Arcane Apocalypse

10 – Questing troubles

Mana. 

What was mana? Well, even in my rather shoddy implanted knowledge, that question had at least five different answers to it.

What Mia understood from them, though, was that silly little novice mages like her weren’t supposed to wrack their pea sized brains over complicated stuff like that.

The important parts were that she had a specific amount of it determined by her main Spirit stat, and that she regenerated a specific amount of it passively just by existing.

As for how much she regenerated per minute, for example? What was the rate of the regeneration? What affected it and how could one speed it up?

‘Depends’ it apparently depended on a thousand and more variables she wasn’t supposed to think about just yet.

Little magelings who couldn’t cast more than a handful of novice level spells shouldn’t bother with the greater arcane mysteries. It was handwaved away in her knowledge dump as such: the stronger your Spirit is, the more mana you attract.

With that being the limit of her current knowledge, Mia found herself extremely tempted to dump her remaining two stat points into Manifestation to give her snaillike mana regeneration a boost.

Every moment she spent writhing on the carpet, groaning from the pounding headache and the pervasive ache at the centre of her being, made that little drop of mana she would get for just giving in all the more alluring.

Another moment passed and a new miniscule droplet of ambient mana sank into her skin and slowly rolled through her energy channels towards her mana pool. She felt the aching emptiness abate by a miniscule amount. Mia could at least think now, concentrate on observing how her body collected mana passively.

“I am baaaacckk!” Mark sang as he came in, the door slamming into the wall alerting the entire floor to his entrance. He stopped, probably noticing her writhing on the ground like a salted slug. “ … Mia? What’s wrong with you?”

“Manadepravation,” she said quickly, wheezing as another icy needle of pain shot into her skull right as she finished.

“ … can I help?” Mark asked uncertainty. “Should I get Lara?”

Mia jerkily shook her head. “Just … silence.”

“Ooookay,” Mark shrugged, taking her word, or rather head shake, for it. She caught him pantomiming zipping his mouth as he ambled over to his room and disappeared inside.

I thought getting a spirit only had upsides, like having magic and stuff. Mia groaned as she felt another droplet of mana roll down her channels. Turns out, if you don’t have a spirit, it can’t be tortured by mana deprivation. 

Mia felt like a lone woman stuck out in the desert with no food or water. Her lips might not be parched and her throat might not be dry, but the spiritual equivalent of both was shuddering at every drop of the life-giving liquid that touched them.

Mana, it seemed, was just as important for her continued survival as water, if not more so. It’d finally driven home that she herself differed greatly from the girl that ran away from her would-be muggers. 

Am I even human anymore- Mia stumbled over the thought, then snorted as she realised the answer stared right back at her if she just opened up the Ancestry tab of the system. Guess not. But does it really matter?

It felt like it should have. The loss of one’s humanity was the topic of many a science fiction novel and movie, but she just shrugged it off. It probably helps that it just prettified me and gave me pink hair. And gave me magic. That certainly helped. Everything goes better with a siding of magic.

Mia distracted herself with errant thoughts as much as she could. She imagined all the awesome spells she would be able to do in the future if she just clawed her way through this suffering and the training she would have to continue once it abated.

The arcane was a versatile element, it could do most things other elements could do — if a bit worse — but where it shone were Abjuration, the art of protecting stuff, and Conjuration, the art of throwing highly explosive or otherwise murderous stuff at enemies.

Of course, as with all things, it had downsides. The most important of those being its tendency to backfire on the caster explosively if they messed up the casting. Another was its complete inability to be used for physical enhancements. Her body would only ever be as strong, fast or hardened as her Body Attributes made it.

That stung a bit. Okay, more than a bit, not that Mia would admit it. The book put all the elements before arcane and listed all the awesome things they could do, then slapped her in the face with a: ‘did you read all that? Yeah? That’s what you can’t do!’

Light had buffs galore, a single competent light mage could turn an army of mortals into something that could fight a lesser dragon. 

Fire had explosive power, which could be channelled through their muscles. Punching through rocks was the baseline.

Air gave swiftness and negated weight at higher attunement, while Water could turn a mage into a flowing current. You have to dodge an attack? Become a puddle.

