Chương 520: B8—Chapter 25: Grinding the Magical Way

On the morning of the third day after our previous grind, Mahya skipped into the kitchen, smiling wide and looking optimistic about the world in general.

"Had a good rest? Ready to continue?" she asked. I thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

"Yeah, I'm good." Part of me still wanted to play with wood a bit more, but that could happen anywhere, and our presence in the dungeon had a specific purpose. Time to get back to it. Mahya clapped her hands.

"Great! I'll let Al know." Rue mentally grumbled from his beanbag with a low growl.

"Stupid monsters not afraid of biting." I really needed to find a way for him to help beyond the barking. Otherwise, there was no chance he'd keep his manageable size. We headed out after breakfast and, for the next three days, kept up the level-up quest, but this time at a far more manageable pace: A few hours in the morning, open the house, have lunch and some downtime, a few hours in the afternoon, then call it a day.

Sure, we collected far fewer crystals, about fifty a day or even less, but it was a much better balance. I no longer felt like the dungeon was sucking out all my energy and joy for living, and the extra time let me keep up with my education in the evenings. During that time, one important thing became obvious. The wood I planned to enrich had to be shaped and brought to its final state beforehand, because no matter what I tried, once I tempered it, that was it. Nothing worked. The stuff became too damn tough.

On the good side of the scale, I learned how to saturate wood with aspected crystals to create a better match between the base material, in this case wood, and the intended enchantment. That, by itself, turned out to be a far bigger deal than I'd initially assumed. Of course, there were limits. I couldn't shove Fire mana into a wooden plank and expect to create a burner. Tough or not, wood was still wood, and there were certain realities even magic could bend only so far.

Feeding wood too much of the wrong aspect either damaged the structure, created instability, or, in my case, created a localized bonfire that scorched my worktable. But beyond the obvious disasters like "flammable material plus fire" and a few other minor limitations, the implications were massive. For the first time, enchanting stopped looking like something that relied solely on the rune or magic script. The material itself mattered. Actually, "mattered" was underselling it.

Material compatibility seemed almost like a foundational theory. If I wanted something focused on healing, life, growth, or natural regeneration, then properly Nature-saturated wood responded better, held the structure more smoothly, accepted the enchantment with noticeably less resistance, and, according to the book, would hold mana far longer without needing a recharge.

Water aspects seemed to improve flexibility, flow, or recovery-based functions, while Earth looked promising for reinforcement, durability, and stability. I hadn't tested every possibility yet, but the pattern was already becoming obvious. The base material was part of the equation. That one shift alone changed the entire process from simple magical engraving into something much closer to magical material science.

Or, in less academically pretentious terms, I'd discovered that enchanting properly required me to stop treating materials based on personal preference or like interchangeable chunks of whatever happened to be nearby. Al was also happy about the slower pace since it gave him more time to catalog, store, and do whatever other mysterious Al-things he did with all the plants he kept collecting left and right. This dungeon was definitely his personal heaven on Earth. Or, more precisely, heaven on Ishkareth.

Rue was still grumpy, but he was slowly accepting the harsh reality that he had no actual weapons against those monsters. To make him feel better, we put him in charge of spraying the root monsters with Al's potion during fights using Telekinesis, and that improved his mood a little. Not by much, but every bit counted. We even got used to the constant thumping of monsters against the house while it was open and eventually learned to ignore it while awake, and even sleep through it at night.

Mahya called them "free advancement," and that one phrase completely changed my outlook on them. Instead of a nonstop annoyance, they became a takeout delivery of free XP right to our doorstep. That mental shift made the whole thing a lot more tolerable, and a couple of times a day, I'd even clear them out when it was my turn to enjoy the free delivery. It was a much more pleasant experience.

Instead of chaos and constant fighting, the monsters turned so sluggish after we let the house drain their mana for an hour or two that dealing with them felt less like battling dangerous creatures and more like chopping off tree branches to prepare a log. During the morning grind of the fourth day, we finally got the first payout for our efforts. Right after a fight with two root monsters and a snake, a small cloud of mana condensed around Al, then vanished into him.

That was the first time I'd been standing right beside someone when they leveled up without being too distracted by an ongoing fight to properly notice what happened. The mana cloud was thinner than when he'd gotten the Mage class or when his mana had increased, and it behaved differently too. Instead of pouring into him through the top of his head, it seemed to absorb directly into his entire body. Every part of him.

