The Cost of Mana
The blade felt too short to be of much use.
Most monsters tended to be massive, so even a jungle knife that was barely a meter long didn’t so much cut them as shave pieces off. That was the more accurate description.
If he poured mana into it aggressively enough to make the edge extend upward, he could probably stretch the effective length to two or three meters. But doing so would drain his reserves in no time, no matter how large his mana vessel was.
The reason he was conserving mana so strictly right now was simple: the density of ambient mana in the air here was far lower than in the other world.
Mana, by nature, flowed and resonated.
Whether casting spells or imbuing weapons and equipment, the standard method to avoid waste was to resonate with the surrounding mana.
But in this place, with so little ambient mana available, he had to expend far more of his own to achieve the same effect as in the other world.
Roughly ten times more… or even higher. This is serious.
Back in the other world, simply coating a weapon lightly with mana would have consumed so little that he could have kept it going for hours. The mana he recovered in the brief moments between breaths had been enough to sustain him.
Here, though?
In the same situation, his consumption rate was ten to fifteen times higher.
And the mana he could recover through simple breathing was less than a tenth of what it had been there. Taking a short break to catch his breath didn’t restore anything noticeable.
“I need to finish this as quickly as possible.”
Deciding it was better to burn a little extra mana and end the fight quickly, Kang Tae-sung drew the thirty-centimeter dagger he kept strapped to his left thigh and gripped it in his left hand for support.
With mana flowing into both hands, his consumption rate had clearly jumped higher than before. Still, it wasn’t yet at a level where he had to worry about running dry mid-fight.
But he wasn’t only surviving today. This wasn’t some grand battle either. There was no reason to waste mana here when he needed to prepare for the future.
To conserve as much as possible while still ending things fast, Tae-sung poured out a heavier burst of mana in a short span. In an instant, he disabled five or six wolves, then charged toward the orcs waiting beyond them.
Orcs were no pushovers.
One of the pair came running with a heavy axe raised, while the other glanced around, picked up a severed wolf leg from the ground, and strode forward.
But to those orcs, Kang Tae-sung’s combat style was nothing short of a natural predator.
He never met them head-on. Instead, he repeatedly slipped past them at an angle. The orcs kept swinging into empty air or striking the ground. Meanwhile, wounds that could not be ignored began to stack across their bodies.
When they finally collapsed, it wasn’t from a decisive blow. It was from excessive blood loss.
Tae-sung approached the two fallen orcs without hesitation and slit their throats, making sure they were dead.
“More than half is already gone.”
He had used a bit more mana against the orcs, but in less than thirty minutes, half of his mana vessel was empty.
To be precise, he had consumed about fifty-two percent. If his vessel hadn’t doubled in size, he really would have run out in the middle of this fight.
Ridiculous.
Watching his mana recover in tiny, sluggish increments—like water dripping into a puddle—Tae-sung knew he had only this much left because he had been as frugal as possible. He didn’t feel any deeper regret.
Still, if he didn’t come up with a solution, the future would be even harder than he had anticipated. His expression grew slightly grim.
“At the next level… should I dump both points into mental strength?”
He was seriously considering it.
At the moment, increasing strength or agility any further felt unnecessary. But with mana consumption this bad, raising his mental power was unavoidable.
Of course, if he fought without coating his weapons in mana, he could conserve almost all of it. The problem was that without it, he wouldn’t be able to pierce the monsters’ reinforced bodies.
It would be like trying to chip away at a boulder by tapping it with a hammer. That kind of hunting was out of the question.
Tae-sung roughly shook the blood from his blades and sheathed them. He scratched the back of his head and looked around. It looked like about five wolves had fled, but the rest of the creatures lying nearby were definitely dead.
“If I want to make weapons with good mana efficiency, I’ll need monster byproducts. But…”
The thought crossed his mind, but he knew that without proper processing skills, butchering them himself wouldn’t yield anything particularly useful.
So, just as he had done before, he used the automatic butchering and drop system. The fallen monsters were instantly cleaned up, leaving a considerable number of byproducts on the ground.
Ten wolf pelts… and why are there so many teeth?
He picked them up one by one and counted. Ten wolf pelts, a large quantity of wolf teeth of various types, and one wolf bone spear.
From the two orcs came one orcish stone axe, one orcish helmet, and one orcish shield.
“A stone axe…”
It wasn’t a weapon he could dismiss just because of the name. The stone fixed firmly to it was no ordinary rock—it was a hard material called black granite.
While it couldn’t match iron in hardness, the heavy stone mounted on a one-meter handle was more than capable of delivering devastating blows when backed by an orc’s brute strength.
Besides.
He had been ready to ignore it, but the axe’s mana efficiency was noticeably better than his jungle knife. It achieved nearly the same effect while using only about half the mana.
