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- Argel Michael ~
-I 't stop it...- Biting my nail as I looked at my system dispying several colored bars, beled 'Popution Rank', 'Mana Rank', and 'Monster Rank' respectively, I felt my soul with ay.
A mere week ago, the ranks were all at the lowest end of 6, however, with every day that passes with that dreaded woman oh, the mana rank crept higher and higher. -It's about to cross over to five...- And while the monster rank had increased quite signifitly due to the appearance of The Warden and System Enforcers she dragged along, the mana rank was about to surpass it.
And that was bad...
Really bad...
The way the system worked was fairly simple. Each world was given 3 ranks, one for the popution, one for the may, and one for the monsters. These three ranks would be averaged out to determihe overall rank of the world, however, it was exceedingly rare that there were outliers in these ranks because of o-so-simple thing called 'bang'.
In simple terms, rank bang was a system to keep the three separate ranks in the same ballpark as one another. If the mana rank rose above the monster rank by an unspecified threshold, the system would impnt monsters into the world through gates to increase it, and if the popution rank fell below the mana rank, it would let us administrators create 'system quests' that would call in system meraries from other worlds.
It was all for the i of keeping worlds banced with their mana rank.
However, Earth as it was currently, was a very special case.
Ever since Evren had arrived, the mana rank had begun to skyrocket, and the monster rank even more-so. Thankfully, whenever monsters were summohrough gates, they would permaly raise the ps rank, regardless of whether they died or not, so Evren killing The Warden, and the System Enfave Earth a grace period.
But that grace period was about to e to an end, and there was nothing I could do about it. -If there is one saving grace though.. it's that she doesn't increase the popution rank...-
Thankfully, since Evren wasn't actually ected to Earth's system, the only thing that increased her rank was her datalink, which, as it was now, was set at default values of 0, casting no effe the popution rank.
It was the only thing keeping me from panig. -With the popution rank so much lower than the mana and monster ranks, we should be able to start calling in fn System Meraries again before the monster rank bang gets invoked...-
But, unfortunately, that didn't mean anything more than there was a ce we could survive.
"Hoooh..." Letting out a long, stress-filled breath, I looked up at the dark night sky looming overhead. -It's a gamble I already pced a bet on.. so I 't regret it now...-
If I pyed my cards right, Earth had a ce to evolve to a rank I couldn't have dreamt of before, but at the same time, one misstep could lead to this world's doom.
-I only trust in Father's guidance...- Looking at the distant stars littering the sky, I felt the weight on my shoulders grow.
-I only trust that I will find his light again before it's too te...-
-----Early M - Mid Summer : Betsey Lake | Leyfa Askr (Previously Northern Michigan)
- Evreir ~
-What a pretty sunrise...- Looking to my right, I watched as the sun was lifted over the seemingly endless forest drawn across the horizon, bathing the sky in a warm e light before looking ahead to see Eve flying just ahead of me. "So, where did you say we were going?"
"To a pce called Betsey Lake." Gng at me over her shoulder, she motiooward the horizon ahead of us. "It's where an old mohat lives in Spirit Lake es to in the summer. It's somewhere around level 600, so we've been leaving it alone besides occasionally direg it away from ships, but I think it'd be a good experimental subject for you."
-I see...- It had been a bit over a week since Eve started teag me about mana at that point, and holy, things had gone swimmingly.
Over the past several days, I had expanded my knowledge of the world of mana immensely, learning what exactly it is, and the utmost basics of how to utilize it.
But the more my uanding of it grew, the harder it became to actually use it. It was almost like I was overthinking it, and overplig the visualizations and calcutions I was doing, even for simple things.
So, in order to help my mind shift gears and learn to shed the extra weight, we had moved to more practical teag methods, bringio several different areas where I would be forced to use only aura, or only mana to do certain tasks, like ftten a vilge of orcs, or, to foy precision, try to hover in the air without using the ground.. something that was far more challenging than I anticipated.
And that day wasn't any different.
As things were, we were headed to a ke about a hundred kilometers north of Terra, across a stretch of water so vast I thought it was an o, only to be corrected and told that it irit Lake, a freshwater sea that used to be the Great Lakes.
From the air, the ke seemed pretty normal, like any e ke, but the moment you peeked your aura beh its surface, a whole new world was revealed.
Scattered around the ke were colossal monsters called 'living isnds', colossal fged serpents that looked like somethiween an arapaima and a crocodile, floatih the water just enough to let their ft backs, covered in thick grass-like moss and small shrubs making it appear no different from a small isnd.
Typically they were quite docile, housiire habitats and enviros on their backs just like miniature isnds would, feeding on whatever happeo float by ier, whether it was a school of small fish, a human, or even boats.
For Earth, they were some of the biggest native monsters in the world outside of the o, sitting at just over level 400, and growing up over half a kilometer long at times.
But the thing we were looking for treated them like floating snacks.
"We call her Betsey because of where she s, but she's something called a chameleon eel. With her camoufging abilities plus a bit of light magic, she is pletely invisible when ier, and even if you catch her crossing a stretch of nd, if you don't know the area like the back of your hand, you won't be able to see her... At least that'd be the case if you were a normal person."
-Hm?-
"Unless she's really deep uer, you'll be able to feel her presehe mome close, but the same be said about you." Finally beginning to slow down, she held her arm out to make me stop as well. "Because you only read so much of your aura for now, she'll feel your presend run or hide before you get to her. Knowing that, I want you to find and kill her without direct tact, that includes through aura."
