‘God, this is the first time in years I depleted my mana, was this how mana backlash felt like?’

James stood up, breaking apart the fragile space, ejecting him out. He looked around, expanding his senses.

‘It’s been over a week?’

Even with James’ ridiculous mana regeneration speed, it still took a week to completely recover his mana pool.

“Teleport”

He analysed the current state of the village. The people were doing fine, playing around in the entertainment facilities. They were happy. But they couldn’t fool James’ inhuman sensitivity.

‘While humans adapt fast, here it is more of forcefully distracting themselves of the loss of their kin’

For the next week, James took his time refining and perfecting the ‘village’ which was now more advanced in technology than cities. When he didn’t renovate the village, he studied the dragon.

He wondered, how does a dragon use its infamous breath. Scales can transform spells back to mana and absorb it. The insides also should be fireproof to a certain extent.

James tried many things, out of which he found out. No matter what fire type magic is used, it will be converted to mana, meaning the breath isn’t exactly a magic spell. Even with pure mana, any spell information encoded is erased.

Also, the insides of a dragon are, unlike what James thought, vulnerable to fire.

The corpse was destroyed, burned over and over. Each time he reversed it back. He made full use of the death of a great and noble species.

Then, another week later he was done, he found out as good as everything there is to know of a dragon's innate abilities.

First and foremost, the infamous breath attack, which is originally presumed as a spell, is in fact, pure mana being burned.

The cells of a dragon each act as a mana core, allowing extreme precise control over massive amounts of mana. There is no need for mana channels, nor circuits. Through manipulating the mana, it creates a protective layer in the throat, which the rest gathers. Finally it becomes a pure high density small orb of mana, which then can be released as a ray of death.

For a red dragon, the massive amount of mana is burned, creating a highly lethal fire. For other elements, as the orb of mana exits the mouth it is converted into said element, due to the high density and compression, it explodes outwards, due to the dragon's physical interference, it instead is a beam of said element.

For less than a month, he stayed near the village, although he didn’t do much after the initial rebuild and spent his time on research. Well, it isn’t that important either way, it is just a village he saved on a whim.

After creating a peak Grand Magic and fighting against a dragon, James felt satisfied, he learned to appreciate nature, he learned new things, he fought a species inherently superior to humans. It has been around a year. He felt like it was time to go back home.

It’s been a long time, my room was still spotless, preserved through mana. Mother probably already knows I returned.

Without bothering to notify mother I went straight to my desk and began reorganizing all the papers I had written over the past year. There were a lot of things to cover, the papers I finished rewriting, I sent to the Tower of Magic.

James spent 3 days like this. Occasionally checking the news.

Not much happened during his absence, nothing of importance to him anyway. A mana beast going on rampage, a soldier betraying his country and terrorizing the capital, a few wars here and there, a few invasions on a couple of cities, coronation of a new king and so on.

Once he was done he teleported to the village, just to see if everything was okay.

The sight that greeted him however, hundreds of the residents, killed, buildings, burned down, resources taken away. An army of 10.000 was camped nearby.

Indifferent, James observed the flags, four colored background with a griffin.

Instead of retaliating, he teleported back, barging into his mothers room.

“Mother, military, economic and political influence of the Kiltes Empire”

Elenoire Signe, titled Great Sage, currently named as the Mage of Eternity. Great Sage is the title all mages aim for, each year through a grand tournament. Other than Elenoire, there is only one person who could keep the title for more than 2 consecutive years, much less 21.

She sighed.

“You left for 2 years, then vanished for another, when you came back you didn’t even come to greet me. And now you ask for information while being so rude?”

I couldn’t say anything, she was right. Mother is a person with paramount status, as well as my mother.

“2 years ago it was still a kingdom, recently after a revolt a new ruler emerged, waging war on neighboring kingdoms, successfully becoming an Empire. It’s military influence is rather low for an Empire and current politics is still a mess. Economy is thriving due to the wars.”

“Thanks… Teleport”

James tried to teleport, he tried and failed. Without him noticing Elenoire managed to place a spatial stabilizer the moment he asked for information on the ‘military influence’ of Kiltes.

“Tell me why they need to disappear.”

After silently trying to break the stabilizer James answered.

“I happened to have saved a village from a dragon on a whim, with the information network of an Empire they should have easily found out it was me who industrialized the village. But they still dared to plunder it. This is a direct insult to me, the Genius Mage, son of you, the Great Sage for 20 consecutive years”

“Then just let me handle it, there is no need for you to stain your hands with more blood”

“This is a personal matter regarding my pride and status as a mage”

“Status as a mage? Then prove it. Bind”

“Break Field” “Sema Seal” “Clear Circuit” “Mana lock” “Mana reflection” “Restriction”

Before Elenoire casted Bind, James managed to break the stabilizer, after which he erased the runes being written by his mother. Countering this Elenoire locked the mana in space, making it unusable or influenced by James’ mana control. Before the area was completely locked however, James managed to redirect the field away. While James was in the process of doing this, Elenoire finally landed a high level binding spell.

