Chapter 13: Mana Blessing
Eren and Reen went to the same place they came from. The same space Reen had used for her evolution. She pointed downwards to where Eren was standing. Eren immediately started digging using the surgical knives. He had recovered the knife lodged in Dom’s glutes and disinfected it with the help of Reen.
Reen saw how slow Eren was working and felt she needed to do something to expedite the process. She coated Eren’s arms with her body and he felt enhanced strength surging within him.
Reen’s intangible body in its original shape wasn’t ideal for digging. And her thought process wasn’t mature enough to think about anything else other than granting her master enhanced strength with her body.
Reen could have shapeshifted into one of her victims whose body she had eaten. Or she could have coated Eren’s fingers and granted them claws so that he could dig better even without using the knives. But in the end, Reen was as immature as a year or two years old human child.
It would be up to Eren to tell her how to do stuff and make her learn new things. And the guy was currently happy digging with enhanced strength to think about anything else. He too wasn’t aware of Reen’s potential. For now, he was content with the way things were.
Eren soon dug deep enough and found something that looked like an oval-shaped Yooperlite stone. But Eren knew enough from his past experiences to tell anyone with confidence that it wasn’t.
The thing in Eren’s palm looked like a normal Yooperlite stone with some natural patterns carved over it like some kind of intrinsic design. That made it easy to zero in on the stone’s real identity.
Eren couldn’t help blurt out two words after lifting that palm-sized stone into his hands:
“Mana Blessing!”
Eren identified the stone immediately. It looked small and insignificant. But he knew people could kill for even the smallest and the lowest-ranked Mana Blessing.
Mana Blessing Stone or Simply Mana Blessing was like a naturally made artefact. It had ranks like the beasts and hunters.
MB stone would help beasts and hunters in promotions by giving them the purest form of mana of that Rank.
An E Rank MB stone would attract the purest form of E Rank mana from the area around it naturally. The respective rank’s mana would naturally get drawn to it.
The MB stone would thus create a spherical environment in which that rank’s pure mana would keep on dwelling without getting dispersed.
If an E Rank hunter or beast stays in this sphere for an extended amount of time regularly, their promotion to the next rank will get expedited by many folds when compared to normal hunters.
While the MB stone’s rank dictated which rank’s mana it would attract to itself, its size would decide the mana density contained within that sphere. The bigger the MB stone, the denser the mana density.
Eren was rankless so he couldn’t detect the mana in the environment yet. Neither could he differentiate between the mana types to know about the MB stone’s rank.
But Eren was still happy after seeing the size of that stone. Even though it looks small, it would give someone enough mana density to expedite their ranking promotion with at least twice the speed when compared with people who didn’t have the MB stone and took the same amount of effort.
Although he couldn’t identify the stone’s rank himself, he had someone else do it for him. Eren asked which rank’s MB stone it was to Reen. He had to explain the ranks and their differences to Reen before she could answer it.
The MB stone in his hand was a D Rank one, the same as Reen’s previous rank. That’s why she could take advantage of being in that dense mana sphere generated by the stone to promote herself.
After understanding Reen’s judgement, Eren felt happy and sad at the same time. Happy because the value of a D Rank surpassed that of Rank Es and Rak Fs. Sad because he couldn’t use it for himself. He needed a Rank F Mana Blessing for his immediate use.
Even though Eren could not use it right away, he would keep it to himself for future use and would not sell it. Because he knew how rare they were to find for humans.
Mana Blessing stones were natural treasures of the world. Therefore, magic beasts and demon beasts had a much higher chance of finding them than humans. That’s because the beasts were better attuned to nature than humans ever could.
This created a perpetual scarcity of MB stones in the market. Even the lowest grade, F and E ranked Mana Blessing stones would require someone to cough up a huge amount of money. The size of the stone would further make the prices dynamic.
And the scarcity and price wars only increased exponentially with each rank up. There were also some fake MB stones circulating through the market which were the products of alchemists.
That’s why it was better if Eren saved this genuine D Rank MB stone and use it after his promotion into the respective rank. Eren decided that his business was over in the forest. Now he would get out of the forest with Reen in his tow.
Eren would be fine making his way out in the night because the leader of the forest was with him and there was plenty of moonlight to not have to second guess his way forward.
But just when he decided to get up from the spot, Reen asked him if liked those stones so much. Eren thought it was a little weird question to ask but he answered affirmatively to Reen. Her curiosity knew no bounds. Maybe it was just something she randomly thought, Eren concluded.
But Reen conveyed that she knew the locations of such stones in the forest. She told him that they had stopped being useful to her since her current evolution. That meant they were E and F rank Mana Blessing.
This was very unnatural for even a demon beast to know the locations of so many MB stones. Eren concluded that Reen was a special case. She could detect the softest ripples of mana in the environment. Therefore she could track those natural treasures.
Usually, the beasts had to come in the proximity of such treasures to find them. Reen used another method different from proximity sensing to zero in on the treasures.
The same proximity requirement was placed on humans, only its restrictions were harsher. If a typical beast needed to be within 10 meters distance to sense the presence of the treasure, a typical human needed to be within 1 meter to achieve the same.
Eren now understood why Dom didn’t let anyone know about finding a D Rank MB stone in the cave. Yes, the stone was precious for rank ups and held great monetary value.
But the real problem lied elsewhere!