What Noah saw through his mana sense skill astounded him. There was what could only be described as a fountain of mana coming out of the depths of the pond. Surrounding the fountain were fifteen low-grade mana stones. “It looks like a fountain of mana?” Then he felt the artifact around his neck heat up and a notification popped into his vision along with Gaia’s melodic voice reading it for him.

“Gaia? What do mana veins do aside from making low-grade mana stones?” Noah asked.

“A mana vein is a naturally occurring locus of mana that gathers and condenses mana on its own. Many have theorized how they form, but the general consensus on the topic is that they are small yet stable rifts in space that lead to the elemental realms.”

“And what’s in the elemental realm? Well, elementals I assume. But what are they exactly?”

“Elementals are, as their names suggest, beings made of pure mana of a specific element. You would do well to remember this, as you are an Elementalist. A time will come where you will encounter them, for it is needed in order for you to advance further on your path.”

“Wow, okay, that’s a lot of information to take in. Let’s leave that for later then. How many creation points do I need to take the mana vein?”

“It is a fairly small mana vein… three points will suffice.”

Noah allowed Gaia to take from his stash and convert it to creation points. He then went to the shore of the pond and jumped in as he needed to be as close to the mana vein as possible. He manipulated the air to form a bubble around his head, then began diving. A moment later he saw it, a resplendent yet frightening tear in space spewing mana so thick that it was visible even in the murky depths of the pond. He held his artifact close to the mana vein, and it magically slurped the space tear up like it was a noodle. “That’s definitely one of the weirdest things I’ve seen.”

Noah then swam up to the surface and shifted slightly, uncomfortable with how wet he’d gotten. “Can’t I just make something like a drier spell? Hmmm.” With that thought, he proceeded to sit down in a meditative position and activated his [Air Manipulation] and [Fire Manipulation] skills. Making hot air was simple enough. All he needed to do was excite the atoms in the air and you had hot air. This was made much easier because he took the control path in his skill evolution for [Air Manipulation] and that he had [Fire Manipulation].

With that done, Noah proceeded to expel hot air from everywhere on his body and was dry in a mere five minutes. He smirked as he noticed Mark staring at him expectantly.

“Beg.” Noah said, as his smirk widened.

Mark’s face fell, and he protested. “You can’t be serious.”

Noah saw that and began laughing. “Of course I’m not! You should’ve seen your face! Fucking priceless! HAHA!”

“Ha ha, very funny. Now dry me up, captain.”

Noah cast multiple instances of hot air around Mark. It took longer to make him dry, but ten minutes later, it was done and they were once again on their way to the orc encampment. Along the way, they couldn’t help but notice that animals were starting to repopulate the area and even some chopped down trees were growing new shoots. “Life sure is tenacious.” He remarked as he observed the surroundings.

Mark smiled and said. “Yeah, gives you a bit of hope, doesn’t it?”

“Mmm.” Noah replied with a smile of his own as he finally saw the log-wall of the encampment. “This should be far enough. Let’s wait a while for my mana to recover fully, then I’ll scan again.”

“Okay. Might as well check out that altar while we’re here… Oh, right! Buy an information packet about them so that we’ll know whether we need to destroy it or not.”

“Good idea.” Noah then brought up the store and bought the information packet. There wasn’t much information contained within it except that orc altars were usually used to borrow power from their god so that they can open up a gate that led to their home world. It also stated that people should destroy all altars connected to the demon worlds immediately upon sighting them.

“Pretty much what I thought. It was probably the cause for that corrupted bear cub,” Mark said with a thoughtful look on his face.

“Guess we’re destroying it then.” Noah then conjured a bomb and set it beside the altar. They then put some distance between them and the altar but were still within line of sight just so they could see the fireworks. “Detonate.”

BOOM

They watched the altar explode into bits as they marveled at the flames produced by the bomb. Suddenly, a pressure descended upon the area and forced them to kneel. A tear in space formed above the altar as a massive eye peered through it. It looked around and then saw them, magnifying the pressure they felt. They first heard a snort, then it spoke directly into their minds. “Humans. I should’ve known this was one of your worlds.” Then, a different, more gentle pressure arrived and fought the eye for control over the area. “Oh? A B-rank world spirit with guts! Don’t worry little spirit, I shall take my leave.” It then turned its attention back to Noah and Mark and said. “I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other again soon.” The spatial tear then closed slowly and eventually winked out of existence.

