Meanwhile, the dude who caused the second sun was just chilling in his room.
Zack was totally knocked out, feeling this wiggling sensation from the warm thing he was cuddling. He cracked one eye open and saw Fannie trying to sneak out of his arms.
"Hmm... what's up? Let's snooze a bit more," Zack mumbled lazily, squeezing Fannie tighter.
"Oops, sorry, I was gonna surprise you with breakfast because I know you're tired from the last ordeal. I didn't mean to wake you," Fannie said, sounding sorry.
Seeing Fannie all cozy in his arms made Zack feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Sometimes, he couldn't believe his luck having her around. How could someone so cute, sweet, and with such a great personality be real? And she actually liked him back!
As much as he wanted to stay in bed cuddling, he didn't want to mess up Fannie's plans for the day. Even though he'd happily sleep all day, he couldn't drag her down. He buried his face in her hair, then nuzzled her neck and took a deep breath. Fannie complained, "Hey, quit sniffing, I haven't freshened up yet." Zack lazily replied, "No worries, you always smell good to me."
After soaking up his daily dose of Fannie time, he gave her a pat on the head and said, "Alright, I won't keep you any longer. Go do your thing today." Then, he yawned and let Fannie go before bundling back under the blankets.
The next time he woke up, it was already late in the afternoon. Despite not feeling sleepy at all earlier, he just couldn't muster the energy to get out of bed. 'If only there was a social media app here for bed-scrolling,' he thought. 'Just imagine, chilling and watching short videos without a care in the world. Ohh how good that would feel.'
"But hey," he mumbled to himself, "I can't laze around forever. Time to do some light work and ease back into my usual routine." After all, Zack had a goal: to return to his previous world. He didn't want to get so caught up in chasing that goal that he lost sight of everything else, but he also didn't want to be too lazy to make progress.
So, Zack dragged himself out of bed and cast [Clean] on himself. By the way, he'd installed a warm water system in the bathroom of his floor, but since he had so much mana, he found it easier to conjure up warm water with his magic. Maybe it would've been more useful during his apprentice days when mana was scarce.
But hey, [Clean] still did wonders for getting him feeling fresh and ready. As he floated to the kitchen, he couldn't help but marvel at the convenience of being a level 2 wizard. If he could, he'd float everywhere, and it would hardly use any mana at all. He'd tried it in the early days after getting the skill, but for some reason, the admiring and envious looks from Fannie had made him feel uneasy.
He didn't want to rub off his laziness on Fannie, so he only indulged in floating around when he was feeling super lazy. Glancing at the dining table in the kitchen, he spotted Fannie's special mushroom gravy steak all ready to go. "Man, is there a better way to kickstart your day than with your favorite meal?"
Plus, he'd put the formation version of the [Preservation] spell on the dining table to keep the food warm without having to reheat it. It was like enjoying it fresh off the stove every time.
Digging into his meal with gusto, Zack checked his badge for notifications. The progress on pushing the Holy Empire's forces out of the Fulminar Empire was looking good. There'd been a bit of a hiccup when the grand paladin caused a scene, and the pope tried to take advantage of the chaos by sending soldiers back into Fulminar.
But now that the pope was out of the picture, the Holy Empire's forces were like a snake missing its head. The magic towers would have an easier time dealing with them. "Hmm, hold up, what happened to the grand paladin?" It had been two days since Zack, the grand paladin, and the pope had their showdown.
'Well,' Zack thought, 'considering how roughed up the grand paladin was, he's probably still recovering. That's why I haven't heard anything about him.' Besides, even if the grand paladin did come back, Zack doubted he'd dare to mess with the Fulminar Empire after getting beaten down like that.
Once Zack had worked through those thoughts, he felt pretty satisfied. He figured he'd handled all the aftermath stuff from his showdown with the grand paladin and the pope. So, he switched his badge to browse the entertainment gossip section while enjoying his meal.
Cleaning up afterward felt like a drag, and even putting the plates away seemed to take more effort than usual. And heading to the practice room, Zack's expression clearly showed he wasn't thrilled about learning magic today.
But once he was inside, he gave himself a pep talk. "Focus, Zack! Remember your goal!" Taking a deep breath, he repeated it to himself to get his mind in gear.
When he felt ready, he started planning out his next moves. "First things first, my sigil. I need to finish that up ASAP." He'd already completed it to about 80%, estimating he could wrap it up in about five years.
Then, there was something he'd realized while working on the barrier for Tormentaheim during [Project Fireworks]. Since he could create multiple mana cores, why not use different innate spells for each core? The moment that idea hit him, he was floored. "How did I not think of this sooner?"
If he'd had mana cores with innate spells like [God Series] - [Athena's Shield - Aegis], he could've whipped up that shield in no time, just by pouring mana into the innate spells.
And what really got under Zack's skin was that even if he didn't specifically program defensive spells into the mana cores, he could still create a bunch of them and harness their computational power to help cast spells. And the crazy thing was, making new mana cores was a piece of cake for him, thanks to his monstrous mana capacity.
"Check this out!" Zack focused on his mana cores. Once he dove in, he saw four massive balls of light, each containing an enormous infinity symbol made of mana. Just watching the mana slowly circulating to form the infinity symbols felt overwhelming.
"Now, imagine if all that mana in twelve cores like this went off at once. No wonder I nearly wiped out the western part of the Fulminar Empire," he muttered. Anyway, he directed a stream of mana from one of his cores and swiftly crafted a magic circle with the innate spell of [Lightning Armor]. Since he'd already memorized the magic circle when providing it for Fannie, creating it was a breeze. Plus, he'd tweaked the structure to better suit his mana core setup, which didn't have a "wall."