Earth. Earth hurt more than the rest. Maybe because she knew Mark would be able to do it in the future. The book had illustrations. A Rank 5 mage transformed into an earthen colossus towering over a city like a god.

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Darkness was a bit yucky, but she could admit perfect control over one’s body would be helpful, if only for healing. Though in the illustration, the mage turned himself into a bony hedgehog, turning his ribs into spikes. She dreaded the day she met a dedicated darkness mage.

All in all, Mia was jealous. Though she suspected what the book covered was just the basics. Maybe arcane had much more to offer than crafting professions, shields and explosions? Something a bit more nuanced.

Alchemy, Enchanting and Artificing might have been interesting, but Mia’d rather become the magical machinegun than craft one that could be stolen.

I’m getting ahead of myself. And far too greedy. Mia observed, berating herself for letting the horse run away with her. Arcane was her sole affinity, the only reason she was even a mage. She shouldn’t be eyeing other affinity’s seemingly greener grass. First of all, I should learn how to properly blow stuff up and throw shields. The bread and butter stuff. Then I can see where this arcane rabbit hole leads. 

The book was good, but it hardly even mentioned what was possible for Arcane Mages specialising in the element and not just dabbling in it for crafting purposes. Major or higher Arcane affinity seemed to be just as rare as Full Light or Full Dark affinity, so understandably, a generalised book wouldn’t go into detail about it. Why would they, when it would only be useful for one in every hundred thousand people. Still, it sucked. I should get that Arcanism book next. Maybe it’d have more practical knowledge, not just what is apparently ‘common knowledge’ in this ‘Mystic Realm’.

As the minutes slothfully trudged by, the soul-deep ache of the mana depravation faded into the background. If she had to guess, it took about twenty minutes for her to recover enough mana to function like a proper human being. 

Mia stood up, hand clutching a shelf for support as her wobbly legs refused to do their damned job properly. Her focus remained on her spirit, and on her mana pool with which she became intimately familiar with throughout this ordeal. 

She felt the warning there, a slight sense that she shouldn’t spend more mana. It was probably there even when she decided to cast that last fateful spell that sent her trembling to the floor. She’d just failed to notice it, or willfully ignored it. 

Mia wasn’t sure which it was. Not noticing a slight mental nudge while doing awesome magic was a perfectly understandable mistake. Not like I will ever ignore that sensation again. That was horrible.

The worst thing was, that she didn’t even get a stat upgrade, her Manifestation remained the same. Oh well, she barely got out a dozen Mage Hands before she collapsed, so it was understandable.

I can’t train my Spirit stats until my mana recovers. Mia grimaced, gingerly letting go of her support to wobble over to the couch. But I don’t want to wait with this quest. I want my next book. Plus that extra Attribute would be helpful in any of my stats.

But an extra point in manifestation would be huge … but I want the book. Decision paralysis, her old foe, struck once more. Maybe it was the added willpower, or just her thirst for knowledge, but Mia decided to power through training her Strength and Flexibility.

Some stretching and squats should do the trick, especially since her increased Body stat flooded her body with energy. Not the magical kind, probably, but good old stamina. She felt like she could run down to the ground floor, then back up to the tenth and barely feel winded.

The only thing that kept her from trying just that was the memory of the bloodied man cursing out nine generations of her family for introducing his face to a door.

Annoying the monster slayers would be unhealthy, I think. 

Enthusiasm surging, Mia launched into the most straining set of stretches and exercises she could do in the living room.

Even when she was just running around the block, a half an hour of it tired her out. Well, it did before the awakening, that is. Now she stood, legs spread and knees bent at just about ninety degrees. That position was a dreadfully tiring one for her thighs, but she’d been holding it for the last ten minutes.

Losing almost twenty kilos of weight due to her Featherweight trait probably helped too. Who would have thought if you were lighter, bodyweight exercises took less strength to do?

She felt the soreness, oh the stats didn’t help with it at all. What they helped with was fighting through it and not collapsing. Her whole body burned, every muscle she knew how to abuse. She abused extensively.

Mia usually wasn’t a fan of gyms and weight training like this. If she exercised, she preferred to do it out in the wider world. Running through the city, hiking up a mountain, cycling the countryside and things like that, but the possibility of numbers going up got all the neurons firing in her monkey brain. 

