Chapter 49

So. Mana is obviously the key. The more I have of it, the better. The stances, my boots, the sword—I need it for all of them.

My Agility is already high enough that I don't feel the need to bump it up just yet, and so far Strength, while useful, hasn't been a game changer. My sword is sharp enough, and the techniques lethal enough, that I don't strictly need the advantage of pure strength.

Which makes what I have to do pretty obvious: all the free points in Arcana and Constitution. Ideally, I should make them equal and grow them in tandem. Being more durable is never the wrong choice, and as my Constitution improves, so will my Strength and Agility. Definitely not to the same extent if I improved those stats individually, but it's not a bad trade-off. And if I spend all my free points, then I'll have, let's see … He scrunched his eyebrows as he did the math in his head. Around forty thousand mana.

That's … pretty fucking good. I won't have to worry about the boots running out on me, at the very least. And I'll be able to get more than a single swing from the sword Cyzicus gave me. A mid- to long-range attack will definitely be useful, especially one that doesn't need any ammo.

Luke opened his status, wary of the pain he was still in and acutely aware of the fact that Rex was just inches behind him and Nel was in front of him. Since both of them could probably detect his mana, he decided to raise his Arcana attribute by a single point. He planned to drip feed himself the stat points over a period of a few days or weeks to make the gains less noticeable.

He regretted his decision immediately, as a searing heat spread throughout his body.

Nope! Not doing that anytime soon. He closed his status. I'll try again tomorrow and see how that feels.

They flew for another hour before setting up camp.

"I'm going to go hunt something," Rex said the second the griffin touched down in a clearing. "Can I borrow a bow?"

"I have food," Nel offered, pulling a bow and a quiver full of arrows from her ring as she did.

He grimaced. "Your food is bland." Then, collecting the weapons, he wandered into the forest.

Kinda rude. As expected.

"I should probably go with him," Jax said, striding into the dark woods after Rex and leaving Luke alone with the warrior.

Nel, like Luke, carried all the essentials of comfortable living with her everywhere she went, fully realizing the benefits of having easy access to portable storage. A few minutes after the two boys slunk away, she had the whole campsite ready: tents, bedrolls, pillows, chairs, tables, and a half dozen other random items meant to make life easy all laid out in a loose circle around a large bonfire.

Unlike Luke's inventory, though, food left in hers would spoil, whereas in his, time seemed to stop, allowing him to remove what he wanted in exactly the same state he had put it in.

Even so, Nel had found a way around it—tagging her food with preservation talismans.

"The talismans don't keep food fresh for long, but it's fine for a day or two," she explained, noticing Luke's gaze.

"Can you teach me how to make one?" he asked, watching her pull one off a container full of rice and tossing it, where it hung suspended over the fire.

She frowned at him. "A preservation talisman?"

"Talismans in general. I don't know how they work, like, at all."

"That …" She glanced at her food, and then back at him again. "Yeah, we have time. I'd advise against spending too much time on learning how to make them, though. Your time will be better spent using the manasink and cultivating than it would on these. We usually let those that have lost hope of ascending to the Warrior tier make them."

So Trixie was right about that, too. I wonder if she's still stuck in the tomb? Arya and Spiros would have made it out by now. Especially if Len and Yjarn managed to clear the empress's bar. Although, I wonder where they went? Spiros probably stayed in Carim. I don't think he'd leave his sister and cousin behind, but what about Arya? It didn't seem like she had anything tying her to the island. I don't think she mentioned her family a single time we were there.

Nel's storage ring flashed, pulling Luke out of his thoughts, and a handful of blank slips appeared on the table along with a thin wooden cylinder and a thin leather-bound booklet.

Grinning in excitement, he picked up and inspected the wooden cylinder. Is this supposed to be a pen? It doesn't have ink, but it kind of looks like one. He rotated it in his hand, noting the small glyphs engraved down its shaft.

"The process isn't complicated. You draw a symbol and then channel your mana into it to power it. That book has the common talismans, and those slips are what we use. All the ones I gave you are designed to activate when you tear them, so we make the paper easy to rip in advance."

He grabbed the book and flipped it open.

Explosive. His eyes traced over the complex but beautiful series of lines that made the talisman and the label underneath it. It doesn't look anything like the talismans I've used in the past, though. He flipped through the book one page at a time. Protective, preservation, fire, and contraceptive? The fuck? His eyebrows shot up in surprise at the last item. One thing is clearly not like the others.

"Do I channel my mana into this to make it work?" He picked up the pen and twirled it between his fingers.

"Yes. The stylus isn't really needed—anything that you can write with works—but it's enchanted to write so long as you put mana through it. It's not as messy as charcoal, and it doesn't smudge, either."

Cool.

