Chương 519: B8—Chapter 24: From Monster Grind to Magic Lumber

Our first day of the level-up quest went well, but it also felt… off. Mahya and I had talked. We'd cleared the air, said what needed saying, and on paper, everything should've been fine. No lingering arguments or obvious anger. But fights, even the ones you resolve, sometimes leave something behind. Not the fire itself, but the smoke. A faint residue that clings to everything for a while. That was what hung between us. Nothing dramatic or outright hostile.

She acted like herself, and I wasn't upset with her, not really. But the usual ease was gone. A subtle shift, a missing warmth where our usual levity and easy friendliness should've been. It was like walking through air right after a storm. The lightning was over, but there was still that strange heaviness, that charged feeling pressing down, as if one wrong word could stir everything back up again. Al noticed it too.

He kept throwing the two of us occasional questioning glances, his eyes narrowing, but to his credit, he didn't comment. Rue, meanwhile, noticed absolutely nothing. He was far too busy loudly lamenting the existence of "bad monsters he can't bite or cut with Wind Blades," or sprinting around them barking his head off to keep their attention divided. I kept telling him it was a huge help, and it really was, but it did absolutely nothing for his mood.

He just kept grumbling about not being dangerous enough, which in turn made my heart squeeze with mild alarm that he might decide to solve that problem by growing again and reclaiming his horse-sized dimensions. The fighting itself went fine. More than fine. It was great, actually. Al's spray made the root monsters pull back their lashing extensions, which solved our biggest problem right away.

Our shields and armor mostly stopped the stabbing ones, and whenever one of us ended up with the occasional shallow puncture, I healed it right up. The snakes were even easier, at least when there were only one or two. Sadly, despite being able to split my mind into six, I still needed a hand to channel Anesthesia, and I only had two of those. That put a pretty firm limit on how many snakes I could put to sleep at once. So if one or two showed up, I knocked them out, and we hacked them apart with little trouble.

If more came at us, things got a bit more chaotic. Mahya and Al jumped all over the place to keep away from the ones still awake, while I flew low to the ground between them, trying to manage the battlefield without getting my head bitten off. That, of course, made things harder, since we still had to chop apart the sleeping snakes while the awake ones slithered around, getting in the way like oversized noodles with murderous intentions.

We progressed along the barrier without going more than half a kilometer inward, circling around the ring in search of more monsters. All in all, I figured we covered about 7 to 9 kilometers along the first barrier, moving from spot to spot and making as much noise as possible in each new area to attract anything nearby. Still, all things considered, it was manageable. Messy at times, sure, but manageable. And the best part was the crazy amount of crystals we collected almost nonstop.

By the evening of the first day, all of us were so tired we had trouble staying on our feet without swaying, but we collected over a hundred crystals each and made big strides toward our next levels. I wasn't sure which of my classes would get the levels, but it was still good progress. I tried using Arcane Lullaby to lull the monsters to sleep, or at least make them less aggressive, but it had absolutely no effect.

As far as the monsters were concerned, my humming or singing was apparently just background noise with extra annoyance. At least Fortify was useful. I kept it on Al and Mahya almost nonstop, and that alone pushed the skill to level 8. I also had Hafted Weapons under my Wizard Battle Master Class, which covered the axe I'd been swinging almost nonstop the entire day, but frustratingly, it still stayed at [Junior] with no visible progress.

The fighting itself was definitely good for the class, but as usual, the magic side was the bottleneck. Apparently, wildly hacking things apart with an axe wasn't enough. I still had to do it while being properly magical about it. I didn't think the Life Weaver Class would get much benefit from this adventure either. The occasional shallow puncture just wasn't new or complicated enough to justify meaningful growth.

Healing minor holes in people who were, overall, perfectly fine even without my help didn't exactly scream profound medical advancement. Still, I kept my fingers crossed I'd get something out of it. After all, I had gained levels from our first mad dash to escape the dungeons, so maybe chaos and buckets of sweat still counted for something. When I opened my house that evening, all of us dropped onto the couches like squeezed lemons. Every muscle in my body felt done.

Just the thought of making dinner pressed on me as if the weight of the world had decided my shoulders looked comfy. I tried giving myself a mental pep talk, the whole get up, move, you still need to make food speech, but nothing happened. My body had officially filed for rebellion, and there was no chance in hell I was lifting my butt off that couch. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

At some point, all three of them turned to stare at me with an unsettling level of focus. I could almost hear the chant of "food, food, food" echoing through their minds. I waved a hand vaguely toward the kitchen.

"Find something in the fridge or eat from your Storage. I'm too damn tired." That was all I had. With those noble and deeply inspiring words, I dragged myself up the stairs, cast Clean on myself out of pure habit, and collapsed face-first into bed without even bothering to undress. In less than a second, I was out. The next morning, I woke up sore from head to toe. No, I'm not exaggerating. I had sore muscles in my ears and every single toe.

I couldn't figure out how that was even possible, or where exactly the muscles in my ears were supposed to be hiding. Six casts of Heal Muscle fixed the problem, but I had absolutely no intention of heading out again that day. I needed rest. A full reset. Systematic killing for sixteen hours straight was more than my body, mind, and overall mental stability could handle in one day, even if it was just monsters. I just wasn't that type of person.

