Several hours later,
Sitting on top of the bed, Beatrice took a deep breath before closing her eyes, a beginning to meditate.
Several minutes later, only a mage with extremely precise control over his mana would be able to see it, a tiny stream of elemental energy going into Beatrice's body.
But even though it was an extremely tiny amount, Beatrice still hurried along, not wanting this stuff in her body longer than necessary, and as such, a rune suddenly appeared in her mind.
As that rune appeared in Beatrice's mind, a slow but steady transformation of the elemental energy started taking place, as such under the influence of Beatrice's inner darkness and after several minutes the elemental energy was fully transformed into Beatrice's own mana.
But as Beatrice sent the mana deeper into her body, it was suddenly stopped for a very simple reason, Beatrice was already at the limit of how much mana her body could contain, and this new mana that she refined could no longer fit in.
Gritting her teeth, Beatrice finally began the last but most difficult part of increasing your mana pool, this was the place where talent truly shined for the first time and the diference between mage apprentices was created.
Without any hesitation, Beatrice began forcefully pushing the mana she had just created deeper into her body, causing her eyes to instantly appear bloodshot from the utterly horrific pain she was feeling right now.
After over half an hour of grinding the mana against her body the last of the mana she had created was finally either destroyed or pushed inside of her body, prompting Beatrice to once again begin the process.
Two hours later,
Just as Beatrice was about to try to push another wave of mana into her body, she suddenly stopped.
"That's enough for today," thought Beatrice as the sharp pain that was totally different from the pain she had felt for the past two hours resounded in her mind.
After that, Beatrice dissipated the extra mana she had just created before gritting her teeth.
"I can't be too stingy, this would waste too much time," thought Beatrice, deciding that testing her mana capacity by transforming it into physical mana and weighing it would take too much time.
...
Even though she had just bought it, looking at the tiny stone slab in her hands which had cost her eight elemental stones, Beatrice felt extremely mad at her lazy self.
Of course, now that she had bought it, Beatrice could no longer do anything about that as she swiftly walked back to her room.
...
"This piece of junk better be precise," mumbled Beatrice as she sat down on her bed before pressing the stone slab on her forehead.
After a few moments, a beep was suddenly heard on the stone slab, causing Beatrice to take it off her forehead and to look at it.
'13.322786...'
Looking at the number on the slab, Beatrice breathed a sigh of relief, it seemed as if her measurements were right, she had around thirteen points of mana, but even though she was roughly right, Beatrice actually had somewhat more mana than she had expected
"Then I'm doing worse than I thought," mumbled Beatrice.
In order to see how much mana using Dark Bolt took, Beatrice took her previous approximated mana pool before seeing how big of a proportion of that the spell took, as such, she arrived at the amount of mana it took to cast the spell.
"43.38... percent of my mana or 5.84 points of mana," thought Beatrice as she lowered her head in slight shame.
After calculating that number, Beatrice couldn't help but try to think of ways to improve her skills in the spell, when suddenly, she couldn't help but think of the spell testing room, or rather, the wall which managed to contain her attack.
Suddenly, Beatrice got up from her bed before walking towards her experimental room, or rather a corner of it.
After a while, Beatrice closed her eyes, and two seconds later, a fully formed dark bolt appeared in her hand, after a few moments of hesitation, Beatrice focused before releasing the dark bolt, causing it to be launched towards the bed in the middle of the room.
"It's as I expected, they are made of the same metal," mumbled Beatrice as she watched the dark bolt, which was capable of utterly destroying iron, dissipate upon touching the restraints that were placed on the bed.
"If the bed breaks, I will just replace it and put the restraints on the new one, and in this way, I will even test my aiming," thought Beatrice as her new testing ground was created.
Back when Mr. Errol had seen that his apprentice was interested in experimentation, and had given her a room with a specially built experimentation compartment, he could not have expected that this would happen.
Three weeks later,
"I did this before and I can do this," mumbled Carl as he looked at the mage apprentice sitting in the corner of the room.
Suddenly, the mage closed her eyes, and merely half a second later, a dark light flashed toward Carl at an incredible speed.
From the moment the Dark Bolt appeared, Carl had already jumped to the side, causing the attack to miss, but before Carl could even have time to recollect himself, he suddenly jumped forward, dodging the Dark Bolt, which changed it's course mid-air.
After dodging the bolt a few more times, Carl couldn't help but be happy, as he saw the Female mage apprentice look slightly tired, right now, he saw hope at survival.
Seeing this, Beatrice smiled.
"If you had survived this round, I would have let you go," said Beatrice as she waved her hand, causing the previously immaterial string which controlled the dark bolt to materialize in her hand.
As Beatrice controlled it, the string, which had already incircled Carl by using the Dark Bolt as a method of transportation, tightened around the latter's neck, causing Carl's head to fall off.
After placing Carl's dead body into a random bag to throw out later, Beatrice closed the experimental room's door.
