Broken Tower Saga: The First Swordsman

AFTER SEARCHING AROUND FOR an hour, Wrik and company found an abandoned building. There's not much to note about it—the building might have been quite majestic in the past, but currently, all that remains was the ground floor while the ceiling was not completely in decent shape. The pleasant aspect of this place was that there were not many monsters here. While they were searching, they did find some goblins, but nothing else.

And the best thing that happened to Wrik was that his headache diminished as the night progressed. Though there's still a thin strain there, it was negligible.

They found a rather enormous hall to spend the night; it was in a decent shape compared to the other infrastructure. The emerald-eyed girl brought out a small square-shaped blue-light lamp from her accessories. Surprisingly, there's no heat emitting from the lamp, and the blue light lamp was not that sharp, but it was more than enough to show them the hall. There was nothing much in the hall, just some broken furniture and waste.

"This should be enough for today. We have the food and water that would last four or five days," Miss—the emerald-eyed girl spoke out looking at the two of them. "You two set up some traps around the buildings, while I make this place a bit more respectable."

Davin compiled without any complaint and Wrik didn't have any complaints against it either. They got busy setting up a few basic traps around the hall, though it might not be able to kill the monsters, but it was enough to alert them. It took a good three fourth of an hour to set those.

After setting up the traps, when they came back into the room, Miss was still cleaning the room. Well, in all this time she did make it utterly unrecognisable from once a wreck of a lodging. If they had any furniture, it wouldn't be any worse than any third rate inn. The cleaning continued, though most of the part was unnecessary, she was determined to do that. She was even using her mana in the process.

"Now it looks a little more residential than before," she commented, nodding as she looked around the hall. Her face was in sweats. She spent a good amount of effort cleaning.

'Of course, it looks more residential. You freaking use your magical power to clean even the damn ceiling.' Wrik mused inside. Then he coughed a bit to draw their attention. "We should talk a little about our future steps now."

Miss nodded and said, "There are some problems with this region, there was not much monster present here, maybe something fishy going on out there."

"Yes, there's something eerie about this place but it's too early to conclude." Davin chimed in the conversation as well.

"First, I want to ask the two of you a few things," Miss continued on a more important topic. She looked at him and asked. "What's your plan for the Trial?"

"Well," Wrik shied away a bit, then told her straight. "It would not be bad to ace it." That was his purpose here, but he didn't know much about the process—what needed to be achieved, what's the criteria here. All he knew was that he had to stay alive.

His words made Davin quite embarrassed but Miss who was listening to his words nodded before replying, "As we know little about the trial, our first goal should be collecting information about our surroundings and making sure to find necessary things like food, water or a place for living first.

"After making sure of basic needs, we should start hunting and try to find others. For starters, let's skip resting for tonight and get a better understanding of mana. I was told the usage of Maha mana would be easier after the awakening."

"There's three of us here," Wrik approved. "One should be enough for the night watch. Let's take it in turn for night watch, three hours each should be enough." Both of them didn't disagree with his opinion so he carried on, "So you two start with the practice while I guard first."

Davin seemed to disapprove of Wrik's volunteering, but nodded. He sat cross-legged and started meditation.

'I should apologise now,' Wrik thought, looking at the slender figure in the dim blue light. He wetted his lips when he heard her, saying.

"What?" Miss asked out. "If you want to apologise, rest it. You should've more things on your plate."

Wrik couldn't comprehend if she's saying that out of contempt or she understood his difficulty. But, he didn't ask; he knew better than to ask when what. So, he lied. "Well, I was about to thank you.. ."

"For what?" She asked. "Wrik Everknight?"

"For starters, looking after me while I was unconscious," he said hesitantly. "And now, understanding about my circumstance, I truly didn't have any time to spare.. ."

"I can guess," a rather apathetic voice sounded out from her mouth. "Well, I'm beginning my meditation. Stay alert and guard well. If you detect something, don't hesitate to wake me up."

She sat cross-legged in a meditative position while he stayed alert. Miss was quite proficient in using mana, while Davin was the same as him, barely having introduced to Maha mana in the trial.

He was quite surprised at first to see that she already learnt mana sense and discharge. Maybe she could manipulate mana even before the trial.

He had read about the basics of mana control in the notes Lucas sent. The elementary mana control starts with mana sense, in this process, one perceives the mana or Maha mana around the surroundings and within the body.

The next step was a bit complicated, in this step one was able to flow mana from the body to outside according to one's will. This step was called Mana discharge, and it was the fundamental of all the art of Mahasaying.

There were few other phases in Mana manipulations that he didn't know much about. There were other high-level applications like Branding, Destruct, Intent or Concentration.