“Should I use it…”
A stone axe in this day and age.
It wasn’t some crude thing like the ones primitive humans once carried, but still—a stone axe.
It’s not like I’ll be using it forever.
His hesitation didn’t last long.
Tae-sung decided not to sell it and would use it himself for the time being.
The orcish helmet, however, was as large as the creatures’ heads. Even if it hadn’t been, he wasn’t the type to wear one, so he simply stuffed it into his pocket.
The shield looks useful.
Neither of the dead orcs had been carrying a shield, yet a rather decent one had dropped. That put him in a good mood.
It was a round shield roughly one and a half meters in diameter. Not a perfect circle—it was slightly warped, with scratches and dents across its metal surface.
It was probably made of scrap iron or some bronze alloy.
It was heavy, and when he rapped it, the metal rang with respectable strength.
Still, for a normal person, wielding it with one hand would be difficult. Only someone built like a large tanker could manage it. So rather than use it, he decided to sell it and slipped it into his pocket as well.
“Two cores. Not bad, I suppose.”
He made sure to collect the glowing cores from the ground.
After that, Kang Tae-sung checked the experience and points he had gained from this hunt.
His experience had risen by about two percent, and he had gained roughly 120 points.
He stared quietly at his total, which now exceeded 200 points, then opened the point store and navigated to the random skill book page.
“Let’s buy just one.”
It was an impulsive purchase.
He had some hope that a skill related to mana recovery might appear, but he knew that high expectations only led to greater disappointment. He wasn’t going to dwell on it.
When he tapped the purchase button, a confirmation window appeared. Tapping it again caused a book to pop out like a hologram, floating gently in the air.
The cover appeared to be made of leather and was gray in color. When he reached out and touched it, he felt a solid, realistic texture. He grasped it properly, and with a message confirming the purchase, the book settled fully into his hand and the shop window disappeared.
[Targeting - Level 1]
“Hmm.”
Where the title should have been, something like silver foil was attached. When he touched it, it felt more like a sticker made of silver powder.
Written on the cover was an instruction: scratch here to reveal what skill is inside.
“Is this a scratch-off lottery ticket?”
What terrible taste.
He carefully scratched at it with his fingernail. Once more than half was gone, the rest peeled away cleanly, revealing a faintly glowing skill name.
[Targeting - Level 1]
This is a self-buff type skill.
Targeting?
Wondering what kind of self-buff it was, he read the detailed description and immediately understood its function.
It was a skill that allowed him to literally target a specific enemy. It locked onto only one target, ensuring attacks focused solely on it.
Once targeting was active, all attacks would land exclusively on that target without dispersing to others nearby.
However, it continuously consumed mana while active, and the accuracy rate itself would decrease.
The base accuracy for Level 1 Targeting was calculated by taking the user’s original accuracy, dividing it by two, and adding five percent. Even in a situation where he would normally have a guaranteed hit, activating Targeting would drop it to fifty-five percent.
The lower the original accuracy, the worse the final value became. Still, raising the skill level would increase the accuracy correction and apparently add bonus damage effects as well.
Is this good or bad?
It seemed useful for preventing stray hits during chaotic melee, but he didn’t feel like he particularly needed it. Then he thought of his youngest sibling and gave a small nod.
“It would be useful for long-range types.”
When he searched the internet, he found that it was a skill book primarily sought after by ranged dealers. In Seoul, it traded for around fifty million won.
Well-organized teams sometimes refused to accept ranged dealers who didn’t have the Targeting skill.
Nobody wants an arrow in the back.
Such accidents still happened from time to time.
Incompetent archers firing arrows at random often turned them into literal stray shots that struck allies struggling at the front lines.
Still, fifty points for fifty million won… I guess that’s about average.
Depending on the exchange rate between points and cash, it could even be considered a loss.
Moreover, outside of Seoul, transactions were rare. Few people sold them, and few people bought them.
“I should give it to the youngest.”
Tae-sung tucked the book carefully into his pocket. Although he still had plenty of points left, he needed two thousand to reach Level 3, so he refrained from buying any more skill books.
That said, simply hoarding points wasn’t very fun. Buying one or two skill books or spell books every now and then didn’t seem like a bad idea.
Author’s Note:
The protagonist is someone who focuses as much as possible on using mana efficiently.
In the other world, it would be more accurate to say he prioritized survival over going on a one-man rampage. He survived, and in doing so became stronger and accumulated achievements. Of course, he is strong.
However, unlike his inner power, his outer body is still human skin, so he has many scars and frequently suffers minor injuries. Covering himself completely with mana for defense would be wasteful, so he has a personality that accepts moderate injuries and relies on his natural recovery. It seems my earlier explanations were insufficient. I will weave this information more naturally into the story going forward.
Thank you.
See you next time…