She sat down on the bed, completely satisfied with her progress in the past two weeks in regard to the Dark Bolt spell.
Although she had to create a string to control her spell, since she was not yet able to control it without any link, she wasted a lot of mana due to the increased cost that her string added. But this wasn't hopeless, after all, she already managed to reduce the amount of mana spent to around 4.6, which was a large improvement.
Another good news was when she got out her measurement stone and placed it on her forehead to inspect her mana pool's new capacity.
'14.41'
This means her reserve of mana increased about an average of 0.1 per day. Satisfied with her performance, she smiled brightly.
"In five or six months I will be considered a High Ranking Mage Apprentice," mumbled Beatrice as her increase in power brought untold joy to her.
Mage apprentices are divided into three levels, namely Lower Apprentices High, Apprentices and Peak Apprentices.
While the boundary between Low and High Apprentices was rather arbitrary, being thirty points of mana, to be considered a Peak Apprentice, one has to reach the maximum capacity of mana the human body can hold.
Although this fluctuates between people, it mostly varies by a few points, being around 78 to 82 points of mana.
When she was done with evaluating her progression, Beatrice decided to change subject and pulled a thick book from under her bed.
The size of the book was headache inducing, but it's subject, mainly Physics, was elemental to a lot of Beatrice's spell so she couldn't skip it. As laborious the task would be, she started reading with attention.
Other than some extremely rare and esoteric types of magic, the main use of physics for mages was the manipulation of speed and gravity around their spell, which would impact greatly its efficiency. Beatrice's dark bolt were both lacking in speed and efficiency and to understand the reason for this, she must first know one critical part of her spell: the Mana coefficient.
A mana coefficient is the maximum amount of mana at which the spell still operates efficiently. As an example: the Dark Bolt spell, it has a coefficient of around 4 so if we increase the mana output into the spell (use more mana than necessary) this will only destabilise the casting and make it fizzle out instead of empowering it.
The reason for the existence of the mana coefficient is very simple: simplification, as increasing the amount of mana that can be used efficiently by the spell is exceedingly difficult for apprentice mages.
For example, the original form of the Dark Bolt spell, the Rank 1 Dark Arrow, has a Mana Coefficient of 15, and as such, is tens of times more complicated than its Rank 0 counterpart.
Physics can be used as a way for mages to increase the power of their spells without increasing their mana cost.
...
Somewhere, into the forest...
A silhouette was observing three large tent containing trolls that were mostly asleep. The observer smiled, and pulled out a small device from his pocket.
"Your hearing will not save you," thought Leylin before looking at the device in his hands.
After sending a tiny amount of mana into it, a screen flashed, writings detailing multiple metrics like the atmospheric pressure, wind speed, the humidity, the elemental energy level and even the spatial stability of the region were now available to Leylin.
After analysing every factors, Leylin fell in deep thoughts, as a wave of calculations were taking place inside his mind. Being in such a confortable setting, and having no direct threat, he took his time.
Thirty minutes later,
A transparent barrier appeared in an instant around Leylin, and before a leaf falling from a tree could touch the ground, an extremely uncanny Dark Bolt appeared in front of him.
If we had to compare it to Beatrice's Dark Bolt, this one was very distorted, some regions of it being flat, while others curved. Despite it's shape the bolt's weight was balanced to perfection, making it perfect for reaching higher speed when launched.
Instantly, the Dark Bolt was no longer in front of Leylin, as the barrier that was protecting him was suddenly impacted by three sonic booms.
As the Bolt was faster than sound, the Troll's supernatural hearing could not save them of something they didn't even have the time to process. By the time the "pop" of Leylin's spell woke them up, their camp, trolls included, when blown into smithereens.
As unbelievable as it is, the three powerful trolls, which could each crush Leylin into meat paste in a straight-up fight, were all dead without any resistance.
The commotion got for answer the howls of multiples giant wolves, local inhabitants of the forest. They were approaching rapidly to inspect the cause of the explosion.
Hearing the howls nearing his position, Leylin silently fled the scene, not wanting to fight an unnecessary fight unprepared. His mission already finished he had nothing left to do here.
Although the speed of the bolt was incredibly fast, three times faster than the speed of sound, Leylin could still do better. He recalled when he had to kill a troll warlord, whose hearing and magic sense was extremely sensitive accompanied with an inhuman reaction time that even speed of sound wouldn't be enough for spell to hit it by surprise. This prompted Leylin to spend over half a month creating the perfect dark bolt, the same one he used today against the three trolls and prepare the terrain.
Given enough time, any mage would become a menace. The more knowledgeable they were of their environment, the harder it was for any unsuspecting foe walking into their domain to fight efficiently. And some mage, to avoid the hassle of always having to do all these calculations, made their own tower, thus establishing a zone where every factor that usually degraded their spell to be under their control.
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