Chapter 16: Dual Casting

  Mana coursed through Teresa’s arm towards her palm as a glowing ball of green fire hovered just above her hand. The fire had no harmful properties, and it did not radiate heat in the same manner normal fire typically would. Rather than heat, it emitted the very feeling of comfort in a small area. The light from the fire was also tinted green, and Teresa felt it was possible to change the intensity of the light by using more Mana.

  However, wasn’t a skill to be used as a light source. That wasn’t the direction she was planning on taking it, but rather just an experiment to get more familiar with the skill and how it interacted with Mana.

  In her other hand, she was using . It was actually kind of difficult to use the two skills at the same time. It was like trying to draw a circle with one hand and a square with the other simultaneously. Weirdly enough, Teresa was pretty sure she could do that far easier than before the System. She definitely still favored her right hand by a wide margin, but her ability to focus on two things at once had improved with her Intelligence stat.

  It had been four hours since Teresa had begun training her skills. She had started out with trying to use both her and at the same time. She had an idea she was working towards, but wasn’t entirely sure if it would work.

  For starters, she needed to be able to use both skills actively and in stable condition. While she was confident she wouldn’t have had the coordination to do something like this before the System, she was inching her way towards something that resembled progression.

  She was seated in the cafe, the Mana recharging staff in her lap. Mentally, she noted she should try to improve her ability to absorb Mana, maybe even try to do it while actively using skills. For now, that was both out of reach and unrelated to her current goal.

  Frequently, either or would sputter and stop due to difficulties keeping both active simultaneously. Teresa had plenty of experience using in both hands, but two different skills was just much harder.

  While she mostly just needed to channel Mana to the right parts of her hands to use the skills, keeping Mana flowing consistently in the correct manner was incredibly difficult. With , her Mana was transformed into restoration Mana that coated her palm. With , her Mana was transformed into restoration Mana, however it was in a different state. It was like comparing water and ice, technically they were both the same thing, but in different states.

  The restoration Mana from her was in a state that barely left Teresa’s body. It clung to her skin like water. The restoration Mana from did leave her body entirely, and a tiny stream of regular Mana was used to keep the restoration Mana near her palm. The restoration Mana was eager to get as far away from Teresa’s palm as possible, which explained how the green ball of fire was shot like a projectile.

  Teresa’s understanding of it was that it behaved somewhat like a magnet. Positive repelled positive and negative repelled negative, while positive and negative magnetic fields attracted each other. Restoration Mana repelled unattached restoration Mana, and it was attracted to regular Mana. The regular Mana kept the detached restoration Mana in place while she channeled more restoration Mana into the ball of fire. It was probably an oversimplified understanding, but it would do for now.

  Trying to keep the ball of fire in place on its own was trivial, though it became harder as she tried to put more Mana into the skill. Trying to maintain restoration Mana in two different states at the same time required her utmost concentration, getting distracted for just a moment was enough to make one of the skills sputter out.

  This was incredibly difficult for Teresa, who was very easily distracted. She kept noting other interesting things that she would look into later, which on the one hand gave her a lot of stuff to put on her todo list. On the other hand, it kept messing her up at what she was doing in the moment.

  Just as she was feeling like she made some more progress, both of her skills fizzled out. She had run out of Mana again, meaning it was time to practice absorbing more.

  The Soul naturally produced Mana on its own, and the body was able to absorb Mana from its surroundings into one’s Soul. This was slower than passively producing Mana by a long shot, but actively absorbing Mana didn’t hinder one’s ability to produce it. This made absorbing Mana a net positive so long as you weren’t in a situation that required your full attention.

  Considering all Teresa was doing at the moment was working on improving her skills, this was the perfect opportunity to focus on absorbing Mana. Doing some good old fashioned guestimation, she assumed absorbing Mana increased her Mana recovery rate by around 10%. Using the staff to help absorb Mana increased it to somewhere around 15%. These numbers were in no way perfect representations of her Mana recovery speed, but Teresa was taking baby steps in her progress.

  She knew from her time doing kickboxing that forming bad habits early on would impact her later on, and breaking bad habits was incredibly difficult. Teresa had a habit of dropping her right hand a little after throwing a lead hook, and the coach teaching the kickboxing elective had to hit it out of her when working with pads.

  Trying to do too much at once was a surefire way to form bad habits and false assumptions. Teresa wasn’t entirely confident about what counted as a bad habit when it came to magic, but she was being very careful to not get lazy with any of her experiments.

