Chapter 156

After the little danger with Mana Gems, risking revealing my ignorance, I decided to let her take the lead in the conversation. “So, what kind of accident caused you to be lost in here?”

“An unfortunate one,” she stated with a frown, though that frown didn’t last long as I filled the pool with more of my mana.

[-613 Mana]

She took a deep breath, the mana density of the artificial pool decreasing significantly. “There’s not much to talk about, I was flying around in the Desolate Outlands for a mission, when I accidentally came across a raiding party of those Eternals, and I had to jump into the dimensional rift that they came out, and found myself in this accursed place.”

Interesting, I thought, her words giving me yet another information, suggesting the Eternals was conducting more aggression than I expected, underlining my lack of information even more.

Therefore making the sexy dragon in front of me, busy absorbing mana, even more important. I slipped even more mana to the pool, curious of the speed she continued to devour my mana. How big was her mana capacity?

[-942 Mana]

So, while she continued her story — which, unfortunately, focused on the details of her fight against the undead rather than the details of her life — I decided to follow what exactly she was doing with all the mana.

I expected to follow the mana into a reservoir, similar to the core that held our mana together in our soul space, ready to be used, but that turned out to be a complete inaccuracy.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have any reservoir. She had many, spread around her body, but I doubted that even their collective reservoirs would hold a thousand points of mana. And she had already absorbed more than that, yet continued to absorb.

[-1282 Mana]

Curious, I let even more mana infuse the water, but this time, watching even more carefully, maintaining an active connection with the flow.

Distracted by her own story and the comfort of the bath, she missed that particular detail, and I was free to follow the trail of the mana. I followed it until her bones, only for it to disappear at that point.

My eyes widened at the sudden disappearance, though luckily, I was able to hide it as a reaction to a particularly exciting part of her story. Inwardly, I focused my full attention to the exact moment of disappearance, to see whether she was somehow sending it to a different dimension.

The answer turned out to be no. The more accurate definition was that her bones were absorbing the mana, but it was assimilated with such a great speed that I had almost missed it. Curious, I paid careful attention to the point of absorption, and after a while, I noticed her bones were slowly transforming under the renewing flow of mana.

The transformation itself was quite mysterious. While I wasn’t free to use my Biomancy abilities directly on her to assess the problem more carefully, I could get a rough understanding of the transformation that was going on her bones, and whatever the exact nature of the transformation was, its magnitude was impossible to deny. The power they radiated, the potential it implied, impressively significant.

Interestingly, it wasn’t a quick transformation. Far from it. All the mana she had absorbed barely allowed her to transform a fleck of her bones, making me question just how much mana she would require for the complete transformation. To properly assess that, I needed a better understanding of what was going on, or a deeper analysis — which was hard to achieve without alerting her.

Still, my guess was easily in the millions.

“So, you have no idea why the undead suddenly decided to ambush and chase you that aggressively?” I asked, after she had mentioned the fifth ambush she managed to defeat before her eventual capture. I had already assumed it was less about the ritual, and more about the deal between Zokras and the Eternals.

“It was probably for the ritual they were doing?” she answered lazily, confirming that she had no idea why the Eternals were showing a special interest in her. I believed her, because I doubted that, in her relaxed state, she could slip into a lie.

I hummed, letting the silence rule the situation even as I tried to decide what to ask next. It was a difficult one. Unfortunately, her lengthy explanation about the ambushes she had gone through didn’t really help me, not in terms of understanding her limits...

And certainly not to understand why someone was so determined to kill her.

I let the silence stretch for a moment before I asked the next question. “So, what was the mission that made you end in Desolate Outlands?”

[Level: 31 Experience: 493210 / 496000

Strength: 46 Charisma: 63

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 6226 / 6324 Mana: 6823 / 7750 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [100/100]

Expert Speech [75/75]

Expert Craft [75/75]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (1/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Cornelia - Level 22/26]

[Helga - Level 22/26]