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Arcanist - Chapter 10
🕑 Added 2025-03-09 11:22:25 +0000 UTCAccording to modern magical theory, which conflicted in many points with the way of the Magi of old, though mana was a natural resource born with the dawn of the universe, it existed in a different wavelength that was decisively difficult to perceive, which gave it a quality fundamentally distinct from that of the air. So while each breath a person could inhale air and the different elements mixed within it, mana refused to be moved with basic suction of gravity and the likes.
When forced into the body without the guidance of a Life Magus, on the other hand, it became highly unstable and harmed whatever tissue it came into contact with.
Therefore, the common understanding suggested that mana was never meant to be held captive in one’s body. Human anatomy just didn’t have the capacity nor the affinity to handle such a miraculous source. It could only be guided by tools and complex spell formulae.
This theory, of course, had been proved baseless through the discreet research Valens and his Master had pursued for the last few months, which focused mostly on the old texts sourced from a well-preserved chest found under the depths of the Black Sea by some pirates. Getting it had cost Valens the greater part of his wealth.
Even though they were full of undecipherable symbols and lore about the olden times, Valens could still remember that the ancient Magi had, in fact, steady mana sources resting inside their bodies. Still, there was nothing suggesting that ancient Magi could absorb mana into their veins and change the very fabric of their beings..
But in this strange world the System did just that. Or rather here, Valens theorized, mana itself rested in a more closer wavelength to that of the human brain which allowed this all-seeing and all-knowing being, or whatever was behind the System, to manipulate the relation between the frequencies through a screen accessible but with a thought.
When asked in a roundabout way, Nomad made it clear he had no idea of the songs or the tunes of the mana. To him, becoming strong by putting a point in a stat was simply common sense, a deed done without any awareness of the Resonance. He did say it was something about the mana you’d gained through killing beasts or performing tasks that aligned with your own class, but he wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about the reasons behind this strange tradition.
It was a kind of ignorant acceptance, but Valens could understand where he was coming from. There was a reason why most of the Magi leashed under the Empire’s strict laws never bothered to perform dangerous experiments like Valens anymore. It wasn’t just because they were afraid, most of them scarcely felt a need for it.
With Wisdom, he found that he could indeed accelerate the rate at which his inner mana source renewed, but since his Intelligent stat boosted the amount of mana he could hold in his core, he had to balance it out with sufficient points in Wisdom to keep the renewal rate the same.
On that front, a simple experiment with stat points showed that for every two points in Intelligence, he had to put a point in Wisdom to keep the renewal rate the same. Another strange thing was that past a certain point, the acceleration rate supplied by more Wisdom stats diminished slowly, which suggested that there was a limit to how fast the renewal rate could get.
From the trickle of mana that’s ever-supplying my core, it seems like an hour is the maximum I’ll ever get, which will come about when I get a 2-1 ratio in the Intelligence and Wisdom pair.
The other stats intrigued him, especially Dexterity which gave him a sense of lightness around his feet. Each point of Dexterity added a slight note to his muscles, fibers, tendons, and ligaments. Valens even heard the harmony of his bone frame being adjusted with a new set of frequencies.
Vitality and Endurance worked more or less the same, the former bolstering the blood flow and the latter shaping the bone frame and the muscles in a different way. From this alone Valens could see the importance of being educated before making a random distribution of stats.
There was a good chance of messing the foundation of one’s bones with dumping stats on Endurance and Dexterity both. The two likely had points of alignment between them, establishing another delicate balance, but the price of disturbing this balance would probably come with more grave results than that of the Wisdom-Intelligence pair.
In the end, Valens favored the parts where his strengths lay, opting for the Wisdom and Intelligence stats after he completed his experiments. The allure was too much for him to ignore.
I have too many things to go over if we can get out of this place.
Done with the distribution, he lent an ear to the grand waves of his inner mana source and nodded in satisfaction before checking his status.
Name: Valens Kosthal
Age: 22
Race: Human (Ancient)
Class: Arcane Healer (Ancient)
Level: 13
Experience: 11%
Trait: Resonance(Ancient)
Skills (7/10):
Lifesurge (Master) - lvl 2
Lifeward (Master) - lvl 2
Blockage (Master) - lvl 1
Fireball (Proficient) - lvl 4
Apathy (Master) - lvl 4
Inferno (Adept) - lvl 1
Gale (Master) - lvl 1
Stats:
Endurance - 12
Vitality- 13
Strength - 15
Dexterity - 15
Intelligence - 70
Wisdom - 30
Free Points: 0
General Skills (3/10):
Laran Language
Identify(Basic)- lvl 1
Mana Manipulation (Master) - lvl 5
“We need to move,” Nomad said when Valens finished distributing his stats, mind fuzzy with all the details. “You… can move, right? You don’t look good.”
Valens swallowed. There was still a lot he couldn’t understand from just looking at this screen alone, namely the class, race and other parts, but the Nomad’s burning eyes had a urgency about them that he decided to postpone the questions to a later date. “I’m fine, thanks. It’s just too much to wrap my head around, but I will manage.”
“Good, because I need those flames,” Nomad said, adjusting his helmet with a click. He hauled his sword over his shoulder, and lifted an armored hand toward the windy cave that lay ahead. “We’re about to pass through one of the core caves. I reckon there’s at least a hundred skeletons there waiting for us, but this deep, we don’t have to worry about their levels.”
