Basic Mastery Respite

Beyern had finally decided to put a bit of distance between him and Seria, just setting her across the room, in bed.

He took a semi-deep breath, as he steeled himself. This was always so annoying, especially the part where he couldn't process the outside world while doing so.

But even then, the constant mental tax that was born of his need to... Beyern had actually not yet made a name for his compression of the mana within his mana pool.

This fact was noted, right before his spirit dropped into his mental palace.

Feeling the wind crossing his face, as he stood in a mysterious void, his goal simple; Form a new world.

There was no longer enough space to stall mortal arrogation, it was his job to fill that abject lack of stalling potential.

With a single mental command earth and rock was birthed from the void forming a giant globe, water being gifted as the moutains were formed.

From the stone and rock great beasts were molded, from the earth man and animals were born, from the waters fish were created.

All aranged in a form as to create a world-wide magic circle that recycled mana the mana of its creatures, of all who had died, along with what had been wasted.

All of it flowing to the centre which would gather and then release, it's entire existence merely a method to gather power for the old gods.

With his job done, he left for another place in the void.

Opening his eyes back in the real world, he shook his head with slight curiousity as to how these 'Dreams' even entered his mental palace.

Then he put back on the mask and snapped back to his neutral smile, with great habit forged by some days.

He couldn't help but enjoy the ease of his constant mana pool refinement- Which was its new name, abbreviated to MPR- As he had just recorded it into {Mental grimoire}.

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Congratulations, Beyern, from you slight usage of mental inscription in a manner born mostly of innate inclination instead of mastery or cautionary practice, 'Mental grimoire' has reached 1-star mastery.

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'Finally,' He thought to himself 'Some progress.'

But luckily for him, Beyern still had some plans for even more progress!

There was a mastery he could progress with constant use, just like {Mana-manipulation}! Though it was mostly derived from the fact that those weird birds from a while ago could sense mana, and that there was an entire skill for hiding mana.

No clue what the name was, but he was pretty sure it existed.

He propelled a ball of mana outside his own body and let it float, getting a better feel for the ripples in the metaphorical lake of existence that it caused, which he had already had interactions with due to {Mana concealment}.

Then, instead of trying to suppress them, he tried to 'Feel' them. To say this was foolish would be an understatement, to expect to be able to sense mana from pure feeling, even Beyern himself understood that.

But what could he do? Probably take time to think about how he could possibly sense those reality ripples he barely understood, or anything else really.

But, that didn't seem neccesary, as he felt the slightest of 'Something' beyond which he usually felt; Directly towards the orb of floating mana.

Though that was mostly just a random attempt to just make sure he didn't overcomplicate it to an extreme degree, Beyern would not complain that it had worked.

And so, he continued, trying to somehow claw out the inconsistant ripples from whatever rug they were hiding behind.

With ceaseless dreg of mind against magical traces in motion, Seria looked at him, and was confused as to what he was doing.

Beyerns mind slowly fell into the act, before he was brought out of it since the very small bit of mana he was maintaining beyond himself had fallen apart 'I should probably inscribe that too.'

He was about to throw out a small piece of mana once more, but then he realized, he had tons of mana just being processed into higher density at all times in the chestal area.

Why would he ever need to put it outside, it wasn't as if his body would somehow deafen a non-physical phenomena.

So, instead of refining it, he fought against the inscribe action and turned to something a bit more normal; Creating a ring.

Just to make sure it took as little mental drain as possible, he put only the normal, the casual 10 mp into the ring, and let it spin as the thing that created the world- Whatever its name was, or if it even existed- Intended.

After the prerequisites had been satisfied by his acts, he returned to focusing on whatever the mana was ripling out.

And this time it was a bit clearer, a bit more present in whatever plane of reality he sensed. Previously it was as if a Master swordsman cut a blade right before his eyes; He could tell it had happened by the slight flash of light, but he could not properly see nor feel it outside the cutting of the wind.

