Ch: 116.4 (Patreon)

The shark was a reminder that danger existed everywhere. Despite its massive size, the magic beast was able to approach us silently at incredible speeds, meaning even though we were running out of time, we needed to slow down and mind our surroundings.

“Did you get a look at its level?” Tabitha makes light conversation while we’re walking toward the crater’s center. The glowing pool of water served as a beacon for us to follow, and we were just now able to make out the distant shoreline.

“I’m sorry; I didn't," I admit shamefully. "It happened so fast; it didn’t even cross my mind to scan the shark.”

"Don't lower your head," Tabitha instructs me firmly. "When you do, you limit your field of vision."

Tabitha pauses momentarily before her voice drops an octave, and she sounds more understanding. “You're still new at this, and with your skill limited, it's only natural you'd freeze when being ambushed."

“And how do I fix that?” I ask Tabitha for guidance.

“Through training,” she informs me. I frown at the generic answer, but thankfully Tabitha explains further. “Your ability to sense mana has kept you from developing a danger sense skill," she warns me. "Having a danger sense skill is important because it heightens your subconscious senses and helps you recognize and react to things you normally wouldn’t pick up on.”

“And to unlock one of those skills, I’d what, need to stop sensing my surroundings?” I venture a guess.

“Not all your senses,” Tabitha corrects me. “You just need to stop using your monstrous mana senses. You must still focus on your surroundings, but only with your five basic senses.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I shakily admit. I couldn’t remember the last time I looked at the world without Sense Mana activated. Ever since I was a baby, I used Sense Mana to scan my surroundings, and it was more than just a passive skill at this point. It would be easier never to use my eyes again than to stop using Sense Mana.

“I’m not suggesting you do it now," Tabitha chuckles. "Deactivating your skill now would do more harm than good. I'm merely suggesting you train without it once we leave the magic-dense region. It will take a long time before it becomes anything as useful as Sense Mana is for you, but unlocking some form of a danger sense skill is a must.”

“You keep saying a form of danger sense; are there that many skills?” I ask while keeping my head on a swivel.

“I can think of a few off the top of my head,” Tabitha starts rattling off names of possible skills. “There’s your classic Sense Danger skill. Trap detection, Enemy Detection, Sense Incoming Attack, Attack Prediction; they all do the same thing, each having their own quirks.”

"Are they all the same tier?" I was curious about the difference in experience.

“More or less,” Tabitha lazily shrugs. "Most are tier 2 skills, with a handful being tier 3.”

“Is any one better than the other?” I didn’t want to waste my time unlocking one only to learn later there was a better option.

"It's how you look at it," Tabitha explains. "Sense Danger " is the most common and all-around most practical version of the skill, but it's sometimes known to be ambiguous. Like if you had it at the moment, it would constantly be ringing thanks to our environment like mine is.

"You have the base skill?" I curiously ask.

Tabitha turns her head and grins at me. "I do, but who says it's my only skill? You can unlock more than one, you know. But you must be careful not to get your signals mixed up

, which is a real problem some people face. For some people, having only one danger sense skill is better than having multiple."

"What about for me?" I ask Tabitha for her expert opinion.

Tabitha lightly hums to herself in thought. "For you and your skills? I think a more focused approach would be better. You already have a wide range of coverage with Sense Mana; you'd probably do better with a skill focusing on imminent attacks rather than a skill that warns you about possible dangers,” she suggests to me.

Tabitha casually points out a major weakness of mine. Unfortunately, she was right, I’ve been relying too heavily on Sense Mana up until now, and now I was unable to pull my weight because of it.

And again, it was yet another problem I was forced to shove aside until later. My weapon. My lack of danger sense. This trip has highlighted quite a few things I need to improve on. I suppose that was part of the reason I wanted to explore the Endless Forest; it just never occurred to me I was lacking in so many fields.

Gritting my teeth, I make sure to keep pace with Tabitha. We were getting closer to the glowing lake, and I didn't need a skill to tell me it would be more dangerous from here on out. I had told myself I wouldn't be a burden to Tabitha, and though she would never say it, I knew that’s exactly what I was doing.

For a few awkward minutes, the two of us travel in silence. Usually, I'm the one to break such silences, but I was too busy questioning how I should improve myself going forward, but instead, Tabitha broke the silence, which was a true rarity. "See anything else you want to take a closer look at?” She reminds me why we’re down here.

