Chapter 23 - Growth (2) (1/2)
Chapter 23: Growth (2)
Min-Hyuk Kang processed his first red Mana Stone very carefully.
He then began to test the Stone. He found that most of the tests he did resembled the quality he would usually expect from a blue Stone, not a red one.
He was pleased.
Min-Hyuk wanted to try further experiments with the Stone but decided he needed a Mana Room. If the Mana in the Stone was as powerful as the textbook said, it was…
Min-Hyuk did not want to take any risks.
In a Mana Room, there would be fewer potential dangers of the Stone reacting to something else in the lab.
The next day, Min-Hyuk bought a luxury home near the Academy.
Min-Hyuk had been looking for a new place to live since he left the Guardian Gate for good anyway; this home had the added bonus of being close to campus and had an underground bunker. Min-Hyuk planned to use the bunker as a secret Mana Room.
As soon as the sale was final and Min-Hyuk could make it his own, he conducted an experiment inside the bunker that he did not feel was wise to conduct in the lab earlier.
He flipped open the textbook to a particular passage. It was called “How to make a Mana Room.”
The directions seemed pretty doable…
It said: “To make a Mana Room, you need a small room dedicated to only this purpose. You will want to draw a Magic Circle on the floor—to amplify the power of your Mana. It also serves as a barrier to stop the Mana from escaping the Room and leak outside. When you have finished drawing the Circle, you will need to place a Mana Stone at the point of the Circle’s star. Your Mana room’s power is dependent on the power of the Mana Stone your place at this point, so find a good one. The output of your Mana within the Mana Room is typically divided into five stages.”
Min-Hyuk got to work. He used his Mana Laser to draw a Circle on the floor. It was easier than he thought!
After drawing the same shape over and over and over again, Min-Hyuk found the task to be less intimidating than it sounded. He had been practicing drawing the Circle he had seen in the Mana Room in Klinssman’s world—he did not want to forget any details. After about half an hour had passed, he was finished. He gently placed the red Mana Stone he had processed at the point of the Circle’s star, and the rock slowly began to give off a soft glow.
He did it!
But he had more work to do. In Klinssman’s world, there were stages to help encourage stability within your Mana Room. Klinssman had laid out three steps—the first was to prevent variables.
Min-Hyuk stepped into the center of the Circle and focused. The Mana began to flow into the Circle, just like it had in Klinssman’s world.
The Circle vibrated.
‘Wow!
Min-Hyuk had done everything the same way he had done before, but this result was totally different!
Suddenly, Min-Hyuk felt a tremendous pressure on his whole body.
“I can’t breathe!” he gasped.
Just focus,’ he thought, calming himself a little. ‘Okay, now think… How embarrassing. Step one is for safety.’
He would have to keep trying.
“Maybe I did something wrong…but what?’
Min-Hyuk looked to the textbook for an answer.
It said: “Principles of the Mana Room: When a Magic Circle is activated, the energy present in the Mana Stone at the point of the Circle’s hexagonal, or 6-pointed star, spreads throughout the Circle first, and then the Room. During this process, the Mana creates a vacuum, absorbing Mana from sources around it to fill the space. Combining different sources of Mana creates tremendous power, but it can also be very dangerous. If you absorb the Mana, allowing it to flow through you as part of the Circle, you can strengthen the Magic. But if you succumb to the pressure, the Mana will not flow smoothly and return to where it came from because that is the easier path. There are some possible side effects to note, including vomiting, or in more severe cases, destruction of the Circle.”
Min-Hyuk had read about a safety technique called output.
Depending on the user’s level of experience, you could set a Magic Circle’s output level to match. Since this was a new experiment in a new Mana Room with a newly processed red Mana Stone in a different world, Min-Hyuk had set the output to one. But it was still so different from what he had experienced in Klinssman’s world.
The pressure here was incredible; it almost seemed like it was twice as much pressure as he had experienced in Klinssman’s world, even though the Circle’s output was three times higher!
According to what Min-Hyuk had learned from Klinssman, a weaker pressure would have been expected on a weaker output level. But exceptions happened…
‘It must react differently because of the difference between our two worlds…’
Although the two worlds were parallel, Klinssman’s world had 2000 years on Min-Hyuk’s, and civilization had developed differently in both places…
That had to be the problem.
“Mana in Nature” refers to Mana released from trees, the land, the sky, and other parts of nature. Min-Hyuk’s world had not discovered how to use this Mana yet…
This was potentially good. In Klinssman’s world, Mana of Nature had been used for nearly 2000 years, and over time, civilization’s use of the Mana grew more quickly than the natural Mana was produced. This led to a depletion of Mana in Nature, and Klinssman referred to it as a social issue regarding the depletion of natural resources.
But in Min-Hyuk’s world…
The Warriors did not use Mana at all. And the Wizards here did not know how to use it.
So, it had been mostly left alone.
In Min-Hyuk’s world, Mana from natural sources took the form of an injection that had been extracted from a blue Mana Stone. It was artificial and had to be created in a lab.