A Relatively Powerful Mage

Imri spent the following day recovering his mana. It irked him that he could only hunt a Cliff Drake every other day. He could have absorbed mana from the communal Espeonite crystal near the nexus, but he didn’t feel this qualified as an emergency. It also wasn’t filling as fast as he would have hoped, many people had found uses for their mana. Virtually all forms of crafts used mana and cores as a base, even the builders used mana to reinforce key materials in much the same way the crafters did.

It was for this reason he desperately wanted to gain a more industrial production of mana. While Zathri said it was far beyond their own skills to create such an item, Imri had surpassed him quite a while ago. He also knew the mana density could easily support a mana farm. He had commissioned the base material construction from Avery, and the man was doing his best to fulfill the order. Imri did all he could to help the man succeed, going as far as buying him several level 10 F-grade cores to personally absorb to jump-start his blacksmith profession. It had taken some convincing for him to accept the gift, but Imri had pointed out he had more money than he knew what to do with and Avery had eventually relented and accepted the items.

When two days had passed Avery was still working on the item, along with numerous other smaller creations that were essential to the building efforts, something Imri had told him not to put on hold. This meant Imri was forced to work on a secondary project in the interim. If he was going to hunt another Cliff Drake, he didn’t want all its parts to be sold for credits. For that to be achieved, they would need a tool powerful enough to cut through the nearly impenetrable hide of the monster without destroying it in the process.

He inspected a well-made utility knife, carefully inspecting the modifications. A small piece of Espeonite, cut from a larger crystal using his spatial tear spell, had been socketed into a small recess. Thin lines of gold ran like veins from the crystal to the edge of the blade, forming leylines. Imri got to work, carefully inscribing each rune into the handle and edge of the blade. He went slowly, knowing that every amount of efficiency gained would be important with an item like this.

Despite having taken a while, the enchantment wasn’t overly complex. It had a standard voice activation feature, as well as some standard runes to accept mana into and out of the Espeonite mana source. Most of the work had gone into defining the primary rune for the enchantment, a rune of spatial tear. Specifically, he had defined it to materialize millimeters from the knife's edge with the frame of reference being the knife. This meant that as the knife moved the tear moved with it, essentially acting as an extension of the blade itself, an extension that would cleanly cut through anything it came into contact with without any resistance.

Imri carefully inspected the nearly finished product, double and triple checking his work. It proved unnecessary, as he could find no flaws in his concepts or implementation. Imri then poured a large amount of his remaining mana into the Espeonite, knowing the mana requirements for this tool would be no joke.

“Dimensional blade,” Imri said, feeling like an anime protagonist. The thin black line appeared, seemingly on the edge of the knife though Imri knew there was some small gap between the knife and tear. He slowly slashed through the air, watching as the tear followed the physical blade. He was about to test the knife by destroying something, but before he could manage the spatial tear disappeared and space righted itself. Despite the nearly 100 mana he had poured into it, the blade had only remained active for a few seconds. This was before the enchantment was made permanent with a core, the process usually degrading the overall mana efficiency of the finished product.

Imri sighed and took out the baseball-sized level 36 D-grade core from the Cliff Drake. He had hoped to save this for his next project, but he would hopefully be hunting another before then. Imri didn’t second guess himself, using the core to finish the enchantment.

Item Name Tier/Rank Mana Efficiency Description

Utility Knife of Spatial Tearing 1E 184 A utility knife enchanted with the spatial tear rune anchored to the relative motion of the blade. It is activated with a verbal command.

Achievement Upgraded Rank New Bonus to Attributes | Improvement

Master Crafter 2 (+1) .2% (+.1%)

Trait Upgraded New Rank New Description

Runic Crafting E Gives an understanding of how runes work and how to create them. Improves the rate at which new runes are learned by 5.12% (+.12%). Crafting Efficiency of runic enchantments increased by 1.53% (+.03%).

Imri smiled, while it wasn’t the huge gain that had come from his battle with the Cliff Drake, it was progress. The enchantments had somewhat improved by using the powerful core, though slightly less than Imri had hoped. Still, it had improved and the core still had a decent amount of essence in it, perhaps enough for his other project.

He hadn’t completely exhausted his mana, so the next day he was able to go Cliff Drake hunting. This time he wasn’t alone, he had insisted that Caroline accompany him so they could both gain a better group hunter achievement. His preference would have been to bring as many people as possible and still gain the title. Unfortunately, everyone else had a good chance of getting killed, splattered like Lenny if the monster decided to divebomb them instead of Imri. Even if they weren’t targeted, none of their weapons were powerful enough to deal any damage, so they wouldn’t be considered contributing members unless they drew the monster's attention, which would get them killed, or supported in some other way. This left only Caroline, whose curses were subtle and had a good deal of range. Imri doubted she would be able to contribute much, she had a curse that enfeebled the target, reducing their primary physical stats, but it wasn’t a large amount, especially when considering the colossal number of stat points the Cliff Drake surely possessed. Still, it should be enough for Caroline to be considered a contributor to the fight.

To make sure she was up for it, Imri handed her 2 level 10 cores, intending for her to level up her farseer witch class. Caroline had always needed cores for crafting, so she had yet to absorb any for levels. As with everyone he gifted cores to, it took a bit of convincing for them to accept them. While they had been considered a precious resource just a few days ago, Imri now had more than enough credits and no immediate use for them. Caroline used them, gaining a level from each, bringing her witch class up to level 5.

