A Live Lesson in Mana Breathing
“...It's a class. A class.”
Entering Rutilus Acron's Sealing Ground required a fair amount of preparation.
According to Karuns, the sealing back then had been carried out in desperate haste, achieved only at the cost of countless sacrifices. Because of that, a Barrier of Severance had been laid around the entire area to keep anyone from approaching it at all. Traps had also been scattered everywhere — the moment anyone drew near, they would trigger and flood the whole sealing ground with water.
“I'll have all the traps disarmed for you. But the authority I wield ends at the sealing ground's threshold — inside, you'll have to find your own way through with your own strength. Even I don't know what lies in its depths, so be careful.”
“That sounds a bit irresponsible, doesn't it?”
“Well, it has to be at least this much for you to earn the price you asked for, no?”
Karuns chuckled dryly, and I nodded.
He was right — this much was more than enough.
Just as Redberry and I were about to head for the place he'd described, he stopped us.
“By the way... I can't tell whether it's coincidence or fate, but did you come as that particular pairing on purpose?”
“Pardon?”
“You two.”
Redberry and I looked at each other. Blue hair and red hair — a combination that suited this place perfectly. On top of that, Redberry was a fire mage, wielding an ability nearly identical to the one Rutilus himself possessed.
I shook my head.
“I wasn't thinking anything like that.”
“I see.”
He nodded and swept his hand through the air. A breeze thick with moisture rolled in, and a blue gate opened beneath our feet.
“Off you go, then. Travel safely.”
The world inverted before my eyes.
The war of the ancients. In its aftermath, most of the land that remembered the past had been buried, and nothing remained on this soil but blue.
The only places where red could still be seen were a scant few veins of Blue-Red Stone and the peak of the volcanic island — and even those were slowly fading away.
But when we arrived near the sealing ground, everything was strikingly different. Red and blue. A forest woven from the two colors welcomed us, and perhaps because this was Rutilus's sealing ground, the red actually seemed to dominate.
“We'll wrap this up quickly and head back. Don't worry.”
After all, I planned to finish the deal and return within a few hours. That way I could move the academy preparations along swiftly and still have time to enter the Void Space.
Step by step, we walked into the sealing ground. Just as Karuns had promised, every trap laid across the surface had been disarmed.
We passed through them and arrived at what looked like the entrance to a labyrinth. Untended, it seemed — its gray-blue bricks tangled with vines growing in wild disorder.
“...And now I'm nervous already.”
Who knew what else awaited us inside?
Pweeeing!
An arrow came flying. I deflected it lightly, and this time spikes erupted from the ground beneath our feet. Kwajak! I shattered them without a second thought and pushed deeper in. Next, attacks rained down from both sides and below all at once.
“There's certainly a lot of them.”
I parried and smashed them aside as usual.
Labyrinth-style traps like these were deeply familiar to me.
In the past, ancient monsters had been truly numerous, and humanity and the other races built dungeons like these either to revere them or to seal them away. So as I traveled the world back then, I'd seen my fair share of them — and solved plenty, too.
Not that I went around unsealing things, mind you. I was someone who wanted the world to be even a little more peaceful, so honestly, the less those seals broke, the better. The whole reason I'd stuffed the troublemakers into the Void Space in the first place was to keep them from causing incidents.
The problem was that the seals were so ancient now that, for one reason or another, cracks were starting to show.
Or it could be the fallout from the war.
The world back then had been a complete disaster zone. It was commonplace to be walking down a road and be erased without so much as a speck of ash remaining by the shockwave of a battle between angels and demons. It went without saying that seals shook loose and broke under the pressure of a war like that.
As I dismantled trap after trap, I glanced to the side. Redberry was skillfully neutralizing the mechanisms with fire magic of her own.
“You look pretty used to this.”
“Ah, I visit dungeons like these fairly often, so I'm a little familiar with them.”
So saying, Redberry extended her staff. Fwaah! A blaze surged in a straight line, burning out the mana circuits that sustained the trap — a spell that seemed to be a slight modification of a skill she'd already possessed.
She looked back at me with an expression that asked, This is right, isn't it?
