Chapter 38: Growth

Paragon of Mana

True to her words, Zephyr had gotten him everything he demanded in a week. Not only that, she had even fought for him and got him a hundred and fifty hours of allocation in the mana chamber, along with an intermediate mana elixir, and an IOU detailing the whole transaction.

Pine Blackstone himself had presented it to him and even asked Ember to reach out to him if he faced any difficulty. Ember didn't take his polite talk seriously, though there were some merits to the advice he had given him on skills or how to use the mana chamber. According to him, he should alternate between the higher and lower chambers, as gaining too many breaths of mana in a short while might be detrimental to his foundation.

Well, he seemed delighted with the result his daughter got from the trial, so much so that he brought cakes and pastries to their home, though Ember still had no clue who Hope was, what class she had gotten, or if she even existed. Lord Pine only said it was a prestigious Knight class, and the girl had already gone for training with her grandfather to prepare for her admission test.

After the whole thing was done and dusted, everything seemed to return to normalcy. Ember could finally practise in peace, though he had to admit the sparring sessions with those older kids had been quite refreshing and good for skill gains. Maybe he would go find them when he was bored.

For now, though, he was fully committed to his mana training.

The Silver Grade Mana Chamber was much smaller in comparison. Apart from that, it resembled the same monotony as the copper grade one. Only four people were allowed inside at once, with dozens of ascendants alternating every three hours.

All that hardly mattered to him once he got inside and breathed in the richness of the mana. Pure mana was invisible, but he could feel it against his skin. Its density permeated throughout the chamber, high enough that it almost stifled him. Even without pushing his skills, Ember believed he would accumulate mana just by remaining in that room.

And if he were to pour his everything into it... the result became evident on the very first day.

He managed to form two new breaths of mana on the very first day he was inducted into the chamber. The progress didn't slow down after that either. Within a few days, he was on the precipice of Tier 3. With the advancement came another level gain in Mana Shaping.

[Mana Shaping (Iron) +5 → 6]

[+600 EPs.]

Adding the improvement in his Blitz Steps, his progress had knocked over 4,000 Evolution Points.

Finally making it to Tier 3 in mana foundation, Ember could use his mana elixirs to boost his accumulation. But he still refrained. With the rate his breaths of mana were growing, a minor elixir might only save him three days. Not to mention, after ingesting one of those elixirs, it would take some days for the foreign mana to settle down and harmonise.

Why should he imbalance his mana foundation now, which might slow down his organic mana accumulation for a while? After all, he was given a limited time in the Silver Grade chambers. Ember would exploit it for all it was worth.

Lady Evelyn had advised him to take only those potions after reaching Tier 3 in mana. According to her, it was never wise to grow more than 10% of the actual mana within a short time. Ember decided he would go beyond that and only ingest those elixirs after he made it into Tier 4. He was only forty breaths of mana away. It wouldn’t even take him two months, though his mana circuit seemed to have stalled at 98%.

While his mana was growing at a rapid pace, Ember didn't falter in his studies. Now that he could peruse more confidential papers and books, he enriched himself with all kinds of knowledge, albeit with special care towards anything related to rifts, attunements, and skills.

He soaked in the information about all varieties of skills listed in the archive. There were more than two thousand Iron skills, over three hundred Silver skills, while there were only a handful of Gold ones. But he was far from disappointed. Now he had a clear idea where each of his skills would take him.

Although there was information on all of his skills, some were not that detailed. For example, Meditative Muse and Mind Wall had the least information available. Ember decided to add some notes on the two skills, exchanging them for a good few contribution points from the bookkeeper.

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He also did some other miscellaneous tasks, mostly those that didn’t take too much of his time.

Ember accumulated a total of 150 contribution points. It wasn’t much compared to the nine thousand credits his father left them. Now that the clan was letting them spend it, he squandered a good few hundred of them in the Iron Grade mana chamber after his 150 hours of allocation ran out. The Silver Grade mana chamber had spoiled him well, that progress in the iron chamber felt like a slow crawl.

Just like that, a year and a half had passed since the disappearance of his father.

His grandfather had already restored his lost leg in that time, though there was still more left to revitalise in his mana foundation. He rarely stayed in the clan these days. Having lost his chance to become the Patriarch, he seemed to be fully committed to the expeditions still going on in the Northern Plains.

In that time, Ember had gone through two more hunting assignments. Thankfully, nothing amiss had occurred during those instances. He had also made it to Tier 5. It had come long before his tenth birthday. Although it wasn't as invigorating or painful as stepping into Iron, there was still a steep increase in all of his attributes.

Ember had already made some good progress into Tier 6. His breath of mana exceeded the requirements for tier 4, but he was still faltering with the mana circuit. Even the newly acquired Mana Augmentation was growing remarkably with his mana foundation. As for why he had chosen Mana Augmentation above the other skills, the skill details were pretty explanatory.

[Mana Augmentation (Iron) +3

Boosts all bodily functions by spending mana.]

That was to say, Mana Augmentation didn’t simply empower his physical force or endurance. His senses also received a boost, as well as his metabolism, digestion, and the like.

Though he feared it was only going to become more difficult from here. After all, the first three levels of any skill were easy as pie, the next three levels were a little arduous, while the seventh to ninth levels were laboriously boring, not to mention time-consuming.

To meet the requirements of Tier 7, he would need six Iron skills at maximum mastery. With how little Mind Wall seemed to have improved in those one and a half years, Ember didn't have high hopes of that.

Well, he could still have room for three more Iron skills after advancing to Tier 6. But what if one of those three skills turned out to be arduous to master? What then? Ember would lose all his chances at Tier 7.

Besides, it was already difficult to reach maximum mastery in any skill. It took a year or two from the ninth level alone. Moreover, it was easier to improve one single skill compared to six.

Ember decided to keep nine slots open for the promised skill stone from the clan. He wasn't hopeful that they'd get him something as good as the defensive mana skill, not after the price they paid, but any silver skill was unlikely to be too bad.

The other option was to take an iron skill among Kinetic Release, Mana Skin or Mana Syphon, and work to advance one of his iron skills into silver once he got eighteen more slots at Tier 6.

To Ember, the latter option seemed more feasible than waiting for the clan to deliver on their promise on a timely manner. Ultimately, he decided to keep both options open. Accidentally acquiring Mind Wall had already pushed the timeline; Ember wouldn't want another mistake.

His plan was to repeat what he had done for his Tier 4 advancement. He would wait for a Silver skill. It was good if the clan could get him a desirable Silver skill stone in time, but if not, he wouldn’t wait for them to make up their minds. He hoped to improve either Split Focus or Blitz Steps to the Silver threshold on line with his Tier 6 advancement.

Two years should be more than enough for them, leaving him with another year and a half to work on the Silver skill.

For the two spare slots, Ember decided to evolve Swordsmanship. Surprisingly, it simply evolved into Advanced Swordsmanship without giving any options. Apparently, that was a common thing, if anything was to go by what he had read in the clan archives. Hopefully, its next evolution would be startling, or he could try to merge it with various other weapon masteries. But that would take years of practice, and he didn’t have much time to spare in his race to Tier 7.

At ten and a half, Ember had grown to almost five feet. His features now resembled his father's more, though not quite as handsome, with his muddy brown hair that curled more than he liked.

In three years and five months, Ember had to acquire over twenty-five thousand Evolution Points. It certainly wasn’t going to be an easy climb. Hopefully, the coming hunting mission would help draw those numbers down.