Now it was more a fleeting wind in the summer noon, you could feel it, you could process it's existence a moment after it had past, but if you were prepared; You could react to it.

With another breath he once again broke out of it, and took a moment to rest. Focusing intently on something so far outside the scope of normal physical interaction was not that easy, especially if you were just starting out and even lacked a mastery.

Opening his eyes he gave a quick glance to everything in the room, along with the windows and the bed he was sitting on.

Then he returned to the sensing part of his portfolio, really dragging all the mana-ripples- As they were now dubbed- For all to see.

At least a bit more visibly than before, though not even close to the level of precision and sensitivity that he'd like. It was barely even feasible to see if anything had mana at all, as he felt a very, very slight, and almost unoticable mana ripple coming from his sheath.

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Congratulations, Beyern, you have faced the daunting challenge, sensing the traces of magical influence with little to no guidance, you have gained the mastery 'Mana-sensing'

=====

With a new mastery under his belt, Beyern could feel real-time the support he had gained, as he could now somewhat consistantly feel that there was mana in his sword.

Not much, but it was something to be proud of. Before he had to use his sight to determine this fact, but now he could close his eyes and superimpose the two realms atop eachother to see if there was mana.

Of course, there was almost certainly some conartist out there who knew how to put some mana into a sword for a bit and sell it off as mana-forged to some down and out farmer who had lost their farm while they were still weeping for the death of their wife- Who just so happened to have {Mana-sensing} in their repetiore.

But that would make a good enough base for him to go around sensing mana at all times for sweet mastery.

With that done, all the mana from the ring was brought out of him in 1:1 density. The reason why is obvious for all to see; Having more aspects available leads to higher chances at proper obfuscation.

He began to introspect on his mind, finding the memories of water. if drinking it, of swimming through it, of looking at a river made of it that one time.

Though water had been highly involved with him for his entire life, it seemed it was not that significant beyond its sole function of making sure he didn't die of thirst.

But at least there was enough for him to not have to put any real effort into aspecting it, he just had to take his time linking the memories. Nothing difficult in all honesty, just a bit repetitive.

Put the biggest and most important memory first; Him seeing a big river that one time, and really let it nestle somewhere as an anchor of constant posistion.

It wouldn't be too bad if it was floating free and all, but it would be easier to find it while putting on new memories.

Beyern had decided that this time, he would not be making a singular line of memories connected as one, instead it would be a three dimensional ball which would make it more compact and easier to grab mentally- Maybe.

Beyern was no master magus or whatever, so to expect of himself the ability to predict the laws of magic would be unreasonable.

He ripped a random water-associated memory from his mind, and latched it onto the first memory.

Then another was stitched onto the anchor memory, then another and another, untill he could no longer find space to attach more to, and so they were then using the newly formed outer layer of memories as a basis instead of the anchor.

Some time later, during which Seria had somehow decided that swinging her sword in a closed space was a good way to train or something, Beyern opened his eyes; Satisfied with what he had done.

With the experience of the death and fire aspects, the process had gone a good bit faster, though it was slow in the beginning since he didn't want to screw anything up with this method he had devised.

He wasn't exactly certain about the strength of the memory cluster, but it was more difficult to use due to its large size when compared to the previous two memory strings.

He could obviously increase its size even more to lower the effort needed to attribute the water aspect, but then it would become more annoying to move around... Beyern vowed to himself to find a way to overcome these dark times.

But that was not important right now, what was important was; He now had mana with a darker shade of blue, water mana.

Of course, there was a classic 'Water bolt', which was the same as fire bolt, but with water mana. Nothing unique to it, there was of course a spell or two still inside the hydromancy book he had read back in the mages' guild.

But he didn't have them memorized by rote, so he'd see later on just to make sure he didn't somehow get crippled while trying to learn some spell.

He quickly listed the other aspects he still wanted to set up; Geomancy, Aeromancy, and Chronomancy, along with Moromancy- In the order he currently wished to 'Learn' them.