The right side of Al's mouth twitched in what almost qualified as a smile before he immediately went to collect herbs. Of course, the secretive bastard didn't bother specifying which class had leveled, Warrior or Mage, but by that point, I expected nothing else from him. That same afternoon, I had a revelation. Once again, Al was the culprit, and this one hit me as if a sack of bricks had dropped straight on my skull. We were fighting a group of five snakes.

Two were already down after I'd put them to sleep with Anesthesia, their long bodies stretched on the forest floor. I rushed the first one and brought the axe down hard. To my left, Mahya was locked in with another, dodging a strike before slashing back. Al held off the last two on his own. One slammed toward him, only to get blocked by his shield, while he swung that ridiculously oversized sword at the second.

I ripped the axe free, turned, and went for the second sleeping snake before it could become a problem again. Then, out of nowhere, a vine from a neighboring tree shot down. It wrapped around the head of one of the snakes Al was fighting and yanked it sideways so hard its body slammed against the trunk. In the same second, the vine tightened and pinned it there, hissing and thrashing. Through mana sight, the line of nature mana running from Al's shield hand to the vine was painfully obvious.

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"Shit!" The word burst out of me with way more intensity than the situation deserved.

"What happened?" Mahya called out. I waved her off with the axe.

"Nothing. I'm good." But damn it, how had that not occurred to me sooner? We were in a dungeon so absurdly saturated with nature mana that my mouth and nose practically tasted and smelled like lettuce twenty-four seven. I almost facepalmed, but the axe in my hand stopped that brilliant idea. No point chopping my head off. I sent mana down my Nature affinity channels and reached for the surrounding vines. It took real effort.

The connection was there, but forcing it into something useful required concentration, and that concentration almost got me killed. The sleeping snakes stirred. One of them recovered faster than the other, its head snapping up in my direction. I jumped sideways just in time, fangs slicing through empty air where my head had been a second earlier. I split my mind one more time, focusing it on feeding and controlling the vines.

For a second or two, they thrashed wildly like the root monsters, lashing around without purpose. Then the connection smoothed out. The vines dropped, hit the ground, and slithered forward. I cast Anesthesia again on the snakes and lunged at the groggier one first, brought the axe down, and finally took its head off. The second snake was already waking up again as I redirected the vines. They wrapped around it, pinned it hard, and held.

Instead of finishing it with the axe, I stopped and directed the vines to tear it apart. Sweat dripped down my back as I poured more mana into them, forcing them tighter. They strained, twisted, and pulled from multiple directions while the snake hissed and thrashed. The pressure split the body apart, the branches it was made of ripping loose as the vines finally tore it to pieces. By the time it was over, I was breathing hard and mentally drained.

The rest of the group had already finished their fights and now stood around me, watching.

"Good idea," Mahya said and clapped Al on the back. He responded with a small, disdainful sniff, as if praise were beneath him, but the man was clearly pleased. I turned to him.

"How did you do it so easily? I really had to force the vines to cooperate." He looked at me, visibly confused for a moment, then his expression cleared.

"Oh. I did not use Nature affinity in the way you did. I attempted that approach on multiple occasions with very limited success. I used Verdant Grasp." Mahya made a face.

"Yeah, I tried using the affinity too. It's a lot harder than it looks, even with my experience with Fire. Still, good call on Verdant Grasp. That one didn't even occur to me." For the second time in just a few days, I wanted to bury myself out of sheer shame. First, because I'd completely forgotten that spell existed, but mostly because they'd both actually considered using the affinity. It hadn't even crossed my mind. And I was supposedly the elementally aligned wizard. Mahya squinted at me.

"Why do you look constipated?" I just shook my head and said nothing. Somewhere deep in the darkest recesses of my mind, the faint hope of one day shedding the Clueless moniker still lingered. There was absolutely no point in adding more fuel to that fire. Rue pulled me out of the mental spiral. He tore through the underbrush as much as it allowed, weaving between roots, bushes, and low branches like a lunatic.

Barking exploded out of him in rapid, excited bursts, and his tail whipped so fast behind him that dry leaves spun into the surrounding air.

"What is it, buddy?" I asked. He skidded to a stop in front of me, practically vibrating.

"Rue can learn spell and help!" he half-shouted into my mind. I winced at the volume, but nodded. Right. He had gotten the Nature spells with us back in Lumis, but never learned them, waiting to be smarter. It had been so long that I'd actually forgotten. Three scrolls dropped onto the ground in front of him. One after another, they flared, crumbled, and turned to ash. Rue froze. Then his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl, and his eyes got a predatory glint.

