The sun rose, and I shifted back into Rhannu’s form and walked over to the docks where Geistig was waiting. Kaz and Tishina were nowhere to be found.

“Greetings, Geistig. Are the others coming?”

“No, they’re doing a mandatory quest today. You’re up tomorrow, by the way. Head to the guild office in the morning.”

“A quest so soon? What is it?”

“Don’t know yet, but don’t get your hopes up. They always give the newbies the tasks no one else wants to do. Anyways, let’s start your training. I know I recommended getting you used to having extra limbs, but it’s best to wait on the collective to get back to me before starting that. For today, let’s continue your training on mana detection. Have you been practicing on your own?”

“I have done basically nothing but sleep and practice since we’ve last seen each other.”

“Good work ethic, lad. Have you gotten to the point where you can detect mana and cast at the same time?”

“Indeed I have.”

“Fantastic. If you can feel your mana while casting spells, then can you tell me what the pattern for your portal looks like?”

“An outwardly rotating spiral.”

“Good, you weren’t lying about practicing. In that case, we can skip to talking about basic spells. You see, the basic pattern for all shield spells is actually the same as the pattern for your portal. For most, the shield pattern creates a defensive field of your alignment’s substance. But what defensive means for different alignment’s basic shield spell is changes based on the alignment.

For fire aligned, this would be an explosive force, which reflects an incoming blow whilst knocking you away. That being said, most fire aligned just use this as another way to blow stuff up, rather than as an actual shield. For force aligned, the shield spell manifests as a semi-physical forcefield that can deflect blows. For space aligned, this shield manifests as a portal, which can be used to send the blow itself to a different space from you entirely.

But as I’m sure you’re also aware, this spell is excruciatingly slow for space aligned. It’s basically useless in combat until you’re C ranked, as before then it will take several minutes to create anything usable. Unfortunately for you, this pattern will hold up a lot for your alignment. There’s a reason most space-aligned don’t become adventurers, other than the fact that operating gates and space enchantments are more lucrative and always in demand. Basically every space aligned spell takes far longer to cast than other alignments, which is a death sentence in combat.

If not for your specialization, this line of work would be impossible. Though as a blue mage, it’s still probably best to stay as far away from combat as you can. Someone with childhood trauma especially. Why are you looking to join this line of work anyways? Do you want power? Revenge?”

“I want both if possible, but neither are among the reasons I’ve decided to become an adventurer. Ever since I was a young boy, my father used to regale me with tales of him seeing the world, overcoming obstacles, and saving people. For the most part, I just wanted to be like him.”

“You don’t have to be your father, lad.” Geistig said, looking away with a look on his face that made it clear I wasn’t who he was really talking to. Is it himself, or someone else that he thinks needs to hear it?

“No, I don’t. But that was only my motivation when I was younger. I lived my entire life in Norbury, confined and afraid. Fearing that I would witness another tragedy. Fearing that I would have to forever bow to those given more than me. But mostly, I just feared myself. That one day I would be satisfied with the way things were. Satisfied with the gilded cage the mana wells offer. Just before I got my powers, I almost was. But I was offered a way out, and so long as I live, I swear I will never take it for granted.”

Geistig stared in silence for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. I’ll hold you to that. But we’re getting off topic. Since you were interested in learning how to crystalize mana, the easiest way to do so is by practicing the bolt spell. The pattern is basically an inverse of the shield spell: an inwards spiral. Compress your mana in that pattern, and stop when it reaches a liquid consistency. Then stabilize the structure, which I’ll guide you through.”

“That does sound a lot like what I tried during my failed crystallization attempt.”

Geistig opened his mouth to reply, then pinched the bridge of his nose when he realized what I just said. “You tried to crystallize your own mana without me? After I explicitly told you not to?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was sleep deprived and not thinking clearly at the time.”

“Sylas… Forget everything I just said about your work ethic being good. I respect your resolve, but you’re going to have to slow down. It’s no use pushing yourself so hard if it kills you in the process. Speaking of which, how did you even survive the blast?”

“Barely. My owl form is useless now because of it, so I’ll have to use my pigeon form until I find something better.”

“You got off lucky. Most people who fail to stabilize a crystal spell like that without safeguards die.”

“Safeguards?”

“Body enhancement, mainly. Sometimes a shield spell. Normally you’d have to wait until D rank to be able to enhance yourself enough to survive a failed crystal stabilization. Fortunately for you, you seem to be able to use D rank mana when in a D rank form.” Geistig explained.

