Andarin looked at me with eagerness and hope, waiting for me to say something, so I wondered if I could help him with strengthening his muscles somewhat with mana and then suddenly remembering our first encounter when the guy appeared out of thin air right beside me with a rush of mana, “Andarin, there is something that makes me wonder. How did you arrive so fast beside my core when we first met?”

The elf frowned shortly and answered, “Oh, that's just a skill called mana step. By using my complete mana pool I can teleport some distance. You can use it for a pre-emptive strike or to escape a bad situation, but as I said it uses all my mana in the process. If I had a bigger mana pool, I would be able to use it more often, but I have invested most of my time into increasing my weapon skills. I could train my mana to increase the amount but that needs more time than I like to use for magic skills.”

So magic was something like a muscle. More training produced stronger magic. It made sense somehow, but I hadn't seen anything myself until now. I mean, I used my magic constantly so shouldn't be there some improvement? Maybe my existence as a kind of magical creature hindered me developing my power this way.

“Have you ever tried to infuse mana into your muscles? Just let it flow through your body to make him stronger?” I asked my future meat shield.

He seemed bewildered by the idea and frowned, then he crooked his head to the side with a thoughtful look in the eyes. I hoped his brain didn't get damaged by using it too hard. He took his time thinking about it and I waited impatiently sighing inwardly about this loaf of a guy.

“You know, I have tried that as a child sometimes but I never got it right. There always seemed to be too much or too less mana in my limbs and often I would hurt myself pretty badly, so I stopped experimenting with mana, but I got a skill for my training called mana manipulation.”

I floated there and I was sure if I had a jaw it would have hit the ground right away. This guy of all possible candidates had the one skill that all the mages needed so badly and he had never used it for all its versatility because he was a dumb idiot!

And to add injury to insult his parents hadn't recognized this wonderful skill the guy possessed. If he had trained it properly and others alike the goblins would have run in a wall of steel and magic instead almost wiping out the elven tribe.

I had to remind myself that until humans on earth had developed the scientific method innovation wasn't very widespread. I mean look to china. They developed black powder but it took hundreds of years to produce the first guns. It seemed, that I still had my historical knowledge but I wasn't able to remember what black powder made so powerful and how it was produced, not to mention how it worked. Perhaps I could use a kind of very small pebbles, then charge them with mana until they were short before explosion, fill them into a tube and fire a projectile by overcharging the pebbles?

“Sir, you are so silent, what's the problem?” Oh right, I forgot Andarin totally.

“I want you to do something for me right now. Try to remember what you did back then and I will watch you with my special sight. I will try to guide you through the process and help you find the right measure for your power. We will see about the next steps after that.”

He seemed content and sat down to concentrate, closing his eyes and steadying his breath. He relaxed his whole body and I watched his mana slowly moving from a place a liitle bis under his heart to his limbs.

“Only try to guide the mana to your legs first, Andarin.”

He did as told and I watched his energy moving down into the muscles and bones, accumulating there more and more. I watched closely how his body reacted and tried to get a feeling like I did when using enchanting to determine when an object reached saturation. It was similar with him and I felt that he reached the point quite fast, “Stop the flow now and let me watch what happens.”

I had to admit, that the elf was an obedient pupil as he stopped the flow immediately. Slowly the saturation of his legs declined and I tried to get a feeling for the amount of it.

“Now let it flow again but use less mana now and reduce it steadily until I stop you.”

He sent the mana flowing again and as I said reduced the amount slowly almost overcharging his limbs, a little bit of pain showing on his face. After some seconds I said, “Now keep the flow steady at this margin and stand up slowly.”

He had problems to keep his concentration on the flow but managed it somehow, standing with closed eyes on the wall.

“Familiarize yourself with this feeling and the flow of energy to your legs. Burn it into your memory!” I gave him more time to get comfortable with the mana in his legs. The tension in his face and body lessened and became more relaxed with every moment until he suddenly opened the eyes with a grin on his lips.

“I can feel it, master. The mana gives me strength I have never felt before and it is amazing. But I won't be able to keep up for a long time, lord Marcus. My mana pool isn't big enough for more than 10 minutes I guess.”

I thought, that this wouldn't be a bigger problem at all, “You know, Andarin, the more you train with your mana the more it should increase your power. So you should train your mana as often as possible by using this technique and keep on getting stronger. I would also appreciate it if you used mana for other things as well, for example hardening your skin or perhaps sharpening your weapon.”

