Chapter 105 Lessons 2

Jay couldn’t use spell channels, and Viladore realised Jay’s mana was different. He decided he would test something.

“Hmm…” he scratched his chin, staring at Jay. It was quite a long stare so Jay looked away after feeling a little awkward.

“Show me that spell you did. The one with the tooth.”

Jay nodded, taking out a tooth.

He channelled it like usual and aimed at a rock, all while Viladore continued to stare at Jay and his hand.

*BOOM~ – flit flit flit flit*

A crack formed on the rock as the unstable tooth spell exploded, and little bits of its shrapnel were sent everywhere, creating more gashes on other nearby rocks.

Jay looked up, expecting some praise since his spell was clearly much stronger now that it was level 2, but he saw Viladore staring at his hand with a creepy look.

Obviously, Viladore was deep in thought. Jay couldn’t tell, but Viladore was still analysing Jay’s spell hand.

“Viladore?”

“Mmh…” he didn’t respond with more than a grunt, only rolling his tongue in his cheek and squinting as he thought about what to do..

“Why can’t I sense his mana…” he thought to himself with a furrowed brow, “Usually there is some residual mana after a person makes it their own… but with him, there is none at all…”

Usually when someone activates a spell, there would be some ambient mana mixed in too.

“…Could it be due to his monster class?”

Suddenly, Viladore had an idea. He put away the red wands and pulled out something quite different.

The wand was some sort of stone. It was black, thin, and had a hoop at one end; It looked like a stone spoon with a hole in it, completely useless for soup.

Half-way down the shaft, numerous tiny bones and feathers were tied around in one spot with a single leather binding, forming a band which made Jay think it was used for some sort of dark, barbaric woodland magic.

At the very bottom was a crude-looking metal hook. “Probably used to rip out more of those tiny bones” thought Jay. He was unable to identify the bones, but guessed that they probably came from bat wings or rat legs; simply too skinny to be something like finger bones.

Viladore held it in his hand and gazed at it for a moment. It was like he was suspicious of it, but after a moment he held it out to Jay.

“Here, try this…” he looked at it mysteriously as he handed it to Jay.

Jay reached out and grabbed it, immediately analysing it.

<[Goblin Wand]>

[Taken from a goblin shaman. Often kept as trophies as they serve no purpose to humans and alike.]

“It doesn’t say spell channel though?”

“Just try it.” Viladore said bluntly.

Jay closed his eyes and began the process again – gathering mana into his hand and pushing it into the wand.

This time, it felt much different. As the mana coursed towards his hand, the wand seemed to suck it from his hand into itself. It was like the wand was magnetised, and greedily gobbled up Jay’s mana; he didn’t even need to try.

After a moment, a small black orb began to appear in the centre of the hoop.

In the middle of the wand, more feathers began to grow under the tiny bones, pushing out the old ones. The new feathers were black, while the old ones were a mix of yellow and rustic red.

Jay continued to push his mana into his hand until he felt that the wand finally stopped absorbing it.

Viladore stood idly by, but as soon as the black orb appeared his eyes widened.

Jay looked up at him, raising a brow at Viladore’s expression – who quickly changed his face back to his usual expression of detached aloofness and cleared his throat.

“It seems like you can only channel through monster wands…”

“Monster wands?”

“The spell channels that monsters use, they’re different to ours since monster mana is different also – monsters convert mana into a different form. It results in them casting spells without much effort, but they also require different tools. As you know, monsters aren’t the smartest, so their spells are more instinctive, as is their mana. Their spells are more powerful, and they never need to practice to get stronger… or at least they never think to practice.”

He continued “We can get stronger than them and evolve our spells through practice and testing however, giving us an advantage in the long term.”

“So that’s why the red wand didn’t work? That’s why I can use a goblin wand even though it doesn’t say it can be used as a spell channel?”

“Yes… I think so. The goblins use those wands as spell channels, but it doesn’t actually tell us it’s a spell channel because we simply can’t use them as such… or at least other humans cannot. The system assumes we don’t receive monster classes.” Viladore shrugged.

A mischievous smile appeared on Jay’s face as he realised something.

“So… I both have the stronger instinctive mana and can also practise and test spells?”

Viladore now realised the implications of this too.

“Yes…” he smiled helplessly as he shook his head.

“You can keep the goblin wand,” he added. “It’s useless to me… in fact, you can probably purchase much better ones for a much cheaper price since they’re useless to… normal people.”

“Awesome. I’ll have to stop by Lillian.” Jay smiled.

To anyone else, this would have been quite a shocking discovery, but Viladore still had his cube sitting on his desk, it was growing while he was teaching and it made everything else fade into the background, irrelevant.

“Well, those are the lessons for today. See you in a week.” he walked towards the door in the back of the association.

“Oh, and come back tomorrow. I want to test something.” he said just before he slipped inside through the door.

Jay nodded while he was still sitting there, looking at his new toy with a grin.

“I can’t wait to learn a spell…. Hmm… My helminth has a spell. Maybe I can copy it?” he wondered as he gazed at the tiny black orb.

After a moment, the orb dissipated into tiny ripples in the air as it disappeared.

Jay was about to bring out his bone helminth but first he looked around cautiously, then decided it may not be the safest place to bring out the parasitic undead worm creature – especially without Viladore who would be able to sense if people were coming.

“I wonder if Viladore can sense it when it’s underground…” Jay thought, wondering how far someone like Viladore could extend his mana sense ability.

“Perhaps if it’s deep underground he will just think it’s some sort of natural creature.”

Viladore had already left by now, so Jay decided to check next time.

The [Sentinel form] of the worm summon skill said it was undetectable while it was hiding as an amulet around his neck, and Jay had successfully confirmed this – Viladore and Margaret didn’t say anything while he walked into the association with it, so it was clear that its presence was completely erased.

Now that Jay had some time to think, he addressed another matter that he had left till later.

“Now… I was saving a skill point until I got to level 10. I can’t use it for any of my new passive skills or the helminth, so I guess I will put it into either undead mastery or the raise skill.”

*rrrRRrr*

Suddenly, his stomach grumbled.

“Hmm. I will consider where to put it after visiting Lillian and getting some lunch.”

Jay stood up and stretched his legs before heading back inside.

“Hopefully Lillian has some monster wands here at Losla, otherwise I will have to wait for them to be delivered.”

Jay headed straight to the trading area.