Moving forward

Chapter 15: Moving forward

Just kidding, he wasn't naming them yet. Like, seriously, with the nightmares he had with getting himself a name you should have expected him to wait until they're able to consent to what he wants to call them. So no, no wolf names yet. Instead, he took them back to his trusty log. That was, after all, his territory. He felt much more comfortable there than in a new, unexplored area.

So, he brought friends home. The trek back took another three days, but Merc didn't specifically mind. After all, there were many new things for him to figure out now. The first and easiest one to witness was the exp sharing. 

When the wolves hunted, he gained some part of their Exp, and knowing the fact that it was proportional to their loyalty, he soon figured out that the loyalty was equal to the percentage of Exp shared. But soon, he also found the sharing settings. 

Essentially, right now, if the wolves killed something, Mercury would steal some of the exp they'd get. The percentage he stole was as much as they were loyal.

For every 10 loyalty, they were granted 1% bonus exp. So if a wolf with 100 loyalty killed a monster, they would receive 110% of that monster's exp, but have to split it with Mercury.

The amount that Mercury stole could also be tweaked to be lower than the loyalty level, but for now, Mercury left it be. He instead wanted to see about where the exp went.

He made it so, that the exp he would gain from the wolves' kills, would instead go into a pool of exp that he could access and distribute as he saw fit.

He could also tweak these settings for each of the wolves individually, but didn't. Fairness above all.

After deciding on that, he could now see a pool of Exp slowly collecting over the three days. Now, in total he collected 5 Exp in there. Yeah, uh, it's not a lot. This came down to some simple maths. They took down a single deer, which gave them 5 Exp. They sustained themselves off the deer for a day and a half, with Mercury impressing the wolves through carrying it around in his inventory. This also boosted Scarface's loyalty to 5. 

But for the remainder of the time, the wolves took down a few rabbits and a squirrel. The Exp those gave was below twenty and the system operated on an "round down" basis. In other terms, he didn't get any Exp, since 5% of 15 was below 1. 

However, this also granted Mercury some insight into the levelling of wild animals. In total, they collected 235 Exp over three days. That was about 80 each. Meaning they made, on average, around 26 Exp per day. That's 780 Exp per month as an adult wolf. They probably made quite a bit less as cubs when they were still being raised.

This was really just another bit of proof that the system was only really powerful for beings with the capacity to read.

But back to the action, when Mercury arrived at his trusty old log in the evening, he could find a very familiar face there. Cherry was sitting on it. There's a lot of emphasis on the "was" part, given that the wolf that used to be his guide very quickly tackled her down from it and pressed her onto the ground while growling. 

This only left Cherry with the time to let out a startled yelp before her mouth was shut from the impact and Mercury got a chance to speak. And this was also the first time that Cherry witnessed a speaking kitten yell "GET THE FUCK BACK HERE!!" at a fully grown wolf... which obliged with a whimper.

This was the <Beast Commander> Skill in action. It made the concept of simple commands graspable to the familiars, even if they didn't speak the language of their master. Essentially, it allows for a small amount of communication between the two.

Cherry was then very quickly stunned again when she saw the wolf place its head on the floor in front of Mercury. He then pointed at Cherry and spoke simply. 

"Friend," he said and confirmed that all three of the wolves nodded, before approaching the girl, who was staring at him with an open mouth.

"Are you alright?" he carefully asked while tilting his left to the side, only to receive a stare at the three larger animals behind him. After another moment of stunned silence, Cherry proceeded to also point at the wolves and then and only then did she actually slowly turn her eyes towards Mercury.

"Did- Did you…" she stammered and was cut off.

"Yes I did," Mercury said, a hint of pride in his vouce. "I tamed the royal Wolf and his pack. I killed spider-bitch and Grumpy the grumpy bear. They figured out it was me, the silver one guided me to them and they voluntarily let me tame them."

"Well, wow. I mean, shit. I mean, uh, no, like, damn. Uh, big impress? Me big impress!" Cherry stammered put a few words, only to have her shock relieved by a laugh from Mercury.

"Still the same old Mercury though," he said with a smile. Right, yes. Same old Mercy.

With the shock slowly dissipating, Cherry started to feel a little more comfortable in her own skin. "That also explains where you were," she added with a smirk.

"Well, yeah. Sorry it took so long. But actually, you picked the perfect time to come here. I need to know so many things."

"Sure, hit me," Cherry answered and leaned back a bit, holding herself up with her arms.

"Okay, so like, it's actually only two things, but I really need to know the average Intelligence stat of a human. Also, I'd like to know if you could get me three more of those <Language> skillstones."

"Around 50 to 60. The skillstones are doable, but you'll owe me for this one, they aren't exactly cheap," Cherry grinned. "Why do you need them though? Are you planning on making the wolves talk?"

"Well, aaaaaactually… yeah, that's exactly what I'm gonna do," Mercury replied with an even brighter grin. "See, since they're my familiars I can kinda control their menus. Meaning, I can allocate Ability points for them. This gives me hope that I'll also be able to make them use skillstones. They also just so happen to have more than 100 saved up Ability points each. It's pretty awesome to be honest."

