Chương 54: [The Mana Well]

The streets were quiet enough that their footsteps carried. A woman half way through cleaning her windows watched them pass. Two kids stopped on a corner, staring openly until one of them pointed at Torren and the other couldn't stop staring at the size of him. Rika fell into step beside Leo.

"So," she said.

"First session with Kai. What did you think?" Phil and Parmo smirked. Shai's tail had gone still.

"Doesn't say much," Leo said.

"Hands on, just moves you where you need to be and watches to see if it sticks. Didn't explain a lot, just showed me and waited."

"Did that bother you?"

"Nah." Shai's tail slowly began to move again.

"Felt like he knew exactly what he was looking for. Every time he corrected something it was the right thing. You can't do that if you don't know what you're doing." He paused.

"By the end he'd stopped correcting me altogether. Didn't say anything about it. Just watched. Felt like that meant I was doing well I guess?" Rika's eyes left Leo, her gaze fixed instead on the sudden, rhythmic twitch of Shai's tail. She grinned. By the time Leo finished talking the sway had settled into something easy and unhurried, Shai looking straight ahead, completely unaware. Rika watched it for another second then looked at Shai's face and made a decision.

"Right," Shai said, half a beat before Rika opened her mouth.

"Weapons. You all chose something today, how did it feel?" Rika closed her mouth. Phil and Parmo exchanged a glance. They'd been waiting for Rika to do something with it, she always did something with it, but Shai had cut her off before she got there.

"I'm glad I picked the bow," Parmo said.

"Let's be honest, the whole Legolas thing is part of it, I'm not going to pretend it isn't. The whole sniper taking out anyone that comes close thing. Standing there with it though, it felt right. Makes me want to really learn it, get good with it. If you lot are all going to be in front of me, risking shit in melee combat, then I need to get good. I could be the thing that saves your asses and that makes me want to take it serious." Phil looked at Leo.

"What about you? Don't try to tell me you didn't pick it cos it's a katana."

"I mean." Leo paused.

"Yeah alright, part of it is that it's basically a massive katana and katanas are obviously cool as fuck." He looked at Sam.

"Right dude?"

"Yeah man, Phil's deluding himself if he says they aren't."

"But yeah, getting it in my hands, feeling the reach on it, the way a single clean strike could do real damage if I actually knew what I was doing." He shook his head.

"It felt right. Like, it just feels good, you know?" Phil grinned.

"Of course the two biggest weebs think the anime sword is cool." Parmo laughed.

"What about you?"

"I mean, two swords is just cool," Phil said.

"I like how much you can do with them. It's layers, isn't it. Feels like one of those things where you think you know something then realise there's way more underneath. Like you've barely scratched the surface. It's like Rocket League." Sam looked at him.

"How is it like Rocket League?"

"You know when you first start and you think yeah I've got this, I can drive, I can hit the ball, I'm decent. Then someone does a mad aerial and you realise you've barely touched what's possible. That." Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Parmo pointed at him.

"Yeah. But for League. You pick it up, there's the champions, the items, the team comps, the matchups, the meta shifting every few weeks. Fifty hours in and you haven't scratched it. But that's what makes you want to keep going. That feeling of realising how deep it goes."

"That's exactly what it felt like today," Luka said.

"First session and I'm already thinking about what comes next." He paused.

"I wished I'd had the maul against the goblin. The shield was the right call, I know that, but there were moments where I was just holding and I wanted to be able to do something with it. Maul to break a line, shield magic to hold one. Both at the same time."

"Yeah man, if you get good with it, that's going to be terrifying to go up against," Sam said.

"Hopefully." Luka looked at him.

"What about the daggers?"

"The fog and traps I already knew I wanted. But the daggers fit it. You've set everything up, nobody knows where you are, and then you close the gap before they've realised what's happening." He paused.

"Blade nobody sees coming." Torren had been listening from behind them.

"In the Ironwood we call it the hunger. Every young warrior gets it. The ones who keep it as they get older become monsters in combat." The smell of fresh earth hit them before they reached the southern plains. The work was already underway. Further out, stakes marked the line where the wall would run, a handful of people moving between them with materials. Closer in, the fields were being turned, people working in loose groups across the ground, the smell of fresh earth carrying on the breeze.

Shai slowed as they reached the outer edge, scanning the guards spread at intervals along the perimeter. She found who she was looking for and changed direction without a word. Lucian was standing at his post, watching the treeline. He was human, late twenties from what the lads could tell, lean, focused on his role watching the treeline. He turned before they reached him, spotting the group. He nodded to Shai. Then to Luka.

"Nice to see you again Luka."

"Aye," Luka said.

"Good to see you again. Settling in ok?"

"Yeah, the bed was so comfortable, shame I share a wall with those two idiots next door. They were still bickering when I went to sleep." Luka grinned.

"Could be worse. You could be in the same house as them."

"Gods, you're not wrong." Shai gestured to the group.

"Okay, so these five have been wanting to understand more about how magic works here. How mana works, leylines, the rest of it. You know more than most."

"I know what my brother told me," Lucian said.

"Which is more than most yeah, still less than anyone at an academy though. I'll tell you what I can." Lucian turned his back on the treeline, leaning into the conversation while the other guards kept their eyes on the woods.

"Mana," he said.

"Let's start there. It's in everything. The ground, the air, the trees, us. It's not something you can see or touch but it's there the same way heat is there. You can feel it if you know what you're looking for, especially somewhere with a lot of it."

"Like here?" Leo asked.

"No," Lucian said.

"Here's actually pretty bad. The further you get from the core of the empire the thinner it gets. What you feel here is background noise compared to what's closer to the centre."

"Why?" Sam asked.

"Leylines," Lucian said.

"Rivers of mana running through the ground. Old, deep, been there longer than anyone can trace. The core of the empire sits on top of the densest network of them. The border sits at the edges where the lines thin out." He paused.

"That's not an accident."

"The empire built where the mana was strongest," Sam said.

"More than that, the emperor and his nobles built their keeps on top of it all, a long time ago. The current emperor and nobles live in these keeps. They've been around for thousands of years," Lucian said.

"The core of the empire is what was built around these keeps over that time. Leylines have what we call a nexus. It's essentially a hole in the ground where the mana is expelled into the air in its purest form. The closer you are to one of these the more pure the mana is in everything and the easier it is to improve your magic."

"So they have a monopoly on the best mana? On the best mages?" asked Parmo.

"Yeah exactly. Anyway, we're getting off track. What this all amounts to is, humans on the border, regardless of the magic they gain, are weaker than those in the core."

"Does the mana purity affect mana sickness?" Phil asked.

"Like, is that a border thing as well?" Lucian shook his head.

"No. Mana sickness comes from your own system, not the ambient mana around you. You've got a mana well inside you, think of it like a reservoir. A heart that produces it and pumps it through you. Push that system too hard and it starts to break down. That's mana sickness."

"So it doesn't matter where you are," Phil said.

"Doesn't matter where you are," Lucian confirmed.

"What matters is how hard you're pushing and what you're casting. Not all spells cost the same. Something small and controlled costs less, something bigger and more volatile costs more. Push past what your well can handle without recovery and you'll feel it." Phil nodded slowly. He'd felt it.

"The purity affects how fast you can improve," Lucian continued.

"Better mana around you means your well refills faster. This means you can cast spells more often which expands the well and strengthens the heart. But the sickness, that's just you against your own limits."

"Good to know," Sam said.