Ether and mana

The succubus stayed outside after the annoying conclusion to her conversation with Torri. She had nothing to do at the moment except maybe train. Practicing magic would only be a waste of time since it was plenty good already. Her body was still recovering from spiritual overload so she couldn't use spiritual energy at the moment which meant she couldn't continue cultivating nor could she practice will enchanting. Formations were out as well since it would be a waste to use most of the materials she had on her on practice and all the materials she took from the treasury are high leveled so she didn't even have the necessary strength to do anything to them. She couldn't make anything interesting out of the materials she was potentially willing to use. That pretty much left her with physical exercise as the only viable option to pass the time.

Her combat skills were improving rapidly thanks to the man's help, that wasn't saying much since they were non-existent before that but overall the succubus was satisfied with her progress. But combat practice had also highlighted how horrible her physical parameters were. That was to be expected since succubi were not physically strong, they mostly depended on magic and deception in combat, but as the man had pointed out and as she already knew but didn't exactly care, even mages needed some physical ability, either as a trump card or just extra insurance for situations where magic wouldn't be practical.

Hell, that's how she was captured. Some Noble had flooded the area she was in with her aura and her magic and spiritual energy instantly went haywire. The myriad of spells she had and other techniques were all useless without mana and/or spiritual energy. She couldn't even run far before she was captured.

That's why she was now running laps around the carriage, to train her speed and endurance. As a demon, she had an enviable stamina recovery rate but as a succubus she had little stamina to begin with. The past few days have proven to her that recovery couldn't keep up with expenditure, especially during combat where the rate of recovery is lower than when you're actually resting. She chose to train her speed as well since she recently acquired a dagger that could probably insta-kill enemies and she was also a member a member of a race renowned for being avid practitioners of the art of deception. It'd be a waste to not to train up any assassination skills.

The white dagger had limits but she wasn't sure where those limits were. No matter how she tried, she couldn't find any enchantments on the two daggers. Which could either mean that the daggers effects were due to the materials they were made of rather than enchantments or the enchantments were so well-hidden that she couldn't detect them. It was most likely a mixture of both. She couldn't figure out just what their full effects were but she was sure that she couldn't use much of the daggers power at her level.

As for the other three spheres she couldn't activate yet, her scans told her that they were merely perfectly spherical lumps of solid metal. Which was obviously false since they sounded hollow when she knocked against them.

The place she got them from was also noteworthy. That spoke of how special these daggers were.

Another reason why the succubus was running laps around the carriage, with the occasional ten minutes or so rest during which a healing spell and the rest itself would get rid of any pain and fatigue she was feeling, is her mana capacity.

Succubi were a race extremely suited to being mages. They had mana and spiritual energy which was relatively high for their level, among the highest if you were to ignore the cheats that are the divine races. They also had pitiable physical parameters which basically meant that they didn't really have a choice.

The problem for her was that she was a 'lesser' succubus not a succubus. The Oculux Stone had thankfully revealed to her that she would eventually evolve to a succubus. But that didn't get rid of the fact that lesser succubi had pitiably low mana and spiritual energy capacity. The result of exceeding either capacities was injury or death. After the training she went through as a child, her spiritual energy had long exceeded capacity but a few seals protected her from dying but they couldn't remove the limit of how much spiritual energy she could use at a time. Something similar was impossible for mana and rarely was it necessary. Unlike spiritual energy, mana was stored in the body or the core depending on one's level and the mana capacity was always how much mana could be fit in there.

Ether was ever present in the plane, both living and non-living things were constantly bathed in it. Ether would seep into non-living things, improving their structure or adding magical effects to it but if the ether levels in that area were too high it would cause the lower quality objects to slowly disintegrate. When ether interacted with living organisms things were a bit more complicated.

Living beings were much more susceptible to the adverse effects of ether than objects. To deal with this all living beings had developed a protection mechanism to deal with this; mana.

When ether seeped into a living being it would be converted into mana, and lose most of its power and harmful effects during the process. The mana would then reside in the body and block the seepage of more ether. But the body had limits to how much mana could be stored which was determined by race and cultivation level. Once that limit is reached the body would simply be incapable of converting any more ether. Which meant that if the ether outside was significantly higher than the mana that could be stored it could push past the blockage, and since you wouldn't be able to convert any more you would then suffer and possibly die from ether poisoning. Which was why most living beings avoided areas with more ether than they could bear.

But of course living beings needed ether to cultivate, not mana. The basic principle of cultivation was first drawing in more ether than your body could handle and then guiding it so that it could be safely absorbed by your body, you really don't want the super volatile energy doing as it wants once in there.

Since, for some reason, people had a technique for everything she had a few secret techniques which could allow her to temporarily exceed her mana capacity but she couldn't depend on those in the long run.

According to the Oculux Stone she was 28% done with her days as a lesser succubus, it had taken seven years to get that far and she couldn't be sure how long it would take to cover the 72% still left. She could get there faster if she listened to those bloodline prompts but she found them either disagreeable, suicidal and/or annoying.

She couldn't rely on magic as much as she would prefer until she evolved. The belt dealt with the issue of pitiable mana levels but when she took the thing she had failed to consider that higher leveled equipment tended to pose some resistance to their owners. She could store mana in the belt but it took too much concentration to pull it out and she couldn't spare that amount of concentration during a battle. She couldn't even do it that well during training never mind a real battle.

She had to develop her physical combat abilities and, since she was going with a rouge-type fighting style, she had to develop her speed and endurance since there'll be a lot of running going on. The damage dealing itself would be handled by her dagger. She also had the silver dagger for defense so as long as she could master dual wielding she wouldn't have to worry about the number one weakness of mages, a physical combatant getting too close.