Chapter 37

Regulating mana was not a conscious effort. Or was it?

Mana breathing techniques were the simplest proof that like breathing, regulating mana can be done consciously and unconsciously.

Mana recovery in the human body was not a conscious effort.

It was more like a siphoning effect from what Noah could gather. The human body was the container with low mana pressure and the planet was essentially the container with high mana pressure.

As with any substance, mana moved from high pressure to low pressure, allowing the human body to nearly effortlessly recover mana.

Although this was still a crude theory, it was the starting point of Noah's hypothesis.

What about releasing mana? A container would burst if it only kept filling. Although almost everyone who had mana, utilised it, there were still many who didn't or weren't capable of utilizing it due to circumstances; e.g., a newborn baby.

The human body or rather the brain of humans in EtherWorld was adapted to handle this as well. They were capable of releasing a small amount of mana unconsciously like breathing out air to prevent it.

While mana paths of a person who did not regularly use their mana would shrink little by little until they closed completely, a person who continuously utilised it would have their mana path expand gradually.

Mana overload essentially happened when there was an increased mana flow to the body while the body wasn't capable of expelling the excess.

'Having to expend mana consciously in small amounts seems like a huge pain.'

'Console'

>_

'hmm... What if?'

After much experimentation with the console window, Noah finally struck gold.

>self.mana.release(self.mana * 0.01)

Feeling his mana being released, Noah opened his status window to confirm his theory.

'Yes!'

>vi expend_mana.script

After a few more rounds of experimenting, Noah finally completed writing a new script.

>expend_mana.script

The script basically defined boundaries to release mana. Noah set it in such a manner that the script would release mana in a constant amount of 0.05 percent in intervals of 1 second when there were no humans in his field of vision and his mana was above 25 percent of his capacity.

Since he had nearly 15,000 mana, Noah could release his mana from 100% to 25% in just 25 mins given satisfactory conditions.

Unlike a mana breathing technique which regulated mana by having it flow within the body with little to minimal release, this was a very crude method as it relied on natural mana recovery to continue to the next cycle when mana was depleted.

As there were even mana breathing techniques that replenished the user's mana while performing it, the efficiency of the script for a regular person could only be described as sad.

But Noah wasn't a regular person. Affected with mana overload, the mana influx he had was much greater than his peers.

Although Noah didn't have a way to measure the rate of his mana intake, he was fairly confident the total number of mana regulation cycles he could do in a day could easily compete with a trained soldier.

'Now I just need to see if my death timer would update itself from the quests menu.'

'Quests'

|—— Investigate Poisoning

|—{…}

|—— Survive

|—Recover body from harm caused due to mana overload.

|—Quest Clear Condition: Stop increased influx of mana into the body. Recover domain to a healthy state.

|—Time Remaining: 1 year 9 months 25 days

|—Quest Clear Rewards: 50 Stat Points

|—Quest Failure Result: Death. All Stats reset to 0.

Accept / Decline ?

|—— Daily Quest: Eat Healthily I

|—{…}

|—— Daily Quest: Grow Stronger I

|— {…}

/* Once Quests are accepted, they cannot be declined. */

'I guess it would take a while to re-estimate.'

Satisfied with the result, Noah headed towards Dr Clara's lab to complete his daily quest.

'I hope all this exercise won't make me smell like a protein fart.'

====

"Good morning, Noah!" Trish got up from her seat unloading kisses and hugs on Noah.

"Good morning, mum, dad."

As Edwin and Trish had to leave for work early in the morning, Noah made sure to wake up early to greet and join them for breakfast.

By the time his sisters usually joined, they would have only very little time before they had to leave. As such, this became a short time he shared with them alone.

As time passed, It became a routine for Noah to start and end his day alongside his parents.

Noah still hadn't figured out what to talk about except for random things that happened the previous day, but somehow that itself seemed enough whenever he joined.

Whenever he didn't have anything to talk about, he would pick a newspaper from the stack of papers Edwin read daily.

While Edwin's attention seemed to be focused on the stack of newspapers he read, he would often shift focus to Trish and Noah now and then, adding to their conversation.

But unlike usual, it looked like his father had a very serious expression while he read the newspaper today.

"Did anything happen?'

"No… The official announcement made it to the papers today."

"Official announcement?"

Taking out one of the newspapers, Noah read the headlines.

"THE BLUE PRINCE..."

Checking the others, it looked like all the papers had the front page headline about him.

"PRINCE NOAH BACK FROM THE DEAD?"

"A NEW CANDIDATE FOR THE THRONE EMERGES."

Seeing the various headlines in the morning newspaper, Noah couldn't help but pick it up and read through.

Prince Noah was finally rescued after separating from his family….. His whereabouts are still not made public as the investigation is still in progress…. The young prince was found injured and will be continuing medical treatment under the care of the Duke's personnel….The prince will be joining the Enid Academy as a grade 1 student to pursue his studies….

As Noah was one of the princes of the kingdom, Edwin couldn't keep delaying the official announcement of his son's return even though the investigation of the incident was not completed yet.

Although Noah wasn't seen by anyone outside the mansion yet, once he entered the academy it wouldn't take anyone much time to identify his background.

Rather than having Noah's return come out as some kind of controversy later on, Edwin decided to announce his son's return officially by sending the press a brief letter. Although he knew even this might be sending fodder for conspiracy theorists, it was something he had to take care of sooner or later.

Most of the articles talked about and around the information that was officially released from the Wyte house, but there were a lot of speculative and blatant statements mixed in:

Is the new prince a scapegoat by the Wyte house to compete for the throne?.... A hidden source has revealed that the young prince was crippled…. How the new prince could destabilize the Wyte house and even the kingdom…

As Noah continued to read, he could see a new quest alert popping up before it disappeared in his peripheral vision.

'Quests'

|—— Investigate Poisoning

|—{…}

|—— Survive

|—{…}

Accept / Decline ?

|—— Win the hearts of the ducal territory

|— A Prince loved by the citizens can never be outmatched. Win the hearts of the citizens in your territory to pave your road to glory.

|—Quest Clear Condition: Gain the confidence of 75% of the population in the ducal territory for you to be fit for the throne. Once this quest is accepted, citizens' trust in you must not fall under 5% of the then current confidence percentage.

Current status: 1.12 %of citizens of your territory feel that you are a good fit for the throne.

|—Time Limit: No time limit

|—Quest Clear Rewards: +10 all stats for every 10 percent increase in confidence. +1 charm stat for every 1 percent increase.

|—Quest Failure Result: -50 charm. -30 other stats.

Accept / Decline ?

|—— Daily Quest: Eat Healthily I

|— {...}

|—— Daily Quest: Grow Stronger I

|— {...}

/* Once Quests are accepted, they cannot be declined. */

======

A/N:

Hey guys!

Hope you are all doing well.

Can you guys help support this novel by sending power stones? It would help others discover this novel sooner.

Also, can you please add reviews if possible? Let me know if you enjoy reading this novel. As there are only a few reviews till now, it still shows as unreviewed. It would also help me decide whether to increase the release schedule.

Happy Reading,

Kamui

Side Note: I won't be following any particular computer programming language while writing any code snippets or commands. They are going to be just pseudo code formatted based on real programming language to give a better experience.

Let me know if the syntax becomes too confusing.