Chương 89: (B2 Chapter 40)

Lucas was looking at me weirdly for some reason. I mentally shrugged and ignored it, focusing on the information I needed to share with him instead. He seemed a bit thirsty, and gulped down some water before taking a deep breath and arriving next to me. Both of us then walked silently side by side up the stairs and into an empty apartment before I started speaking.

"I have some huge news," I started, but paused at seeing Lucas's hand held up.

"What?" I asked, confused.

"Let me just sit down first and mentally prepare myself for the newest crazy thing you discovered," he answered, taking the time to choose a suitable place to comfortably sit.

"Rude!" I remarked, but got nothing in return as he continued testing places to sit. After a while, he finally settled on the couch and looked up at me expectantly.

"Are you done?" I asked, slightly exasperated.

"Sure, hit me with what you have to say," he answered. I sighed, and then proceeded to tell him everything about the encounter with the lizards. By the end of the retelling, he had gotten up and was pacing about the room, deep in thought.

"I need to find a better place to sit next time, this didn't work at all," he finally said, still pacing about." That's what you have to say…?" I asked incredulously. He shrugged, "Yeah, the couch really didn't help, like at all," he looked at me so innocently that I burst out laughing at his antics, joined by him laughing heartily as well just a second later. Our laughter died down soon enough, and we then got down to a more serious conversation.

He did point out that it would have probably been better if I had just followed them closely under concealed presence instead of revealing myself, which I had to agree with, but we couldn't change the past, so we just focused on how to deal with the situation. After a lot of discussion, we came up with a strategy we felt could work, but at the same time we also agreed to discuss it with the others before finalizing the plan. Which reminds me…

"How's Marcus? Any change?" I asked worriedly. Lucas shook his head, and my worry grew. Marcus had been out cold since the dungeon, and nothing we did was waking him up. The only silver lining was that he was breathing steadily, so he was still alive. His ability caused him to be unconscious for a few hours in the tutorial… this has to be something else… Could it be the boss constantly draining him after he passed out? But then Hannah should have also been affected…

It could be a combination of both, his ability and the boss's drain. The thing was that we simply didn't know what the problem was. All we could do was hope he would get better soon, as no amount of healing we had tried on him seemed to work. Lucas then said he needed to go back downstairs and excused himself, but left me a cryptic message before leaving.

"I've decided that since you ruined a peaceful day of mine by poking your nose into something yet again, I'll be doing something to affect your peace as well. Be prepared," he said as he left, with a slight, dangerous grin. What does that mean? I thought about it for a few seconds, but ultimately ignored his words. I had better things to focus on; like magic.

I remembered about the experiments I had been doing before running into the lizards, and I wanted to continue on the way I had been thinking about progressing. The two main aspects of mana I was focusing on were going to be trying to get an actual boosting skill, and trying to change the type of my mana. I settled down to start, and chose to work on a boosting skill for now. The way I had been going through with this seemed wrong, as simply making mana rush throughout me didn't seem like the answer.

I needed to somehow supercharge my mana, so I gathered a small amount of mana in my right hand and tried just that. I exerted my will on the mana to make itself more powerful, or to vibrate rapidly, or to just be more, but it didn't matter what I thought of as nothing worked. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. If only I had access to mana sense!

Mana sense would allow me to see the mana, and I would then be able to utilize mana mastery and arcane comprehension much more effectively. It is just so unfortunate that arcane comprehension makes the skill pretty much unusable for me right now. If only there was some way I could make the environment less mana dense, it would help immensely with using both skills at the same time. Oh! Wait a minute… Surprisingly, I actually remembered something I had within my inventory for once.

I opened it and took out the glowing blue crystal we had encountered in the dungeon. The crystal actively siphoned off mana from its surroundings, so if I could reduce or even eliminate the mana within this room, I could have a controlled environment in which to use mana sense after so long. I proceeded to take out a few mana crystals from my inventory and started placing them all around the room, and then I waited for a few minutes before taking a deep beath and using mana sense.

The skill activated without any hiccup, and I could see absolutely nothing within the room, not even near to or inside the crystals. Then I changed my view to observe the mana within me, and to my great joy it seemed I could sense the mana within me without any trouble from arcane comprehension. It worked! My excitement was suddenly interrupted by the apartment door slowly start to open.

I briefly saw a pair of small, beady eyes looking at me from the gap before the door was thrown open and Alexandra came running up to me.

"Alex! I finally found you! Lucas said you were here!" she exclaimed excitedly. … So, this is what he meant by doing something to affect my peace. I hate to admit it, but the bastard did do well this time.

"Woah! What is that?" she asked, running towards a mana crystal.

"No! Don't touch it, it's dangerous!" I said, running towards it and clutching the crystal in my hand, although it didn't look like I had needed to, as Alexandra had immediately stopped as soon as I had said not to touch it.

"What is it?" she repeated her question, curiosity shining in her eyes.

"It's what we are calling a mana crystal for now, but I think we should come up with a better name," I explained, not finding any reason to not be truthful to her. I think it was just due to the fact that I didn't want to make up an elaborate story in answer to her question.

"Wow! What does the crystal do?" she then asked.

"It siphons off mana from its surroundings, now, no more questions. I am trying to do some work here and I need absolute peace and quiet!" I answered firmly and without leaving any room to negotiate from my tone. Alexandra suddenly went silent at that and climbed up on the couch that Lucas had vacated just some time ago.

"Okay, but can I stay here please? I promise I won't disturb you!" she said.

"That's fine, but one word out of you and the deal is off, okay?" She nodded profusely at that and started staring about the room in silence, fidgeting whenever she found something of interest or excitement. Meanwhile, I activated mana sense again and started my experimentation. I gathered a small wisp of internal mana and once again started trying to influence it to make it become more somehow. Mana mastery and arcane comprehension offered small bits and pieces of advice, and I quickly started making progress.

I even used my ability to make the mana become something more, and the ability worked, but it happened so quickly that I didn't get the chance to see how my ability had changed the mana. Remembering the days in the tutorial and the resemblance of what I was doing there and what I am doing now, I let out a small chuckle at the thought, but quickly focused back on the task at hand. I activated quick step to take advantage of the enhanced perception, and then used my ability to do the same thing it had done earlier.

The process was still too fast for me to understand it, but I was able to grasp a few key concepts. Time started passing rapidly as I focused completely on getting mana to boost itself. Progress, as usual with magic, was slow, but the incremental changes I was doing would soon turn out to be amazing, I was sure of it. By now, I was able to vibrate my mana rapidly, which actually worked to an extent, however, it still had the problem of being too wasteful.

I figured out what actually worked best was to have a concrete image of what exactly I wanted to accomplish with the wisp of mana in my hand, and then use my intent to convey my message and mental image to the mana. It seemed complicated, and perhaps I was doing too much for a simple job, but luckily it looked to be working well, so I kept at it.

I was waiting for my mana to regenerate so I could try again, having placed the mana crystals back within my inventory so that I could regenerate mana, when I noticed that Alexandra was still here. She had actually stayed silent throughout my experiments, which was a real shock to me. I believe close to two hours had passed since I had asked her to remain quiet, whereas I didn't think she would even last five minutes. With how silent she had been, I had honestly thought she had already left after getting bored.

I was curious about something, so I called out to Alexandra, "Hey, Alexandra… why do you keep trying to find me and hang out with me?" She jumped a bit at the unexpected question, but nevertheless answered…

"Because I trust you!"