Chapter 17
They walked through the forest of thin trees, common to the areas near the sea. The sky was now completely orange, with a beautiful sunset over the Midarior to the west. Annette had some hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, while Keziah looked at ease, a lazy smile on his face.
The walk back to where Lucia was wasn't long, 5 minutes at most. Seemingly unable to stand the quiet, Annette asked, "Do you know Lucia? Is that while she helped us?"
"No, first time I met her," he replied. "Honestly, I'm still quite not sure why she would help us."
"Maybe she just likes helping people?" she offered.
"Hmph, maybe." He snickered. "Doubt it, though. You rarely meet people that help out just out of the goodness of their heart on the road. Although the S and A rankers tend to be on the weirder side, there must be something in it for her. Let's just hope it's not achieved by backstabbing us. It's not like we can do anything about it anyway, so we just have to stick with her until we reach that small fishing town."
"Is she that strong?" she asked.
"You don't get to S rank without being strong. Although the ranks are measured by accomplishments and achievements on quests, you can't have those without being strong," he explained.
"Could you defeat her?"
"No way," he replied, shaking his head. "In hand to hand, or with a sword? Maybe. Probably. But if magic is involved, then my best choice is to run and hope she runs out of mana. And judging by how she isn't carrying any weapons, I must guess that she is really confident in either her magic instantly killing her opponent, or lasting long enough to finish them off. My magic is somewhat… crippled, you might say."
"Crippled? But I saw you using it back then against those guards and that creepy guy?" She tilted her head in confusion.
"I can use it," he started to explain, "but it's hard to control. Most of my mana gets consumed by trying to not blow myself up. I can only use it for about 15 minutes or so, before resting and drawing more mana into my mana core. Thankfully, I'm quite proficient at that, so I only need a few hours or so."
Annette was slightly surprised by how open about his magic Keziah was. It was in contrast to her, trying to hide Class from him. She did have a rare one, but Keziah's condition made it as worth hiding as her Class. It made her feel bad about trying to previously not reveal it to him. Even if he praised her for it.
"Wait." She grabbed his sleeve to halt him.
"What?" His brows knitted in confusion.
"I have to release the mana that I have stored up from those attacks," she explained. "I can't keep up for too long or else it will gradually make me weaker."
"I see…" Keziah mused over it for a short while. "How does it work? Do you release it in the same form that you absorbed it?
"No." She shook her head, "It's just ambient mana. Or do you call it Spirit? I'm not sure. I never went to the Tower Academy."
Keziah chuckled. "Spirit is somewhat of a new term. I've only ever heard nobles use it for some reason. Maybe they want to dissociate themselves from commoners by doing it. I don't know," he clarified for her. "Ambient mana is a good term, if you mean the mana that's all around us that we absorb into our mana cores."
"Yeah, that's the one."
"Wow, what a useless ability, then. It's almost worthless to hide." He teased her with a smirk.
"Ha ha." She gave him a leveled stare that questioned who was really the adult one in this situation. "Anyway, it will only take a minute. I might be exhausted after so you could be carrying me back."
"As you wish, princess." He mocked a bow.
She rolled her eyes and proceeded to release the excessive mana in her body. She stuck both of her hands in front of her and focused on her two mana channels. She forced the mana in her core to move and guided it through them. She hoped it would get easier once she opened all five mana channels, but she had to do with two in her arms for now. Putting her arms in front of her helped her focus on them more, as well as providing a point of release.
After a couple of dozen seconds of focus and trying to control her mana, it finally started to flow out of her. It was invisible to the naked eye, as was typical of ambient mana. Only mana that was shaped into some form of a spell inside someone's mana core could be visible. What Annette was doing was somewhat of a reverse of that process, as she absorbed already shaped mana and released it in its ambient, natural form.
Keziah watched her as she furrowed her brows lightly in a struggle. He didn't know how hard whatever she was doing was, but judging by how she had to do it every time she absorbed some mana and how used to it she was, he speculated that it couldn't be that hard. Her mana control must have been subpart. She said that she hadn't gone to the Tower Academy, like most young mages, noble and commoner alike, so that could be the reason.
He guessed that she also had only two mana channels opened so far. The way she clearly focused on her arms and how slowly the mana flowed out of her were his reasonings. Her output was only bad compared to full-fledged mages. For her age, having only two mana channels was actually quite average.
Keziah could feel the released mana as a soft breeze on his senses. Quite different from the wind, as it didn't physically move his hair or the leaves around them. Flowing mana affected all senses. He could smell it, taste it, and feel it. He couldn't see it unless someone with a Class that could affect ambient mana wished mana to be seen.
The strength of her mana was rather above average. Definitely not bad by any means. He also couldn't judge it perfectly, as she was releasing ambient mana and not something forged in her mana core. He suspected the color of her mana core must have been somewhere between blue and purple.
The average for her age, at least when he was in the Tower was green, sometimes blue. It just went to show that she didn't lead a peaceful life, as the color of a mana core represented the strength of released mana, and it was mostly increased by a soul going through so much that it would tear itself and repair, becoming stronger. Almost like a muscle. The difference being that you couldn't just increase it by training, at least not to the same degree as going through something traumatic.
When he was her age, he already had all 5 mana channels, but that was because he was born with them. He was considered quite a prodigy because of that and his mana core being blue when he was in the academy. A few years later, when he was Annette's age, his mana core was yellow, two stages above Annette, due to two accidents that left him orphaned and his magic crippled. To add insult to injury, they both happened within a few months of each other, causing his whole world to collapse around him rather rapidly.
"Phew, I'm done," said Annette with hands on her knees. "I actually don't feel that tired, to be honest. I might be ab—"
She couldn't finish her sentence as she had passed out right then and there. Before her body hit the ground, Keziah scooped her with one hand around her midsection and lifted her up. He carried her under his arm like a small sack of potatoes and headed to the small campfire that Lucia tended to.
It didn't take long, as they were already close enough to almost smell what she was cooking. Spotting Keziah exiting from the tree line, she greeted him, "Must have been a hellish training, I see."
"Not quite." He waved his free hand. "She is just that bad." He shifted her weight, as to make sure who he was talking about.
Lucia gave him a knowing smile that said 'I've been through that'. Keziah moved to put Annette inside the wagon, where she slept last time, and then sat next to Lucia, ready to eat as his stomach was beginning to growl. As he was ready to pour some of the stew into his bowl, he spotted an already used set next to Lucia.
"Have you eaten already?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied, yawning. "You were taking so long I got tired of waiting for you."
"Hm, fair." Keziah shrugged and proceeded to fill his bowl.
"Anyway, I'm going to sleep. Have fun staring at the trees for eight hours."
"Yeah, yeah, I slept through the whole day, so now I get to suffer. I get it." He shook his head, resigned.
Lucia grinned and did what she had told him she would do, stretching out some kind of material for her to lie on. The campfire was close to the wagon, so she settled in between them, and soon after Keziah could hear faint snoring coming from her.
"Damn," he muttered to himself. "That was fast."