"Where monsters? Rue show them how much dangerous Rue is now." For about a second, nobody said a word. Then we all broke. Mahya laughed the hardest, stepped forward, and smacked him on the back.

"Come on, you dangerous thing. Let's show those monsters the new and improved Rue." Rue immediately rewarded her by dragging his tongue from her chin to her forehead in one extra-wet lick. Mahya stumbled back, laughing as she wiped her face. For another two days, we continued along the perimeter. By that point, we'd already covered something like twenty kilometers of it and killed a ridiculous number of monsters.

Each evening, Mahya fed her share of the crystals to the combined core, still with no visible changes, but she refused to lose hope. Al kept collecting herbs too, though his enthusiasm faded a little more each day, which was understandable. By then, he no longer lacked raw materials; he lacked an actual lab or greenhouse. What he did have were drying sheds packed to the brim with hanging plants, carefully sorted into batches. On the evening of the second day, Al leveled again.

This time, Mahya sensed it too, probably from the subtle shift as he grew stronger, and shot him a dirty look but said nothing. I just smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. His lips twitched again in an almost smile. During fights and in the stretches between them, I kept practicing with Nature mana. It felt different from the other elements.

I had no idea whether that difference came from the fact that basic elements functioned differently than Nature, or because I got it from an affinity stone instead of learning it "the wizard way." In some ways, it was easier. With the other elements, progress usually came when I understood the element better, its nature, my connection to it, or how it reflected through other concepts, like water's connection to life. Nature didn't work like that. Honestly, I still didn't understand it. I knew what it meant.

I understood the broad idea behind it. But Nature was too massive, too layered, too all-encompassing for me to truly grasp all its nuances. And yet, despite that lack of understanding, my control kept improving. That was the key difference. Control. Not partnership like with Water, cooperation like with Fire and Earth, or friendship like with Wind. No flow or harmony, and definitely not asking it to do something. Nature responded when I exerted control and ordered it around.

The moment I finally understood that, genuine progress started. Rue was having a field day with the spell and got upset if I bound all the snakes without leaving him one. He also experimented with the other spells a bit, but quickly dropped them. The first time he created a small bridge made of vines with Nature's Path, a snake almost dropped right on top of him. He yelped, jumped back, canceled the spell, and growled. That was the end of that. With the other spell, though, things got more entertaining.

Suddenly, in the middle of a fight, one of the snakes exploded with flowers all over it. It looked like an extra-long centerpiece of red and yellow flowers.

"What the hell?" Mahya shouted. Rue made a choking sound. It took me a moment to realize he was trying to laugh out loud.

"Rue made snake Flourish." I looked between him and the blooming snake, then shook my head, chuckling. My chuckles quickly turned to full-on laughter when the snake's emotional state reached me. It was the first time I'd felt anything from a monster besides blind hate and aggression. The snake was deeply offended on a profound level. That was also the end of that particular experiment, entertaining as it was. Still, with Rue's new spells and all of us getting better by the day, the fights kept getting easier.

By that point, no number of snakes really posed much danger anymore. Al could bind one and hack it to pieces. Rue could bind one. Even Mahya did sometimes, despite her constant mana-saving mode. As for me, I stopped bothering with Anesthesia. Instead, I split my mind, flooded a large amount of Nature mana down the proper channels, and bound the rest of the snakes. After that, it was mostly just chopping. The only real fly in the ointment was the root monsters.

Yes, we could bind them too, which stopped them from skittering all over the place, and Al's potion dealt with the lashes, but the binding vines didn't stop the stabbing ones. That meant we still got punctured now and then. The only good part was that all of us had high enough Constitution that even when those things broke skin, they usually couldn't push much deeper than that.

In one of the fights, on our tenth or eleventh day in the dungeon—I'd kind of lost track by that point—I stood leaning against a tree, holding down four bound snakes while Mahya and Al chopped them apart. Rue sat beside me, holding down another one. At that stage, the whole thing felt routine. Snakes strained and hissed, vines tightened, Mahya hacked, Al sliced, and I stood there like a magical crowd-control specialist. My red light started blinking.

Level up +3 to all Traits Wizard Battle Master level 18 Apparently, I'd finally reached the point where I was fighting while being properly magical about it. Yay me!