It didn’t even take an hour before her efforts were rewarded.

***

[Strength: 1 -> 2]

[{Newcomer} Introductory (2)] is Complete!

Reward has been automatically claimed:

[Strength: 2 - > 3]

***

Her soreness all but disappeared as a wave of revitalising energy flowed through her body, suffusing every fibre of muscle she had. Where Mia felt like collapsing and never getting back up, now she easily rose back up and stood, the burning in her thighs still present, but fading by the second and much less debilitating.

She zeroed in on a chair, her selected test subject and comparison tool. Before anything else, she tried lifting it up and holding it above her hands. Back then, it resulted with her arms shaking and giving up on the task before she could come anywhere close to lifting it above her head.

Now, though … She grabbed it and heaved. It was time to see whether the stats actually did something, or if the surge of power she felt was just her brain being wonky. 

The chair moved, not easily. Her brows tightened into a frown as she sucked in a breath through gritted teeth and heaved once more. Her arms shook, the soreness in her biceps coming back with a vengeance from the fifty pushups she forced on them.

Still, the chair slowly rose, and a few moments later she held it up above her head.

As gently as she could, she let it back down. They were already down two chairs from the stupid bird’s rampage. She didn’t want to smash one of their remaining two chairs into the floor.

Her chest rose and fell with each breath she took, but a grin spread across her lips. It really worked. She got stronger from just training for a single hour, and not just a little. What got her excited wasn’t even the strength increase, but the implication.

Strength, while somewhat useful, was not all that appealing to Mia. The other stats on the other hand, like Cognity, Memory, Agility and all the Spirit stats? She was salivating at the thought of what increasing any of those would be like.

Experiencing life with a mind that worked twice as fast, backed up by an eidetic memory and with a body made up of corded muscles working beyond human capability, was a possibility. It was exactly what the system offered to those who were willing to work for those things.

Those were superpowers the likes of which wouldn’t be out of place as the powers of a comic-book superhero. Then there was the titanic icing on the cake: Magic.

If the system gave all this to her without also dumping monsters all across the city, she’d have thought she died and gotten into heaven. 

Mia rolled her shoulders, focus turning inward as she inspected her mana pool. Her mana recovered some, but it was still maybe another twenty minutes away from full. Well, as full as it could be with her current Spirit stat. If she really filled up her pool, she’d back to constantly having to focus on holding her mana down with a mental grip.

Her Spirit was far too flimsy to suppress a full mana pool just yet. She’d have to make sure she didn’t accidentally overcharge herself. Is there even such a thing as a full mana pool? Or could I hold an infinite amount of mana if my Spirit was infinitely powerful?

Mia thought that through, going over what she knew of the mystical energy, and came to the conclusion that ‘probably not’. Her knowledge told her that while mana usually acted like a gas that ignored other matter, when one compressed it, increasing its density, it started acting like liquid and refusing to condense after a point. 

In essence, even if she filled every cell of her body to the brim with mana, there would come a point when she couldn’t fit a single drop more into herself. That would be quite a while away though. 

As for her mana becoming too much for her spirit to passively handle? Well, she didn’t plan on ever even getting close to having too much mana. In her opinion, there was no such thing as too much mana. She’d spend every drop she had on training and playing with magic. Just to be safe. Yep.

Let’s see what the next Quest is.

***

[Quests]

[{Newcomer} Introductory (3)]

Objectives:

• Get a Secondary Skill

Reward: 10 minutes of remote access to the nearest System Obelisk.

***

Mia frowned at the reward, then at the quest as a whole. She wanted another book damnit, not some free trial for a System streaming service.

Slightly put off by the quest, she still opened up the Secondary Skills tab under the Skills tab.

***

[Secondary Skills: (0 / 5)]

{Newcomer} Desc: Also called general skills, or Subskills. The second name stemming from the fact that any Secondary Skill fitting for the User’s Main Skill can be made into a Subskill of that Skill. (If there is an empty subskill slot, that is)

• Empty Slots: 5

Visit an Obelisk to view your list of available Secondary Skills.

***

Mia groaned, then perked up as she got an idea. “MAARK!”

“WHAT?”

