Chapitre 22: New Insights
After the fight, everybody got involved with cleaning up the bodies left behind. We dug a sort of mass grave off to the side of the road and every one worked on placing all the remains there. I took this time to observe a bit more of all the people that ended up dying here.
First there was the unmistakable group of trainees that I knew exactly what happened to, but past that, I noticed that there were multiple people in suits of armor and a very small amount of people in robes. I guess as to be expected, they sent out a group of knights to protect some mages that were supposed to investigate what happened. I had all but written the whole situation off until I found one body that still had the unmistakable black robe with red linings.
I froze after seeing the remains of this particular body. The Red Eyes had posed themselves as the dominant enforcers of this area, but before actual strength their member died just like the rest. At this point I couldn't be sure if that core stage t-rex was able to kill all these people by itself or if some sabotage was at play with those spies that I met earlier. However, one thing was very clear. If you have the power, no amount of superior numbers would make the difference.
It took quite a while to get the road cleaned up, but when we finally finished it was time to head back to the capital. It was now evening time and I was glad that I wouldn't have to experience what the wild would be like at night just yet. I had been strongly reminded recently of just how weak I was compared to others in this world and was not ready to test my luck at night when I was at even more of a disadvantage.
The whole process of stopping by the gate to return our weapons and then making our way back through the city went by uneventfully. The only real interesting part was seeing how the city looked at night. As we passed through what I would describe as the trade district of the city, I was surprised to find a group of mages channeling mana towards a bright light that hovered over the whole district.
This acted as a sort of mini sun that gave everybody in the area just a bit more time to go about doing their work in a decently well-lit environment. I couldn't help but think that if they had people out here maintaining the light then either they didn't have a concept for a street light or that this was just more cost effective. Maybe they would only extend the daylight hours by a couple of hours before the mages packed up and everything went dark.
Regardless, our whole group eventually made it back to the training grounds. Everybody looked exhausted, but we still stopped by the cafeteria to have a late dinner before turning in for the night.
Now back in my corner, eating my food while sitting on the floor, I was left with an opportunity to think about how I would train going forward. It was probably likely that I could get a spot at a table now that everybody saw my performance in the practical training, but I wanted the time to myself. Nobody else would bother eating on the floor just to talk with me.
I thought back once again on what that group of spies told me about the blood path. That man had said that everybody in the blood path always ended up killing themselves to blood loss before reaching the adept stage. I wasn't entirely sure of the validity of this statement, but I could definitely see somebody going too far if they were desperate to continue training with their mana.
However, I had more information to think about. Back in my fight with the other trainees, I felt like I was able to use up my leftover mana and strengthen my blood for the fight. Does that mean that the path forward might be shifting my focus to improving my blood in high stress scenarios?
I began to think everything through and thought that it made a lot of sense. If that man was right about the initial stage being about setting up a mana center, then it would make sense that doing something like blood loss would be ideal at that stage. I didn't know the intricacies of how mana worked in this world, but I felt like I could make the assumption that mana was being used to replace and thereby enhance something about my body.
In my case that would mean that I was losing my natural blood in return for creating mana enhanced blood. As soon as the ratio between the two became heavily favored for the mana enhanced blood, I would reach the initial stage and all of my blood would start to naturally attract mana. This would then create the mana center that he was talking about.
I didn't know much about other paths either, but knowing what I did about muscle training where it is the act of breaking down muscles so that they can regrow stronger, this idea of mana would also apply.
I was satisfied with my explanation up to this point, but that would also lead to the question of what I should do going forward.
If I was right about the idea of blood loss being a means of replacing my natural blood with mana enhanced blood, then further blood loss was meaningless. I had already replaced basically all of my blood at this point, so trying to do it anymore wouldn't change anything. Instead, I felt like improving the capabilities of my blood made much more sense.
With this, everything lined up and I was only left with trying to figure out in which scenarios I would be able to stress my blood. By my estimations, I had a couple of things that I could try. I already knew that something like a life threating situation would be a valid way of stressing my blood. I couldn't be entirely sure if this was related to injuries like when my mana struggled to heal the stab wounds that I received or if it could simply be related to the start of the high stress scenario when adrenaline starts pumping through my veins.
Either way though, this felt like a very dangerous path forward. It would involve constantly getting into life threatening situations only so I could train my mana. With my fighting capabilities coupled with the fact that I was still one of the weakest people in this world, I felt like I would be inviting an early grave if I went with this route.
Well, I guess if the training were related to healing injuries, I could do something similar to my blood loss training, except instead it would be more about injuring my body. However, I felt that this was risky too. After all, covering up a simple cut on my body was not the same as covering up a serious injury. It also had the risk of me misjudging just how much my body can heal with the mana available.
Nothing would give me away quicker than showing up to breakfast with an unhealed grievous wound on my body.
Did I have any other choice though? I thought back to every situation I clearly felt my blood working in my body and was reminded of Bruno's fight. At the end of the fight when I was shocked by the incredibly cold air that washed over my body, I felt like my blood was fighting to keep the temperature stable. If that were the case, wouldn't that mean that simply putting my body in extreme environments that slowly tried to kill it could also be used as mana training?
If I had an area where I could slowly freeze to death or conversely overheat, then I could improve my mana, but also control when I stopped the training. I felt like this method would be the most ideal, but I also had the problem of these kinds of areas being unavailable to me. It's not like I could just ask Rorick or Bruno to prepare an ice bath or something for me. Even if I could convince them that it was used as a method to improve strength training back home, I couldn't see a world where they would make an exception for me.
Maybe if it was their preferred hero Alex that asked them, but thinking like that just made me bitter. If I had any sort of freedom, I could probably figure out someway to get an ice bath, but for now I was left with trying to figure out a different solution.
At this point I had finished my meal and while simply following my built-up routine I eventually ended up in the corner of the training grounds that I had been training with blood loss previously. I was about to just lay down like normal, but I noticed that there was a patch of weird flowers in the area.
Covering only the spots that I most recently buried my blood were flowers that looked like tiny little rose buds sprouted directly out of the ground. There was no stem as with a typical rose, simply a blood red rose bloom that came directly out of the ground. Somehow these had bloomed here in only a day's time and only covered a few spots.
Taking this as relatively unimportant, I made sure to pluck all of the flowers and then bury them in their own spot. It could be dangerous if anybody that knew about the existence of these flowers spotted them where I usually slept.
With that done, I went back to thinking about my training.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone