"Lewis! Thank you. I owe you my life," David called, the warrior looking pale and bleeding from several wounds, but his gaze was focused on Lewis as he spoke, limping over.
"It's fine, I'm just sorry I couldn't make it back to save him," Lewis replied, pointing at the body of the man the goblins had managed to kill, their healer, Lee, standing over him with a grim expression, clearly too late to provide any healing to the man.
David nodded solemnly as he glanced back at the gruesome sight.
"Lee, please focus on the worst injuries, but don't bother healing minor cuts, conserve your mana," Patch called, the group now looking around for further threats as they nursed their wounds.
"Holy cow, Lewis, was that your boosting skill? No wonder it has a cooldown if it makes you that much stronger." Matt called, the young mage having primarily acted as a defense against those arrows before Jonny had reached the archers and cut them down, the warrior having invested all his points into strength like Patch and having engaged the creatures alongside him, the man having charged deeper when Patch retreated to help clear the goblins.
Lewis had deactivated the spell when the fight was over. The sense of weakness that had overcome him from losing all that extra power did not seem as drastic as before, now that his body had been strengthened. A sense of sturdiness infused him from his increased constitution that he hadn't previously experienced. Still, the strain remained, a feeling of having pushed himself and his body, making him tired but it was nothing a bit of rest couldn't fix.
"Yeah, I managed to kill that mage goblin after deflecting his fireball. I got to say, his spell was far stronger than yours, but it seemed like he had used up all of his mana to produce it. Is that something you can do too?" Lewis asked the young mage.
"He used up his entire mana pool in a single spell? I definitely can't do that; there seems to be a limit as to how much I can channel into a spell before it just stops accepting my mana." Matt explained, sounding puzzled.
"Where was this goblin? I heard an explosion, but was too busy on my end to figure out what was happening." He added.
Lewis brought him over to the dead goblin, the creature slumped up against the large tree with one eye missing. Not sure what Matt would get out of seeing the dead goblin, he stood back as the young soldier got closer and examined the creature, picking up a strange ruby-like crystal from the ground beside it and holding it up to his face, his eyes widening as he did.
Confused about his reaction to a mildly pretty rock, he noticed Matt's eyes glowing a faint white color, a sign that he was using mana sight, and suddenly realized he had forgotten to reactivate his own mana detection after cancelling his boosting spell. When he rectified this, he immediately realized why Matt was so interested in the ruby stone, the object shining vivid red in his mana detection, making Lewis realize what had actually happened with the goblin mage.
Unlike what Lewis had expected, the goblin mage likely hadn't actually possessed a fireball spell at all, and definitely not one as powerful as the one he deflected. Instead, this ruby-like stone had small runic markings that were likely the source of the spell; the goblin was nothing more than the supplier of mana, which explained why it had been so exhausted after firing that big spell.
"This is incredible! Where on Earth did this green shit get such an amazing thing? Don't tell me they can make these?" Matt asked, seeming like his usual child-like self once again as he stared intently at the red stone.
Without warning, Lewis felt mana being channeled into the ruby, the rock glowing brighter to his senses as all the pure mana it received was turned into the familiar red of fire mana, the same process he had seen happen with a fireball's field. Matt's face lit up as he turned to Lewis, the ruby's glow having stopped growing before it suddenly pulsed, a ball of fire materializing and flying straight for Lewis.
Cursing in his mind, he quickly activated [Anti-magic mantle] and dispelled the fireball as it connected, his mind fuming when he heard Matt laughing, not even paying attention to him as he stared down in awe at the ruby.
"Matt, what the hell. Why would you do that? You almost hit me." Lewis exclaimed, receiving a raised eyebrow from Matt as he finally looked up.
"What are you talking about? You're magic-proof." He responded calmly, appearing bewildered why Lewis would make a fuss out of this.
"Only when I have the skill active, and it burns my own mana to use it," Lewis replied angrily, a little harsher than he had intended, which seemed to shock Matt out of his inspection of the fireball spitting ruby.
"Eh, I'm sorry, dude, I thought it was like a passive skill or something, I just assumed it was always on." Matt replied sheepishly, making Lewis feel guilty for having purposely withheld that fact from him to make him seem cooler.
Lewis let out a long sigh, his anger fading away as he composed himself.
"Never mind, sorry for shouting, just don't send a dangerous spell at me without warning me first, alright?" He asked, Matt nodding eagerly.
"Right, so then, what about the stone? I guess that was how the goblin managed to shoot that huge fireball?" Lewis asked, refocusing the discussion.
"Yeah, I have no idea how it actually works, all I know is that there's some sort of enchantment inside it that must act as a replica of the fireball spell, only it doesn't have the same inherent limitations as my own spell, so I can make the fireball as big as I want as long as I feed this enough mana," Matt explain, passing the ruby over to Lewis.
Grabbing the red stone, he found that its strange markings weren't just carved on the surface, but were somehow also present within the very rock, intricately interweaving patterns too small to fully make out, which appeared to be some sort of three-dimensional maze that appeared to shift and change the pattern when he looked at it from different angles.
Then again, perhaps that was just a limitation of his skill; the patterns were only visible thanks to his mana detection, the remnant mana within the stone making its inner workings light up.
Wanting to better understand the stone's function, he tried replicating Matt's actions as he, too, tried pouring mana into the red stone, a feat that didn't come as naturally since he hadn't needed to do it before. He had seen Matt use his mana on several occasions, but he had trouble locating his own. The fact that none of his spells seemed to be as simple as a barrier or fireball only made it harder to understand the fundamentals of what was happening within him to activate those abilities.
