"Do I know of a way to restore anima?" Kayafe repeats my question. "So it all makes sense, then; the weird magic items you've made. You’ll be pleased to know that there are ways to restore Anima. Evolving your race to Legendary will grant you a vast amount of anima, hundreds of times more than normal.”

That’s good to know, but my next couple legendary points need to go toward my cursed skills to prevent any further anima depletion.

“I don’t see that being a possibility for me in the near future,” I say, a little dejectedly.

“That’s not the only way,” Kayafe says. “A powerful Life Bonded user can easily restore anima, but they need at least a thousand levels in their Bond, so you’ll probably need to find a rare Bond mage,” Kayafe says that last bit with obvious disfavor.

“Bond mages are that bad!” I protest. “It’s just that they have to be a little more careful when leveling up Classes.”

“No sane person levels up a Bond Class as their first or even second Class,” Kayafe counters. “Their third or fourth Class, however, I can see them branching off into it. Seriously, A non-caster Class can easily get you to level one thousand! After that, a caster Class will get you to two or even three thousand” Kayafe goes off on a rant.

“Bond Classes can be both caster and non-caster; it rewards you for the time and dedication you put into it!” I argue back.

The dragons, at least the four I saw, are all hyperfocused on Bonds, and I can see why. As far as I am aware, it is literally divine power, and if all of the strongest beings in the world focus on Bonds, then there must be a reason.

“You have it easy, Alysara! Most Bond Mages have to constantly switch from party to party because their group always out-levels them. Even casters have it rough until we get our support skills merged and at decent levels.”

“I am aware that my skillset makes it easy for me, but that’s also why it’s viable. Anyway, we drifted off on a tangent. Is there any other way to restore anima?” I say, getting the topic back on track.

“Maybe, but I am unaware of them… Well, I suppose there is one more, anima vampirism, where you steal the Anima of others, but that’s a really rare skill in the first place, and I have no idea how one gets such a skill.”

Wasn’t one of my cursed evolutions capable of stealing anima from others?

Regardless, it doesn’t matter; I can’t take that evolution anyway.

“If that’s all, then I guess we can move on to another discussion,” I say. “The flagship I am working on is almost done; I’m just waiting for the reactor. You wouldn’t happen to know any way to gain more items and materials that produce reserved mana?”

“There are many rare skills out there that are capable of all sorts of things,” Kayafe says. “My dwarf companion had one such skill. He was a genius soul mage and was able to transfer his mana core to items and rebuild his core. There's way more to it, such as stabling his mana core so it doesn’t degrade and all that, but to answer your question, yes, there are a couple of ways.”

Hmm, that sounds almost like what I did with my extra mind component. Can I do the same with my mana core? Can I own multiple mana cores? Can I use [Astral Projection] to move not just my mind component but my mana core as well?

“How common is having multiple mana cores?” I ask.

“It’s rare for the majority of mages, but it’s actually fairly common among powerful mages.” Kayafe answers matter-of-factly, “Any skill that augments your mana core should be capable of duplicating your mana core to some degree, and if not, then perhaps a dedicated skill that you can later merge.”

I examine Kayafe's soul but don’t see any extra mana cores, I would have noticed years ago, but I just wanted to make sure. The dragons, too, only have one mana core; why is that?

I Kayafe knows about it; then the chances are she has the skill for it, the dragon too, should have a similar skill, right?

“There more to that, right? You only have a core, so do the dragons; why do you not have more?” I ask.

“Which is better?” Kayafe asks, amused. “One core that produces a million mana an hour with ninety percent of that being reserved mana or ten cores that produce a hundred thousand mana with eighty percent efficiency?”

I see, so they remerged their cores into one more efficient core, but what about mana core stealers? If the mind eater can take my extra mind component, then something may take my mana core.

“How do you deal with a being that can steal mana cores? Having more than one will at least make it so you aren’t helpless if that happens.”

“I’ve never met a being capable of that, but I suppose anything’s possible; however, such beings are so rare you’ll probably never encounter them,” Kayafe says.

“It’s a little late for that…” I say, remembering my encounter with the mind eater.

“You had your Mana core stolen? Did you get it back somehow?” Kayafe interrogates me.

“Not my mana core but my spare mind component. It was a few years ago, in the dungeon, I saw a Mind Eater, and it attacked me. It’s still there, and I am not strong enough to fight it as I am right now.” I explain.

“Why didn’t you mention it earlier?!” Kayafe says, sounding a little worried.