She essentially meant I couldn’t just punch it from a distance, using my aura to trahe force. "So you wao kill it with only magiy aura?"
She was quick to nod.
-Simple enough...-
But as I turned away, about to run off and start the search, she held me up with a smile. "O thing, you 't go uer. Ah, and you have twenty minutes."
Pausing, I gave her an odd look. -Twenty minutes is fine, but...- Not being able to go uer wasn't great... -How am I supposed to s the bottom of the ke if I 't get ier?-
To keep it short, aura, just like a gas, prefers to flow through lower-density mediums her ones, so, even if I focused the ey of my aura into the water, it would barely pee it before being forced back to the surface like a fog mae poi the surface of water.
Until that point, my solution had been to dunk or bury myself in the object I wao force my aura through, that way the aura leaving my body would force itself into the medium, and while it'd still feel like moving a ball through mosses, it made it far less straining to trol.
But on top of that, going into the medium got me closer to whatever I o reach, so I didn't have to worry about my measly four-hundred-meter range limit when trolling my aura.
However, I now had to find out another way. -Iy minutes, no less...-
And that was far easier said than done. "Alright. Betsey Lake is straight ahead of us, right?"
Not wanting to waste more time than I already had, the instant Eve nodded, I darted to the horizon, reading as muy aura as I could while sifting through the tless presences I felt in search of the monster.
But, even after finding the massive ke and sing the surrounding area, I was empty-handed. -But if it's isoted to this ke, I have a ce...-
Standing on my aura about twenty meters over the water, let out a long breath. "Hoooh..." The ke was only about eight kilometers wide at its widest point, and almost half of it was a thiively shallow al, limiting my search area immensely.
-If I wanted, I might be able to just send a big enough shockwave into the water with my aura that the eel es up to the surface to fight or tries to run through the al...- But that would defeat the whole purpose of the assig.
-So let's start simple.- With a little over fifteen minutes left to find the eel, I started running through ideas to more naturally i my mana into the water so that I wouldn't have to precisely trol it, trying everything from just f it into the water at the surface, thinking it would then push what was beh it deeper into the water, to creating different shapes with my aura and shooting them into the water.
But nothing seemed to wht. -Creating shapes worked the best, but it's still not great...-
Trying spheres, disks, and even bullet shapes, I found that I needed something that would maintain its dire, uhe disk which would flop over seemingly at random, and something that would provide as little resistance against the water as possible. -Siold me mana particles fortably fit ioms.. what if I just stacked mana to make needles?-
In theory, it would work well, but simir to a teardrop shape I tried, it would take more trol and I had to create in bulk.
However, it was the best option I had, so I looked more into it, very quickly burning away the remaining time Eve gave me to plete the assig.
But even after a couple of hours, Eve never walked up to stop me, never pulli of my spiraling thoughts. -If it puts too much strain on my mind to create them individually, I o create it in bulk.. or do it without thinking...- And on top of that, I had to figure out how to shoot it into the water.
But after a lot of thinking, I had an idea. -What if I covered my reserve in a bunch of fuo focus my aura into thin beams?-
Of course, it was ahat sounded much easier than it was, but after trying it, creating a rough funnel out of stiffened aura and pg it against my reserve, a thin beam of aura zipped out of my abdomen. -Oh?- And while quite a bit of aura still leaked through the 'shell' I made with stiffened aura, the beam was actually quite substantial. -Now.. I just o shrink it.. and create a bunch of them...-
Pain instantly ripped through my head as I did it, but after f myself through it, I mao make a se of perforated 'shell' that covered a small se of my reserve and turhat se into a series of tiny beams.
"Hooh..." Thankfully, o was made, it retty easy to maintain, and even more so to move around. -Now.. let's see how it works...-
Turning it down to the water, the image my aura painted in my mind suddenly started growing, with a deep cloud f ier as the beams pushed deeper and deeper.
Of course, the beams were far from strong enough to reach the bottom, just like spraying a pressure washer into a deep pool, the beams made it about halfway to the bottom before ing to a stop and spreading into the surrounding space.
But that was more than enough to catch a whiff of the monster lurking below. -There you are...-
Smiling like a cheetah that found a wounded gazelle, I casually walked over the surface of the water until I was tered over the presence I felt, when, out of the blue, the massive, several-hundred-meter-long eel darted toward the surface, spreading its jaws just before it could close them around me.
But, unfortunately for it, it never had the ce to get above the water. -To charge into such dense aura... How ballsy.-
Stiffening a colossal pte of aura just ihe surface of the water, the moment the eel was about to blow through the surface, its nose was crushed while I, along with a few hundred meters of the ke's surface was unched into the air.
"Surface tension is a wild thing, ain't it?" Smiling with a bit of a craze as its bloodied face came out of the water, I looked down at it like I was looking at a rabbit caught in a trap.
*Vwoom* As the eel tinued out of the water, trailing blood into the sky, I gripped it with my aura before letting the massive pte of water I held with my aura to start falling, and, just before reag the water, transferring the impato a corkscrew motion.
*Spt-SPLASH* Instantaneously shearing off the eel's head, its body began spasming, crashing through the surface of the water while its lifeless head sank into the depths once more.
*Ding!* But the panel only caused the joy of success to fade for a moment.
You have killed a Level 614 System MeraryReceived:14,321 Gold26 Items:
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