Unlike the level up for his Dragon Bond ability, Mana Sight progressing to level 4 didnât increase his perception stat. It appeared that the levels were awarded retroactively for the work heâd already done. The implications of that interested Caleb greatly.
âIf I can somehow get a blacksmithing skill, would I start it at a higher level?â
Heâd not given up hope of getting skills to help his smithing, even though heâd chosen a combat class. There were ways outside of class progression to get skills, he knew. Some people gained achievements that granted skills. His village heard tales of a desert tribe that initialized their members by stranding them in the sands. Those who survived more than three days gained an achievement that granted them a skill. The details of how they did this and what the skill was werenât known to him, but they showed it was possible.
Bog looked back at him as he spoke again, but when he realized Caleb wasnât speaking to him, he picked up his pickaxe and moved to the far corner of the room.
âSorry! I tend to talk to myself.â
Bog ignored him, which Caleb thought was probably for the best.
Caleb studied the mana flowing into him.
No, not into. Around.
A thick cloud of mana surrounded him, and it was growing larger as the wisps flowed to him.
Status.
The whole screen appeared, but he only focused on the two lines relating to mana.
â¦
Mana: 61/125
Mana Regen: 1.44 per min
Ambient Mana: Average
â¦
My rate of increase went down from 1.73, and the ambient went down from âElevated.â
Dismissing his status and looking around the room, he found the haze was certainly less than heâd seen before, and most of the wisps he took in were coming through the door cracks. Most, but not all. If he looked closely, he saw that the stone of the cave and his bucket of ore produced the haze as well. Mana flowed from every natural thing in the room, save for Bog and Caleb.
Ding!
Mana Sight has increased to level 5.
âNeat, but I wish I could see the number without opening the whole screen.â
Mana Status, he thought, but nothing happened, so he called up his status the normal way and inspected the mana section.
He focused just on that box, squinting and trying to mentally push the rest of the information away. Unlike his Mana Sight, which he saw on another axis of vision he still didnât understand, the system window obstructed his view.
After some mental straining which saw his mana level dropping rapidly, he felt something shift inside of him, and the rest of the window fell away, leaving just his mana values.
Mana Sight has increased to level 6.
âWoo!â he shouted, which Bog completely ignored.
Once free of the full status screen, Caleb found he could move the window to the side of his vision, where it remained unnoticed until he thought of it. After that, he went back to examining the mana around him, and found the two level ups from before made it clearer to him.
âSo, getting better at using the skill increases the level of it, and that in turn also makes it work better,â Caleb said.
Skills had always been a nebulous concept of much debate.
Did the system grant the proficiency as the skill leveled, or was the gained proficiency what leveled the skill? Caleb hadnât thought it the latter in the past, not liking the idea that anyone with the Blacksmith class would be handed the skill and talent heâd worked at his whole life, but it seemed it was a bit of both.
He could live with thatânot that he had any say in the matter.
He played around with his Mana Sight further and got it up to level 7, but at that point his leveling stalled and he went on to his next skill.
Mana Manipulation: This skill gives you the ability to manipulate the mana of your surroundings, draw it into your pool and use it to wield magic. Your mana capacity increases with your willpower, and your rate of recovery is controlled by your acuity and the ambient level of mana. Both will increase further with your level in this skill.
The first part seemed obvious, as heâd just spent the better part of an hour looking at the mist pooling around him. The whole time, heâd felt like he could reach out and grab it, but had refrained from doing so.
Caleb reached out toward the pool around him. By now, it extended from him like a stretched-out bubble with a faint current to it. As the haze entered it, the bubble grew thicker, not larger. The edges of the bubble had licks of mana that flew out only to be pulled right back, like the tongues of a fire.
His hand passed through the pool, not even causing a ripple. He looked over to Bog, noticing only then that he too had a bubble of mana around him.
âBog,â Caleb began, making sure the dragon knew he was actually talking to him. âCan you move your mana?â
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Bog looked at him and cocked his head, sending confusion through the bond at the word âmana.â
Caleb gestured at the haze around him and repeated the word.
Still the same look.
Next Caleb pointed to the wisps of mana he saw trailing toward Bog, and then poked at the bubble of the stuff around the dragon.
âMana,â he repeated.
Recognition registered in the dragonâs eyes, and Bog narrowed his brow, focusing. A tendril of Bogâs mana pushed out from the mass and went towards Caleb, but when it reached Calebâs own pool, it fell apart.
Bog gave an irritated grunt at the dissipation and tried again. The same thing occurred. He kept at it, moving the tendrils out in different directions, only to find that, to his confusion, they vanished around Caleb.
âYou canât see my mana pool?â Caleb asked, outlining where he saw it.
Bog shook his head, and now seemed to understand the source of his failure. Satisfied that the mystery was solved, he went back to the nearly gone remains of his pickaxe.
Once the dragon had given up, Caleb tried it himself. He pictured the mana moving just as Bogâs had, and one of the flames licking around the end of his pool elongated before falling apart.
He kept at it, focusing. In the corner of his vision, he saw that every time a tendril fell apart, his mana value decreased. The first time he got the tendril to extend past his armâs reach, he got a notification.
Mana Manipulation has increased to level 2.
Buoyed by his success, he kept going.
Mana Manipulation has increased to level 4.
Once he reached level 4, an hour later, he decided to stop. He wanted to keep at it, but he couldnât spend all day at this despite his earlier decision to take his time. He needed to figure out where he wanted to place his ability points, and then what he was going to eat down here. There were a few dead bat creatures around, but they were far less appealing today.
