“Finally, the ground once again,” I chuckled even as I enjoyed the sensation of standing, the wind on my skin, the great sensation of dominance.
So much that, even the subtle smell of decay couldn’t ruin my mood. Nor could the state of the forest in front of me, lifeless and dead, clearly affected by the subtle necrotic energy in the air.
One problem at a time, and I had one problem that was bigger than everything else.
I was, once again, fully naked, and bleeding.
“First, the wound,” I murmured even as I pulled some of the stored mana from my storage, and carefully processed it through my own Tantric. After several repeats, the efficiency wasn’t as horrible as before, though the difference between a thousand to one versus eight hundred to one wasn’t exactly a great chasm.
It still cost me more than three thousand mana just to stem the bleeding completely, enough to resurrect dozens of near-death victims back when I still had the System.
I shouldn’t be ungrateful, I decided even as I felt the sting of the wasteful operation. No matter how bad my situation, relatively, it was still leagued better than the times I had lived as the mule.
With healing done, I turned to my other survival challenges. “Should I try conjuring my clothing?” I murmured, but after a pause, I decided against it. Conjuration was not a simple spell, and I didn’t trust myself to succeed without the system’s assistance. I could experiment, but I didn’t want to do so without creating a ward to block the resulting mana flares.
I was not in a safe location.
I walked toward the nearest dead tree, and broke off a large branch, tainted with a subtle yet persistent necrotic energy, more intense than the subtle energy in the air.
“What an interesting difference,” I murmured. Back in the great area of the material plane, such mana would have been long absorbed by the System, leaving it bare. Here, the mana stuck around persistently.
It wasn’t only necrotic energy I could feel. I could also feel a great amount of ordinary mana, though its purity was significantly lower than I had expected, enough to make even the simplest mana bolt a great challenge.
Regardless, it was an interesting challenge to have a great amount of free mana, floating freely. I could even identify floating particles of other types of mana — forms that were different from anything I had seen up to this point.
“Still,” I murmured as I let some of my mana dance across the surface, easily purifying the necrotic energy back to pure mana, “the difference between here and the System lands isn’t enough to justify calling that place material plane, maybe other than the size difference.”
I received the answer sooner than I had been hoping, before I could finish even crafting my spear. The dimensional barrier was miles and miles away from my current location — thanks to the violent throw of the barrier — but even with the distance, the sound of cracking was clear….
Maybe because it was not exactly a physical sound, but a physical effect.
At a great distance, a string of Primordial Aether started to invade the plane, distorting and disintegrating everything nearby. I shivered as I watched the scene, everything disintegrating into nothingness with the slightest touch.
The view itself wasn’t shocking, as I had watched the Primordial Aether invading the Material Plane, but back then, the Primordial Aether only spread for a moment even with the assistance of an elemental.
This time, maybe because there was no immediate basic elemental mana in the immediate vicinity — as there was no mage relying on that to cast spells, or any mage nearer than me, period — maybe because of differing elemental interest, there was no Elemental trying to widen the gap. So, the breach itself only lasted a second.
But even without constant flow from outside, the strand of Primordial Aether continued to spread, even growing stronger as it disintegrated everything it touched.
I was tempted to go close to breach, but I held back. With the rotating nature of the barrier, my own breach was unlikely to be the reason. If there were others responsible for fixing it, I would only come across them while trying to help.
Reckless assistance was not the smartest thing in a completely unfamiliar situation. Instead, I created a shield around myself, geared to block detection spells. It wasn’t perfect enough to avoid a dedicated search by an expert mage, but it was enough to hide my presence, especially since I stopped my crafting process.
I stood in place, watching the Primordial Aether slowly swallow anything in its path, but soon, I felt a magical presence at the horizon, before it was close enough to have a visual presence.
Considering the said presence was radiating necrotic energy, I decided that hiding was the most prudent option.
I crouched behind a tree to reduce my visual presence as well, getting even smaller as I saw a flying creature appear in my field of view. It wasn’t a bone dragon, but it rivaled them in size, and on its back, several cloaked figures cast repeated spells.
A ward was around them, its intricacy clear even with the great distance, radiating a mixture of pure mana and necrotic energy.
Soon, they arrived at the breach, and used the ward to control the Primordial Energy. They threw the ward like a projectile weapon, and the ward settled around the energy, imprisoning it, though it smashed repeatedly against the ward, doing its best to break it.
I expected them to store it, or at least break it down using all the mana they had. Even if they lacked my ability to break it down rapidly, surely they were not entirely incapable of doing so.
They solved it differently. A flare of mana covered the ward, and suddenly, it disappeared in a manner that I found very familiar.
Teleportation.
They literally dumped the energy into Aether dimension, which was an interesting solution. “Can a great amount of Aether grind down a strand of Primordial Aether?” I asked, though the answer was probably yes.
The necromancers looked far too interested in maintaining their control of the plane to risk destroying it completely. I stayed concealed for a while as they moved away, even after they disappeared from my senses for a while.
I didn’t know about their detection range, but I wanted to play safe. I was facing a completely unexpected reality.
I turned my attention to my spear once more, first making sure that I had erased any hint of necrotic energy — which I was much more reluctant to touch without HP to block its effects. I had invented my own energy that could technically be classified as proto-HP, but it wasn’t exactly up to the challenge of necrotic energy.
A challenge for another time, I decided as I finished cleansing the spear, and started reinforcing its structure with my mana, applying all the crafting abilities I had in mind.
It worked much better than trying to copy the healing abilities, because there was no need for nature transformation to craft a good weapon. Of course, some clever implementation of different types of mana would have given the impromptu weapon a lot of extra power, but ultimately, that was extra.
What was fundamental to crafting was to understand the nature of the materials, and, enhance it appropriately based on the requirements. I missed the intense clarity of the vision granted by Perception, which would have allowed me to comprehend every little flaw in its structure, allowing me to reinforce its nature as needed.
Still, after spending ten minutes fully focusing on its nature, I had enough sense to understand its nature.
“Now, to enhance it,” I murmured, feeling excited. It was the first time I was crafting anything without the constant intervention of the System, hungrily draining mana from every single thing constantly, forcing us to focus on durability across all of the structure.
I started by creating a simple yet intricate scheme to ensure durability, doing my best to create a strong outer shell. Even without the System constantly devouring the mana, it was a rather necessary requirement.
Then, I turned my back to the internal structure, thinning the purified mana as smoothly as possible as I created a bunch of enchantments inside. My biggest focus was the sharpness, but I also added some spells to enhance ranged accuracy, and some tricks that could be used to trigger an explosion.
“Not bad,” I whistled as I twirled the spear, listening to the whistle it created. It was not the finest item I had created, not even close, but it took nothing from its impressiveness considering I used nothing but a tainted piece of wood to create it.
Then, I flared my mana, pulling some leaves and connecting them, creating just enough to cover my modesty.
“Now, it’s time to explore,” I murmured, determined to find a source of water. And, if I was lucky, even something to hunt.
[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]