"Well damn, that sounds really cool!! I can pay for the skillstones using my savings, but again, you'll owe me big time for this. I might even need you to help me out with a main quest," Cherry said with a wink.

Since Mercury didn't actually have much of an option, he simply agreed and then watched Cherry skip away into the forest. Something had her strangely excited, but since he didn't really mind his friends being happy, Mercury instead decided to focus on what he could do. Since he didn't exactly need to provide food for himself anymore given the familiars he had, he decided to not grind for Exp for a week and instead resume something he hadn't done in a while: pure mana training.

It had now been almost a week since his last time doing it, but back when he was preparing to fight the bear, he was actually rigorously exercising every time he meditated, since the condensation of his mana required only part of his focus. Of course, this also meant he failed hard at the beginning, since he was better at focusing a lot on one thing than multitasking, but after some time he got the hang of it and managed to create some swirls with his mana while still absorbing more from the outside.

So, he continued to practice, watching as more and more mana filled his core. It was still nowhere near full, he was actually still barely filling up the bottom of it, but progress was progress. So, he decided to change the name of his puddle and promote it to a "large mana-puddle". A truly incredible promotion all of us should strive to achieve.

And now he had the time to resume his practice. He had far more time than in those weeks actually, since he didn't need to meditate nor did he need to prepare anything else. Heck, with his new familiars he didn't even need to hunt for any food. He only had to eat and drink and could dedicate the entire remainder of time to controlling his mana.

And so he did. The very second Cherry left, Mercury laid down, closed his eyes and focused, slowly creating the image of his core and seeing its landscape. He saw his large mana puddle at the bottom, and the cave walls towering up into the sky, closing up far, far above. He saw the stalactites and stalagmites, all the bumps and imperfections in the walls. He saw all of them far more clearly than the last time he had meditated. 

Something felt different from the last time he meditated. It wasn't anything big, he didn't have a sudden revelation on how one could control their mana more easily. It wasn't like everything was different and he had become a god. It was more of a minor change. Maybe it was due to him solely focusing on it again, without needing to also absorb mana from everywhere around him. He didn't quite know, because there really were no hints. But in any case, something was a little different about his core.

But since Mercury couldn't quite put his paws on it, he decided to explore it while practicing his control. He made his mana swirl in a circular motion again, creating a whirlpool. This came relatively easily to him. He first focused on moving single drops of mana and maintaining their momentum as they moved more of it. Then, when more mana was moving, he helped it maintain its speed. And then he continued that until he had a whirlpool, sliding against the edges of his core and slowly changing them.

With his entire focus on <Mana Movement> his stamina had increased by far. He managed to maintain the whirlpool for almost an hour until a slight headache set in. He then continued as long as he could, until the headache became more distracting and he decided to take a break. He then ate and made a short trip to the pond, allowing the wolves to scout out the area while he sustained himself.

Then, when his headache had subsided a bit, he returned and focused some more as he kept exercising the control he had over his mana.

He continued this routine for three days until something changed.

He was swirling his mana around as usual, spreading his control out in more and more of it until he was grasping every single bit of mana in his body, when he felt a drop of it leak out. He stopped immediately, halting every bit of movement his mana had started in its tracks. A drop of it had just leaked outside his core. That drop was lost. Entirely.

Mercury had luckily expanded his field of control and was grasping all of his mana at once, so he could feel where the hole in his core was. It was incredibly slight, a tiny connection to the outside, where the walls of his core had been broken through by his swirling mana, like a stream of water slowly grinding down on stone.

But while mercury was shook first, he soon realized something. He could watch as the hole closed back up with a sheet of stone, plugging up the path his mana had used to escape. This, to him, was actually not entirely comforting. The plug was actually made a little further outside than the hole was. Essentially, there was now a slight recess in the wall of his core.

Sadly, he couldn't really do anything about it.

Instead, Mercury continued to practice rigorously, swirling his mana again, when he could feel yet another breach, in multiple places this time, including the one from before. And soon after, the walls regenerated a little further outside, deeping the recesses that were already there.

This was when Mercury started thinking. He went about it in a very mathematical way, first coming up with a few plausible hypotheses and then trying to test them as best as he could.

The first hypothesis Mercury came up with was a simple one. Maybe he had overworked his core and now his mana was leaking out, which could cripple his future as a magician. This seemed quite plausible at first glance, but then he thought about it again and discarded this one. If the walls of his core were able to regenerate quickly enough to close the holes within minutes, his mana control was nowhere near strong enough to cause actual damage to its walls.

Next, he considered that maybe, his core was becoming fragile due to external influences. Maybe taming the wolves had strained him to some degree, but this was also unlikely. He didn't feel drained or weakened like he usually would when his mana got low. Additionally, he was confident in detecting major anomalies with his core at his current level of control. So, he scrapped this hypothesis as well.