He looked interested with my ideas, “I don't know how you come up with all these ideas, but I will try to fulfil your wishes and also come up with some of my own, but how will I know when I have reached the right amount of mana?”

Oh, that was easy! I smirked inwardly, “Did you feel pain before?” He bobbed his head, “See, that was the point when you overcharged your body. Try to increase the charge slowly and at the point when you first feel pain, stop and find the right point with a reduced charge after some time. Then you only have to remember how much mana you used to reach the perfect saturation and you will have a new way to enhance your fighting style. Okay?”

Andarin looked like a person with a religious enlightenment right now and was glued to my non-existent lips, “Yes, sir. Regarding the team I will be part of, who will you send with me? I'm not good with sneaking around and would need some training to do that.”

“Do not trouble yourself with my problems. I will ask the princess to find suitable candidates with someone who can train you in the arts of a ranger. Now get back to training your new technique, I have other things to do right now. Oh, and don't be surprised if you hear loud bangs from the direction of the forest. I want to test an idea I got some minutes ago.”

With that said I left him and went to the border of my domain and began to create a tube made of stone with one end closed. After that I took some pebbles and crushed them between some flat stones I made, remembering a video I once saw about old mills and mill stones. It took surprisingly much mana to turn the pebbles into grit, but I was very satisfied with the result.

With the grit ready now I imbued mana into the substance and got almost at once an explosion. It wasn't very strong, but it propelled my grit all around the place, frustrating me more than just a bit.

It seemed that every crushed pebble counted separately as an enchanted object and that was a problem because I surely didn't want to imbue every tiny part to create my black powder substitute. There had to be another way to do this!

After having thought about the problem for some time I just wanted to facepalm myself. Why should I use grit if I could use clay! It was a coherent substance and could easily be parted into any wished size. I had some of it still in my inventory and formed it like a bullet. Then I imbued it carefully with my mana and discovered that clay didn't use much mana to reach saturation.

Filling the clay bullet into my tube I targeted a small muck hill and overcharged the clay.

I expected to see an explosion erupting from the other end of my tube, but not that the whole tube shattered into fragments of sharp stone splinters, shredding everything in 3 meters diameter. I was so glad that I didn't have a fleshly body right now.

Okay, so a stone tube wasn't strong enough to contain and direct the explosion, so I would have to use a stronger material. Sadly I didn't have any other stuff at my disposal right now.

I went back to the shelters and rummaged through the materials of the craftsmen, looking for anything I could use, when I saw Kalla walking inside the walls. As she sensed my presence she changed directions immediately and walked to my position, looking curious at my doing.

“I know that we have told you that we will do our best to helpyou with building your city, but why do you search the property of my subjects? Couldn't you just ask them?”

Sighing I turned my attention to her, “Excuse me, but it seems that they are quite occupied at the moment. By the way, why aren't you?”

Blushing a deep red she stared to the ground, “I have no partner right now and didn't want to take the fun from any of the couples,” She squinted her eyes,looking sharply at me, “You haven't answered my question.”

“Yeah, I haven't.” I resumed my search and enjoyed the simple fun of teasing her. I ignored her stare for a minute, humming a melody and then said, “I'm searching for a material that I can form into a pipe and that is much more sturdy than stone. I just blasted a stone pipe some minutes ago because the material wasn't strong enough for the explosion happening inside the pipe. You don't know if someone here has anything I could use?”

Frowning she looked at me and thought about it, “Perhaps one of the smiths has any metals you could use, but without the proper tools you would be hard pressed to form it into a suitable shape, even with your use of mana. The only other alternative would be ironwood, but if I remember it correctly the last ironwood tree was halfway back to our former village, but maybe some of our hunters have seen another one during their hunts.”

I was sad that I couldn't continue with my project right away and had to wait until any of the hunting groups would be unoccupied again, but there was still another pressing matter I had to talk with my adorable elven princess, “I know that it sounds strange now, but I have a pressing matter to discuss with you, Kalla. You remember Andarin, right?” She nodded, bewildered by my sudden change of topic, “I have discovered an interesting skill he has and want him to get some levels to balance some of his stats. He will be one of my pillars for the defence against the goblins, as I urgently need someone who can take serious punches and still stand upright. So I want you to collect a team that will be able to infiltrate the forest, find small packs of goblins and hunt them down.”

Pure disbelief and pale she faced me, “Andarin? You mean Andarin, the dumbest male in many miles around? Are you for real?”