Chapter 33: Torrent city [4]

*Boom*

The sound of a large explosion was heard as dust and debris filled up the room. The room had a diameter of a little over ten meters and a height of three meters, it also had a dome shaped ceiling. The walls of said room were lined with metallic plates on to which crystals that shone a bright white light; Mana crystals, hung. It was a Mana room.

Mana room were a mage's ideal training area as they provided a list of facilities that could prove invaluable to a mage with aspirations to get stronger. A person could be born with a D-rank Mana pool, but that was only their potential. Having a greater Mana pool than others simply meant that you would hit your insurmountable wall much later than others with less talent.

One needed to train very hard to achieve their full potential and because of that fact, the list of individuals who have actually managed to achieve their potential paled in comparison to the list of people who didn't.

Mana cores formed naturally, but that didn't mean that they were devoid of impurities. One had to perform Mana training techniques to rid themselves of the impurities in their cores, improve their handle on Mana and learn stronger spells and magic.

The way by which people monitored their progress in respect to the amount of impurities which they have expelled was the number of layers which their Mana cores possessed.

The starting Mana core was the size of a slightly above average fist. That meant that one's core could store the amount of a person possessing a D-rank Mana pool, the standard for all normal humans.

The more they performed Mana training rituals, the more the layers increased till they struck their permanent bottleneck. The number of layers a person with a C-rank Mana pool could form before hitting a permanent bottleneck was three, and similarly for a B-rank Mana pool, the maximum was six. But the A and S rank Mana pools begged to differ.

An individual with an A-rank Mana pool could only form eight layers, while the people with S-rank Mana pools ceased progressing at nine. Nine was set to the maximum amount no one had managed to break past it. Not even Saint Charles Xavier, the man hailed as the greatest mage in history, could surpass it.

(AN: Saint is a title given to an individual who managed to reach the heights of Great mage before they died by the Mage association)

Layers could also be referred to as circles or rings and that was what was used as the rankings of mages a long time ago. But after a long debate, the mage association decided to officially adopt the alphabet ranking method as the generally recognized rankings for mages and the reason for that was quite simple.

Although the circle ranking method allowed for a more specific judgement of one's current capabilities, it was not very effective as people broke into new levels much more frequently. It was discouraged due to the fact that numerous people would need to change their rank frequently and that could overload and potentially collapse the mage association's database, the place where information pertaining to all who are certified mages of the association where stored. The alphabetic rankings didn't completely eliminate this problem, but it sure as hell did reduce it.

Another advantage of the alphabetic rankings were that, unlike the circle ranking, they actually looked at other aspects and not only the Mana pool when ranking mages. They took into account the mage's affinity, mastery, battle IQ and a number of other things into consideration to provide a more battle effective summary of a person's abilities. The circle ranking method was also still made us of in the magic technician industry though as the amount of Mana which one could access was of absolute relevance.

It was also good to note that a person wasn't recognized as a mage by the association untill they graduated from a magic academy.

Mana rooms provided access to artificially created ambient Mana, which was much easier to absorb than normal Mana. They were also the perfect training area for a mage as they possesed technology which could drain the Mana out of a spell, depending on the level of the room and tier of the spell. The metal plates on the walls, amongst other things, could also completely nullify most blunt force attacks making it a strategic dummy for mages to test their strength on.

There were also a horde of other things that Mana rooms could do, but they had to be of a higher level than five. It was good to note that the highest level of Mana room was level ten.

As the dust in the room cleared, the body of an individual slowly became visible. His body had perfect and firm skin, with large muscles and toned abs. The figure's hands were holding a wooden practice sword. His hands were covered in scars and callouses, proof of the effort he had put into his swordmanship.

*Crack*

A cracking noise was heard as the wooden sword began to break. The dust cleared even more and the surroundings became even more clearer.

The Mana room had been reduced to a pitiful state as craters littered not only the floors, but the walls too. In the center of all this chaos and destruction stood the count raymond, the culprit behind it all.

Even with the force and Mana absorption technology, the count had been able to destroy more than half of the room.

