While I was escorting my wife through the castle, she suddenly became unsteady and nearly fainted. I wasn't worried about it, considering it was a typical symptom of pregnancy.
Anyway, I was now giving her a princess carry. With a strength reinforcement spell, she was as light as a feather.
Anastacia seemed genuinely happy to receive such a special treatment.
**I'm pretty sure she could walk by herself now… But to be honest, I don't dislike this either. I get to have a close-up view of her pretty face.**
So, to wrap this up before this turns into another monologue about my wife's qualities, I put her to bed in a room prepared for her and asked the maid tasked with taking care of her to prepare her some tea.
She wasn't going back home because of the upcoming siege. In a few hours, she would join the royal family in the underground shelter. Except the king, obviously. He would be commanding troops on the front line.
However, as soon as I left her room, I stopped. It was not because I forgot something inside or anything of the sort.
No, I simply had no destination in mind. I was utterly clueless as to what I should be doing at that moment.
**I know I shouldn't be wasting time when such a crucial battle is at our doorstep. The king said I should preserve my mana so I could be in top condition for tonight. In that case…**
In the end, it didn't take me too long to figure it out. I headed outside to the royal garden, the same one I landed in earlier after coming back from Humfrey's place.
Something was out of place.
The gardener, which was previously tending to the hedges, was now watering them.
**No, that's not it, dumbass.**
In the middle of a small grass field, a tall women was laying down with her eyes closed. Her long black hair were rustling on the lawn.
She certainly looked attractive. But, just like Élise's case, looks were deceiving.
Under that ravishing human beauty dwelled the soul of a women older than life itself. Indeed, because of her outstanding healing capabilities, she could restore her own dying cells, resulting in the halt of the aging process.
In simpler terms, she could heal herself to prevent her body from growing old. Her current allure was not like the eternal beauty of the elves. In fact, it felt more like cheating.
You see, an elf takes hundreds of years to achieve the level of intellectual and physical maturity of an adult. Which means that their thought patterns matured at the same rate as their physique.
This woman, Lilliana, on the other hand, ceased growing after reaching her mid-twenties. Even so, her mind kept maturing as she accumulated experience and wisdom.
Here's a short story.
Once upon a time, a young Léopold approached her excitedly and shared a bit of history that he learned from his tutor that day.
It was a random part of ancient history when the witch's clan apparently helped the human realm against a monster invasion. That in itself was not noteworthy.
Yet, she corrected him, "The part about the witches selflessly coming to mankind's rescue is slightly off." She softly tapped her temple with her index, ruminating deeply. "As a matter of fact, the king of that era kneeled down and begged the clan for help. In the end, the witches yielded when the king offered the treasures of the royal vault," she sighed, exasperated. "Desperate times, indeed… Considering the witches were responsible for the monster's outbreak in the first place."
You heard that right. She was so old she could rectify history books.
At this point, wisdom-wise, she was at the level of a decrepit riddle-teller on top of a snowy mountain.
Nonetheless! She still looked extremely seductive. Or should I say, bewitching.
That's what I called cheating. Misleading a man's perception of beauty was unforgivable.
In spite of her abusive cheating, she was still loved by everyone. Her kindness knew no bounds. In her spare time, she would travel around the city's clinics and heal the patients.
However, after some time, this gesture of goodwill developed into a mess. Indeed, every citizen affected by a disease or an injury could get healed instantly by her care. This lead to a significant drop in the mortality rate within the city and, consequently, a rise in the population. Stories about the capital spread throughout the continent, stating that living there would prevent diseases and fatal injuries, leading to further increases in the city's population when citizens moved in seeking safety.
To fix this and bring back some sort of balance to the kingdom's healthcare, she was forced to go around the city and villages around the continent and heal the people in need.
**And who do you think was chosen as her personal chauffeur? Eh.**
And that was only a temporary measure. The population was rising rapidly around the world. Soon, it would need more viable lands.
**And the dense mana zones are converging, seizing more fertile lands every day.**
Notwithstanding the noble figure she usually displayed, she was laying down in the grass all limbs spread out.
She looked ridiculous, but she also had her eyes closed and seemed immersed in meditation, so I refrained from laughing.
Instead, I joined her and laid down in a star-shape sleeping position.
Even if this position looked ridiculous, it had a significant purpose. It was used to feel one own's mana flow.
In order to sense and locate the mana throughout the body, the mage needed to be deeply focused on the task at hand, and so, they spread their limbs to differentiate them from the rest of the body and make the whole process easier.
I closed my eyes and focused on the flow. I could hear the mana coursing through my veins like a river in spring. I could feel it tingling on my muscles, filling them with energy. I could feel the mana from the atmosphere knocking on my outer layers of skin.
Commonly, mages absorbed ambient mana through their skin and their breath. The pace at which their mana pool could be filled using these three approaches was called mana regeneration.
As for the mana pool, it was the amount of mana that could be stored inside the body. The untransformed mana had no physical form, so it was not stored in a specific container within the body. Rather, it was an intangible energy stored in every cell of the body.
Another characteristic was that despite being a form of potential energy, the mana had a behavior similar to air in such a way that air currents are generated by a difference in the density, or concentration, of the air particles. In other words, mana moved from an area of high pressure to an area of lower pressure.
Interesting, isn't it? Despite being an intangible form of energy, it also had the properties of a particle. Just like light, which has the properties of both wave and particle.
Practically, this meant that the mana-filled atmosphere naturally flowed into the body until the mana pressure from the atmosphere found balance with the mana within the body.
Strictly speaking, the mana would converge into the body until the mana pressure from inside and outside evened out.
The available room to stock mana in one's body was called mana pool. With a larger pool, it would take more mana to obtain the same pressure as the ambient mana. Also, the pressure differential being greater, the vacuum effect from the mana pool amplifies, therefore strengthening the mana regeneration.