I glance around at our surroundings, but there isn't much to look at. There were no more intact buildings in sight; in fact, it's been almost ten minutes since we passed the last one. The only thing left were piles of grey bricks, and after the eel incident, we were doing our best to avoid said mounds.

There were a few plants here and there, but I'd already collected samples from most of them, and none of them caught my eye as the willow did.

I'll say it again, but not having Sense Mana's full range sucked. If it were back at full power, it would be child's play to scan for anything interesting, but now I was limited to line of sight. That or get lucky and walk over something new; and how often did that happen?

Not a minute later, I sense something enter Sense Mana's range as if to contradict me. It was a hermit crab of some kind, but it wasn't the crab that interested me; it was what was attached to its shell that drew my attention.

"Over there," I point out the general area where the tennis ball-sized crustation was crawling between bricks.

Tabitha changes course and leads me over to where I pointed. She looked confused as there wasn't anything noticeable about the spot I directed us to, but she didn't question me.

While Tabitha stands guard, I bend down and carefully start shifting bricks out of the way. The hermit crab notices what I’m doing and tries to scuttle away before I can uncover it, but I can move the bricks faster than its little legs can carry it away.

Soon, I’m looking down at an angry crab. It uses one of its claws to snap threateningly in my direction, but my attention was on its other claw holding a small blue crystal that wasn't bigger than a marble. There were multiple similar crystals fixed to the hermit crab's shell, and the crab looked to be in the process of adding the one in its claw to the others.

“Are those mana gems?” Tabitha’s eyes widen, seeing the beautiful crystals adorning the crab’s home.

“Not quite, they’re mana crystals,” I reach down and poke the crab avoiding its one claw until it angrily drops the crystal in favor of using both its weapons to try and defend itself.

I snag the small piece of crystal without getting pinched and inspect it closely. I didn't know if it had a different name, but I knew exactly what I was holding. The small blue crystal in my hand was the water equivalent of magicite.

“It’s collecting magicite!” Tabitha exclaims in shock.

"Wait, I thought earth-attuned magic crystals were called magicite?" I questioningly look up at Tabitha.

“All forms of crystalized mana are referred to as magicite,” Tabitha informs me. “People just aren't familiar with the other forms of it, as earth magicite is by far the most common version of it. It’s believed 70% of the magicite in the world is earth attuned, while 24% is water.”

“And the last 6%?" I point out how those two numbers didn't exactly add up to 100%.

“Undetermined,” Tabitha blandly tells me. “Fire and air magicite are considerably rarer compared to the other two. Air magicite can only be found in high places, while fire magicite has only been documented around volcanos or extremely deep in the earth.”

“Are there other forms of magicite?” I quizzically ask. As someone constantly seeing mana, I know there are countless variations worldwide. Earth, water, air, and fire were the big ones, but they could mix and match with each other and could produce exciting results.

“How should I know?" Tabitha rolls her eyes. "Wouldn't the stone kin be better suited to answer these questions?”

I wanted to retort that Master wasn’t treated to all his people’s knowledge because of his lack of talent regarding mana, but it wasn’t my place to say so. So, instead, I brush off Tabitha's remark. “He might of,” I pretend to be sheepish and rub the back of my head. “I might have just forgotten.”

Tabitha doesn’t look convinced by my fib, but she doesn’t call me out on it either, choosing instead to give me one of her 'I don't care looks.'

Focusing on the small crystal in my hands, I have a decision to make. The hermit crab was trying to flee but was still within arm's length. Ripping the other tiny crystals off its shell would be easy, but I wasn't sure if that would harm the crab.

Overall, it was only a few grams of magicite, and if a random hermit crab was carrying it around, there was bound to be more nearby. The only trick was, with all the ambient water mana, the magicite wasn't exactly easy to sense. I only picked up the cluster the crab was carrying because multiple fragments were close together, and it stood out against the hermit crab's mana.

“You know you’re soft, right?” Tabitha comments as she watches me let the hermit crab scurry under a nearby pile of bricks. I could still sense it, but I had already decided to let the little guy be.

“I don’t need to steal from a cute little crab,” I retort. Tabitha's eyes slide down to my hand, and the little blue crystal I stole from said cute crab. “This one doesn’t count,” I quickly shove the small crystal into a pouch connected to my belt.

“Sure,” Tabitha judges me with her eyes. “I take it you’re going to want to look for more?”