“A hundred of them?” Valens arched an eyebrow at him. He weighed Nomad up and down as he considered the concept of levels. He was a level 13 Arcane Healer, which he had to admit was a simple representation of his abilities as he much rather preferred the title of Resonant Healer, but he didn’t know and couldn’t see the level of his new companion. “What’s your level?”
Nomad tilted his head and snorted out a contemptuous breath. “96. Just a little stretch before my first Trial.”
“That’s… a lot, isn’t it?” Valens asked as his lips parted slightly. If he was getting 5 stats at each level, then that meant Nomad must’ve invested hundreds of points into his stats by now, which then meant he was a terrible, terrible force to be reckoned with. “Are you sure you can’t deal with them alone?”
“I could,” Nomad said with a straight voice, clearly stating a simple truth. “But even a bunch of ants could beat a wasp, eh? Better to have some safety over your bones than to dive straight into the depths. That’s what I reckon.”
“Makes sense,” Valens nodded, tensing. It wasn’t the matter of the skeletons that bothered him so much as the amount of mana he could store in his core. If he were to spend all his mana and the animated corpses still kept coming at him, then that wouldn’t be charming. “What I get from your words is that you’re going to act as a meat shield, is that it?”
“I’ve not much meat under these bones, but I’ll try,” Nomad sneered with a rotten, rasping breath. “Don’t worry, you’ll keep your soft hands clean of any rot. The undead is used to doing the dirty work of you humans. And you have the range with your skills, you can just manage that firestorm from over the din.”
Valens pondered over it for a second, then shrugged as it seemed Nomad was sincere in his words.
He’s the local one, if you can call him that.
“Alright. We move.” Nomad gave him a last look, and started toward the edge of the cave. Valens followed after him.
……
They passed the last stretch without coming across as much as a single skeleton before the path narrowed down, and split into two ways. The left one slithered slowly down the ground, while the other ended with a sharp fall to the main cave ahead.
Valens risked a glance at the sight below, then scowled deeply at the scene where dozens of skeletons just milled about as though a group of senseless slaves. Now and then some of them stirred, ribcages rattling, the rusted weapons scraping against the ground, but they never moved further than a step.
“That’s our path to above,” Nomad said, jerking a finger to the opening over at the opposite side of the cave. Valens nearly missed it since the skeletons blocked the entrance with their rotten bodies.
Somebody has placed them here to guard that path.
“It’s the Necromancer, isn’t it?” Valens asked. “He’s controlling these beasts.”
Nomad looked at him as if asking if there was a reason why he decided to state the obvious now, but nodded either way. “This Rift is one giant maze and it’s full of holes that stretch down to the depths of the Broken Lands. You don’t want to fall into them, trust me.”
“What’s the plan?” Valens asked. A Magus without a detailed plan was no different than a bird without its wings. You can never be too sure about these things, especially since it involved a group of animated corpses.
“The plan?” Nomad gave him a side-eyed glance. “I’ve told you. You stay here, and I—“
“You?”
“I’ll move.”
“Wait—stop!” Valens tried to say, but Nomad had already launched himself into the emptiness below, falling toward what seemed like a sea of skeletons waiting senselessly in a wide opening.
Valens found himself standing there with a hand stretched out, eyes widened as Nomad crashed down into the dirt, a boulder of silvery metal denting the earth with great force. He brought his sword up in a brutal swing that caught more than a few animated corpses, splintering bones, cracking skulls and kicking them spinning for good measure.
This guy is such a bonehead!
It took a moment of lull for the skeletons to register the sudden intrusion to their ranks. A moment and half a dozen of their kin. After the initial shock, dozens lunged from their ranks for the towering undead with cold fury, all hissing through rotten teeth.
Some tried to bite chunks out of his armor, others clutched their fingers tight around his boney legs, and dragged him in their ranks while Nomad grunted and twirled his sword round himself, the metal carving a smooth path through the sea of bones.
His emerald eyes glinted with pleasure as he lurched out a step and came out swinging from the pile, swatted a hand reaching for the weapon’s handle with its pummel and drove it grinding into the Skeleton’s chest.
Then he stumbled back on his heels, trying to shake off the skeletons grabbing at the back of his plate, at his heels, at the side of his neck. Alone, it seemed none of these creatures could ever hope to lay a finger on him, but they did a good job with their numbers at flooding him.
There are just too many of them.
Everything below his neck got covered in sickly, yellowish bones, Skeletons pressing into him from all around, trying to drown him with their maddened rush. For a second it seemed they would succeed before Nomad let out a roar and threw himself away from the pile, rolling out the way and floundering back to his feet with sword at the ready.
Valens wasn’t sure if the undead could sweat, but he had a pretty good idea as to what sort of demons were ringing in his head as he regarded the endless horde that sprawled before him.
It seemed a painfully pointless affair to go against these bunch when you watch some of the half-ripped Skeletons crawl back to their feet.
Then Nomad made a gesture with his hand at Valens, right index finger drawing a circle in the air, before he broke into a run. It was him and the sea of Skeletons down below the cave, the former cackling madly as it let the latter trail him behind his back. Now and then he let out a howl, stopped to crush a stray one with his armored feet and continued on, hardly affected by the pressure.
What do you want me to do?
For a brief second, Valens considered his options. Nomad was dragging the horde of Skeletons behind his back, and from this high up the cave, Valens could, in theory, rain the Inferno down without as much as letting a speck of dirt on his robe. It seemed a wiser option than having himself surrounded by that bunch, no doubt.
Might as well get on with it. I’m sure he won’t blame me if I accidentally burn him as well.
…..
