As soon as they entered, Kai felt his mind and body being pulled apart into thin noodles. Normally, when teleporting using teleportation gates like the ones to and from the bluestone Sect, one would feel a similar pulling force.
However, that just felt like a light vacuum was softly tugging at you.
This teleportation felt like two vehicles from Earth were pulling him in different direction from his head and feet. Not just his body, but his mind felt an equally powerful stretching effect and it almost felt as though his Mental Space might be affected by this pulling force.
Just as that was about to happen, the teleportation ended and Kai regained his senses. Immediately, Kai looked around and noticed that he was in a vast and considerably empty dessert.
Around him, the only thing that existed was a near-endless desert. However, he also felt something strange. Immediately, he stimulated his Spiritual Energy and activated a fireball spell.
2 seconds later, a small flame appeared in his hand, which he then threw out.
However, instead of flying in a straight line, it swivelled and swerved in seemingly random directions until it finally crashed into a nearby sand dune, resulting in a tiny explosion of sand.
Frowning deeply, Kai instructed the system the analyse his surroundings and find out the problems. However, even after spending nearly 20 minutes on this, the system was not even able to calculate how much time it would take to do this.
However, not even a second later did Kai realise something. He had already stopped the system's calculations and decided to check on his Mental Space and its stability before beginning to move, but realised that the mana that his spell was recovering was almost fully recovered.
Normally, he would be able to cast at least 10 spells from each rune if they were fully charged with mana. It would take him about 5 hours for this amount to be fully recovered. As it turned out, the more Spiritual Energy he had, the faster his spells would absorb Mana.
However, the rune in his mind had only taken 20 minutes to recover enough mana for another spell. How was this possible?
This time, Kai asked the system to investigate the matter using this train of thought and allowed it to use 20 mana from its reserves.
Within just 3 seconds, an answer that both shocked Kai and was somehow expected appeared.
[The density of Mana in the surroundings is 1.5 times greater than that of the Hepis Dynasty. Based on estimations, the Santok Empire has a Mana density of 0.9 times that of the Hepis Dynasty. Spells in the current conditions will have smaller effects on the surroundings due to the ambient mana resisting the spell. However, something other than strong mana is interfering with the spell-casting process, resulting in irregular casting. Higher Mana density can only limit the damage and power of spells, and lower mana densities can make it stronger.]
'Huh…' Kai mused as he finally understood something. The tiny explosion in the sand dune created by his fireball was actually about two-thirds of what it normally was, which Kai blamed on whatever was causing his spells to go haywire.
However, now it appeared that they were two different things causing stacking results. The higher the Mana density, the effect of his spells was weaker. The unknown energy or force caused his spells to miss.
'How long will it take to analyse this unknown force if you use all your remaining mana.'
Just like his runes, his body was also absorbing mana at a considerably faster pace, which resulted in the system absorbing mana at an equally faster pace. Therefore, he did not need to worry about Mana in the short term.
*Beep*
[Establishing task]
[Time until completion: 10s]
[10]
[9]
…
[1]
[0]
[Task complete]
[Using all current Mana reserves, it will not be sufficient. Based on the current Mana absorption rate, and continuing to use absorbed mana while analysing normally when Mana runs out, it will take 26 hrs]
'Good. Begin then.' Kai instructed. He had 72 hrs inside, and if he could spend just 26 hrs understanding what it was that was causing his spells to fail, he might be able to reverse-engineer it to the point that his spells would begin working again.
Until then, all the strategies and methods he had practised until now were pretty much useless. At least, all except [Blood Burn] and external art, and sword combat experience.
After allowing the system to begin its analysis, Kai decided to try and get out of the desert he was in. A slight bit of struggling while climbing up the dune caused him to understand that the unknown energy was unable to affect [Blood Burn], and any other spells he would cast on his own body. It would only affect things he sent out of his body.
Nevertheless, the increased Mana density did indeed affect everything, including the power of his body, making him much weaker than he was before.
Of the past half a year, Kai had increased the mana within his body to the level that it almost matched an Inferior knight. However, within this location, he felt had the strength of his body had been halved.
This made climbing the dune considerably more difficult than what he had expected, but he ultimately made it, and immediately looked around. Unfortunately, all around him was only the endless desert, with the only thing reminding him of any sense of direction was the setting sun in the distance.
Shrugging internally, Kai just decided to head towards the direction of the sun.