass by, I see light from under Jill’s door. There is a chance she is still up studying to avoid being surpassed by Ken. In my experience however, she likely fell asleep at her desk the candle still burning.
The second floor is used for storage. Shelves and weapon racks line the walls and stand between some of the columns. In the remaining open spaces my pacts, the ones who prefer the indoors, gather and sleep. The stairs creak, I pause for a moment to make sure no one had been disturbed. Once satisfied I begin my descent again.
The spiral staircase ends in the main sitting room. Simply decorated with a couple couches and a handful of chairs around a casual wood coffee table this room, more then any other, feels like home.
Light glows from under the door to the right of the stair case. The door leading to the most luxurious room in the house, the study. Stacks of paper and a stockpile of quills and ink to make a calligrapher jealous. Blackwood desk polished to such a fine finish that dried ink would appear as a rise on their surface.
Bookshelves line the walls and fill the empty spaces between the comfortable lounge chairs, their cushions filled with the baby down of phoenixes. The shelves are lined with books I have gathered from all over the continent covering every topic that caught my interest from fantasy to fact.
Adding a study was due to Gerald’s influence. He said my grandfather along with every other great man had a study. He would read to me every night before I slept, before I knew it, I was reading to him. I have read every book in my little library but Gerald has read them all twice. The light is probably him now.
I chuckle to myself as I head the other direction, ‘does that man ever sleep.’ No one else is awake to answer.
I go through the door immediately left of the stairs, passing through the kitchen into the cool night air. I feel the dewy grass under my feet and am tempted to lie down, to feel as one with the earth, to immerse myself in the endless ocean of twinkling stars.
As I strain my neck, I can’t help but wonder. Is she looking at this sky too? I shake my head to clear it of silly thoughts. She is just an ordinary girl, what reason would she have to be up at this time of night.
With that my thoughts begin to swirl around possibilities that fill me with fear and jealousy. So instead of thinking I run. As I get closer to the beast wall, I start to think about what I am going to try, how I will make it work. I jump off the wall.
I don’t jump far off the wall like when I expected Soran to catch me. I jump close, close enough I can reach out and touch it. My fingers dig into the pale white stone like it is moist earth slowing my descent. As I begin to stop, I let go, this time stopping my fall with the other hand.
My mana vasculature reached its peak a year and a half ago. It now mimics my physical vasculature right down to the capillaries that run between cells. Because of that mana now leaks into the cells all over my body in the same way nutrients does out of blood. This changes and strengthens the cells in a permeant way unlike using enhancing magic. By forcing mana, I can still enhance my physical abilities but my base abilities are now on par with a fully enhanced A rank adventurer.
The next time I use 4 fingers, then 3 with minor enhancement. By the time I get to the ground I am using one finger with a fair bit of enhancement. I stretch out my hands, I could have flown down but physical conditioning serves me better these days than mana control practise.
I walk into the deciduous forest that covers the edge of the beast crater. The moon and stars disappear between the wide leaves as they gently sway in the breeze. I wander for a while enjoying the calm of the sleeping forest. Once I feel I am sufficiently far from the wall I stop holding back my mana. There are dull thuds as the small animal living in the trees fall dead.
‘too much.”
A single lunge puts me out of the range from my last release. This time I tone it back only release a portion of the flow I normally held back. The silent forest burst with life as all the animals within a hundred meters of me make their escape. Squirrels dash along branches while birds take to the air squawking and chattering. Satisfied I move out of range again.
My goal is to avoid doing what I did at the mansion again. Redirecting the mana that leaks out of the mana vasculature back in comes naturally for anyone with enough mana to cause a problem. Letting it go comes just as easy, but it is more of an on or off thing. Those with higher levels of control, like me, can treat it like a lantern. Raising or lowering the wick and adjusting the shutters to control how hard the fire burns and how much of the subsequent light is released.
What I want to do is something I have never seen before. To release it on a small spot on the body, directing where the released mana will hit. While it might sound like a mana attack spell it is the difference between blowing over the top of water and throwing a rock through its surface.
Unlike condensed attack mana, the mana that seeps out, even from a high-level mage’s mana vasculature, is dispersed and unstable. What makes this unstable mana dangerous is that it can excite the mana in others, and if there is a large enough level difference it can cause a person’s mana to go haywire. If your body can fight it off you get the oppressive feeling. This feeling comes from your own mana rejecting the external mana trying to alter it. Both animals and mana beast alike fear and flee from this feeling so it has uses even outside of intimidating other humans.
If I can master this technique, I can avoid a repeat of that situation.
I think back to Clair’s words, “A child, huh,” I say to the moon as it winks at me through the trees.
Marine had called me that back then too. But she was my age when she said that, so was she just a child lecturing another child. Or will I always be a child, always destined to make mistakes, to hurt people through my thoughtlessness, my weakness, my failure.
A wave of condensed mana flies from my hand felling the tree in front of me. Questions like that don’t help, not me, not anyone. If I stop, if I give up, I will leave many worse off then if I push forward. I have to believe that.
Child or not I will learn from my failures and push forward. I will protect those important to me along with whoever else I can. That is what I decided then, I will keep working towards that goal.
The sound of the falling tree startled the animals so I move again.
…
The sky over the edge of the beast wall has already taken on the light blue of predawn when I finally get the hang of my new technique. the moon who watched me practise had dipped below the horizon taking her turn to sleep.
In the awkward light of predawn the animals struggle, the shadows growing darker before true light shines upon the land. At this moment my eyes, permanently enhanced, see even better. I quickly spot the three birds sitting on a branch and completely conceal my presence before they notice me.
I watch for a moment deciding to target the fat center one. I calculate the exact point in my aura that I need to release and for how long to only hit my target. My sweat that had begun to cool runs hot again as I focus.
The bird drops from the tree without a sound, dead as it hits the ground. The other two birds watch confused but not taking off. I target the one on the left. A much smaller release sends it squawking and flying into the air. The other one does not make a noise as it looks first at its friend flying away then at the one on the ground. In the end it chooses to follow the one flying away leaving me with my breakfast.
As I pluck the bird, I spread my mind out to my pacts in the crater, “Anyone got prey for me?”
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