Alex sat cross-legged in his room at Hedda's, a strained smile on his face. In his lap, an open booklet depicted five rough-drawn images of his targets.
Among his targets, Hedda and Einar seemed to be closest to him. He could go outside his room, look for the couple and dispose of them in mere minutes.
Alex already had a grasp on their strength - due to his mana sensitivity - and could confidently say that neither had a mana core, making them easy to deal with.
It came as a surprise to Alex, but none of the Fence Leaders hired any extra guards for their protection. 'They must think Violet hasn't picked up on their breadcrumb trail.'
Alex didn't know whether it was because he was raised in a dangerous environment - Enrilth Keep deserved its name of Slaughterhouse - but it was weird few people invested in personal protection.
'Firstly, Violet lacked any sort of bodyguard agency, and not even the black market leaders had any protection.' Though he thought that, the Recen refused to believe these people didn't think or care about their protection.
'Either way, that makes my job easier.' Alex concluded as a sudden feeling overtook him. It hadn't happened before in his life, but since Alex arrived in this city, he had killed people for money. And he didn't know how to feel about it.
Violet's targets haven't done anything to Alex personally, yet the latter would dispose of them for cash.
Alex didn't think of himself as a vigilante type of person, ready to stand up against evil, protecting the weak and powerless. Almost everything he did was for himself and his goal. He didn't think it was the wrong way to live his life, but Alex never would've thought he would turn to killing for money.
Even if these fencers are evil people, even if they plan on killing Violet - or worse - to take over her business, from Alex's point of view, he shouldn't be the judge, jury, and executioner.
If he was hired to protect against this type of people, he would kill to defend without worry or shedding a tear. But to preemptively kill someone, it just felt wrong.
This wasn't to say Alex would never kill this way ever again. If the people were despicable, kidnappers and the sort, he wouldn't have a problem killing them. If that made him a hypocrite, then so be it. Alex never wanted to be an example. As long as he didn't stray from his internal ethics, he would be fine.
'This probably is why I feel unsure.' Alex concluded, musing to himself. 'Fencers are closer to innocent civilians than bandits and kidnappers.'
On the black market, fencers resell stolen goods, making them closer to merchants than killers.
Alex abhorred civilians and the weak being killed by those with power. That is what happened to his family's servants twelve years ago. That is how Pelan met an early grave.
Shaking his head, Alex resurfaced from the river of memories and returned to his current task. Shaking his sore right fist and joint, Alex was pleased with his current mana manipulation.
Since he lacked a core, Alex couldn't fully control the mana as he would've liked to. Specifically, there was no way he could control the state mana was in, which is how one creates spells.
That said, simply moving the mana in his body as is, proved to have some benefits. Pure-Mana manipulation, Alex decided to call this for easier reference.
The way it worked was simple. The simplest, in fact. Alex controlled as much or as little mana as he wanted in his body to achieve a simple effect.
This effect relied solely on the mana's passive abilities; passive healing and energy addition. Mana, in the simplest of terms, is energy in an easier-to-use state.
Mana, in its pure state, in contact with living tissue, manifests these two reactions.
If an organism acquires a wound, the mana in its body would help heal it, transferring energy from the mana's "additive" state, slightly decreasing the organism's peak power output. However, Alex found out that even if an organism has no wounds, mana would divide its energy equally, putting the "healing" state on standby. It was something he didn't really like. There was energy he could tap into, and Alex wanted that.
If Alex controls the mana in his body, he can choose how this transfer/distribution will occur. Thus, Alex could transfer the energy from mana's "healing" state to the "additive" state, increasing his peak output. He could do the reverse as well.
His Recen techniques did something similar, but to a much lesser extent and infinitesimally less efficient. These techniques forced mana to gather in a particular body part or parts, which wasn't the proper way to go.
Take his movement technique, for example. Just by undergoing the proper steps, the method forced a large part of the mana inside his body to gather around his legs, thus allowing Alex to move faster than he naturally could.
Now, Alex could achieve more simply by controlling where and how the energy went. He didn't need to gather more mana in his legs to propel himself at higher speeds.
Alex could switch the mana in his muscles to the additive state, achieving the same result as the technique.
It was simple, efficient, and effective.
There was one downside, however...
Alex rubbed his wrist, slowly moving his fist in a circle, and concentrated.
...The Pure-Mana manipulation strained his body to the extreme. There was no way to strengthen his bones, meaning Alex could only exert as much strength as his bones physically allowed him to.
Fortunately, there was a simple way to treat this.
Alex switched the mana in his wrist to its healing state. A hot, almost burning sensation appeared in his joint, allowing bone, muscle, and tissue to heal at astonishing speeds.
Five seconds later, the area stopped heating, making Alex smile. There was no more pain or discomfort in his hand. It was healed.
'Nice. This will come in handy.' Alex nodded to himself, getting up to prepare to meet his first target, a man named Lorcan.
As he buckled and tightened the leather straps of his light armor, Alex's thoughts returned to his abilities.
'Even if I now can heal at a faster rate, I don't think it can heal any deeper cuts or stab wounds. Firstly, I don't have the mana necessary for that, and secondly, the mana merely enhances my healing, not improves it. If a bone is broken, the mana won't set it back in place before healing it.
'Similarly, if different tissue is damaged at the same time, I don't expect the mana to differentiate between tissues. It will heal everything together.'
This concerned Alex. Let's take a stab wound, for example. If Alex was stabbed through his heart, he couldn't use mana to heal the wound.
His suspicion is he could still die. If the wound would damage skin, muscle, tendons, lungs, and heart. How would the healing process know to differentiate between all these different tissues?
For all Alex knows, if he were to try to heal such a complex wound, the healing effect would stitch everything together. Heart to lungs, lungs to skin, and tendons to muscle. Everything would be healed together, an abomination.
If such a thing was correct, even if Alex wouldn't die due to blood loss, he would still perish because his heart won't be able to move - just like his lungs.
'Sigh. Without a core, I don't imagine being able to heal each tissue individually. It would take delicate control of mana and extreme precision, both things I'm unable to do right now.'
Walking outside, Alex made up his mind. 'Let's not get that hurt, shall we?'