The Raid Dungeon Pt3

After the main party was brought together, it took an hour to organize the skeleton NPC before finally bringing in the rest of our numbers.

During this time the scouting party was also brought forward and used a combination of my silk and general magic to create a crow's nest at the top of the broken bell tower. Once the skeletons had prepared a place for us in the foyer and grand entrance hall of the cathedral, we started moving in people in bulk.

While Donna and Mr. Thirteen handled the skeletons, my teams were stationed on the roof of the cathedral with the head priest figure doing their best to learn and report everything they could about the situation now and details from the past. Now that the new plague lord was here, I spent my time in the yard exploring the grounds.

At first I just wanted to use his power to study the mana in the area around the front waterway and the back pool but could not learn anything besides a divine residue that he could not directly interact with as an undead. Even when I tried sensing mana with mild meditation the way I had when learning the elements from Ferithar, all I could feel was that mana in this area was much denser than anywhere else I had ever been.

This density of mana was even greater in the back by the pool and among the graves. "Did you name yourself Trollbone?" I ask suddenly while Standing in place at the bottom of the dried pool, somewhere the plague lord could not enter and thus the strongest point of divine energy.

"No," comes the rasping growl of a reply from the giant armored ghoul. Now that he had flesh, he had a functioning mouth with which to speak. He preferred telepathy, but unlike the head priest and a handful of other NPC skeletons the only person he could do that with was me.

So, I made im practice his words. "When the ancestors made me, their knowledge and wisdom had overridden what I once was in order to create a shield for protecting my people. Thus they named me after the oldest weapons and armor of our people, Trollbone."

"I've been thinking of giving you a name more fitting for modern society in this world," I reply thoughtfully with my eyes closed, allowing my sense for magic to become an awareness that slowly stretches out from my body. "You're going to be a big figure in a small area soon. Once everything is said and done here, we're going to set up a Traveler city on the plateau above and you'll be the guardian spirit of the first Traveler city on the Imperial Continent."

My companion was silent for a while, as if mulling over the idea of their name. Finally, they say, "I am your familiar, now. My service to the ancestors is over even if I still work toward resolving the crisis. Why not, go ahead."

Nodding my head slowly as my mind begins filling with a dense haze of mana picked up through my awareness, I find that the rocks surrounding me have even higher concentrations of mana within them. The rocks in my mind were like black negatives of the various colors that actually existed with shimmery white outlines.

Inside the black mental imagery rocks, though, were clusters of even brighter white lights.

"Since you will be the last thing enemy players attacking our settlement would see, I have decided on a name starting with the end of my language's alphabet," I inform the evolved plague lord while concentrating on expanding my awareness. I could currently only perceive the world around me within a three-foot radius, but it was constantly growing further and further out. "Zekrom. Plague Lord Zekrom the Undying."

[Undying Plague Lord had been named: Plague Lord Zekrom the Undying]

Hist last name came with the lich lord prefix, so I wanted to show off the lord status by once again including it in their name alongside a title that carried the descriptive part of their new race. I really only rearranged their name around a simple addition, but the name itself looked like something the system itself would produce so nobody would question the name.

This was not like my first captured familiar, a giant owl I named Duck. Nobody would question that kind of name on this kind of mob and I would have no regerts whatsoever.

Contrary to my beliefs, Zekrom himself asks, "Do you not think that is a bit much?"

"Your last name was just as bad, what's the difference?" I counter blankly while actively using mana to expand my awareness. "It's no big deal, you're a new type of undead lord so you need a new name. Your race even has 'undying' in the name. Nobody will care."

Changing the topic entirely, Plague Lord Zekrom asks, "What are you doing, exactly? I can see an expansion and thinning in your aura but I do not see the purpose."

"I'm expanding my mental perception through my mana sensing," I reply with a slight frown, wondering what he meant by not seeing the purpose. "What other purpose would there be?"

"Most mages will train to take in the surrounding mana," he seems to explain in my head rather than using his voice. "When biding my time in the pit, I would absorb the elements and mana of darkness and death in the tunnel above to sustain and strengthen myself. You appear to be opening yourself up to the surrounding mana, but you are not taking any of it in. For me, it is as natural as breathing, but you should possibly try… breathing it in."\

Turning my mental attention toward myself so that my body comes into view in my mind, a shimmery silhouette in the bright veil of holy mana. Focusing on the idea of taking in this ambient mana, I stop spending mana to expand my awareness before slowly and evenly taking in a deep breath of air. At first, there was little response from the surrounding mana but just in front of me was a slight disturbance in the air.

Encouraged by the fact that the disturbance was an attraction of the mana in the air toward me while I was breathing, I contemplate the issue for a few moments before coming to a simply theory. I was trying to take in the divine mana by breathing and perception but I was not doing anything besides breathing to take in the mana. Since the mana was within my awareness it should be somewhat within my control.

