Timothy, Skendus, Ortana, Arvena, and Gustav explored Valporovus together. Their target was clear, they wao get to the Ruins of Aqumus, with the hopes of accumuting great amounts of mana there!

  The team has been on the air for a couple of days now, their dragons really came in handy in terms of proper transportation, so it wouldn't take long until they finally reached the ruins, it may take them a couple more weeks. They were very enthusiastic to reach the ruins, though one couldn't say that their progress, regarding mana quality improvement, has been slow. The team was doing fine, and with minimal trouble throughout their flight, their mana had mostly been accumuting!

  Siheir mana accumuted, the weakest members of the team could upgrade their mana quality soon! They could either choose to initiate an upgrade, or spend the mana over a period of time, they had those couple of options. The tter option would be less than ideal, because a better mana quality would do them a lot mood than having some extra mana to spend.

  The lot of them who could improve their mana quality today, had made their mind up to do exactly so, that was a no-brainer. Due to their decision, they had to stop somewhere secluded for the night, and give it a shot!

  They o be somewhere safe tonight, because the process of jumping from one level to the other was quite painful. Most of the team experiehat sensation of pain before, they were familiar with it, and had even experie a couple of times before they visited those three cities! They knew how to prepare for it.

  Initially they wao hide in a cave to do this, as caves were often one of the safest pces, but while they were in the sky, they spotted a vilge of sorts which looked a lot more appealing. When they flew down there, they noticed that it was empty, abandoned.

  sidering that this vilge was built on a dry, short mountain, it was likely abandoned because one's livelihood was difficult to sustain here. It was a beautiful poheless, especially if someohered to dust off all of the cobwebs, and perhaps repce a few of the rotten boards from the several small buildings that were situated here. It was a lovely set up.

  The cold breeze became more sistent every hour, especially after noon, which would make this pce a smashing vacation home. It was refreshing to be here!

  Anyway, seeing that this pce was rather safe, the team set up iown houses. They ate a fieak dinner first, as they needed a lot of energy if they were to upgrade their mana quality, and then they separated.

  Jumping from one level of mana quality to the other, wasn't only painful, but retly, it was also quite disgusting. Small amounts of this bck, tar-like substance would e out of their skin during their assion, and also, siheir inner ans literally sloshed around to adapt towards the enced ges, they ended up smelling like death, so they had to shower in the end.

  In other words, the team needed privacy, so those who could asd tonight, set off in different houses with a couple of buckets of water on their hands. Arvena and Gustav didn't have enough mana to initiate an upgrade, so they just decided to sleep in the same house. They had enough room here to respect each other's privacy, and they didn't o guard their frieher, because there were eight, agile dragons around them to do that job for them! The dragons surely were grand protectors!

  “Okay… don't panic, you’ve dohis before.” Tim spoke to himself, aared at the crag fire as it roared, sheltered by the stonework of the fire pit. “I'm under much happier circumstances here too, better than what I had to gh when I was in the sea. I'm in a house here! Besides, it's gonna be fun to have enough firepower to burn a whole town, heh, cuz level seven isn't as puny as those bastarding guards made it out to be. Maybe I'll go and burn their bastarding city one day? We'll see.”

  Timothy spoke with himself a lot, and this was especially the case when he was nervous. He fot half of the things that he was saying, and at some point he even started annoying himself, so he decided to be more serious, and started to focus. It was necessary to have a clear mind if one was to gh the uping process quicker, but at this point, he figured that the pain would clear out his mind really well.

  Anyway, after he felt ready, he started uttering a spell that ropriately designed fes that lived in the micro-universe of Valporovus. This spoken-word spell was used ter the mana quality upgrading process, and its effects were rather instant. This was about to be the fourth time he recited this spell, so he memorized it thhly!

  He muttered, “My will is but mana, and mana is life! Gods, you know where I am, you know why I’m here, and you know what my iions are - my will is pure. Gods, please bless me with purity, I demand it, as mana is greater when pure! On behalf of the creator of this micro universe, I ask you to bless me!”

  sidering that he wasn't cursed with the Mark of Death anymore, he had the ce to address the mana gods directly. They couldn't kill him during the uping assion, as the micro-universe of Valporovus protected him from such death.

  The pain, however, was emi. The upgrade started taking a real physical toll on him, he felt a lot of sharp pains within his ans right away, and it was brutal! The reason behind this pain was logical at least, it wasn’t random, no matter how brutal the process may be.

  Mana was a magical substahat had to be stored, and processed through anic bodies, as that was how mana typically worked. With that said, this upgrade was simply preparing Timothy's body to accept a better quality of mana! It made sense.

  Tim's muscles twitched for about thirty minutes, at a rate that one would fuse this process with severe seizures, which wasn’t fun at all, but the twitg stopped eventually, and that was what mattered the most. His pain halved immediately, but now, he couldn’t move all that much, he was immobile. Timothy's body remained dormant for a moment there, but thearted radiating a luscious, blue light out of his body!

  The light pushed out impurities out of his skin, hence making the mana more pure. This was whear-like substance appeared, as expected, and it was mostly ing out of his chest. A smaller portion dripped out of his forehead, and it got his thighs dirty, as he was in a strict, meditative positiht now.

  “Ahh!” He yelled out afterwards.

  Timothy's ans were sloshing around again, and the paiurned, in fact, it became all the more violent! He couldn’t hold in his cries, and it was fair to say that he couldn't focus that much either right now, despite the meditative positioook! Since fog was out of the question, this process was going to take lohan he expected, he might suffer like this for another couple of hours. The extreme pain was iable!

  Skendus and Ortana, were also screaming from their individual little houses. This was going to be a long, painful night for the three of them!