  She focused on getting a steady stream of Mana to be absorbed through her palms and flow smoothly to her Soul. She had the most experience with manipulating Mana around her palms, so this was a good starting point. This was the second time she had run out of Mana while training, so she was already familiar with this stage of the process.

  Doing this, she was able to absorb just as much Mana through her palms as she would if she tried absorbing Mana through her entire body at once. Previously whenever she had absorbed Mana, she had been trying to do too much at once, resulting in her doing a very inefficient and poor job. Just focusing on the Mana flowing through her palms made her hands behave like Mana vacuums, sucking up the Mana from her surroundings much quicker.

  She took some inspiration from the pedestal rooftop that had been absorbing Mana. Instead of just letting whatever Mana that happened to be near her get absorbed, she actively tried pulling Mana towards her hands to absorb it quicker. It was like using a new limb she never had before, a limb that had the hand-eye coordination of a toddler. She felt she could absorb more Mana at once, but then it would come in clumpy globs of Mana rather than a steady steam. She felt it was safe to assume keeping smooth control over the process was a good habit to form.

  She couldn’t compare to the efficiency of the pedestal, which would have been able to take all of her Mana in minutes. Regardless, she figured she could consider the pedestal’s absorption of Mana to be something to aspire to. Teresa gradually increased the surface area she was absorbing Mana through, adding just a little bit more to the steady stream she was taking from the environment.

  Eventually, she would be able to absorb Mana smoothly with her entire body. For now, she would be happy getting this level of smooth absorption to spread from her palms to the edges of her hands. Increasing the surface area she was absorbing Mana through was like brushing your hair one strand at a time, except even slower.

  It involved multitasking that was made easier with her Intelligence stat. That stat had come into use quite a bit with magic, which clearly showed why her class highly favored that stat. She still refused to put any more unallocated points into it for her next level up, but she did look forward to her next jump in her mental stats.

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  Teresa had to focus on both taking Mana from her environment, and guiding it to her soul within her body. It was a similar issue to using two different skills at the same time. Just focusing on the Mana around her was easy, and just focusing on the Mana inside of her was also easy. Focusing on both? Insanely difficult.

  For starters, she barely understood environmental Mana. How was Mana even made? She understood her Soul produced Mana, but not how. Her environment also had Mana, but she wasn’t sure where it came from. She already had a hard time discovering where Mana came from in her own body where her senses were the strongest, how was she supposed to tell where all this environmental Mana was produced?

  She figured this was why her class gave a +1 in Perception for each level up. Being able to sense Mana in her surroundings and in a patient would both come in handy, probably increasing her efficiency. Being a and all, she had a lot of questions she wanted to explore and look into. It was just that all of these questions took a lot of effort to find an answer to, and even with two whole weeks just focused on Mana she was sure there would still be a lot she didn’t know.

  She added looking into environmental Mana to her todo list. There were a lot of things on that todo list that involved experimenting with Mana, and she wasn’t sure if she even could answer some of her questions.

  Teresa shook her head and tried to stay focused on her current task. Absorb a steady stream of Mana, keep it steady, make the stream a tiny bit bigger, repeat. It was monotonous work that required her full attention, but that was what it took to become stronger.

  It took around half an hour to fully replenish her Mana, and she had just slightly improved her ability to absorb more. She was tempted to look at her status screen, but decided against it. If she kept checking how close she was to leveling up a skill, she would never be able to focus.

  Teresa took a deep breath and got back to work casting both and at the same time. Keeping these skills active didn’t require a significant amount of Mana, as she wasn’t actually using her skills on anything. It took a little bit to maintain both skills, but so long as she was not actively healing anyone she didn’t really need too much to keep it going.

  Within another hour she smiled, both of her skills setting a record of being active for an entire minute without stuttering. She moved her hand that was using , and immediately her skills began to flicker again. Moving at all seemed to make it even more difficult, so she decided she needed to master just staying still with both skills first.

  She spent another hour and a half on this before she ran out of Mana again, and the cycle continued. Absorption practice, dual casting practice, repeat. Several cycles later, she was pretty sure she could keep both skills active indefinitely, so long as she had the Mana and didn’t move a muscle.

  By this point, it was late at night and Teresa hadn’t eaten since she began training. It had been a long day, between Sarah and all of the training she was exhausted. She decided to call it quits for day one, she just needed to eat something and sleep for a little while. She stood up from her chair in the cafe and made her way back into the kitchen.

  In the kitchen was Jake and Preston, as Madeline was on Clubber duty at the moment. They were both covered in sweat, likely from training their weapon mastery skills.

