The others go to sleep shortly after I complete the weapons, and we test them out. I try to go to sleep but just end up tossing and turning for an hour, so I decide to check out my status. It’s been a while.
[Ray Alder] lvl 21
Race
[Human]
Active Skills
[Space Control] lvl 16
[Mana Shaping] lvl 14
[Condense] lvl 6
Passive Skills
[Mana Sense] lvl 15
Traits
[Adaptive Affinity]
[Beast mana-heart]
Affinities
[Space]
Seeing my progress over the last few days brings a smile to my face. [Condense] is leveling up quickly, and I already have a few more ideas for it that should level it up even more, but those will have to wait until the bear is dealt with. I spend the rest of the night cultivating my [Beast mana-heart] after I finish filling the battery on my new sword. The crystal slowly growing in my heart has reached the size of a pea now, and it seems to grow even faster the bigger it is. By the time the sun rises four hours later, I can feel it producing more mana, an increase of a few percent, I think.
Both Daniel and Corvax wake up within ten minutes of the sun rising and join me on the top floor of the tower for some breakfast. There is some nervousness and excitement in the air about our goal today, but during our meal we don’t talk about it. Instead, we talk about all the food we miss and how eating deer jerky for every meal is getting pretty old.
By the time we finish eating, our spirits have been raised, and the overall mood improves after Corvax accidentally makes a joke about my missing hand. Both Daniel and I laugh at this, and I see some embarrassment on the giant alien's face for the first time as he apologizes to me.
“Eh, I’m sure there's a way to get a new hand.” I say after he apologizes. “Even if there’s not, I bet I can make a better hand soon enough.”
Daniel holds up his mana gauntlet, the crystals glowing from the mana stored inside. “I bet we could make something like this, but better. Or you could create a hand out of mana like you did that sword.”
Huh, why didn’t that ever occur to me? I don’t think I could make a fully functional wrist and hand yet, but it seems doable eventually. More ideas start flowing through my head, and suddenly losing an arm doesn’t seem as detrimental anymore. All of that will have to wait until the stump heals, however, as it is currently still an open wound. The mana cycling I’ve been doing has definitely helped, but mostly with the inflammation and pain, but a little bit of pink skin has started growing at the edges, closing the wound. I had hoped that my mana-enhanced healing might regrow the limb, but it just seems to speed up my body’s natural healing, not improve it.
The three of us leave the tower, and Daniel locks the door behind us, the thunk of three locks sliding into place confirming it. We skip walking down the stairs entirely today. I just open a portal into the city, and we walk through. I use [Condense] on my spatial perception field and turn it into a long tunnel reaching toward the center of the city, toward where we fought the bear the other day. I can only extend the tunnel about half a mile away from me. Any more than that and it starts to unravel, even after [Condense] levels up again. Hmm, I need to do more testing with my spatial perception field. I don’t think I’m using it to its fullest extent.
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The portal opens a few streets away from where I was rescued, and after we all step through and the portal closes, I check out that area from a distance. There are a few undead littering the ground, the ones Daniel shot and one that I think Corvax killed. My sword is gone too. I was hoping to get that back.
I open another portal to get us closer to the bear’s territory, and we start walking from there, with Corvax in the front and Daniel in the back. I’m in the middle acting as our GPS. We go over the plan for today as we head toward our target.
“It should have less than a hundred undead left, if it didn’t keep any in reserve.” I say.
“We took out two of the armored ones as well when it ambushed us while you were fighting that assassin thing.” Daniel adds in. “I’m feeling good about this, especially if the bear can’t heal itself. Corvax managed to get in a solid one on it before we left.”
Corvax responds before I can even ask him what happened. “The damn thing tried to bite me, so I punched the side of its head with a sunlight-infused fist, burning the thing pretty good.”
I keep leading us further and further into the city, keeping watch not only on where we’re going but all around us as well. I also keep changing the frequency of the field within a thirty-foot radius of myself, constantly looking for anything that may be hiding. It only takes a small amount of mana to do small changes like this. Most of it is mental strain, which I have become frighteningly good at withstanding. I sometimes wonder if my mind will just break if I push it too far, but that is a problem for Future Ray. I have too much on my plate.
We reach the former border of the bear’s territory, where it had a bunch of undead in the buildings. Now they are all empty, and we quickly move on, heading into new grounds.
The buildings start to open up a little bit more in this part of the city, and they become taller as well, up to four stories in some places. I notice that some of these buildings have stuff in them too. They’re not just empty buildings anymore. It looks like these buildings are mostly homes, as I see a lot of kitchens, bedrooms, and bathrooms, most of them with wooden furniture that has rotted away over the years, but some look to be in good condition still. I make a mental note to come back and check this area out later. We might be able to furnish the tower with some of it.
After another few hours of walking, I finally find something. I see a few undead sitting inside of a walled-off courtyard of an estate that I assume belonged to some noble or wealthy person. It’s the first mansion we’ve come across in the city, but not the first we’ve seen, as several others can be seen throughout the city from the top of our tower.
I lead us closer to the estate and stop a few streets away so I can fully scout out the place. The wall around the place is a big square, and the mansion sits right in the middle of it. The rest of it is filled with dirt and a few stone paths that I assume once led through a garden, but all of that is gone now. Only a few statues and benches are left, made out of stone. I change the frequency of my spatial field a few times but never spot anything hiding.
There are a few dozen undead spread pretty evenly throughout the courtyard, all facing outward, likely on the lookout for us. I move my spatial perception inside the mansion next, finding exactly what I’m looking for.
“The bear is sitting just past the entrance to the door, sitting on a huge pile of mattresses and blankets and stuff. It has three of the armored undead with it, but one of them looks to have taken a beating. Its armor is pretty dented. There are also a few dozen more undead spread throughout the mansion. At each doorway and window leading in, it looks like. It has also barricaded the front door with a bunch of furniture.”
I draw a rough map on the floor using a piece of charcoal, pointing out all the undead and the rough layout of the mansion. We hash out a plan for dealing with all of the undead outside the mansion first, as it looks like the bear is going to hole itself up inside and make its last stand there.
Once we're all ready, I open a portal just past the wall, right next to a small group of undead. By the time I cross over and close the portal, Daniel and Corvax have already taken care of them and are moving along the wall towards the next group. I look down at the bodies. They lie on the ground in pieces, cleanly cut through with our new weapons. I activate my sword, and a few seconds later it starts whining softly, ready to be used.
The area inside the walls is fairly small, and the three of us manage to clear out all of the undead here within minutes, draining about half of the battery from my sword. The bear reacted as soon as we started killing undead, but it never leaves the mansion. It just gets up and starts coordinating the undead fighting us. The last undead out here dies to my blade, a clean decapitation.
“Well, that was easy.” Daniel says while he turns to face the mansion. “On to the bear now?”
I nod my head and start opening a portal inside the mansion, but it immediately gets shut down by a blast of mana from the closest undead. Wait, they can do that? I [condense] my spatial perception field over the mansion and take a closer look inside.
There is a light haze of mana emanating from each undead, filling up the mansion like some kind of gas. After a few more failed portals, I come to the realization that it has set up some kind of mana network, with the undead acting like nodes, and it’s using them to extend its range to the entire mansion. I explain the situation to the other two just as my [Mana Sense] levels up.
“Well, front door it is.” Daniel says as he and Corvax start walking toward the mansion.