Deciding to experiment with this theory, I concentrate on the idea of applying pressure to the mana around me and find that the mana in the air thickens as it tightens around me. Carrying the same intent of guiding pressure in my breathing, I slowly inhale once again and feel that the air I breathe is icy and hard as if the air itself had become impossibly thin. However, despite the vague feeling of my saliva crystallizing from the cold I was still able to breath.

Not only was I able to breathe in the ambient mana, I could feel the little bit of mana I used to expand my awareness was replenished with just the one breath. During my next breath, I could feel the mana I inhaled course through my body and mind, carrying with it a chilling energy that reminded me of the excitement in my muscles just before a fight started.

This feeling of energizing continued as I continued breathing and eventually became stronger and stronger as if my body was physically storing the mana like a battery. After a few short minutes of this, my body soon reached full capacity with a feeling as if I was freezing over from the inside out.

Just as I was considering ending the breath in which this happened, the subtle freezing of my body suddenly shattered away as if I had broken through myself and my body began to hungrily take in even more mana. My awareness expanded by a foot or so in every direction on its own and my breathing somehow became deeper. It was as if the air suddenly had more oxygen in it and I could breathe the condensed mana more comfortably.

[MP has been permanently increased by 10]

[Acquired Mana Training Technique: Mana Condensing]

[Acquired Unique Title: 13th Loose Mana Cultivator]

[13th Loose Mana Cultivator: Legendary. Passive. For being the thirteenth person to discover their own form of mana meditation training, you have been awarded a ranked title marking your achievement! Permanently x2 rate of (Mana Condensing) and +50% increased efficiency in future methods of cultivation. +50 Imperial Reputation]

After taking the time spent listening to Melpomene's voice as a break to reflect on what just happened, I realize that I had already stumbled upon the recently early-release balancing content from the recent update. Since I did not have class trainers who would grant me access to the manuals for such training techniques, I would have eventually needed to discover my own methods. Now, Zekrom had helped me to do just that.

Taking a seated yoga position on the rocky ground to settle in for the long haul, I once again begin condensing and breathing in mana to store within myself. Based on the amount of mana replaced by my first breath, the amount of mana my body initially took in was around one hundred MP before I had broke through the limit and raised my MP.

Considering how the energizing feeling in my body did not change much from between the first breaths despite the fact that I could feel the difference in my breath, I find it safe to assume that my limit this time had doubled from previously but the doubled intake compensated this change perfectly.

[MP has been permanently raised by 20]

Once I had broken through the limit once again, not only did I receive twice the amount of mana as a reward but my aware grew out by over a yard, increasing the amount of mana at my disposal. Now, though, I could feel that the requirement had grown to be much more than simply three hundred MP. From how little stimulus I received from the energy I took in, I could tell the requirement had doubled all over again.

A solid five minutes of Mana Condensing later, I surpassed my limits all over again but only received thirty points instead of the forty I had hoped for. With this reward, I could safely assume that the rewards for each 'level' of condensing would go up by ten every time while the previous requirement would simply be doubled. The fourth level would probably take an entire ten minutes to complete at this rate and things would only get worse from there.

Wondering if I could not simply save time in the long run, I release my condensing pressure on the mana in the bottom of the small dried lake and 'watch' as my awareness expands by another few yards with the release of tension. Next, I once again started spending mana to expand my awareness. This time, though, the cost was much less and the expansion was much faster.

After depleting almost half of my overall mana to fill the entire area up to where Zekrom was standing, I take a few 'relaxed' breaths of mana to replenish a few dozen points before once more applying pressure. My awareness suddenly shrank down by a fourth of the pond but the mana within my awareness became more than three times as dense as before and each breath once again doubled in effect.

Only a minute or so later I had already refilled my MP and moved on to quickly filling up the vessel of my body. Less than twenty minutes later, I had already achieved the fifth level of my condensing mana technique and acquired a fifty-point increase in my mana. From the first to the fifth, I had already accrued one hundred and fifty points in my MP.

Reminding myself that people would now be starting the game with access to mana and physique manuals, I could not help but wonder at what the comparisons between this and other mana training were. As well, the process. A new player with a default mana sense and awareness in normal settings would probably have a similar initial requirement to my own.

However, I was not currently under normal conditions. I was surrounded in residual divinity in the centuries old graveyard of a ruined cathedral. This alone had to be boosting my speed to some extent, as well as the condensing itself. For all I knew, normal beginner manuals tell people to just breathe it in and I had uncovered an intermediate or more advanced methodology through brute force.

Under these conditions, with the further help of having Zekrom spread his awareness and condense most of the graveyard toward the pond, it only took me an hour of meditation to achieve the tenth level of my mana training technique. The tenth level itself took more than ten minutes because I had to stockpile and estimated ten thousand mana. However, the overall reward was a growth of fife hundred and fifty new MP in less than two hours.

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