A smile formed on my face, but was interrupted by his next remark. “Don’t get used to it. Blue mages always get cocky because they can handle stronger mana at the early ranks, but that stops being useful rather quickly. The difference between ranks grows exponentially, so I doubt you’ll be able to handle anything of a higher rank than you once you reach D rank.

More importantly, your ability to absorb mana does not grow in line with your mana capacity and expenditure. If you’re ever C rank like me, you’ll need to spend at least a week recovering mana just to use your full strength for a few minutes. The lucky few who grow beyond that tend to spend most of their time trying to amass a fortune of crystals to quickly make up for this difference, or spend months or years outside of mana wells to naturally regain their mana. Absorbing a monster's mana is much faster than natural recovery and doesn’t require a fortune, but using that as your main source of recovery is dangerous. Also, there’s only so much a person can eat in a day, and only certain species of monsters can even be eaten. Beyond that, you have to be a mage, have the same alignment as a monster, or pay someone to extract its mana into crystals for you.

That photosynthesis Dryads is about half as effective as absorbing ambient neutral mana, but that tends to be a drop of water in the ocean.”

Geistig paused for a second, realizing he had gotten a bit off track from the original conversation. “Anyways, don’t expect to be able to continue using strength above your own. It won’t last. But at least for now, it may be helpful for training. You can detect mana whilst moving it already, so you should have everything you need to be able to control your body enhancement. Now let’s put that theory into practice. Sit down, and I’ll cast another low-power sleep spell on you.”

I obliged, and sensed my mana in Rhannu’s form. With Geistig’s assistance, I was even able to do so with my eyes open. As it was in Polypus form, my subspace was clear enough to me to sense through. Rhannu was performing his exercise routines again, the Ostean Giant Flytrap was digesting the bugs I sent to it, and both the Polypi and the Spiderilla were boredly crawling around their terrariums.

Sorry, guys. I’ll find some ways to keep you all entertained in the future, but the neutral mana problem takes priority, then Rhannu’s happiness after that.

Other than my subspace, I could also sense some other, foreign mana around my head, as well as a few other types of mana throughout me, though they were all significantly weaker than the aforementioned mana. Is the mana around my head geistig’s sleep spell? I wonder if I could —

“If you can sense the sleep spell in this form, don’t mess with it or form a mental barrier. Things can get complicated when you mess with a spell you don’t understand.”

“I still don’t know how to form a mental barrier, but good to know.” Nevermind. Back to body enhancement. I can sense my mana, and I already know how to produce it, but how do I use it to enhance myself?

“Geistig, what’s the pattern for body enhancement?” I asked.

“Just focus on your alignment’s mana, and have it fill whatever part you want to enhance. Normally an E rank would have to condense it first, but your D rank body should naturally produce dense enough mana, assuming you use mana of its alignment, rather than your own.”

“I’ve never intentionally produced mana of another form’s alignment. Give me a second, I need to figure out how to use it.”

Alright, so Rhannu is wood aligned. In order to use it, I need to figure out what the wood mana feels like. Thankfully Rhannu is made of wood, so there should be at least some within me I can try to detect.

I went through all of the mana I could detect within Rhannu’s body one by one, trying to manipulate them as I had my space mana. After going through a few, I finally found some that budged when I tried to move it. Wood mana, it must be. I traced this feeling down to one of my arms, and “activated” it. The mana came alive, surging with a radiant strength that was now much stronger than anything I’d produced outside of my subspace or in Spiderilla form. I leaned over towards that arm’s side slowly, and stuck my hand in the dirt. There was some resistance, but much less than there would have been if it wasn’t working.

“Good, you figured it out quickly. If you can do that to your whole body, you should be able to survive a failed mana crystal stabilization. Now turn it off, I don’t want to have to wait around for you to recharge more than we need to.”

I pulled my hand out of the dirt and obliged, feeling the strength leave me as I did.

“So if I can keep that up, I can try to stabilize a mana crystal?”

“You can attempt it, if you have the mana for both, but first you’ll need to learn to stabilize mana in liquid form. A simple bolt spell should do. I can help you through the process, but it may feel a bit invasive, since I’ll have to take control of your body’s mana production.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about lending over that much control of myself to someone else.”

“It’s fine if you feel that way. It’ll just take days instead of hours to learn.”

“My mind and body are yours.”

Geistig shuddered. “Sylas, never say those words to me ever again.”