“Excellent.”
“What a relief. I worked pretty hard on that modification.”
“Looks like you've made progress since the lectures.”
“Yes! My overall technique's improved, and my mana consumption is way lower than before. Oh! And my ranking went up, too. Ninety-seventh.”
“Oh.”
So she'd broken into the top 100.
Ninety-seventh, huh...
DeoEn was certainly packed with rankers. But if a mage of Redberry's caliber — a mere ninety-seventh here — had existed in the past, she'd have been hailed as a living sage. Not just across a kingdom, but as the savior or ruler of an entire continent. Leo would have been called a god outright.
If people like them had been around back then, the world might have known a little peace.
Feeling a flicker of bitterness, I quickened my pace.
Just how deep had we gone?
“This must be the lowest floor.”
“...It's kind of chilling, actually.”
We had reached the bottom of the sealing ground. Beyond a massive stone gate, red mana pressed against us — an intense heat unlike the Venetus tribe's, searing into my skin. An angel barely registers ordinary swings in temperature, but even I found it genuinely hot in here.
“Should we step back for now? Just in case?”
“Hold on a moment.”
I stopped Redberry, who had begun to shrink back. It felt like a waste to just walk in like this...
Mana condensed over at least a thousand years. Energy of this heat, packed this dense, was essentially a hyper-compressed power source. To the Venetus tribe it would be outright poison, but to anyone who wielded fire, it was a priceless resource.
“Redberry.”
And right here stood a mage who did exactly that.
“Yes?”
“Do you have any intention of getting stronger?”
“Huh? Of course I do.”
“Then we're good.”
Ignoring Redberry's baffled what do you mean?, I stepped around behind her and drew out a portion of the red mana, tracing a magic circle onto the stone floor.
“This will be a short lesson. Would you kneel and sit inside this circle for a moment?”
“Uh... yes, ma'am!”
“...It's a class. A class.”
What on earth were they imagining?
When I glared at the camera for a moment, the chat flooded with endless strings of “lol.”
“I'm kneeling.”
“Good. I was originally planning to teach this at the academy, but I'll give you a preview. You do know what breathing techniques are, right?”
“Accumulating mana within the body? Is that not it?”
“Correct. Drawing in the mana dispersed through the atmosphere and storing it in your body through breath.”
Mana was diffused everywhere in nature. Because it had a cyclical nature, it flowed in and out again and again through the breathing of living creatures or through specific parts of the body. But precisely because it was a cycle, it never lingered in one place for long. If the amount of mana entering the body were 100, only about 1 would remain — the other 99 would simply flow back out.
That was why most mages acquired the mana of nature through tools like staves, through engravings etched into the body, or through mystical artifacts. But even those were closer to one-time effects, and permanently increasing one's mana was never an easy feat.
“Mages have a skill called Mana Breathing. I think it's a wonderful technique.”
Mages of the past had clawed and struggled for every scrap of extra mana they could hoard — and now there was this convenient skill sitting there: remain in a place with a certain mana density for a certain time, and your mana permanently increases by 1.
“But for all its convenience, the numbers it gives are modest. In the end, if you want to build up your mana properly, you need your own method.”
“Breathe in deeply. And as you do, your mana has to move with it. You've already learned how to move your mana, haven't you?”
Redberry nodded, closed her eyes, and drew in a breath. The seething mana of heat spread across the lowest floor began streaming into her body.
Hooo... Over the course of her long breath, most of that mana drained right back out. She wasn't breathing properly yet.
“Focus more. Draw the circle within your body. Apply that expanding cycle to yourself.”
“...Circle, circle...”
Sssuuuh...
She drew the mana in again, and at the same moment I pressed my palm against her spine, twisting it just slightly to guide the circulation along.
Jolt!
Her slightly hunched back snapped straight, and the circle flickered into being — then collapsed again.
“Focus.”
“Th... uh... yes...”
Sssuh...
Perhaps it was the heat — Redberry's face flushed red as she drew the mana in once more. A crimson circle carved itself into her body, and then—
“Hnng—?!”
Flames erupted from her entire body.