When I got downstairs, Al wasn't there yet, but Mahya looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, fully ready for action. Sighing, I said, "I think we should take a day off," and braced myself for the explosion, or at least some disagreement. She surprised me.

"Good idea." I stared at her hard enough that my jaw might've hit my belly button.

"Seriously?" She nodded.

"Yes, we overdid it yesterday. By the way, can you heal my muscles?" Wordlessly, I cast Heal Muscle on her, then went to make breakfast, still mildly shocked that it had gone so well. Apparently, our talk had really done something. With that, the last clouds still hanging over my head from our fight finally dissipated, and for the first time since our fight, I actually felt lighter. When I glanced back at Mahya over my shoulder, she smiled, and there was sincerity and goodwill in it. A genuine desire to do better.

It came through so loud and clear that even without the strange extra awareness level 100 Perception gave me, I probably still would've felt it. For the next two days, I lost myself in studying Introductory Studies on Mana–Matter Relationships and Saturation Techniques — A Preliminary Survey of Energetic Behavior, Material Response, and Safe Exposure Limits, and experimenting with my findings. The name was way too long, but the book itself was incredibly interesting, and I learned a lot.

One of the first things I learned left me feeling mildly embarrassed, since in hindsight, I really should've figured it out myself. Lis had mentioned that if you saturate trees with mana, they turn into mulch. I'd also come across similar information elsewhere and had basically accepted it as a simple fact. Too much mana equals wood breaks down. Turned out it wasn't that simple. Wood in mana worlds already had a certain amount of mana in it naturally.

Of course, the book didn't say "in mana worlds," since it was written in one, and the author clearly had no idea worlds without mana even existed, but that was my understanding of it. Wood didn't start from zero. It already had a baseline saturation based on the material itself, influenced by the environment, age, type of tree, and most importantly, by the mana level of that world.

From what I understood, most wood could safely be saturated to about double the amount of mana it originally contained before structural failure became likely. People with classes related to wood, like Mahya's Wood Artisan, could push that limit even further, usually something like thirty-five to fifty percent more, depending on skill level and control. Once wood passed that threshold, it didn't just "turn to mulch." It suffered structural collapse from mana oversaturation and exploded.

In other words, exactly the same situation as the goat I exploded in Shimoor. The moment that clicked, I seriously wanted to bury myself in a deep hole for not figuring it out sooner. The logic was right there. Different material, same principle. Overload something past what it can contain, and bad things happen. Thankfully, I was the only one aware of my own shame, and I had absolutely no intention of ever mentioning it to anybody else. But there was another way to saturate wood.

The book gave it an absurdly long academic name— Progressive Multi-Phase Runic Saturation Threshold Stabilization, Sequential Energetic Redistribution, and Structural Integrity Reinforcement Methodology —but I immediately renamed it "Woodworking the Wizard Way." This method was far more controlled and honestly made a lot more sense once I understood what was actually happening. First, you had to sink your awareness into the wood itself and slowly saturate it with mana to just below its threshold, not past it.

The goal wasn't brute force. It was controlled infusion while maintaining structural integrity. Then you drew a string of runes onto it designed to stabilize the mana, distribute it evenly through the material, and reinforce the wood's internal structure so the mana didn't build unevenly and cause collapse. Once stabilized, the wood effectively adapted to that new saturation point and established a higher functional threshold.

Then you could erase the runes, draw new ones, and place mana crystals on them to help the wood gradually absorb even more mana into its structure. Again, stabilization, even distribution, and reinforcement, followed by more mana crystals and, of course, more runes. Each cycle further reinforced the material, almost like gradually tempering steel, except with mana and wood instead of heat and metal.

Depending on the wood's quality, this process could usually be repeated up to five times before the material could no longer adapt further. Once I figured out the process, I rushed to experiment because, obviously, I had to test it immediately. The results blew me away. I ended up with a piece of wood I couldn't break, cut, saw, or even sand, despite my Strength being at 119. It was still wood, but ridiculous wood that was stronger than steel. Amazing!

The problem with actually working with the wood made me worry I wouldn't be able to engrave enchantments onto it, but once again, mana decided logic was optional. If I tried to engrave it normally without channeling mana, nothing happened. Not even a scratch. But the moment I channeled mana into the rune or magic script symbol while engraving, everything changed. Instead of resisting, the wood almost seemed to cooperate.

The engraver glided through it with ease, and the runes and symbols came out deeper and crisper than usual. Honestly, it felt less like carving hardened wood and more like engraving butter with a hot needle. Amazing! And the best part? It was so saturated and stable that it could hold even the healing artifact I invented without deforming, burning, or anything else going wrong.

I didn't intend to stop using bones and switch to wood, since I already had the bones, no real shortage of them, and I also had the Thunderbull horns from the Lord of Lightning dungeon. But that wasn't really the point. The point was that it demonstrated the almost unbelievable upgrade the wood had undergone. As I said… amazing!