The pressure Noah and Mark felt slowly disappeared along with the eye, allowing them to stand back up. “What the actual fuck was that? That wasn’t in the packet!” Noah exclaimed as he wiped the sweat off his brow.

“Yeah beats me. I’m just glad we’re alive. It felt like that eye could kill us with just one literal look.” Mark sighed in relief as he plopped back down on the ground.

Noah balled his fists. “We need to run those dungeons and level up as much as humanly possible. I don’t want to feel so weak ever again” He inhaled deeply in a bid to calm himself down. He looked at his mana bar and saw that he was less than half an hour away from full mana, so he sat down to meditate. Although he hadn’t gotten the skill yet, it helped him to calm down and think more clearly. “Stronger, faster.” He thought as he remembered the dream he had.

“I agree. That felt worse than when the apocalypse happened.” Mark looked off into the distance as they waited for Noah’s mana to fully recover.

---

Half an hour of waiting later, Noah activated his radar. And what he saw baffled him. There was one giant red dot a few kilometers to the east. “That’s either one gigantic monster or that’s a dungeon. Want to check it out?”

“Yes, but carefully. If it’s a monster, we run.”

“Agreed.”

And so, they headed for the massive red dot and a few minutes later; they arrived at the location. They discovered that it was some kind of pitch-black distortion in space. Noah then immediately cast his [Analyze] skill.

 

“Oh? No choices this time, huh?” He picked yes and then tried it out on the dungeon again.

“Neat! It says that we need to use light or fire magic for this dungeon and that its only tier one. We should be able to handle it with no problem.” Noah explained to Mark. “Though let me just prepare a few spells before we decide to go in.”

“No problem”

With that, Noah sat down in meditation as he closed his eyes and visualized his next spell. What he wanted to imitate was the mana shield that the orc shaman used to stop his explosive spear. In theory, it was simple enough. Just form a spherical shield of thick mana and you’re good to go. So, he did just that. He first formed the shell into a sphere around him, then pumped in more mana until…

“That was easy enough.” He thought as he went on to do the next spell. He still needed a spell that would hinder the movements of their enemies on a massive scale. But earth magic was extremely reliant on geography, so that was out of the question. Then he thought of ice magic. “It’s just cold water, right? How hard can it possibly be?” He thought as he tried it out himself. He first summoned a basic waterball in his hand and tried to manipulate its atoms into a state of inactivity. It took a few minutes and three times the original mana cost of the water ball but he managed to freeze it.

 

 

Noah stood up in excitement and did a fist pump. “I finally got an achievement!”

Mark was unimpressed as he didn’t even get up. “Uhuh. Took you long enough.”

“Don’t tell me you have one already?”

Mark yawned. “Nah, I was just confident you’d get one soon.”

Noah let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know if I should be touched because of your confidence in me or annoyed that you weren’t even shocked.”

“The first one, definitely. Hehe. Anyway, what was the achievement for?”

Noah sighed again but proceeded to tell Mark that he was the first one on Earth to learn a skill by himself and that the achievement gave his ice spells a ten percent boost. “Pretty cool, right?”

“A bit underwhelming, considering that you learned a whole different element of magic. Still pretty good though, percentage boosts are always the best.” Mark had a thoughtful expression on his face. “You should try to get stone magic next. You’ve already got earth and water manipulation. It should come naturally with forced lithification.”

“Yeah, that was actually the plan for after I get the crowd control spell I was aiming for. Now with ice and water in my arsenal of spells, it should be easy to make something like an instant icy floor or even just cold air gusts that slow down our enemies.”

And so, Noah got to work on the spells. First was the ice floor skill. All he needed to do was to summon a massive amount of water, drop it on the ground and freeze it. It should freeze the feet of all enemies which was a nice bonus.

Just like that, he got it. “Finally, a legit crowd control spell.” He thought as he moved on to the next spell. A spell to be used in tandem with the icy floor spell for maximum effect. He first activated his concentrated gust spell and made it bigger for more coverage. He acquired the spell [Gust] from that. He then did the same thing with the ice ball spell and slowed down the vibrations of the atoms in the air.

 

Noah immediately picked yes.

“Hell yeah!”

“Good news I bet?” Mark asked.

“Definitely. Now I can crowd control a whole bunch of enemies at once!”

“On to Lithification then?”

“Yup. Give me a few minutes. If it doesn’t eat up too much mana, I should be done by then.”