Green Glows Red Flows?

Half blinded by the green flash I took a couple minutes to let my eyes recover and then I walked to the next door down the hall now having explored the three rooms on what I'm going to call the north end of the hallway. As I approached the door I studied it a bit and noticed that there were stylistic runes carved into it and that it was slightly open so I gave it a light push and immediately saw a hallway filled with corpses so I slammed it closed and pushed the crossbar locking the door shut before I walked over to the next door.

The fourth door opened into a library of some kind and I rummaged through every single book I could find and only found one that I could read luckily it was a translation codex with about eight different languages in it and I figured I'd keep it until it was no longer useful as I looked for books that it could translate. I found a few beginner books though they were worded as layman's guides but hey I'm not going to complain about that as I delved into them like a starving glutton. The books I was able to translate were "A layman's guide to mana, A layman's guide to wizardry, A layman's guide to Kratoon flora, A layman's guide to Kratoon fauna, and lastly A layman's guide to Druidism" between all of those I learned a lot and a little.

Combined I learned that mana is used to cast spells and that you don't need a focus of some kind to cast magic but it is more powerful and efficient if you do and that every person has a different color of mana and because of the green flash incident I realized that my mana was a light green and that to refill your mana you basically have to meditate and clear your mind while "opening your mana channels" yeah that's going to be a challenge. On the upside reading both the wizards guide and the druids guide I learned how to cast two spells if I could figure out how to actually cast them one was spark and it was from the druids guide the other was arcane arrow from the wizards guide spark is a touch based spell that is extremely easy to cast while arcane arrow is a ranged attack with no quoted range leading me to believe that skill was the deciding factor for its range.

Following the directions on in the wizards guide I attempted to cast a arcane arrow and yeah that went poorly sure I got it on the fourth try but I also basically used up all of my mana to create it and it was weak my target a wooden weapons stand was hit exactly where I aimed but damage wise well it put a small dent in the wood and I was dead exhausted casting just one. The mana guide also had a method to increasing your mana capacity but it was capable of doubling your mana capacity in a year and you had to do it every day basically you have to meditate and cycle your mana throughout your body and back into your mana reservoir and I had no idea where that was.

Since I had just used all of my mana up I decided to try to recover it and I got comfortable and started meditating and trying to "open my mana channels" yeah it took me about two hours to figure out how to get them open and another two to get them full of the buzzing in my body was any indication and then I tried to cycle my mana like the mana increasing method described and I don't know how long I did that for but by the time I stopped I was positively starving and my stomach was being extremely verbal. Hunting through the other rooms I found a bedroom and a kitchen and I found a magical preservation box in the kitchen it had a stack of jerky nearly a meter tall and some fruits that were just about over ripe so I dug into them and ugh they were almost inedible but they did fill me up for now and then I spotted a couple jugs in the back and I gave one the sip test and it was wine at one point but now it was closer to vinegar but I drank it and then sat down to try expanding my mana capacity again.

I'm not sure how many days passed with me doing the exact same thing over and over but every day I would cast a arcane arrow then recover my mana then expand my capacity followed by repeating the cycle but as the jerky dwindled to the last few pieces I was able to cast two arcane arrows before I felt like I was dead on my feet so one year to double my mana capacity eat my hat! After my marathon of grinding I searched through the bedroom and dug through the chests and came out with a satchel on the larger side and a couple more rings with gems in them and a very ornate dagger with a maybe 9" blade and a reddish tint to the metal.

I also found a proper wizards robe if you were a pauper the dang thing was made of even coarser wool than my shirt was and was actually thicker though it was in my favorite color gray so obviously I tried it on under my cloak and it fit pretty well honestly and now I was a little bit too warm but that was easy enough to fix I took off my shirt and put it in my satchel before exploring the last two rooms at the end of the hallway. The second to last room was a dud it had nothing but a circle inscribed into the floor in the middle of the room while the other was a storage room with all kinds of storage boxes which I quickly looted.

My finds in that room were many but mostly useless fully half of the crates were filled with rotting vegetation and most of the other ones were filled with clothes or lumps of metal not ingots but literally clumps of metal which I went through and found that there were lead, tin, bronze, iron, copper, bone?, and gold needless to say I stashed the gold lumps in my pouches and tested the remainder by trying to cycle magic through them into my hand from my other hand and found that the bone colored material was almost like it wasn't there when it came to my mana so I tried to crudely from it into a wand and it was pretty malleable in fact I was able to make a very decent wand from it by rolling it on the floor with most of my body weight on it I even managed to get it straight.

After creating a wand of sorts it was just a rod with a little bit of taper on one end I tried to cast my arcane arrow through it and I found I could cast instead of two with a little bit of mana left over I could cast three with almost enough to cast a fourth a marked improvement if I must say so myself though it was still extremely slow casting a single arcane arrow taking about a minute and a half if I had to guess still I wasn't failing two out of three times at this point either so that was good.

My first spell through my new wand literally shattered the side of the crate I'd aimed at which was a significant improvement if you ask me as before it might have cracked it my new wand proved it's worth. Looking through the remainder of the crates I found one full of all kinds of tools and another that had some bits and pieces so using some of the tools I worked a bit of silver into a spiral along most of my new wand and I should point out that making my wand took several exhausting days as the material was about as malleable as very stiff clay my entire weight was needed to deform it slightly so wrapping it in a bit of tin was more my way of attempting to protect it than anything else.

After another cycle of regenerating my mana and increasing the capacity I tried my now finished wand and I was floored with just the thin tin wire wrapped around my wand it increased my efficiency I was able to get 4 casts of arcane arrow instead of 3 and now I had to wonder. I completed my mana regen and growth cycle and decided to try adding similarly sized gold wire see if that would add anything and a few hours later I was ready to test though now I was almost out of food.

My newly upgraded wand ready I cast as many arcane bolts as I could but it was still only 4 but it seemed like the power of my arcane bolts had increased by at least half as my last 4 shots had shattered entire crates compared to just one side and just cracking the board without one so yeah now I was a proper spell caster sort of maybe hedge wizard was a better description. After my cycle I kept looking in the crates and found one chock full of sealed packages so I tore one open and found it full of travel rations ie some nuts some dried berries and some dried veggies and a tiny pouch of some green mush I tried it all and while the mush was edible it was borderline and weird so I hauled the entire crate into the library and tried to find other books my codex could translate.

I used up most of the rations as I perused the books and I even found a couple more books that I managed to translate one called a novice wizard guide and the other "The warriors Guide book" yeah it wasn't very good and was extremely simple basically don't hit anything as hard as you can and don't trip is what it boiled down to with a couple of stances and strikes laid out. I studied the heck out of the novice book and learned two new spells sadly they were "create water" and "create light" both handy but hardly attack spells though in my searching I did find a couple of blank books which I nabbed and searched for some kind of writing utensil finding only a fancy quill pen and no ink so hoping for it to be magic I tried writing how to cast arcane arrow and spark into the one I didn't really care for it was glaring pink.