Chapter 48 - No Mana Stone?

The floor was filled with a lot of paper with drawings on them. There were a lot of these drawings, but all of them possessed the same characteristic: they were all describing the head in various angles with a line traversing and heading toward the top of the skull.

All these sketches were the ones that Rohan had drawn. This one, standing in the middle of them while stroking his chin, thought about what he should do.

He had reproduced all his knowledge about the path he needed to take to fully open the fifth meridian, as well as the method used later for the Intermediate ranks: the creation of the vortex.

What he was trying to do was to decide which way he should take. Since a few days already, he had begun to form his fifth meridian, but one day he would have to decide to go directly toward the place to connect it and open the meridian or make a detour to see if he had a mana stone or not.

He had thought about it and remembered all the data that he could, and in the end, he thought that it was feasible.

If there wasn't a mana stone, then actually everything should be good. He would be able to continue toward the marked place. The only drawback that it should have, was that his meridian wouldn't be centered and thus the effect of the skill Overload wouldn't be as good as the other warriors.

But he would be able to manage it, in one way or another.

The problem was in fact if there was indeed a mana stone. If there truly was one, then he would have to bypass it in a way to continue toward the place where he would connect the meridian. But he didn't know how to do it.

Of course, he could simply, once he had reached the stone, continue along the side of the mana stone and just go toward his targeted place.

But he didn't know what effect the contact between the mana stone and the meridian would have. Maybe there wasn't any problem, but since he had nobody to ask, and no way to know, he preferred to think about all situations. But even if he thought about it, he just couldn't find an answer.

The skill of a Beginner Warrior was an explosion of mana inside the meridian. The mana filled the whole link before sipping through it to enter the body and reinforced it for a small time.

But what if the mana stone was in contact with the meridian? Wouldn't the mana touch it and maybe enter inside the stone? But the mana of a warrior and the mana of a mage were fundamentally different.

He sighed. There wasn't any help in the wizard's book he had, and neither was there in the warrior's book he had learned before. Of course, no one could help, and his master was a Paladin, he didn't know anything about warriors, much less about wizards.

The only thing he could think was that he would somehow do something about it the d-day.

He left the room without tidying up anything and went down the stairs, no need to think too much about it.

The days passed and then the weeks before whole months disappeared in the fast flow of the time.

In contrast to what Rohan was expecting, no one had searched for any trouble for him, even after the party when he had insulted a whole group of pampered rotten princesses. Of course, he knew that it was because of Delia who had helped him a lot to salvage the feelings of the nobles.

Without him and the fact that Rohan had still helped during the operation to kill all the bandits, he would probably be already chased off the city, or even worse.

What Rohan didn't know though, was that even Delia wasn't enough to calm down everyone and that Elia had also helped behind the scenes. All in all, his life was pretty peaceful. Peaceful, but still somewhat harsh.

All his days were packed and he didn't rest, not even once. He forged each day, and now he was even capable of making a dagger that wouldn't make Horim frown of disgust.

He still trained every day with a sword and could feel that he had learned a lot. He was much stronger and faster than before, and the control he had over his body was simply not comparable with the days when he was only a rank 1 Beginner Warrior.

He was even sure that he could have beat Makin in only a few moves now, of course, he judged that the captain of his guards still had better swordsmanship than him, but he still would have been able to crush him. Of course, it was as if he was still alive.

His other activities were also a few hours each day when he would learn all the strokes of the rune to become a rank 1 Beginner Wizard. It would of course be useless if he didn't have a mana stone, but honestly, with a spirit of 11, he had difficulties thinking he couldn't have one.

And of course, the other time was taken by his two sessions of meditation, the morning and the night. He had already used the weak mana compression potion that the daughter of the viscount Macker had given to him. After all, it would be too dangerous to use it in the end since there was the risk of damaging a mana stone.

And like that, more than a year had passed. Rohan was looking much more like an adult, and his face was looking the same as his father's. He didn't have anything from his mother, not that it pained him. In any way, today would be the day when he would have the answer.

The creation of the fifth meridian was one of the tougher ones, and even him, who had taken only two years or so to become a rank 4 Beginner Warrior, had taken that much time to reach the area where the potential mana stone should be. From his calculation, it should be during this session that he would be able to have the answer.

He closed his eyes and controlled the mana like he always did. He was now much more experienced, and even an Advance Warrior would be shocked to see with how much ease this young man could manipulate his mana. He sent it toward his meridian, and with stress going stronger inside his heart, he awaited the result.

The mana reached the end, and like that, began to dig inside the body of Rohan. He was going slowly, with the most perfect control he could do. That was because he was now manipulating the mana inside his head, and even more, in a direction that wasn't in the books he had learned. So now, he was extra careful.

The mana dug and dug, and each time it advanced, it decreased to construct the path and reinforced it, creating bit by bit the meridian.

The more time passed, the more Rohan felt stressed. His hands were even shaking on his legs. But there was nothing. He couldn't find anything, not even the shadow of the stone, and soon, he felt short of mana. The session was over.

In the end, he didn't have a mana stone. No! That couldn't be right! How could he have such a mighty spirit if there wasn't any stone? Was he wrong about the place the stone should be found?

He gritted his teeth and took out the bag from his side. Without caring about anything, he took out 4 weak mana potions and gulped them down in an instant. He didn't care, he would even search through all his brain if he had to!

The mana inside his mana core came back and in no time, he was ready again for another session. He sent all of his transparent mist compacted inside the meridian and with his heart throbbing at a crazy speed in his chest, he carefully continued to open his meridian.

Even if he was stressed, he couldn't make the mistake of losing control here. He was already taking a risk by changing the path of his meridian, if he wasn't even careful when doing so, then he would have merited to destroy his brain in a second.

The new mana replaced the ancient one and took back the task. It slowly crawled forward, making Rohan feel the same pain as ever. Since he had begun the last meridian, he had felt pain like never before.

But compared to the day when he had used mana combustion and had been obliged to crack his meridian, it was truly nothing.

Suddenly, he widened his eyes. Before his eyes, or more exactly before his mana, inside of his head, he saw it. A blue-purple wall. Something that should never be found inside the brain of anyone. But it was there, he was right!

He didn't even finish the session of mediation and called back the mana that wasn't used and took it back inside his mana core. He opened his eyes. A big smile bloomed on his face, he couldn't help it as it was probably the best day of his whole life. The value of his spirit wasn't for nothing!

He was able to become a legendary wizard. He possessed a mana stone!