Getting access to the four elemental aspects would allow for a good few different disguises, since most like to stay to just one or maybe a second aspect due to their class' focus. But more importantly, it'd probably increase his mastery once or twice.

After which, he would then take Moromancy of course, death was already close to his class, to not learn it would be a travesty.

And again, Chronomancy- Because you can't not want to control time.

Seeing from the time, and the prudence that Seria was showing, he thought for a moment if creating the next memory cluster would be the right decision- Or, if training another mastery would be prudent instead.

'To be totally honest, {Mana-shaping} isn't even particularly difficult to train,' he thought to himself in the middle of his contemplation 'It is mostly the aimlessness in training, and lack of use beyond a certain point that keeps me from persuing it as I did {Mana-manipulation} and {Mana-packing}-

It isn't omni-present enough for me to constantly use it.' Though most people probably also weren't constantly using {Mana-packing}, since they apperantly had no notion of putting condensed mana back into the mana pool.

He looked at his sword for just a moment, and then forced out normal 1:1 mana out of his mana pool over the course of a few minutes, silently sitting there without any complaint.

Finished with the preperations, he put forth his hand to the open air and burst a total of 10.4 mp out of his form, which included the ring he had not thrown away; For it would be wasteful otherwise.

Said mana bolted for the air before him, quickly forming something akin to the cross used in crucifiction but upside down, its four cardinal beams akin to spikes of the magic bolt.

He, without much thought, choose to grasp the somewhat spike-like handle. But his hand just passed through, with a sigh he called on his spirit and manifested it into the real world before once again letting his hand reach the presumed handle.

After a few moments of trying to pull the four-directional stake of mana, he also realized a few new things:

If he wished to propell manifested mana with measures outside of his mind, he had to stop keeping it in place with said mind.

And that a measly 0-star {Arcane manifestation} could not help but deform in the face of a human's grip.

With the shake of his head, he quickly reformed the handle to its original state. Then chose that the most fundemental thing he was lacking; {Arcane manifestation}.

It was just as foundational as {Mana-packing} to any mage's journey, and he had completely left it in the dust, thinking it would grow on its own due to the constant use.

As foolish as he had been, he had seen through all lies and recognized the truth.

Just one problem; How was he to increase its mastery?

He held no knowledge if, just like {Mana-packing}, he could just keep on piling on mental energy and/or spirit to make it more 'Real' in a sense.

Or maybe it needed him to manifest a large amount of mana in one moment, he did not know wheither either of these two choices were correct.

But luckily, he could un-manifest manifested mana, so he didn't have to worry about consuming mana whenever he manifested it.

So to test the second theory, he just had to wait for enough mana to pour out of his mana conduit. But the first, that was a little bit more difficult to conceive of in all honesty.

He took a few moments to ponder apon it as he returned the mockery of swords born of mana back to a ring around his heart.

Then he shrugged, took out a single mp, and focused on it. Manifesting it, and then trying to manifest it even more- Failing miserably in the process, Beyern couldn't even tell if there was a future in this theory of progression.

With a sigh, he buried the hatchet of {Arcane manifestation} mastery chasing temporarily, and took out the hatched of {Mana-shaping} mastery chasing instead.

He first de-manifested the mana, since there was no reason for it to be manifested, and started to shape it.

From a ball to cube, all went smooth. Until, Beyern had an idea; 'Wouldn't I gain more mastery if {Mana-shaping} went against spellified mana?'

Turning some mana into a spell was a simple process, moving it? Simple too, though annoying. Shaping it? He had no clue in the slightest, for he had never really tried to do so before this moment.

1 mp was sacrificeable for experimentation, though a little risky in his eyes. It was an entire twelve or more minutes of channeling! But still, it was not that costly to do so.

A way to train {Mana-packing} was far more valuable than a few minutes of his time, even if it was merely the chance of finding the fabled 'Feasible training method'.

Stealing his will, Beyern spellified the 1 mp cube, and started to focus.