I felt another headache coming on, and my body stood up without me telling it to. I moved my hand in front of me palm-up, and began to pull at my space mana, condensing it into a liquid in my palm. Throughout my body, my wood mana flowed to enhance me. I could feel the mana in my palm shift into place and become more real, more tangible. Gradually from the inside-out, I relinquished control of the mana, except for a thin layer around the outside to keep its shape.

What was left in my hand by the end of the process was a pitch-black ball of space, sloshing like a filled water balloon as I moved my arm. I threw the spell at a tree, and the impacted spot on the tree stretched, bent, and twisted, but didn’t break. It’s as if the space itself was distorted, but the tree was fine. For a few moments, at least. The tree began to tear and break at the bend, as if it were made of a weaker and less dense material than wood that couldn’t hold up its weight.

My headache went away, and my body was back under my control, exhausted from the mana usage.

“Once you reach D rank, or when using naturally condensed D rank mana, you can skip the condensing step for this spell, and even activate your body enhancement in reaction to most forms of destabilization to save on mana. You can also alter the spell such that it launches on its own, or condenses rather than expands, but that can get much more complicated and costly. Understand the process, lad?” Geistig asked.

“I think so, but that’s a lot to do whilst sensing my mana and enhancing my whole body. I’m not sure if I can do both and cast the spell at the same time.”

“You don’t necessarily need to keep detecting your mana once you’re used to the process, but it will take less effort to do so as you get used to detection. We'll keep practicing until you get used to it, then move on to mana crystallization. It’s roughly the same process to create a crystal mana, though you’ll need to condense it a bit further, for about an hour instead of half an hour, and you won’t have to make a shell since it’s already solid and stabilized. Any further questions?”

“Hmm…” That still sounds like a lot to do, especially with my limited current mana capacity. Based on what it took when I tried it yesterday, just failing to condense a single crystal without any enhancement took all of my mana. I think the consumption will be matched by my mana recovery when around neutral mana, but that doesn’t fix how long it takes. If it’s an hour or so per crystal, assuming I’m outside of a mana well, then that’s 24 per day. No, 8 to 16 since I need sleep and have other tasks that need taking care of. “Wouldn’t that only be a maximum of 16 mana crystals per day? There’s no way that’s enough. Not for everything I want to do.”

Geistig sighed. “You’re correct. They get much faster to make once you rank up, which should only take you about two years with our party, but you’ll still max out at 24 per day outside of a mana well — plus about six for the 12 hours of daylight with photosynthesis — due to recovery constraints. You’ll find the problem of making money and recovering mana to be a constant annoyance and restraint on your growth. Welcome to being a powered. It only gets worse from here.”

“Two years, and only that much in a day afterwards? If it’s so hard to make money and rank up, then how Did anyone ever make it to S rank?”

“Typically it takes thousands of years, lucky breaks, and resource funneling. That's why there’s so many sects, and most of the S ranks are elves.”

“And Alexandra? The first S rank powered was a human, so she only had 100 years to live at most. It was also the age of monsters, so there was no one to funnel resources to her. Even with the increased lifespan from B and A rank, she wouldn't have had thousands of years to reach S rank. What got her to S rank?”

“She spent most of her life in the Major Husaram Labyrinth. She was fighting the strongest monsters she could find literally every day of her life, and had to find and fight primarily earth aligned monsters to recover her mana. She was eventually able to delve deep enough where the labyrinth stones were worth the time and effort to extract, but she was already most of the way to A rank by the time that was a viable method.

Many have tried to replicate her success, but of the millions to try, only two are known to have succeeded.”

“Has anyone in the collective tried?”

“‘Course not. We can’t keep funneling power to someone for however long that would take, and the collective wouldn’t get much out of having one more S rank. And no dwarves are willing to risk their lives to go that deep without its assistance, considering we already have as much power as we normally need through the collective. What fool would risk their lives for world-ending power when they already have it?”

“It must be nice, being born to a race where everyone has what they need to thrive. There are still far too many humans who never had that chance.”

“Yes, Sylas. I’ve seen the slums too. It’s a shame what you other races have done to your powerless. Why do you think most of us dwarves have chosen to live on Welt? We can’t stand the sight of you lesser folk.” Geistig spoke in a voice that made it clear he was joking, but there was some anger to his words.

“And you’re different?”

His jokeful demeanor turned solemn. “No. I may not look away from such tragedy as the rest of my kind does, but I too am complicit. Now stop asking personal questions and get back to practice.”