As I walked along the dirt path that would lead to the closest city I let my mind wander slightly. How would I gain entrance to the academy. From what information I had it was for the elite and the strong. The most promising of the golden age I guess. Do I just walk up class myself as a commoner with some secret master who taught me and use all my strength. Or do I make myself average and hide in the shadows. I'm definitely more of an assassin/rogue but I do have a large number of spells and now a slight affinity to all elements and the highest affinity for space magic.
I could create the most basic spells but if I tried anything more with normal methods the mana consumption was extreme. I had a method to bypass it but I needed time to experiment and increase my mana rank.
I had noticed that mana was similar to coding and you could create a circuit that boosted the efficacy of the spells. However you needed at least C rank mana and a high mana control. Since I had mana manipulation I didn't have an issue with that but I needed to increase my mana pool but I wasn't taught a way to increase it but I had read on multiple methods.
I could try the one with the best returns but it could kill me easily, so I may go with the second best which is Mishia's personal mana circulation method. Apparently I would need to crush my mana core and reconstruct it until the mana core becomes condensed and then strengthen it, This allowed the mana core to grow bigger and absorb more pure mana however it had the drawback that if you failed you would never be able to use mana again and since mana is linked to your lifespan you would die in a year at most.
Only the clinically insane would try this method but that also meant that you needed to be more than insane to use the best method.
To remove your mana core completely and store mana in every cell like mini batteries while using aura to hold the mana. This would make your body a living mana core and break all limitations on your body as mana and aura are then linked. It would also strengthen the body similar to what dragons have.
This puts me in a dilemma, which one I use? One that I knew works or one that was experimental but would increase my strength exponentially? I wasn't a masochistic guy but I really could use the strength but It wouldn't matter until I found a safe place with a decent mana atmosphere.
Pulling myself out of my musings I heard the clash of blades and the distinct noises of mana. I jumped into the bushes on the side of the road as I used the shadows to my advantage to get close. It seemed that a noble or a wealthy commoner was being attacked by, you guessed it actual bandits.
They were either bandits or filthy adventurers. They wore what was basically rags and their weapons were closer to blunt pieces of metal than blades. It seemed that they had a mage and they were better dressed than the others with proper robes and a staff of some sort. He kinda looked like an overweight gandalf, that's all that could be said about the mage.
I decided that I wouldn't intervene until things were too dire so that I could gain the best benefits from whoever was in the carriage. The knights were sloppy in my eyes but they made up for it with a decent rank, basically they were brute forcing the battles. Unlike me who had advanced knowledge of weapon arts and was locked to my rank they were just shit.
The bandits seemed to be at equal footing and it was making me think that nobles weren't actually much higher than commoners in terms of skill. The way that she had spoken of the world had put me on edge as she explained how nobles were strong and that it would be dangerous to encounter them.
It took half an hour for the battle to end and the knights had just barely won over the bandits. They seemed exhausted and barely standing, After noting that the battle had ended I emerged from the bushes ahead of them and kept on going. This wasn't some novel and even with these cliche encounters I wouldn't involve myself unless it truly benefits me. I'm sure that they would continue without my help, after all they did manage the bandits.
Who knows maybe they will pass me once they get moving again and if so it would be a fateful encounter.
The lack of action was causing a battle hunger to ignite within me. After almost a year of constant battle you either become a battle junkie or lose yourself to the feeling of death. I had so much to do and the quicker I could explore dungeons to gather materials and make it to the academy the better it would be and maybe I could even find a worthy adversary while I am a low rank.
More stuff for the shopping list I guess.
~~
Hey sub par author here just wanted to ask a question on how I should move the story.
I could bring him right to the academy and gloss over the dungeon adventures and give an overview or I could show the dungeon chapter but it would make the novel slower as I would have to create multiple chapters going over the floors.
While I am writing it for joy who is to say you can't enjoy it too.
This will probably be the only message I write in a chapter as I don't like them to be honest.