Alex reached home and immediately began taking inventory of the potions he had stored.
'Seventeen healing, thirty-six mana, ten poison varieties, three sets of mental potions, and five stamina draughts…'He counted everything twice to be sure.
"I'm still lacking poisons," he muttered to himself. "But that'll change soon enough."
Once he finished checking the stash, he dove straight back into spell construction. He would give himself one more hour to work on the Spiked Water Arrow, then dedicate time to Senturion Control training until he ran out of mana. With mana potions at hand, he could recover the mana lost from intense sessions… but he needed to be careful.
'I have read in a book that if someone abuses mana potions, they could develop Mana Leakage Syndrome… if I'm careless, I'll cripple myself.' The illness caused one's mana to bleed away over time instead of regenerating. Ironically, victims had to rely on mana potions to replenish what they lost—an act that only worsened the condition.
So Alex pushed his training to the limit, but not past the line. He emptied his mana reserves completely, then used only one potion per day to refill them. No more than that.
After that came the usual mana-gathering meditation, the longest portion of his regimen. It took him nearly three hours, with more than one of those spent simply refilling the mana he had thrown out during training.
Once he wrapped up, Alex made a quick meal, ate silently, and returned to potion making. He focused primarily on poisons—something he couldn't risk preparing during class.
He avoided the gym entirely. Without finishing Spiked Water Arrow, training Water Scape alone would be inefficient. Once the spell was complete, he would return to magical training.
With the remaining time in his night, Alex opened the Water Bending manual he had bought before and reviewed its contents. Now that he had acquired Mana Sense, he could finally understand it properly.
Mana sense skills, as it turned out, functioned like magic circles—except instead of funneling mana to cast a spell, they imprinted themselves onto the mind, allowing the user to perceive specific mana particles with greater clarity. Creating a mana sense circle was incredibly difficult, but applying it was surprisingly easy.
Twenty minutes later, Alex finished imprinting the circle onto his consciousness.
The moment he did, something shifted. It felt as though the world had been hiding faint glimmers of water mana all along, and only now did they reveal themselves. His mind opened wider, seeing more clearly.
'So this is what it feels like…'He hadn't known what to expect, but it wasn't this quiet, electrifying awakening.
It was late by the time he closed the manual. Alex showered quickly and collapsed into bed.
A few hours later, his alarm tore him from sleep, and the cycle began again.
He kept this routine for an entire week. The exhaustion began etching itself onto his features—dark circles, slower reactions, pale skin. Tessa was the first to notice.
At first, she chalked it up to nightmares or grief. But when Alex began actively avoiding her, suspicion bloomed.
He dodged conversations, slipped out of groups, and barely responded to greetings.
It hurt her more than she wanted to admit.
She cared about him—about his recovery, his presence, even just spending time together—but he was shutting her out completely. When she finally confronted him about it, Alex brushed it off like dust.
"Sorry, I've been sleeping little. Nightmares." Then he offered another excuse and walked away before she could push further.
She decided to give him a bit more time… but not forever.
Scarlett was the next to notice. Unlike Tessa, she had the authority to make Alex stay behind after class.
"What's going on with you? You look sick," she said bluntly.
Alex gave her the same excuse he'd fed Tessa.
"Uh-huh. Sure…" Scarlett narrowed her eyes, clearly unconvinced. 'He really thinks I'll believe that bullshit? Who does he take me for?'
But she couldn't force him to speak, and in the end, she let him go—though not without worry.
Alex, on his end, didn't care whether she believed him. He just didn't want distractions—or interference.
Besides the occasional check-ins from Tessa, no one else bothered him. And so, three more weeks slipped by.
During that time, Alex finally succeeded in creating a functional version of Spiked Water Arrow. All that remained was live testing at the gym to adjust the nodes accordingly.
Following Fabian's advice, he had visited the town's library over the weekend. There, he read through multiple advanced spell-creation texts, learning techniques that fundamentally changed his approach.
Instead of relying on the water's structure alone, he would use wind mana as an external stabilizer—reinforcing shape, maintaining rotation, and drastically lowering mana consumption from the control node.
However, the revised spell came with a drawback: it was louder. Less discreet. So he needed to increase the casting range—longer even than Water Spear—to ensure he could fire the spell and retreat before anyone traced the direction.
Now, standing before the training facilities, Alex took a deep breath and entered.
He fired the spell.
The result was disappointing to say the least. Too little power to penetrate anything meaningful. Too unstable to maintain stability at the desired range.
Still, Alex tested it repeatedly, analyzing every fluctuation, every wobble in the structure. He listed smaller flaws, corrected what he could, and tested again.
Hours passed.
When he finally stopped, he was drenched in sweat and frustration.
'Back to the drawing board it is… fuck me.'
Over the next few days, he studied the problem more thoroughly. Eventually, clarity struck him again.
'I'm approaching it wrong. Coating the water with wind mana is inefficient. I need partial fusion—a semi-combination. Let wind act as the rotational force, letting the water harden through accelerated spin… that would increase solidity and penetration.'
He returned to the schematics.This time, he wasn't rebuilding the spell—just refining its foundation.
And now, he had it. A design far more solid than the previous one—at least, theoretically.