Inside the room, the booming coming from the various mana circuits created a very relaxing environment. In the middle of the room, in the center of the mana circle, Lance was sited there with his eyes closed.

If one looked and listened closely one would notice that both the flow of mana around his body and his breath were becoming more intense. The mana was flowing all around his body like a whirlpool but didn't spread far from his body becoming more and more condensed. Lance was at the brink of a breakthrough.

After he began his journey towards this godforsaken city, he was missing just a little more before breaking through to the top Adept level. Although he knew that was just a little it was still too slow for him and his future plans.

Even before entering the Desolate Region he already knew of the mana suppression array that covered the whole region. For his plans to work he had to find a way so that the suppression couldn't stop his tier progression and that's when he together with the Groath and Bodvar manage to slightly merge technology and mana. Although it was just an insignificant merger to Lance a former scientist it made him have an epiphany.

After several months of directing the dwarves to build some important components and ordering some blacksmiths for the other, he managed to build a very primitive form of his former A.I [CAT]. Although far from the full potential of an AI it could still help in adjusting his plans while he continued to upgrade it. 

After building the underground space and installing the A.I, he had built this room and designed the mana runes necessary to negate the suppression from the mana array. Lance noticed that after the suppression disappeared his mana root was almost upgrading making his breakthrough to the next level.

..............................

 After a while, all the mana gathering around him suddenly entered his body. At the same time, the mana entered him, his body changed accordingly. His bones became sturdier, his muscles and ligaments became more flexible, but more importantly, his brain became more developt.

Lance was awake when his body began to evolve feeling its every change. His bones breaking and reforming, tendons and ligaments tearing while regenerating at the same time. He shouted in pain but while his mind was full pain just like a switch it was soon replaced with rage and hatred.

This pain wasn't anything like when his father died the way he died. Thinking of that his mood took a turn for worse, completely offuscating the happiness from breaking through. Arcs of lightning began to surge from Lance as they began to crash against the reinforced walls of the room. 

His rage only turned from 'uncontrollable' to 'controllable' after fearing the potential damage that it could cause to the machine and the mana circuits. He was a bit astonished for his large mood changes because although the young appearance he had a mind of a ninety-year-old man. After some reflection, he blamed his hormones and the fact the in his past life he didn't really have something that could be called a family.

He knew that the time he lost the mind inside the sewers was probably wasted. All that time spent mumbling in English wasn't done without any reason, it was some a thing that made him think faster.

Lance stood up and walked to the machine. That machine was the main console of the A.I [CAT]. 

"[CAT] I need you to do an assessment on your capabilities."

[Yes, master. CAT can analyze and compile information while deriving other data from the collected data.]

Lance took some of the books about the history of the continent, some famous mages biographies, and some general magic knowledge. He hoped that CAT could be based on this infer about what was the most powerful path that someone with his path could take.

Ever since he had awakened his ~Lightning Root he only had ever learned how to do some mana manipulation. He could only discharge his mana in close quarters. Although it was powerful enough it couldn't be called a 'spell'.

He wanted to be able to summon lightning capable of incinerating anything and for that he had to learn spells. He had already planed for CAT to derive some 1 and 2 tier spells for him but for the other tiers he couldn't because that kind of information wasn't anywhere other than the Mage Academies.

Spell tiers were divided into 10 tiers. Tier 1 was those that anyone with a mana root could learn without any restriction on the element, like Mana Barrier or Push. Tier 2 there were still some spells that didn't have any restriction based on elements, like Feather Fall, Float, or Magic Missile. But it was here that the first element-based spells appeared, for example: for those with a fire root there was Fireball and Fire Shield, one for attack and one for defense; for water roots, Waterball and Water Shield; for earth roots, Earth Stomp and Earth Shield; and for wind roots, Wind Blade and Wind Shield.

About the other more rare elements those were only available at the specific academies. Lance knew that Lightning was one of the rarest elements and due to the delicate story about it there weren't any spells in any kind of the book. He knew that it would take some time for CAT to derive the 1 and 2 tier spells so he walked out of the underground space and headed to the R&D division lead by the dwarves.

..........

Groath and Bodvar were discussing some crafting and processing skills when they heard Lance enter the room. They ran over to him and Bodvar said, "Master, the crafting and metal processing skills that you taught us are simply groundbreaking. We never have seen such refine skills in our entire life."

During the time in the mountain range, Lance had taught some of the processing techniques from Earth. He hoped that they could implement both the techniques from Earth and BloodIron Continent for his needs.

He looked at the happy beardy faces of the dwarves and asked with a stone-like face, "Have the thing I asked you to build done yet?"

Both the dwarves were still discussing the intricacies of the techniques when they heard Lance's question. Groath coughed and said with a clear voice while at the same time directing Lance to one of the many workstations in the room, "At first it was a bit difficult to make a weapon with a metal that could withstand that heat without deforming and could be used many times before breaking. But after trying both techniques, master's, and ours, we manage to create a metal that could be used. Although still experimental we manage to create the thing you asked us to."

Groath finished talking at the same time two of the other blacksmiths in the room brought a metal case. They put it on top of the table and backed out. Lance approached the table and opened the metal case. When he saw the thing inside he nodded in confirmation.