Then, he considered that maybe, the slight cracks actually weren't a detriment to his growth but the next step. The level of his <Mana Movement> was maxed out, so these exercises were now really just helping his mental fortitude rather than his actual skill. But then, if it were beneficial, what could these holes do?

He then came up with another idea, taken from popular fiction.

In fantasy books, characters often had to channel their mana around their body. This was currently impossible for him, since it was all collected in his core. Maybe the walls breaking was happening in order to allow him to pump his mana through his body?

He couldn't exactly say that this was right or wrong from previous experiences, so all he could do was to test it pretty much. So, he brought his mana up to one of the breaches and made it press against the wall of his core. It didn't take very long until it broke through there and spilled outside. This time, Mercury had made sure to channel multiple drops, maybe a solid 20 Mp, and was trying his hardest to maintain control over them.

Well, safe to say he failed miserably. As soon as the mana left the walls of his core, it started to burn up with a white flame, scorching his insides. This was really fucking painful and immediately Mercury ripped his eyes open and let out a groan through clenched teeth. Ouch. Okay, terrible fucking idea, that was for sure. Hypothesis debunked.

But the mystery wasn't quite solved yet, so he had to continue thinking. It took him a while but he came up with another idea. Channeling the mana through his body seemed like an absolutely horrible idea given the results he had gotten just now. Still, every time the mana broke the walls of his core they expanded a little, forming somewhat of a tube shape. This gave him an idea.

Instead of moving the mana through his body, couldn't he create a net of those tubes to move it through his body and get it to the places where it can do something? But then, forming the tubes by breaking their walls again and again seemed tedious, so he tried something else. His core was also part of him, right? So instead of trying to grow the conduits using his mana, he tried to control his core with <Mana Movement>. 

And surprisingly enough, it actually worked. As he envisioned it, the recess in the wall grew deeper, slowly spreading. Now, this, of course ,was a change to his body, but it didn't actually interfere with his insides. It felt a little like a second skeleton in another dimension or something. Well, what exactly it was, he could figure out later. For now, what mattered was that it didn't interfere with him and it felt like progress. So, for the entire remainder of the day he continued to grow out this single channel, slowly spreading it through his body.

He continued doing so the very next day. Then the day after as well and the day after that one, too. In total, he grew this channel to become a loop, exiting his core, then circling around below it and re-entering it on the other side.

This took him three days.

Then, on the next day he tried it out. He carefully roused his mana and moved it into the channel, then made it flow through it and re-enter his core on the other side.

It felt motherfucking awesome. It was like a shiver running through his body, like a slight electrical current that made every hair and muscle of his stand at attention. He felt ready for anything and everything, prepared to burst out every ounce of energy he had at a moment's notice. It was a sensation both chilling and burning hot inside of him, making him feel supercharged and powerful.

Then, the pop-up appeared.

[Ability <Mana Movement lv. max> has evolved into <Mana Veins lv. 1>!]

Yup, he was right. It was the next step in his journey of magic it seemed. He managed to evolve <Mana Movement>. But all the Adrenaline that was released because of this achievement was entirely incomparable to the sensation of Mana rushing through him. This was different from his normal life and boring job. This felt right. This was what he was meant to do.

Mercury wanted to be a mage, in other words. A mage and a king, though the order of that might be interchangeable. Being a king was his goal, being a mage was what he felt he needed to be. I'd love to use the word "destiny" for it, but sadly, I hate that word and the author does as well, so I feel like I can't exactly put it here. It wasn't his destiny, it simply gave him an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction when he did anything remotely similar to magic, so I suppose defining it as his calling would make sense. Yes, we shall go with that. 

Being a king was his goal. 

Being a mage was his calling.

Now, he was working on developing both of those currently and it was going very well. In fact, the day after he had made this leap in progress on his journey towards magic, he made a step towards being a king. In other words, Cherry was back. And she had skillstones, three of them to be precise.

"Thanks," Merc said as he took the stones off Cherry who was busy squatting down when he delivered them to his wolf buddies. 

"Yes biggie, actually," she then said with a grin. "You owe me."

"Yeah, yeah. Just tell me what you need when you need it. Now, let's try this out then."

Mercury approached the wolves again then and opened up their status windows, investing points until their Intelligence stat reached 50 for all of them. In an instant their eyes all lit up with a glint of humanity that wasn't there before. Seems like increasing Intelligence with stats to make someone smarter definitely worked up until a certain point. But of course, Mercury wasn't done yet.

The very next instant, he put a skillstone with <Language> carved into it in front of each of them. Turns out he could, in fact, use them in the wolves' stead and quickly did so.

[Acquired the Skill <Language lv. 2> from a Skillstone!]

He saw the same notification for each of them. And then, the wolves were surprised. It seems they had seen the pop-ups before, but now that they could actually understand them, they were stunned. And then they bowed again, pressing their head onto the ground in front of Mercury.

Then, all three of them lowered their gaze and spoke.

"Master."

They were surprised at the words coming out of their mouths, but Mercury only had a giant grin on his face.

"Well then," he said. "The name's Mercury. Let's arrange that for you all as well, shall we"?