With a click, the magic circle lit up letting out the sounds of gears starting to turn in the mana heart space. Zack poured more mana into the circle until it was full, then kept going, pushing more and more mana in until the sphere inside the circle elongated into an infinity shape. Once the two ends of the mana spheres connected to form the infinity shape, a pleasant bell chime reverberated through the space.
Ding!
"Phew, that's more like it!" Before he could even finish celebrating, he felt the colossal mana cores behind him start to vibrate. "Oh, crap!"
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Sure enough, as Zack observed the tiny magic circle he'd just created, it began resonating with the mana cores behind it. At first, it was like comparing a human to a skyscraper or an ant to a human. But as the new mana core synced up with the old ones, it started to grow larger, absorbing mana sent by the colossal cores. In no time, it reached about half the size of the old ones before leveling off. Now, the infinity mana inside the new core looked tiny compared to the expanded magic circle.
Zack was dumbfounded. "Okay, what the heck is going on?" Examining the new magic circle in the new mana core, he realized it wasn't just getting bigger. The spaces left from its enlargement were filled with symbols from level 2 magic circles, making spell computation faster and more efficient. Normally, this process would take years to occur naturally, but here it was happening in an instant. It reminded him of when he advanced to a level 2 wizard; the second core had synchronized with the first, growing to match its size.
Staring at the small infinity mana inside the circle, he had a wild thought. "Hold up." If it was similar to his advancement, that meant he could fill up the new core, enlarging the infinity mana inside it. It seemed outrageous, but he decided to give it a shot anyway. Redirecting some mana from his old cores to the small infinity mana in the new core, he watched closely. Apart from a small stream that the infinity mana consumed to grow naturally, the rest of the mana was rejected.
Instead of frowning, Zack let out a sigh of relief. "Good, at least the infinity mana is normal. Otherwise, I'd be way too overpowered." He'd nearly had a heart attack at the thought of glitching and instantly increasing his mana capacity infinitely. If he could fill up the new mana core in an instant, he could just keep creating new mana cores and repeating the process. That would mean an infinite increase in his mana capacity. But being that OP? No thanks. He was already feeling overwhelmed by his near-immortality. Adding another OP ability to the mix might just make him pass out on the spot.
You know how some people have their own capacity to handle stuff. Some could be handed immense power and stay calm and rational. Others might get cocky and treat everyone else like trash. But Zack wasn't either of those types. He was just fine with a bit of power to live smoothly. Anything too big would send him straight into a faint.
Brushing imaginary sweat off his forehead, Zack refocused on his task. Now, he was planning to create the second magic circle in the new mana core. This time, he decided to use [Athena's Shield - Aegis]. But instead of directly converting the spell into an innate one, he decided to tweak it a bit.
Now, the spell became [Athena's Shield - Aegis - Node]. With this tweak, [Aegis - Node] would be weaker individually, but when multiple [Aegis - Node] spells were used simultaneously, they would reinforce each other, making them several times stronger than usual. "Just imagine! Thousands of clones casting [Aegis - Node] at once. The shield would be practically unbreakable," Zack thought, sending a shiver down his spine. "Great! Let's get to it!"
Pouring mana into the new mana core, he created the level 2 magic circle [Aegis - Node]. As the circle finished forming and he poured mana into it, it slowly grew brighter until...
Ka-cha!
Gears started turning once more, and the two magic circles in the new mana core began spinning on different axes. Faster and faster they spun until they blurred into a golden forcefield covering the tiny infinity mana inside.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZ
"Aw, come on!" Zack sighed, looking back at the old cores as they began resonating with the new one again. Once more, the new core absorbed mana from the old ones and grew to match their size. Now, inside his mana heart, there were five colossal mana cores slowly revolving.
"Alright, let's create nine more and call it a day." For the rest of the day, he crafted nine more mana cores: four defensive and five offensive. The defensive ones contained [Lightning Armor] and [Aegis - Node] as innate spells, while the offensive ones held [Supernova] and [Zeus' Thunderbolt]. One of the offensive ones also had weapon spells like [Odin's Spear - Gungnir] and [Thor's Hammer - Mjolnir], though only one out of five included weapon spells. Zack figured he wouldn't need that many weapon spells.
After creating the mana cores, Zack flopped down flat on the floor. "Honestly, it didn't take much effort to make these cores, but I still feel lazy," he muttered. After wriggling around a bit longer, he finally forced himself to grab a spell pattern book from his storage ring. For some books, he printed the content from the badge onto physical copies. Sometimes he just got tired of reading from the badge and wanted to feel like a normal person.
He spent half an hour reading before calling it a day. "Alright! Just gotta keep this up and ramp up the studying intensity for the next month," he told himself, "for now, it's rest time." Floating out of the practice room, he headed to the kitchen for dinner.
Thinking about the delicious steak and chocolate cake waiting for him, he couldn't help but feel happy. Combined with the satisfaction of being productive, he found himself humming a happy tune.
Hmhm hmhm!
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A/N:
Big thanks to @TheFoolishDreamer over on RoyalRoad for suggesting the idea of having different innate spells for each mana core. Really appreciate it!
I mentioned twelve cores exploding at once because during the [Project Fireworks] 3 clones blew up, with each clone having the mana capacity equivalent to 4 full cores.