  “I’m telling you dude, Narnia is not an isekai.” Jake said,

  “They get transported to a fantasy world, it is totally an isekai.” Preston responded.

  “It can’t be, there has got to be some sort of technicality that makes it not an isekai. If I could use Google right now I would totally prove it. Besides, Narnia isn’t Japanese.”

  “It doesn’t have to be Japanese to be an isekai- oh hey Teresa. Can you tell this guy that Narnia is an isekai?” Preston asked with a teasing smile as Jake rolled his eyes.

  “How would I know, you’re the only people I’ve ever met who knows what isekai is, and I had to learn about it from you.” Teresa answered with a smile. “How are your skills coming along?”

  “It’s been a bit easier for me than Preston to practice them.” Jake replied. “My only takes Stamina, and my only takes Mana, so I can work on one skill until I’m exhausted then move onto the other, although my Mana recharges at an unbelievably slow rate.”

  “My only takes Stamina as well, but my takes both Stamina and Mana to work. I make up for it by trying to train both at the same time, but I’ve been burning through my Stamina pretty quick. I gotta invest some points into Endurance.” Preston said. He and Jake shared a look, then Preston continued speaking. “Hey Teresa, we’ve been meaning to ask but how have you been doing dude?”

  “Oh pretty good, I’m making some solid progress. I have an idea I want to try out with my skills but it requires using both at the same time. I can keep both activated now so long as I don’t move, though I’ll expand upon it tomorrow. I also improved how fast I can absorb Mana, and I have some long term goals I’m working towards in that department. I eventually want to see if I can absorb Mana from the environment while using a skill at the same time, though I’m still a long way away from that.” Teresa answered as she prepared a meal for herself.

  “Yeah…” Jake said awkwardly. The two guys shared a look again, and Jake continued. “But otherwise you’re doing all good? I don’t mean to press it or anything, but we’d all understand if you took a break for a bit, especially after that last wave. We don’t want you to push yourself too hard man, we’re worried about you.”

  Teresa sighed, and thought for a moment before answering.

  “Yeah, I guess I’ve been pretty stressed about the whole Sarah thing, but don’t worry. I’ll make sure I get strong enough to help her.” Teresa answered. Truthfully, she had been extremely anxious about the whole situation. She hadn’t mentioned her panic attack during the last wave to anyone, but there were more important things to worry about. Besides, she had probably been just faking it for attention.

  “Right.” Jake replied hesitantly. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about exactly, but, well-”

  “You almost fucking died dude.” Preston said far more bluntly.

  “Well, yeah, all of us did.” Teresa answered. “Any of us could have received a bad hit and got taken out.”

  “That’s completely different.” Preston replied. “You actually almost died. Like, you actually took that bad hit. We all thought you were dead man. If not for your healing magic, you would be dead. Hell, even with your healing magic you almost died. I was the first to see you after the wave was dealt with, and you didn’t look like someone who should still be alive. I could barely recognize you as a per-”

  Jake nudged Preston roughly, making Preston pause and clear his throat.

  “I’m sorry. But listen, I’m not trying to get all up in your business or anything, and I’m really not great at this kind of thing, but no one is going to blame you if you take it easy for just a little bit. And about Sarah… we understand if things don’t go according to plan. I hope everything works out, I really do, and I have a lot of confidence in you man. It’s just, we can all see you’re doing a lot. You have a lot on your plate, and if you need help with anything, we got you dude.” Preston finished.

  Teresa took a moment to digest all of that, steadying herself before speaking.

  “Thank you Preston, and Jake. I appreciate it, I really do. I’ll be alright, don’t you worry about it too much.” Teresa said. She was grateful, really. It was kind of them to worry about her, but if she died that would mean Sarah would die too. Teresa wasn’t going to let that happen, if her death meant someone else would die then of course she had to stay alive. “I’ll take it a little bit easier for a bit, I could probably use it.”

  “Good, I’m glad to hear it.” Jake said. They both looked visibly relieved, and the conversation went back to a more normal tone.

  They continued to chat while Teresa made and eventually ate her meal. Nothing particularly important was covered, it was just like hanging out with some friends. Teresa finished her meal and excused herself for the night, heading to the gift shop.

  Teresa layed down on her makeshift bed of shirts and sweaters, and closed her eyes. A few moments passed, and after some deliberation she sat back up. Teresa activated and at the same time, and began trying to slowly move the hand using without her skills stuttering.

  Teresa had blatantly lied. Of course she wasn’t going to take it easy. Sarah’s life was in her hands.