"So you draw one of these symbols"—he tapped the book and lifted up the pen—"with this, and then you fill them with mana?" That's way easier than I expected.

"Yes. The hard part isn't drawing them, though, it's charging them."

"Hmm," Luke grunted, flipping the book back to the page with the protection charm.

Might as well start with the lifesaver.

Grabbing a slip, he drew the symbol. His boosted agility allowed him to draw the glyphs on the page perfectly, quickly, and easily. "Why not just make a stamp?"

Nel swallowed her food. "It doesn't work. Anyone can use a talisman, but only the person who draws it can charge it. Here." Her ring flashed, and a piece of paper landed in front of him. The glyphs for an explosion talisman were already drawn on it. "Try putting mana in this one, and then the one you drew."

Picking hers up off the table, he concentrated on his mana. It was still achy, but the pain had faded rapidly, and his Arcana stat had ticked up another seven points while they were still in the air, much to Luke's relief, and surprise.

With a flex of his will, he moved his mana toward the paper, and like she said, it felt no different than venting it into the air.

"Huh."

He picked up the one he drew and pushed his mana toward it. Instantly, he felt it latch onto the ink, much like it did when he was funneling the energy into his boots. With an effort of will, he began to push more and more into it. To his frustration, only a small fraction of his mana appeared to be absorbed by the glyphs, with the rest dissipating into the air. Frowning, he increased his output from tens of points to hundreds, expecting the increased amount of mana to make a difference in the rate it filled. It didn't.

Nel grinned, swallowing another mouthful of food. "Did you try to put mana in it faster?"

"Yeah."

"That won't work," she said matter-of-factly. "How fast you can push mana into them isn't related to how quickly you release it. It's a fixed rate over time. The only way to improve is by constantly filling one after another. Eventually your mana learns how to get in there faster, but it takes time. Every new talisman also needs to be learned from scratch, so even if you learn to make a protective talisman in a reasonable amount of time, if you ever decide to make an explosive one, then you'll be starting from square one."

Well, that sucks. He reduced his mana output to one point of mana every couple seconds, matching the rate the talisman was absorbing it.

"What about Warrior-tier talismans? And would this one hold up to that giant's boulders?"

"No. Definitely not." She shook her head from side to side. "If I were you, I'd get out of the way if a warrior attacked you. Maybe surrender if you can. And Warrior-tier talismans are the same glyphs as those, but just filled with Warrior-tier mana instead. So only someone at that tier can make one."

So it's not all bad news. If I learn how to make these once, I can just continue making them forever. And the paper, other than being perforated, looks pretty standard, too. I have more than enough of it in my inventory.

"Are these the only talismans you have?"

She frowned. "I don't think you realize what I just gave you. Those are all the talismans the Rising Sun has access to. If you were a member of the sect, then you would have had to spend thousands of merits to even learn one of them. It's only because you'll be representing Sylcra in the tournament that I even allowed you to see them."

"Oh."

"Quite. I'd also caution you against mixing and matching the glyphs. Unless you somehow learn how to read and write in the ancient tongue, you'll likely blow yourself up."

"The what? And what?" Luke looked at the talismans with a sudden sense of apprehension.

"It's the language of the divines. Every word has power, and carelessly toying with it will get you killed."

"That's good to know. I'll be sure to be careful," he said evenly, eyeing the book.

The ancient tongue. So that's what these symbols are. You write them down, and reality bends. That's … kind of wild.

"Good." She waved her hand, and the talisman she had drawn flew away from him and back into her hands. Closing her eyes, she funneled her mana into it, and after a few seconds, it blinked white, and the symbols drawn on it changed, condensing into the familiar pattern of the other talismans he'd used.

So that's how it works.

"You can have it, and these," she said, flinging it back to him, along with a handful of other talismans from her ring. "They're all Warrior tier, so you'll have something to rely on if things get dangerous."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it." She waved him off.

"NEL!" Jax came running back into the camp, his clothes tattered and covered in blood. "They took him. They took Rex!" he panted, hunching over his knees.

Of course they did.

A spear appeared in Nel's hand, and she rose up in the air.

"Where?" she demanded.

Jax pointed to the direction he had emerged from.

Not wasting a second, or even bothering to ask who or what had taken her brother, she flew into the tree line, moving so fast she looked like a blur in Luke's eyes.

"What happened?" Luke asked, standing up and drawing his sword from his sheath in anticipation.

Jax didn't answer and just stood there, his chest rising and falling as he caught his breath, staring off in the direction Nel had gone.

"What happened?" Luke asked again, tightening his grip on his blade. His heart beat in anticipation as he realized that something was wrong.

"Nothing … Nothing happened." Jax looked at him. His eyes cold, he withdrew his sword from its sheath and inched toward Luke.

Man … Fuck this. I should have stayed in the capital.