They made their way to the site of the previous battle. The Cliff Drakes were still there, basking in the sunlight as they effortlessly clung to the sheer cliff wall. Imri cautiously approached, nearing the point where he had been attacked the last time, Caroline hanging about fifty meters further back. He reached the point, expecting another attack at any moment. It never came, the Cliff Drakes seemed utterly indifferent to his presence. He moved a few meters closer and nothing happened. He took another step, this time scuffing his boot along the ground to make some noise. That got one of Cliff Drake’s attention and it lazily stared at him. For a moment it didn’t move, and Imri was beginning to think the lizard-like creature would go back to sunbathing. Instead, after a brief hesitation, it pushed off the cliff wall, diving down towards Imri.

Imri backpedaled, keeping the fast-approaching Cliff Drake in his view at all times, but getting a little distance from the rest of them. As with the last time, he activated his Time Dilation item, giving him a better chance to react at the last moment possible. It was especially important with Caroline around, if he disappeared before the Cliff Drake had fully committed to its attack, there was a small chance it could attack Caroline instead. So, Imri pushed the timing of his Boundless Step till the last possible moment, when the Cliff Drake was only a few scant meters from him. He cast the spell and vanished just in time, the powerful jaws of the crocodile-like creature snapping into the air. As with the last time, he didn’t hesitate to pour the majority of his remaining mana into a meter-long spatial tear that knifed through the air in a vertical slash. He hoped Caroline had managed to land her curse, but he couldn’t have afforded to wait.

Instead of cleanly bisecting it in two, like he had the first one, this time it was slightly off-center and at an angle away from center mass. The tear still did incredible damage, shearing off a large portion of its snout and body, including one of its front legs. Blood gushed from the wound, but to Imri’s horror, he could visibly see the Cliff Drake’s wound start to heal itself.

The Cliff Drake rushed towards Imri, still moving with surprising speed despite missing one of its legs. Imri had just enough time to activate his boundless step for a second time, appearing several meters behind it. This time he ran, cutting at angles so the Cliff Drake couldn’t charge him in a straight line. He wasn’t sure if the monster pursued him, so he kept running for several minutes. He also lost track of Caroline, though he was fairly certain she had the good sense not to stick around. He ran for the better of half an hour before his FP neared zero and he had to pause to catch his breath. That’s when he noticed the notifications.

Achievement Upgraded New Rank Primary Stats

Group Hunter 20 (+13) 1% (+.65%)

Imri Padar has reached level 19 in Relativity Mage (1E)

Imri Padar has reached level 19 in Primordial (1F)

Imri Padar has reached level 13 in Runic Engineer (2F)

Primary Stats Gained New Value

+1 Strength 120

+1 Agility 93

+1 Constitution 107

+4 Intelligence 169

+2 Willpower 146

+1 Charisma 98

Secondary Stats Gained

+3 HP 134

+3 FP 102

+16 MP 297

+15 Mana Efficiency 303

+17 Crafting Efficiency 326

Imri was a bit confused by how he managed to defeat the level 37 Cliff Drake. While his spatial tear had done enough damage to instantly kill anything that existed pre-integration, the Cliff Drake was something else entirely. Not only had it been resilient enough to survive the attack, it had been in good enough shape to attack. What's more, Imri had seen its incredible natural regeneration already start to take effect.

“I was wondering how long you were going to keep running,” Caroline managed to say as she was breathing even harder than he was. Evidently, her FP pool was even smaller than his own.

“What happened?” Imri asked, his own FP recovering quickly as he focused on his breathing.

“I managed to land a second curse on it, the same one I landed on the Umbral Tiger. That slowed its natural regeneration and intensified its blood loss, either of which might have been enough to kill it eventually with a third of its body missing. It still only just died a few minutes ago, it kept chasing you until it finally dropped,” Caroline explained.

“I guess it was a good thing you were with me. I’m guessing you got quite a bit of experience then?”

“3 levels and the achievement, putting my Farseer Witch class to level 8, though my class is still F-grade, my quest to rank it up involves cursing things for hours, something I haven’t even come close to doing yet,” Caroline explained. Imri whistled, she was now the second highest level person when adding all types of levels together, with her alchemist profession at level 12. The unassuming alchemist had become a vital part of Celestia, and Imri was glad for it.

They brought in several people to help retrieve the various pieces of the creature. This time they were able to harvest the corpse a bit more effectively, using the utility knife of spatial tearing, though it took the combined efforts of everyone present to keep the knife powered. By the end of the day everyone was exhausted, but they had completed the harvesting and returned to Celestia. Caroline claimed the same components she had the first time, scale, heart, tooth, and several vials of its blood. The meat was butchered, though they still had Cliff Drake meat frozen on ice from the last harvest. Its hide was skinned, to be turned into leather that could eventually become boots, armor, and bags. Its dagger-sized teeth would be turned into weapons. Several of its longer bones were extracted as well, even though their exact purpose was unknown, it never hurt to have a nearly indestructible material on hand. With most of the Cliff Drake stripped off or missing, the remains sold for a small fraction of what the nearly intact carcass had. Imri attempted to transfer the credits to Caroline, which she refused.

“I already claimed everything I needed and you only took the core. Besides, I might have helped kill it, but we both know you did most of the work,” she pointed out.

“You're entitled to half of the parts, minus a small contribution to those who helped haul it. Just because I’m giving away most of it, doesn’t mean you have to,” Imri said. Those who had gotten free handouts looked sheepish, but none seemed inclined to argue they shouldn’t have gotten what they did. There was still too much of the supply chain that hadn’t been paid a fair wage for everything to run smoothly. This was something Imri had been discussing with the council, and he fully intended to pay everyone who contributed to Celestia a fair wage. Their complete inability to determine just what constituted fair was the only point still needing to be worked out.

“Let the porters take a quarter of the money. You’re not the only one who needs to sacrifice for Celestia, this is all of our homes and we all succeed together,” Caroline explained. This was met with raucous cheering from those gathered nearby. Imri smiled as a mortified Caroline wilted from the attention.