Chapter 63 - Vortexes And Runes

A few days had already passed for Rohan after the duel with Daidras, and as he couldn't endure it anymore, he had decided this day to go alone in the forest.

His goal was simple, and all he wanted to do was to go meditate and create his first vortex as soon as possible. He didn't know how much time it would take him to do so, but that wouldn't be an easy feat.

A lot of warriors, even some who had become rank 5 in a really short time, found a wall in front of them when they try to become an Intermediate Warrior. Will alone would suffice, talent and effort where necessary.

A long time ago, Rohan had read the story about a mighty Supreme Warrior. This one, with mediocre talent and some shortcomings to construct his meridians, couldn't perfect them enough to become a stronger warrior.

In the end, as his weak meridians couldn't support any vortexes, he had come up with one of the worst ideas anyone would have thought about. He had crippled himself.

He had destroyed his five meridians, even the one connected to his skull. The pain was without a doubt the most extreme one someone could feel, and Rohan who had already lived through a mana combustion could only imagine it.

After destroying every meridian of his body, and at the frontier between life and death, he began the same tough meditation he once had done, but in a much more painful way. He had waited months and months for his body to heal, but seeing that it couldn't be like it was before, he had no choice but to construct his meridians with such a damaged body.

He continued and continued, until one day, with sheer will and effort, his five meridians were newly opened. They were now much more solid than the ones before, but his body was on the brink of breaking apart.

But he didn't care, and under a pain ever-growing, he constructed his vortexes. The first one was a success, then the second, until the last one. He had taken decades and decades for each of them, always pushing back the doors of death with each ranking up.

And now, this warrior had a status inside the capital of the most powerful Empire of the human and was dimmed to be the Supreme Warrior with the most willpower of the world.

But this story was just a story. Rohan, sitting on a fresh carpet of grass under the protecting shadow of a tree fighting the sunlight for him, pushed these thoughts away.

Now was the time to continue where he had last stopped before his encounter with the Blackwolf clan. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the mana resting inside his chest. With incredible ease, he dragged it toward the right and made it rush inside his first meridian.

Once the thread made of mana reached the end of the meridian, where he had connected it, he saw his previous work.

There, the entrance was slightly larger than the rest of the meridian, and without wasting more time, he began the tough work. He manipulated the mana and made it turn on itself. He was forced to do so slowly, as the area kept swelling bit by bit.

His mana decreased over time as it was used in the process and the result was so pitiful for so much time and mana used that Rohan felt a pinch in his heart.

What a warrior should do to become an Intermediate warrior is in theory relatively simple. It was to use the mana and to make a vortex appear where the meridian was connected.

To do so, Rohan just needed to keep increasing the size of the opening with the same moves. And a vortex would appear at the end, permitting the warrior to increase his mana total and the speed at which it regenerated.

It seemed easy, but it wasn't at all. The first key point was that the meridian needed to be tough enough and well made to support such pressure. The most important one was that the moves used to make the mana turned on itself must be precisely the same. Too many variations and the enlarged part would simply be to fragilize and crumble on itself.

Every time, there were a lot of Beginner Warriors who had destroyed their chances to become an Intermediate one because they wanted to get faster, but precipitation was never a good way to advance.

Rohan understood this perfectly, but with only the memories of the book he had read and without anyone to guide him, it was difficult to grasp and to know if he was going too fast or not. In the end, he was forced to move by himself. Once he would try to become an Advanced Warrior, he didn't even have the slightest idea where he should go to find the method.

After an hour or so, the session of meditation was finished. Or at least, it was the case for half of the session Rohan had envisaged to do.

He shifted his attention from the mana core to the mana stone, where another job was waiting for him.

The second rune was much more ridiculously hard than the first one, and each stroke needed all his mana to engrave it on the violet mana stone. He had already drawn 16 of them and was now preparing to draw the 17th one.

He had already lost a few weeks among the Blackwolf Clan, and his training was thus harder to continue. He was even trying to learn each stroke of the rune whenever he could, especially at night since nobody could spy on him easily, but he couldn't do it with peace in mind. Even though he had already made 16 strokes, he still had 623 more to do, and that would take him a long time before he would become a rank 2 Beginner Wizard.

Even if he could openly make his session every time he could, he would take a few months to finish it. Each stroke needed all his mana, which was 10 points.

As a wizard, the mana resting on his mana stone only needed five hours to be fully regenerated, and this meant that at best, he could only do three, or maybe four sessions a day if he was foolish enough. But even if he could do it, he would still need almost five months to finish it.

This simple thought made Rohan sigh, and he nearly swore when he remembered that right now, he was only at one session a day.

He willed the mana to move the way he ordered it and began the engraving. Since he only had to draw one stroke, he found the whole operation painfully easy and dull.

It wasn't like the first rune, where he could draw it in a single breath, with a beautiful dance. Here, he could only advance slowly, one step after another. He finished only a few minutes later, void of any mana.

He was tempted to use his weak mana potions to continue, but he didn't have many of them anyway. That wouldn't change anything.

As he was going to stand up to leave, a strange thought materialized in his mind.

"If I drink a mana potion right, which one will be filled first? The mana stone or the mana core?"