"Che...there goes another one....and I was holding back so much this time." Raymond aid and tossed the destroyed sword behind him. There was a large heap of broken swords at one corner of the room, and that was were the newly destroyed wooden weapon landed.

Raymond had been training in the Mana room for the past two days, only coming out to eat his meals and rest, but the rest of the time was spent in the room. As an S-rank mage with a seven layered core, he had long since hit his permanent bottleneck, so there was not much that Mana training could do for him. But he had not been in a proper fight for a long time, and although he really didn't need to, he decided to take the opportunity to 'whip himself back to shape'.

"I don't think this room is usable anymore...but this is the last level five Mana room they have..." Raymond thought out loud.

Over the course of the last two days, Raymond had destroyed several Mana rooms with his training. Each time he destroyed one room, he would hire and switch to another one and this was the last one the guest house had!

"Well, I guess that's enough training for me." Raymond concluded as he turned around to leave the room through the door. But then, a knocking sound was heard.

*Knock*knock*

"Hmm? Who could that be?" The count asked himself. He was wondering who it was that had the guts to interrupt his training, even though he had already finished.

*Knock*knock*

The knock came again.

"Come in." Raymond finally consented.

The metal door opener and a man stepped into the room. It was Alvin.

"Good day sir, I hope your training has been going well." Alvin said his greetings with a curt bow.

"It has. Get straight to the point." Raymond said, not wanting to waste much time.

"I have news pertaining to the whereabouts of the rogue faction." Alvin said and looked up to see Raymond's reaction. The count still had his usual indifferent face on.

"Go on."

"After a thorough interrogation, we have managed to determine the location of our targets. I am deeply sorry that we weren't able to give you a report earlier, but the suspect required immediate medical treatment after you were done with him. The healing process was what delayed us." Alvin said.

"That's enough with the apologies. Tell me what I need to know, now." Raymond ordered.

"At once sir." Alvin said and quickly added;

"We discovered that their faction made plans to travel underground, but they tried to throw us off by allowing a few of them to follow the surface. Their plan was to send out a small but elite squad to act as a diversion and get themselves discovered, then they would flee back into town and regroup with the others to follow the underground path. That way, they could decieve the magic Knights into thinking that they were still in town, while they were actually long gone. But it seems that they didn't make any plans for in case one of their men got captured." Alvin said, and purposely looked at Raymond for a reaction.

"Do you think that this is some sort of joke?" The count said with a serious tone.

"Do you really think that I am that dense? To believe such a pathetic lie, is this some sort of test? There are an endless list of inconsistencies with that report you just gave me, surely that cannot be the real story can it?" Raymond added.

"It is not." Alvin said simply, but with a very polite tone.

"Then stop with the tests. I have a very good impression of you, and I would advice that you didn't ruin it." Raymond said irritably. His cold face was maintained, but the anger was leaking from his voice. 

"I apologize. I just thought you would be in the mood for a little laughter since you have been training for such a long time. I acknowledge that I was wrong and I hope the count can forgive me." Alvin said while taking a knee. His head was still bowed.

"I was not, and your joke was similarly not funny. At this juncture, it is quite obvious that the captain and the baron have some sort of involvement in this matter. Do we still need any more evidence to take them into custody?" The count asked. He had decided to give the earlier matter a rest. There was no need to delay their progress because of mere trivialities.

"Yes sir. But it is much larger than you could expect as THEY have a hand in this. I shall now give you a full detailed report of our findings." Alvin said.

For the first time, Raymond's indifferent facade cracked as his eyes widened up in surprise of THEIR involvement in this matter. He quickly regained himself and spoke up.

"Continue." Raymond said. His poker face was back on, but his mind was in a small panic.

'this might escalate into an annoyingly large problem if THEY are involved. I might have to call upon the association.' Raymond thought. 

Just who were 'THEY' that they could make even an S-rank like count Raymond feel the need to call for back up?

A/N:

Special thanks to halis_eren_balaban ànd Epic_Buddie123.