Mana detection barrier

Blaze patted Frore's back and said, " let's get out of here."

Frore let him go and stood up straight.

Blaze also stood up and sheathed Kaiser.

"...wait a minute, Blaze."

Frore walked up to where the dark mage's dead body was lying and extended his hand to use "skill absorption".

Frore waited for a while, but nothing happened. He turned to look towards Blaze with a confused expression, hoping for an answer.

Blaze chuckled.

"Is "skill absorption" not working?"

Frore nodded.

Blaze thought for a bit before replying.

"It might be because , the difference of your ranks and the levels of your skills, is excessive. When a situation like that occurs, there is a fifty-percent chance that the skill activation might fail. Another reason could be that the dark mage had already made some sort of preparations to transfer their skills to someone else, if they were to die."

Frore nodded in agreement.

Blaze smiled and continued, "I think that the latter is more likely to be the reason."

{I will apologize for lying to you, Frore. I would have told you about the true cause of your skill not working on that mage, if it weren't for this...}

Blaze was looking at the system's red warning window flashing in front of him.

[WARNING!]

[ User, you can not tell Frore about future events or give him major hints about the upcoming events.]

{..the reason?}

[I can not disclose that information to you.]

{Alright.}

What Blaze had said wasn't a complete lie, however it wasn't the complete truth either. It was a half-baked truth.

Of course, the part about "skill absorption" having a fifty-percent chance of activation due to rank difference was completely bullshit.

The only condition for the activation of "skill absorption" is that the target should have died by Frore's hands and nothing else. It had nothing to do with the opponent's rank in the first place!

The 'skill transfer' part was the half-truth. There were no spells in that could transfer skills to another person upon death. None that Blaze knew of anyway.

Here, the main point was that, they shouldn't let their gaurd down just because the dark mage is dead. They could certainly get targetted by another person, at any instant. And, Blaze managed to convey that point.

{System's warning said 'major', that means it should be fine to give Frore minor hints or tell him about the future events in a roundabout manner.}

Frore walked back to Blaze and held his hand and pulled him in the direction Blaze had come from.

"... let's go."

Blaze didn't say anything about him holding his hand and they walked out of the underground tunnel together.

Frore silently looked at the tall heaps of golems at the entrance.

{...about 300. Blaze must be tired. After continuously using his skill to travel such a long distance, then fighting so many opponents by himself. He also disabled the traps inside the tunnel. I want to get "heal" or something similar so he won't have to depend on potions in the future.}

Blaze was drinking a mana potion and stopped walking. Once he was finished drinking it, he knelt on one knee with his back towards Frore.

"Get on my back. We will reach home in about thirty minutes."

{...thirty? But you got here in twenty minutes or less, considering I hadn't passed out for too long. If he spent five to ten minutes while dealing with the golems, he managed to cut down the time required to reach here by more than half. He must have been really worried about me...to do such a thing, even with his skill; he must have pushed himself to the limit.}

Frore felt really happy and bitter at the same time, before he could say anything to reject Blaze's offer to use his skill, Blaze spoke up, he had an anxious look on his face.

"We should get back quickly."

Just as Frore seriously wondered about what could have happened, Blaze continued.

"I left the door unlocked in a hurry."

Frore sighed internally and got on his back without any arguments.

----

Evening, the next day.

"Place your hand here."

Blaze directed Frore at the outer steel gate.

Frore put his hand on the centre of the magic circle Blaze had drawn.

"Release your mana."

Frore did as Blaze said and the magic circle lit up with a white light.

"Done. Now, your mana is registered. Let's test it out."

Blaze was talking about testing out the barrier on which he had been working on, since this morning.

Blaze went inside the house, hid in a spot and used his mana. Frore waited outside the gate.

Frore felt a wierd tingling sensation on the palm of his hand, he looked down at it and noticed that a black circle had appeared on his palm.

Frore got inside and moved towards the inner gym, the tingling sensation grew weaker and when he moved in the opposite direction to go upstairs, the sensation grew stronger.

As if, the marking was trying to direct him towards the source of the unknown mana.

He stopped in front of the wardrobe of his room where the feeling was the strongest and opened it. Blaze was sitting inside.

When the door to the wardrobe was opened Blaze smiled at him and asked, "how was it?"

" Good. It's working."

Frore gave him a hand and Blaze accepted his help to get up.

"After I am done registering myself, we would get this signal whenever somebody, except us used mana in our house."

Blaze pointed towards the mark on Frore's palm.

"Just trace this mark with a finger to deactivate the signal."

Frore traced the mark and just as Blaze had said the mark disappeared and the tingling sensation stopped.

"It should prevent something like yesterday's surprise attack from happening again.I should have been more careful and should have set up this barrier from the very beginning..." *sigh*

Blaze said with a serious look on his face and then sighed.

"It was my fault. I should have expected something like this, after getting attacked by the cult."

Frore heard Blaze's self-blaming comments and shook his head.

"No...I wasn't careful either and got dragged into that skill. It's is not your fault Blaze. It's not possible to stay vigilant all 24 hours of the day. We should just be more careful in the future and learn from this incident. Don't think about it too much."