Mia hopped over to his room so she wouldn’t have to shout. “How did you do the Secondary Skill quest?”

“Ah come in, stop shouting through my door," Mark said, and when Mia did so he spun over on his gaming chair to face her. “What quest was it?”

“The one where I have to get a secondary skill,” Mia said, crossing her arms as she surveyed the room. Despite his haphazard and lazy nature, Mark's room was somewhat tidy. 

What caught her attention, though, were the empty sword holsters on his walls. Over the years, her roommate wasted exorbitant sums of money on buying swords, from longswords and claymores to katanas. He had everything. 

Of that, only the katana remained up on the wall. Mia decided to ask about that later. Maybe a dagger or shortsword would be better than a bat for her panic melee weapon of choice.

“Ah that?” Mark hummed, his legs swinging in the air. “I got Lesser Earth Mana Manipulation. Barely had to do anything before the system slapped me in the face with the skill.”

“How?” Mia frowned. “I’d been throwing spells around for an hour and got nothing.”

“I meditated on the mysteries of the earth,” Mark nodded, fingers running through his beard as he upturned his nose. “Once I caught a glimpse into its secrets, earth mana gathered around me in droves. From there, all I had to do to get the Skill was to make use of it. Which I did promptly thereafter by manipulating the elemental properties of a creation of the earth.”

“Okay,” Mia nodded. “And what did you actually do?”

“Thought of rocks,” he shrugged. “The mana came, then I shoved it into the sledgehammer, which melted into a puddle. It wasn’t hot, just melted at room temperature and solidified a moment later when the mana ran out.”

“Huh,” Mia stared at the ceiling in thought. “So when you thought of your element … it attracted mana? Which you somehow used without a spell circle.”

“Yep,” he shrugged again. “Didn’t need much thinking to do. I even managed to upgrade it to regular Earth Mana Manipulation. Just had to turn a pebble into a spike and shoot it at a wall.”

“Shoot it?”

“Yep.”

“How did you do that?”

“With magic.” He had the gall to shrug again. “Mana went into the pebble, pebble turned into a spike, I wanted it to shoot at a wall and it did.”

Mia debated asking him about ideas for herself, but refrained. Some strange flare of pride telling her she had to do this herself if she wanted to be a real mage.

“Okay,” Mia said. “Thanks for the help … also, do you have some small dagger or something I could use? Just in case? I don’t want to walk around with this bat.”

“Leave my poor bat alone,” Mark grumbled. “The only thing it’s good for is looking nice and cracking nuts. Not skulls. I’ll lend you a … dagger.”

He hopped out of his chair and pulled a large wooden box out from under his bed. In it was a stash of sheathed daggers, folding knives and some stilettos. Mia even caught some knuckles and stuff she was pretty sure was illegal to own in Austria.

“This should do,” he stood up, a dagger as long as his forearm held in his hand. “This should hold up against stuff. Though probably not against metal feathers. Now, where did I put the holster … “

He pulled another rack out, browsed through it before showing both back in and starting to go through his drawers. 

“Aha,” he exclaimed, holding up a leather thingy that looked a bit too complicated to be a belt. “I knew I had one of these lying around somewhere.”

“What’s that?” Mia eyed it curiously. 

“This is a holster,” he threw the thing at her and Mia easily caught it. Surprisingly easily. Flexibility? Or maybe that reflex enhancement from the Body stat? “A thigh holster to be exact.”

Mia stared at him, then down at her bare thighs. Tightening leather belts around it would be uncomfortable at best.

“Really?” Mia raised an eyebrow.

“Oh come on!” Mark rolled his eyes. “Don’t you wanna be like those spy girls with hidden daggers under their skirts?”

“Not in this scorching weather I don’t.”

“Fiiineeee,” he said and took out another holster, this one sporting a simple belt and a sideways sheath. “You can be boring for all I care.”

“Thanks,” Mia grabbed all three and quickly slipped out of the room. Who knew, maybe that thigh holster would come in handy once. 

Plus, it would look awesome together with a black pair of jeans. Even if her pink hair wouldn’t quite fit it, Mia still wanted to go for the cool look instead of the cutesy one.

They wouldn’t catch her dead wearing a frilly pink dress that fit her hair and eyes. Not in a million years.