“I was able to regenerate my spare mind component,” I reassure Kayafe. “It happened shortly before the perception poisoning monster, and my worries about my skill being damaged were more important.”

Kayafe sighs exasperatedly. “What am I going to do with you?” she mumbles. “Anyway, what’s going on with the Lunaley?”

I kept Kayafe informed about the Lunaley, but she doesn’t have much of an opinion about them other than the tracker that I assume is the Eyeblight Assassin.

“You haven't seen that assassin again, have you?” Kayafe asks.

“No, but even if I did, I am confident he won’t be able to track my location by the time I react and move my perception.”

I explain my recent improvements and insight into spatial layers.

“I still don’t get it,” Kayafe says after I tried explaining the concept several times. “Perhaps it’s just one of those things you can to see for yourself to fully understand. In any case, it seems like those layers are incredibly useful! And there are more types of elements in there? Are there other elementals too?”

“I don’t know, but the layers are incredibly dangerous in many ways.” I try to curb Kayafe’s enthusiasm before she gets it in her head that it’s a safe.

“What do you mean? It’s just another ‘here’, right?”

“Yes, but no.” I try to explain

“See, it doesn’t make sense. It’s either yes or no; it can’t be both,” Kayafe argues.

“Yes, it can, but that’s not the point. The point is the laws that govern those layers may not make them habitable. In fact, most, if not all, layers are uninhabitable in the long term. However, environmental hazards are not the only thing we need to worry about. There are… things in those layers, creatures that exist according to those different laws, and I think they may be in some sort of inter-layer conflict of some kind,” I explain my encounter with one of them.

“Hmm.” Kayafe hums as she digests my recount of what happened. “The one you saw wasn’t strong, but they have strange skills. Gaze attacks are rare, I’ve only ever fought two beings with them, and one should not take them lightly, being able to attack every living thing they see, and they are all the more terrifying when combining their attacks with perception skills.” Kayafe pauses as if she is remembering something.

“One of my top five difficult battles was against someone known as the Burning Seer, who would ignite entire armies from his tower. He was a ruthless conqueror who specialized in his fire gaze skill, able to light anything he saw aflame, didn’t matter if it was one person or an entire mountainside. We eventually slew him and freed the people from his tranny, but we almost died trying.”

If Kayafe could have shuddered, I am sure she would have, I don’t know what it’s like to be burned alive, but I am sure Kayafe experienced it in that fight.

“The other one was, in a way, worse,” Kayafe says. “She had [Stop Gaze]; you would be completely frozen in time so long as she looked at you. She could stop someone mid-fall if she wanted. This is just a warning for you, be very wary of gaze users, especially legendary tier ones like the Burning Seer.”

“Have you ever heard of a skill that can let you see others who sees you?” I ask.

“No, but you are right about that; that creature’s skills are built to directly counter perception users in such a way that it bypasses any defensive measures. No scapegoats, proxies, those perceptive knots you told me about, nothing can block it; it’s a perfect retaliation, and being hidden makes them all the more suspect. They aren’t just targeting weak perception users; they are targeting strong, smart, and curious perception users. But who is their enemy? Us, or something else from other layers?”

“I don’t know, and that’s what has me worried; what’s worse is that they, or some other threats, may be watching us, and we have no knowledge that they are even doing it.” I voice my concerns.

“That may be, but I doubt it. If they want to harm us, they would have done so long ago, at least in many parts of the world; there would at least be some records of their attacks somewhere. We can’t rule out the possibility, but there’s no history of that happening.” Kayafe says.

Kayafe alleviates my concerns a little; however, I am unable to continue the discussion. I am almost out of mana, so I say farewell to Kayafe and fly home. I would let Safyr know about those large monsters, but she’d probably give me the same answer as Kayafe.

Once home, I check my inscription test samples and make more based on the most successful ones.

If this works well enough, then do I need materials that only produce reserved mana? I ask myself

What about the ones that produce light mana? If I pair them with the reserved mana transformation inscription, then I might be able to get that airship reactor made sooner!

Go to the Dungeon Village to see if I can buy a mana-producing material and see one that produces six hundred wind mana per hour. I buy the expensive material and bring it back home to begin my experiment.

First, I use the mana gathering coreless inscription and have it funnel the produced mana to the mana transforming coreless inscription. It isn’t perfect, but I work on efficiency. Now all I need are more of these items, and we’ll have that flagship up in the air by next month!