As he stayed alert the whole time, the two of them meditated. He was glad that his head didn't hurt anymore. Wrik turned his attention towards Davin to notice his figure was now soaking in sweat just by trying to sense mana. Drops of sweat were dripping from his forehead. Davin was able to stay in that mediating state for about half an hour before giving up.

Soon, the three hours were up. The emerald-eyed girl was still meditating, while Davin didn't have enough mental power to concentrate on meditation. Davin gladly took the charge of the ward, as Wrik took his very first step in Mahasaying.

After giving Davin his post, Wrik sat cross-legged and started sensing mana. The principle of Mana sense was to feel the waves or flows of mana in the most comprehensive way. Sense each of the particles thoroughly. He could soon interpret the mana particle in the surrounding, well it's within his expectations, currently, his perception was over 30 while intelligence at 24.

Perception, intelligence and Magic power were the three most impactful stats over Mana manipulations. Perception helped in sensing mana in the shortest time, intelligence helped in controlling while the Magic power looked after the entire amount of it and its circulation speed.

Soon, he was sensing the mana in the surroundings. Well, it's not the hard part. The hard part was to stay in that state or to control how much to sense in detail. It's quite difficult to balance the perception. He started with just a one-metre radius around him. After spending a good amount of time in the radius, he felt that it was quite easy to stay in like that. After staying like that for half an hour, he started to increase the radius to 1.2metre. He found he had little a problem there either, maybe because of high intelligence and perception.

He suddenly had an urge to activate the [Eye of Insights] but ended that thought immediately. Eye of Insights could amplify his perception and sense to a whole level up, but he could use it for only a few minutes with his current mental strength—it was unnecessary to exhaust that. Moreover, he feared the piercing pain quite much.

After sensing the mana outside the body for about two hours, he changed the direction to within his body, his blood vessels and heart. Sensing mana within one's being was many times more difficult than sensing outside. Maybe with the help of the Eye of Insights, he would be able to sense it immediately.

After trying for a few minutes, seeing no results, he triggered the [Eye of Insights]. And the piercing pain in his brain launched at the very moment. But it's many times milder than before. Enough milder for him to continue. He made a mental calculation to continue. He wanted to feel the waves of mana particles inside him for a few moments; it would be quite helpful later if I knew the feeling.

After a few moments of searching, he sensed little waves of mana flowing slowly in his body. 'This is it.'

He made an effort to imagine an endless sea of calm water. Nothing but stillness and him present there. He imagined the mana as droplets of water—one drop of water poured to the surface of the sea.

The Mana particle within his body moved unhurriedly, according to his will. He turned off the [Eye of Insights]; there's no need for it anymore. The ethereal feeling was still present there even after he deactivated the innate ability. He concentrated his whole awareness to the surface of the sea that he imagined—he forgot everything about outside the sea. Another water droplet dropped—made the surface surge a little, then calmed down again. Water droplets started to pour one by one, and the process continued.

He could feel the ethereal ripples on the surface of the sea. There was nobody present between him and the sea—the Maha mana.

When he opened his eyes, it was already dawn. He had meditated the entire night, about six hours. The sounds of Miss lecturing Davin came in his ears. She was teaching him about the basics of Mana manipulations.

The first thing Wrik did after opening his eyes was to check the status window to see if there was any change. As the blue window appeared in front of him, he smiled; there was a new tab in the Omega abilities section.

[ Maha Mana Application (E- ) :

- Mana sense (E-): Mana sense is the basic sensing ability of Maha mana in the surroundings and within oneself. You can sense mana quite easily but you are at the still novice level.]

[ Mana circuit (Auxiliary) (Progress: 2.2%) :

Mana circuit is the auxiliary system where the mana flows. With a completely opened Mana circuit you can easily discharge mana outside the body with more momentum. It is unnecessary to fully open the Mana circuit to discharge mana from the body. The flowing speed of mana is proportional to the progress of the Mana Circuit. ]

He learnt Mana sense in just about six hours and even opened the Mana circuit to 2.2%. Well, he used some shortcuts, but who can blame him for that. Without the help from Eye of Insights, it might take him over a day to learn Mana sense. He chose a bit of pain rather than spending another day meditating.

Apart from this, there was a clear increase in intelligence, from 24 to 26 points. It also increased magic power to 18. Well, the attributes were still low, so he was not surprised to see it increasing.

______________________

For those that don't know, MAHA means Enormous, Mighty, Holy and Ancient.

The magic system of the series is quite broad, it would only be an info dump if I start to discuss them. So, I'll let my characters discover them as the story progresses.

— Thank you.