Closing his eyes, he looked deep within himself, trying to locate the source of his new powers, looking for the core of his mana. Surprisingly, his mana detection skill seemed to react to his intentions as he felt its flashes of knowledge and intuition nudge his mind, his consciousness drifting deep within his chest until he found something. A new pool of energy resided within him, something he immediately knew to be his mana.
With an excited glee, he grabbed hold of some of that energy and pushed it into the ruby, his eyes opening as he watched its intricate patterns change, expecting to finally be able to use a normal mage spell.
Honestly, if this was an option the whole time, he wondered if he could just buy an enchanted rock or something instead of learning the skill, maybe that would get around the system guide's 'advice' of just giving up being a mage?
But as he gleefully watched the stone react to his feeding of it with mana, the changes it underwent was entirely different from what he was expecting, the red patterns within the stone disappearing in a wave, like a city getting its power shut off, one section after the next suddenly went dark, the entire thing turning from a vivid red color to entirely black in little more than a few heartbeats.
He watched in frozen horror as the red stone blackened and began crumbling in his hand, the red mana within the stone having entirely disappeared as the ruby crumbled apart like wet sand, pieces falling through his fingers.
"WHAT THE HELL?" Matt cried, frantically grasping the pieces from his hand and yanking them away in a vain attempt to rescue the spell stone, but none of the fragments glowed with any sign of mana.
Lewis was stunned, his mind unable to understand what was happening as he stuttered incomprehensibly, staring down at his hand.
What the hell did I do wrong? Did I accidentally activate anti-magic mantle without realizing? But no, that was the normal mana within me. How could it have such an effect on the stone?
His thoughts swirling, he tried to think of any explanation that could explain this, but all led back to the same conclusion. His mana wasn't actually mana; it was anti-mana. With that unwanted realization, his last hope at eventually learning to use normal magic was dashed, his other abilities suddenly making a lot more sense, but also raising even further questions.
Thinking back, the only skill that required any mana was, ironically, his anti-magic mantle. That wouldn't make a lot of sense based on what he had learned about mana so far, thanks to his testing with Matt. The ghostly pale mana needed to be converted into a different aspect, such as fire, or at least granted a structure like his barrier spell. But Lewis's ability didn't have that step; his skill activated instantly without any sort of intermediate conversion process for the mana, meaning what he was getting when using his skill was the same thing Matt was doing without even trying; he was expelling mana from his body without anything more to it, the only difference from the pale mana Matt passively emits and his own, was that his destroys all other mana.
He had thought it felt familiar when he had infused some of his mana into the ruby, the process having felt oddly familiar, like he was rediscovering how to ride a bike. Turns out he had been expelling mana unconsciously every time he activated his skill, the only difference being that doing it manually allowed him to expel his mana from a specific part of his body rather than the whole.
Ah, goddamit, I should have tried experimenting with using my mana before. He sighed inwardly, brushing off the crystalline powder of the once ruby red stone and holding his head, Matt appearing heartbroken as he tried to infuse mana into the fragments in some vain hope that they might magic themselves back together or something.
"Shit, Matt, I'm sorry. I only tried to infuse some mana into the thing, but I guess I don't actually have mana." Lewis said in a low voice, Matt's betrayed expression meeting his.
"You destroyed it by using your anti-magic?" Matt asked
"Yeah. Well, I didn't want to. I just pushed normal mana into the stone, at least I tried to, but I guess I don't have normal mana. Honestly, I'm super pissed at the system right now. I picked the mage class, and it gave me an anti-magic skill, then I tried to get different spells, and I'm told I'm not compatible. And now I find out that it wasn't just some arbitrary reason; it's because the system somehow made my magic anti-mana down to my very mana pool and didn't even bother telling me. So much for becoming a wizard." Lewis ranted, some heat entering his voice as he defended himself and vented his frustration at the entire situation.
By the end of it, Matt had a sympathetic look, his anger having dissipated as he patted Lewis on the shoulder.
"I'm sorry, man, I know this must suck. I just wish we could have copied those markings and maybe even recreated the spell stone before it got destroyed." He said, dropping the last fragments of the destroyed spell stone with a sigh.
"I don't see how that would help. The patterns were far too complex. I couldn't even make out most of the pattern inside the rock and have no idea how you would replicate carving the inside of the stone," Lewis added, shaking his head at the soldier's idea. The ability to recreate that stone was beyond anything they could hope to achieve.
But instead of nodding or even remaining quiet, Matt turned to him with a confused expression.
"There were markings within the stone?"
What the hell? How crap is this guy's mana sight? How could he not have noticed the complex patterns all lit up with red fire mana?
Lewis only nodded stifly, briefly wondering what was up with his skills compared to the young mage, not only his anti-magic but even his mana detection, but the answer hit him hard. All his mana was anti-mana, so what was powering his other abilities?
He had assumed spiritual alignment was related to his supposed spirit, but without any understanding of what that even entailed, he was stuck as to what to think about the spell's true function. His mana detection had never appeared to use much mana, which was why he would usually keep it on all the time, but now he knew that it wasn't that it used very little; it was that it didn't use any at all.
But before he could digest the massive revelation, Jonny walked over to them and delivered some serious news.
"We found tracks, and one of them got away. This isn't over."