Unable to move a single micrometer, James began casting in his mind.

On the other hand Elenoire started encoding mana en masse.

“Anti magic field, mana drain, Silencer, Enteros field”

Before she finished this compounded spell, James broke free from the Restriction, Immediately creating a physical barrier around Elenoire.

“Enchantment, Godspeed. Destructive, Crash”

Before both were fully activated, the field magic of Elenoire was deployed.

All circuits vanished.

“This… antimagic? That should be impossible”

Antimagic is in fact, also a magic. Due to the nature of antimagic, the spell will self-destruct after a period of time, given that Elenoire casted this on James, who can easily accelerate the destruction of the spell and get out, it meant she perfected it.

“Oh, I have a few trump cards I didn’t show in the tournaments, some specially done to counter you~”

She said as she examined the cage that formed around her. It absorbed the broken circuits and siphoned the mana for active spells, slowly dispelling it.

“Blast. Quite sturdy. Inner mana amplification.”

Before her fist hit the bars again, it instantly broke apart due to the sheer pressure.

She summoned a cup of tea, of which she already drank half, and sipped.

“Stay here and just do your own thing, let mother take care of this. Teleport”

James sighed, it wasn’t the first time he lost to his mother.

“Break field, Clear circuit, Rune overwrite, Dispel, Infer field”

Nothing worked, with his interest prickled, James started to experiment.

To be able to eject mana to the outside, this means a circuit has to exist inside the field in order to move the mana, but then the circuit responsible will also remove itself from the field, self destructing. Then, is it external? A way to remotely control mana exists, spatial gravity fields that don’t affect the physical realm but can move mana. But to do this with this precision… Well the problem with this is if the person inside the field has too much mana and just breaks the field apart.

‘Is this why mana drain was added? It is too weak for me, but it uses my own mana to strengthen itself and the field. I can only cast spells, but those that use enough mana to break the field will destroy the city, or kingdom if it continues to strengthen. I can’t just release my mana pool because of silencer, and while there is no barrier stopping me from leaving, Enteros field makes it so that all magic spells applied follow a target’

“...A perfect counter for all mages, it was casted in around 4 seconds. Isn’t this on the level of cheat?”

James had to give up, as long as mother had mana the antimagic would be maintained. Unless he didn’t care about blowing up an entire nation and ruining the ecology and climate he couldn’t escape. Besides, the mana drain which was also strengthening the antimagic also sent a portion of mana to mother. Even if you don’t count on that, Elenoire as the Great Sage had a ridiculous amount of mana, not comparable to James though.

Eventually James went to his room and rested. While he didn’t want mother to meddle with his affairs, she was capable. Despite having a much smaller mana pool than James, she had the capability to use it to its full potential, as long as no destructive magic is involved, James could never win against her.

When he woke up the next day however, he noticed something amiss.

The antimagic was gone. He gathered mana on his palm, which worked normally.

‘She isn’t back yet, something happened’

“Advanced detection, Grand magic version”

The immense amount of mana he had spread out, covering the entire Kingdom, and didn’t stop there, it continued to flow outwards, spreading over the continent.

With this, he could ‘see’ everything. All of his five senses are applied to where the mana was. Meaning, his senses were being overloaded by every piece of information of the present in the continent.

He nearly threw up, which is already a wonder, any other person would've fainted immediately and be in a permanent vegetative state.

Blocking all other senses, he filtered what he saw with the mana pools. But nothing, no one exceeded the limit of the mana pool he had set.

“Did mother… die? No impossible, Kiltes wouldn’t be that dumb, killing the Great Sage means becoming the enemy of the entire world, plus it is pretty much impossible to fight mother and win”

He refocused the area of detection, Kiltes Palace.

He only sensed 2 things of note, firstly his mother several floors underground, chained to something… undetectable, secondly was a conversation.

‘Mana sealing stones, how in the world did they get their hands on that’

The conversation was between the emperor and a few aristocrats, judging from their clothing.

From what he heard, they were planning on monopolizing the magic engineering department as well as the majority of unaffiliated mages.

I shut off the spell. Organizing my thoughts.

‘So, they plunder a village I saved, this much I can still let go, but to get so greedy to manipulate the world of magic through my mother… How displeasing, I was right, that empire can just be erased’

As I was preparing a series of Grand magic spells, I could not help but stop. A kind of tinted glass was floating in front of me.

No, my senses say it is incorporeal, so a type of light projection.

There seemed to be words on it, fragmented, unreadable, but they were definitely words.

As I stared at it, more and more such projections appeared, the contents were filled with error messages, and even that was slightly fragmented.

I was conflicted, I wanted to bring destruction to the Kiltes Empire, but my thirst for knowledge and curiosity was urging me to investigate.

I tried moving the projections, didn’t work, nor could I decipher any of the gibberish written.

Before James knew it, he was suddenly overwhelmed with dizziness. When it faded, the projections merged together to read one line.

You have activated the Skill: Ruler

After reading it, the projection blinked out of existence. It was James’ first meeting of what would later be called the World System.