Theron’s Core had already been insatiable, but now it was akin to a bottomless well.
For a hundred meters, then a half kilometer, then an entire kilometer, it was as though there was no rain at all. It all concentrated into a funnel, pooling into Theron’s Core.
This amount of Mana should have made even a Silver Mancer explode, let alone a Bronze Mancer like Theron. And yet, he was a truly fathomless pit.
When Theron finally completed the last pose, and the aches to his body relaxed, his first action was to move.
He had already taken Low’s corpse and cleaned out the battlefield out of habit. Without knowing who was nearby, this sort of commotion wasn’t something he could assume hadn’t been sensed.
…
Only when Theron was a long distance away, still weaving through a forest of stones, did he finally relax just the slightest bit and turn his attention to his core.
He really had gotten closer to a breakthrough. Shockingly close.
It shouldn’t have made sense given he had just regressed so much. But not only was his Core back to the size of a fist, it was even purer than before.
Oddly enough… the runes were gone. What had been etched into it before disappeared.
After some thought, Theron pulled on his Mana, only to find that…
’So heavy
It wasn’t his senses that felt burdened. It was his Mana, it moved just as easily, but he could practically feel his feet sinking into the ground.
’The Blue Pufferfish, it grew so much stronger because of that tortoise?’
The Blue Pufferfish Echo was all about density. This sounded great, and as though it should have been a much more popular Echo, but no one cared for it much precisely because it was a Water Mancy method.
Water Mana was very fluid. Adding density to it only made it more difficult to control and took away some of the element’s most useful abilities.
A density ability for an Earth Mage or Flux Mancer would be like adding wings to a tiger. But no one cared if it was for water.
Your adventure continues at
While there were some applications where heavy water could be useful, there was a second problem as well… that being that the Blue Pufferfish’s ability wasn’t potent enough.
Not only was it useless to most applications of Water Mana, but its influence was limited. It was like if one had a gravity field only capable of outputting an added 5% to your enemy’s weight. Who would care for that?
The only reason why Theron’s Blue Pufferfish abilities seemed so powerful was because he had integrated with a Ninth Silver Resonance Blue Pufferfish Echo. Of course it would seem powerful.
By the time he started fighting against real middle and higher tier Silver Mancers, the density change would be negligible.
Even so, Theron had always been confident in himself. The ability to change the density of water didn’t just represent heft and weight to him, nor added defenses. It was like opening a world to changing the properties of water itself.
He envisioned a future where as a Water Mancer alone, he could change the properties of his water to the point that it became chilling ice or billowing steam. Maybe he was very far from such a future, and maybe he was even overestimating himself, but self-belief wasn’t something he ever lacked in.
Who would have thought that before he could grasp this, something like this would happen instead.
The density ability of his Blue Pufferfish had improved by more than ten times easily.
If before the density was only enough to force a low-tier Silver Mancer to take it seriously, now even the lower end of middle-tier Silver Mancers would suffer if they were caught off guard.
At this point, the density alone could crush a First Silver Resonance Mancer.
And all of that analysis only took into account the Mana itself… not what spells Theron might attach to it.
Theron reached up a hand to his necklace and gripped it tight.
Just… what was going on with him?
**
The sound of footsteps through the sloshing rain and puddles echoed, a group quickly surrounding a now empty location.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Silence fell.
“How many are we still missing?”
“Princess, there are still about 37 of us unaccounted for.”
“… Too many. But we have enough to start a more systematic approach to things.”
“Which plan do you want to start with, princess?”
“We have time. We’ll take the most conservative approach for now. Kill any unaffiliated disciples we come across, but the main focus is unique Fire Mana Beasts and gathering Bloomstone.”
After a pause, she spoke again.
“Sound off one by one. On your way here, how many of you found things worthy of note? We’ll decide our main targets from there.”
“And what about this location, princess? The commotion here was very loud.”
“There’s no need to look into it. I know who it was. He is trying to improve into Silver Mancy as fast as he can. Unfortunately for him, he seems to have run into a bottleneck. We just can’t let him get his hands on any Vital Bloomstone.”
“Understood.”
“I think I stumbled onto a potential Vital Bloomstone deposit, princess. It is hard to tell because the deposits are always very small, and well guarded by Mana Beasts, but the aura of life over there was very strong. There are very few other types it could be.”
“Anyone else run into what they think might be Vital Bloomstone?” the princess asked.
“No, but…”
One of the others seemed to want to say something important, but Thessa cut him off.
“We will go to the Vital Bloomstone deposit, then.”
Thessa pointed to the one that had spoken and had him lead the way.
The others looked toward each other and could only shake their heads inwardly. Even now, they really didn’t understand why they were putting so much effort into blocking a Bronze Mancer’s progress of all things.