[Adam's POV!]
…
Moving inside the portal, I transferred us to an empty space near the deep sea dungeon. It was a secluded place where nobody should disturb me for now. My clone, Neptune, nodded at me before he channeled a bit of his mana creating arrays all around my body.
Those arrays slowly spread in the entire area around me, creating an external mana channel for me to circulate my mana.
Using the natural mana for so long to maintain the 'Heaven's Wheel' and also Neptune's attack was something that my body couldn't handle for long. Even after a thousand retries, I wasn't able to reduce the damage even one bit. It was something that was inevitable since it's nearly impossible for a mortal to control all the mana and divinity in the air.
"It was fun though," I chuckled as I recalled how I collected the stray mana and divinity that the Gods were releasing.
Under normal conditions, all forms of energy should return to nature once they are used. But if one can create a strong dense mana pool in an area, there is a way to force the mana to stay for a few more seconds. And if it can be intercepted again, the mana can even be made to flow in the direction where I wanted it to flow.
Hence the reason why I made it so that nobody uses mana in the coast city for that duration. The denser the natural mana, the more its effects on 'used' mana by the mortals and immortals.
"Recollecting all that, implementing mana and even maintaining the flow… this time it sure took too many restarts," I sighed as I was very tired a lot. But still, I was happy that it all worked out in the end.
Making sure that the Gods don't notice was even harder… especially since I was using their 'used' divinity, amplifying them with the surrounding natural energy and then using it on Laplace. In essence, it wasn't an attack but just a 'natural' mana burst that I made it look like an attack. Hence, the [Commands] failed to take place… after all it was targeted to an 'attack' or 'Neptune' both of which had nothing to do with the perfectly timed mana bursts.
Still, to sum it all with mere 5-6 attacks was rather hard. I had failed more than 50 times because Laplace attacked one more time or one of my attacks missed becuase of Laplace's tricks…I guess, instilling fear in his mind was another necessary step.
"Well. It worked somehow," I spoke as I looked at Neptune, healing my body, slowly restoring my mana nerves from scratch. In essence, it wasn't a restore but a replacement, since my original mana nerves were pretty much blasted now. Though, if I could just replace all the mana veins nerves with manually arrayed nerves, I could probably increase my reserve by twice at least.
The only drawback probably would be that from now on, to increase my mana, I would need to constantly replace the mana nerves with newer finer versions. They won't be growing along with my body anymore.
It's similar to an advanced robotic prosthetic arm.
"Should I try delving into alchemy this time? Or perhaps mechanics? Han Xiao-kun was really powerful, eh?" I laughed out sheepishly before shaking my head as I recalled that in a week, the players would be coming as well.
'Since I have grown a lot after this ordeal, along with the gain… Hmmm… I think I would need to re-analyze my plans for the players,' I began thinking about the ideas I had for the players that will be coming in the official release.
My powers were about the level of an S-Ranked adventurer, but given I had the power of restart, I could be compared to the Gods. Heck, the Gods surely consider me an entity above them…
'Hmmm. I can use that as well,' and then, a plan began cooking in my mind as I recalled the previous events that were going to take place in Zarraf during the first update. And then a smile began forming on my face as I began cooking a plan that I immediately found interesting.
"Hehehehe… they are gonna love that… my sweet and kind slave-…. Players," I laughed out loud, while my clone ignored my words and expression, fully focused on healing me using thousands of complicated arrays at once. Because of my memories that I had shared with him, he should have the knowledge of all the ways that these arrays could go on. All the right ways, and even all the wrong ways.
"Still," I then paused as I saw him barely finishing a 0.1% of it in about 5 minutes. Despite thousands and thousands of returns, this was the fastest way I could achieve it. But I guess, even that is fine…
'Should take 3 and a half days just like last time,' I sighed before I closed my eyes, recalling the Heaven's Wheel. Not that fake one that I created but the Real one used by someone from the past.
"Man. If not for the restrictions on Fate Weavers, I would love to have something like that," I smiled, reminiscing about the idea of improvising my own 'Heaven's Wheel' before slowly closing my eyes.
While most of the things have been done, there were still things that needed to be done. Especially with Laplace's son Ignirus, Equi and Luciana. Those take precedence over everything else.
And then there was that guy as well… the First Fate Weaver.
A few creases appeared on my forehead as I thought about him. He was the most odd out of all the people I had met in my returns… If possible, I would like to avoid him all together. But then again… given our line of work…
"We will probably meet again, huh?" With slight irritation on my face, I mumbled for one last time, before finally falling into a dream-like state. As for Neptune, he continued working on my mana nerves with a slight sigh before he focused on it once again.
Both of us, far away from the sight of any immortal and mortal, focused on our recovery while the rest of the people from the coastal city, began moving with their own life. Enjoying this second chance that they had received in the war that occured this morning.