Next, he focused on his Imperium Ventorum. From the wording of both the Mana Manipulation skill and Wind Affinity, he suspected this would be similar to the skill heâd just practiced. Touching on the new yet familiar awareness he had, he pushed at the air in front of him, using the mental muscle heâd just been using to create tendrils of mana.
The effect was immediate, and the air in front of him blew forward, sucking at his clothes. It looked to be the wind pulling a haze of mana from his pool, but Caleb could tell it was really the mana pulling the wind along with it.
Bog turned his attention back to Caleb and watched, suddenly interested.
Calebâs mana, which had nearly topped itself off by then, dropped a point.
He tried again, picturing the wind moving across the room, and the wind obliged.
Imperium Ventorum has increased to level 2.
Caleb smiled, and despite vowing otherwise, he lost himself in practicing the skill.
***
It was taking far longer than he thought to advance the skill to level 3. By the time he had spent half his mana, he forced himself to stop. He was getting better, but the stupid number wouldnât go up. Caleb consoled himself with the idea that a major affinity skill must be more powerful, thus requiring more mastery to increase. He didnât know if that was true, but it did make him feel better.
He had one last ability to testâaside from Power Attack, but he forgot about that one.
Caleb moved over to the anvil heâd thus far only given a cursory inspection. As with his wind sense, he could perceive all the metal in the area around him. While the two senses were similar, they werenât the same. His metal sense was limited to around three meters, and within that space, he could pinpoint the location of any piece of metal or ore as small as a grain of rice.
His wind sense worked differently. It had a greater range, closer to thirty meters, and through it he could sense the movement of the air. It didnât give him a map of where the air was around him, but the faster the wind moved around an objectâor the faster an object moved through the airâthe more clearly it showed up.
The metal sense had something else to it, he realized as he stood touching the anvil. He could tell how large a piece was and where, but not the shape. All the pieces of metal around felt to him like round masses of varying sizes. He couldnât tell what kind of metal they were either, though if one was magicalâsuch as the ore and his hammerâit had an additional weight to it in his mind. When heâd touched the anvil, however, the metal blob was crystalized in his mindâliterally.
He could see the crystalline structure of the entire anvil, picturing the shape perfectly in his mind. Cracks hidden deep within the metal were clear to him as if they were cracks in a glass sculpture. Everything was as vivid as the textures on the cavern wall, showing him where grain boundaries occurred. And those were just the things he knew he was seeing. There was much more he sensed but couldnât identify. Within the crystals, he sensed little motes of things that were both metal and not metal, which he suddenly realized must be the carbon within.
The anvil had a feel to it he couldnât connect to any of his knowledge of steel, and he sensed energies in the metal his mind had no name for. He spent longer marvelling at that hunk of steel than he had playing with his Wind Affinity, and it was only the thought of what his hammer might look like to this sense that got him to pull away.
He reached for his hammer, and was inundated with more to explore. The first thing he found was that there was mana all through it, woven in between the grains like a childâs crude sketch. He couldnât say how he knew the sketchings were crude, only that they were, yet somehow despite their crudeness he knew this to be the source of the +1 strength effect.
Mana Sight has increased to level 8.
The message pulled him out of his examination.
âMy Mana Sight can work through my affinity?â Caleb asked Bog. âCan you do that?â
Bog had come over to watch Caleb caress the anvil, and had begun to lick his lips at the thought of nibbling on it.
Caleb gave Bog a reproachful glare, sending a strong sense of âdonât you dareâ through the bond.
Dragon Bond has increased to level 3.
Bog let out a whine and sat at Calebâs feet.
âYouâre hungry?â Caleb asked, understanding. âMe too, let me finish this up and then we can go see what we can find in this cave.â
Caleb sensed Bogâs agreement as the dragonling settled down for a nap. The young dragon already knew his partner well enough to know this would be some time. Caleb, however, didnât pick up on this emotion, intent as he was to resume his exploration of the hammer.
Once he got over the overwhelming sensation of the hammerâs enchantment, he recognized the beauty of his masterâs work. The grains of the hammer put the work in the anvil to shame.
Caleb pulled out his knife, stretching his awareness to perceive them both. He was pleased to see his work was better than the anvil, but it had flaws of its own, though he could tell they were not critical. He placed the two items on the anvil, and found that once they touched, it was far easier to examine and compare them.
The first thing he figured out was what the implacable âfeelâ of the anvil had been. It was the magical aspect of the metal. His knife and masterâs hammer, both constructed from the cold-aspected metal of their volcano home, had the same feel to them, while the anvilâs was different. Comparing the pickaxes, he found they matched the anvil, though this didnât give him any idea of what they did.
Next he placed the magical ore on the anvil and extended his senses into that. The inside of the ore was a chaotic mess. It was like tiny motes of metal in a sea of black that he had no ability to sense. He sensed mana in the ore much like the mana in the hammer and, once he saw it, could also see that there had been small amounts of mana in the knife and anvil. Unlike the crafted items, the ore exuded mana, yet the mana within didnât decrease.
Caleb looked deeper, feeling around mentally to find where this mana was coming from. He pushed his mind into the cracks of the ore, faintly aware there was something there he couldnât see until finally he saw it.
Mana Sight has increased to level 10.
Mana Sight has evolved into Magical Perception level 1.
Your class Dragon Rider has increased to level 2.