She knows me so well. I smile as I stand up, “Only what we can come across as we're moving." I say that now, but I knew we were

bound to come across more.

And as we descended deeper and drew closer to the lake of glowing mana, as I predicted, I noticed spots on the ground where the ambient mana was thicker than usual. Rummaging around those spots resulted in me finding small chunks of magicite, but it wasn’t without cost.

The mana around us was already incredibly dense, but it was so thick around the spots the magicite was growing the ambient mana turned into something more akin to acid. Just getting close to these spots had the ambient mana melting through Mana Skin. It eventually got so bad that Tabitha had to stand back while I harvested the crystals.

It just went to show how amazing the animals were. Whenever I found a spot that most likely contained a chunk of magicite, there was almost always an ecosystem of bottom feeders centered around it. Of course, there were plenty of hermit crabs using their claws to break off small chunks like little miners, but there were other animals too.

Glowing slugs and small finger-sized fish were hanging out in between the rocks. The large amounts of mana in the air shielded their small frames from Sense Mana, but now that I knew what to look for, I noticed just how much life was living a few inches under our feet. And it was all centered around the spots of dense mana. Even in an environment overflowing with the stuff, life was still drawn to the places with the densest mana possible.

Unlike the creatures that evolved to tolerate such extreme mana, I had to be in and out fast. Moving the bricks was the most significant time consumer, as simply grabbing them required a lot of focus. Because the bricks absorbed kinetic energy, holding on to them was difficult, and the weird algae that grew over them didn’t make things easier.

Sometimes a few smaller fish would try to attack me, but I only needed to swat them away. But even though I was in a hurry, I tried to fix whatever damage I did, digging out the magicite. There were plenty of pockets of dense mana about, so when I dug out a new spot, I didn't take all the magicite, as that would be bad for the environment.

I limit myself to half of whatever magicite I find and make sure to cover the remainder back up once I’m done. And even limiting how much I take, I quickly fill most of my remaining bag space.

Magicite is much heavier than my other stuff, but it was worth it. Besides the elemental fragments, I'd put the water magicite as the most valuable thing I’ve found so far. I couldn't wait to get home and see if Sandra and I could somehow incorporate it into our engraving ink.

“How much time do we have left?” I turn and ask Tabitha while tying my bag shut. It was embarrassing, but I lost track of time while jumping from one magicite spot to another.

“We’ve been down here for three hours and twenty-seven minutes," she informs me with a slight grimace.

"Are you okay?" I ask, noticing the slight movement.

“I’m fine,” Tabitha tries to act cool, but I can’t help but notice she’s shifting back and forth on her feet. “Are you doing okay?” She deflects my question back at me. “Are you still only in the first phase of mana poisoning?”

Now that she mentioned it, the burning sensation across my body had worsened. The joy of finding a new form of magicite had distracted me from it, but at some point, the pain had graduated from the levels of a slight sunburn to feeling like I was standing next to a fire; it was still bearable, but it was a noticeable difference.

“It’s still bearable for me,” I tell her.

“That’s good, but we need to hurry if we want to reach the bottom,” Tabitha urges me to get moving.

Had her mana poisoning progressed to phase two already? “Maybe we should turn back?” I hesitantly suggest.

“No need,” Tabitha quickly strikes down my proposal. "If you're fine, then we can continue. We'll reach the bottom, then turn around. Besides, we’re almost there,” Tabitha gestured in front of us, where I could see the glowing outline of the mana lake in the distance.

Tabitha was right; we were almost there, but would she be okay? I ask myself that as we push onward, with our goal in sight.

**********

2,600 words.

The next chapter will be the last part of 116. After that, we’ll be entering the final phase of the Endless Forest Arc.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and as always, stay safe.

Quick Notes:

I’m going back and changing the size of the crater. People pointed out that it was too big, and after thinking about it, I agree. I still want it to be humongous, but I’m reducing it to a more reasonable 89 miles in diameter. Still massive but more reasonably so for the size of the planet.

Part of the reason I'm doing the rewrites is to smooth over some of the inconsistencies within my story, and one of those is the size of Yurilia, the planet Aaliyah’s on. I don’t know if I ever outright stated it, but Yurilia is 4X the size of Earth. Its surface area is 788 million square miles or 2,040 square km.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good map-making program? I've been putting it off, but taking the time to develop an actual map, at least for the continent Aaliyah's on, would be a good idea.