As much as I wanted to start working on my new mana-resistant material, I decided to focus on sothing different. Another skill that I had received during my most recent class upgrade.
[Identify (Common) - 1]
If things went as planned, Identify would be a critical part of my future experints.
Unfortunately, just like the Command skill, I didn’t have much public resource I could use to my benefit. Though, this ti, it was less about the confidentiality, and more about the way people used it. Most of the classes that had it worked as scouts, and for them, the ability to correctly assess people’s levels and classes was a lifesaver.
That, combined with the limited number of people who had similar skills that I could talk with in the first place, ant I was alone.
Luckily, while I was alone, I was not helpless. I still had my Observe, which was exactly how I wanted my skill to develop, only not limited to analyzing tal and other alloys. I wanted to be able to assess not only the other materials, but also the atmospheric mana.
And, if things went well, maybe even observing that mysterious, corrupting energy.
The forge was quiet, enchantnts already in place. This ti, the aim wasn’t to hide what was going on, but to keep the sound out. The last thing I needed was for my attention to slip while I was playing with my skills.
Once the isolation was in place, I had activated several wards to contain the mana inside, and started to increase the density, creating an easy target for the skill. Only after that, I closed my eyes, and reached inside, activating my Advanced Observe, focusing on the mana-filled air in front of .
At this point, I didn’t need the assistance of the materials to activate my Perks. I could invoke them directly. That didn’t an they were useful. Without anything tallic to target, the Perk didn’t provide its usual deluge of information. That was the point.
I kept my attention focused on the air, and reached for Identify, my lowest skill by far, and switched it. I still targeted the mana-dense air, but switched the skill. A tricky operation, one that I doubted I would be able to achieve without the familiarity of looking into my soul due to the dungeon connection.
But, it ca with a beautiful reward.
[Identify (Common) 1 -> Mana Detection 1 (Rare)]
The jump didn’t surprise . What surprised was the flood of information that followed, the skill still locked to the mana-dense air in front of .
[Mana Detection (Rare) 1 -> 17]
[Perk Options — Mana Awareness / Elental Detection / Assessnt ]
A tough call, I decided as I looked at the available perks. It hadn’t been my intention to actually improve the skill. Unfortunately, in that rare case, my stats actually worked against , my high perception giving the skill enough information to push it to the next stage in a re second.
In the end, I picked Mana Awareness. Once that was done, I split the room into multiple sections, each separated by different amounts of mana — one even low enough to dip below detection limit — and used the new skill, curious about the information it would provide.
[Mana Detection (Rare) 17 -> 22]
It was a flood of information. Essence allowed to sense the mana in the air, but it was always a vague feeling, like trying to see through an icy glass, not to ntion the other limits, like being unable to sense when mana presence dropped down to a certain point.
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I expected the result to change using a skill that seed to be designed for that purpose, but the result was even better than I had expected. It wasn’t just a cloud switching between liquid and gas, with a vague set of attributes felt by Wisdom. It was far closer to using Observe on tal. A detailed breakdown of the structure, including the flaws.
And, its accuracy had already surpassed Observe. Maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised, as Observe was rely a Perk, while Mana Detection was a standalone class skill, one that was supported by a dedicated stat.
Emboldened by the success, I was tempted to push the limit. The question was, in which direction should I push? “I wonder if it’s possible to support it with multiple stats,” I wondered.
Technically, I knew that it was possible, as it was the main principle of Runic Forge. Using that required four of my stats, Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, and Intelligence actively; and two others, Vitality, and Essence, indirectly.
Compared to that, Mana Awareness was only using two. Perception directly, and Essence indirectly.
I closed my eyes, trying to reach inward, to sohow involve Wisdom and Intelligence. The result was … mixed at best. My awareness of the skill as a discrete entity was already weak, and trying to push the other two skills to rge didn’t work.
“Indirect path, it is,” I decided, and forged a tal puzzle, one that contained mana with enforced concepts, while the tal itself carried complicated patterns.
[Mana Detection (Rare) 22 -> 29]
[Perk Options — Advanced Mana Awareness / Elental Detection / Assessnt ]
It did not work as intended.
I chose Elental Detection as the next perk, which gave better clarity when it ca to mana, but otherwise had limited impact.
What followed was a complicated set of experints, trying to create a great variety of situations to trigger another skill upgrade. But, there was no miraculous jump, limiting to a more linear upgrade.
[Mana Detection (Rare) - 136 [Advanced Mana Awareness, Advanced Elental Detection]]
While I was unhappy to miss the opportunity to get an even more useful variant, I decided to stop the experint. The current state of the skill already allowed to sense mana in a much more granular fashion, both in terms of density and quality.
It also allowed to see that, what I called pure mana wasn’t as pure as I had first assud. In that way, it was similar to density. Once it was mostly pure, it registered as the sa monotone blue. A good developnt, as further accuracy would an that the tools I developed would be even more accurate.
“Let’s see if my initial design is viable,” I said, and used my skill to create a layered tal sheet, as fine as I could manage. It was rely half an inch thick, yet it had a hundred different layers, each made of tal. I shaped it into a hexagonal cylinder to act as a pipe, but closed both ends with enchanted plugs.
I filled it with mana, using both Observe and the new Mana Detection skill to check the situation. The pipe worked well … for a prototype.
The biggest problem was the tal itself channeling the mana. The beehive-patterned gaps helped, but the inevitable connections carried the tal. The leak was far less than the steam-mana condensers that were already in place. Those pipes leaked almost ten percent of the mana they contained each minute, while the new design reduced it below one percent.
But it was not usable due to differing purposes.
The pipes for the steam-based mana condensers worked, because they only had to hold mana for a minute while they carried it toward the nearest dungeon gate, which then gets absorbed into the dungeon. A ten percent loss each minute was that. Just ten percent.
anwhile, the new design had to keep mana far longer. For that, a percent leak every minute ant ten percent of the initial storage was lost by the ten-minute mark, forty-five percent was lost by the first hour, and by the end of the first day, only twenty percent remained.
All assuming a constant rate of escape, of course, but even if the lesser amount of mana had been contained marginally better, the loss was still too much to be sustainable.
“Maybe if I alternate material,” I questioned. First, I alternated different tals, which didn’t work as well as I had hoped. Then, I switched to one skill I had neglected quite a bit.
Nurture.
I quickly grew a small tree, carefully cut its trunk to cut layers of wood, and cut hexagonal gaps, hoping that it would work. It did … technically, but there, the problem was simpler. Wood was not the correct material to punch millions of tiny holes and expect to survive.
Worse, unlike tal, which was able to handle as much mana as I could push, wood didn’t play well with higher densities of tal. It started to absorb it, and depending on the type of wood, it either grew, decayed, or caught fire.
But, it was still promising. By decreasing the leak by an order of magnitude, the daily loss had dropped from eighty percent to fifteen percent, at least at the current density. Not viable for actual production, but useful as a proof of concept.
I was about to dump that as another project for Rebecca to develop a variant that handled higher mana densities better, when I rembered sothing else. The semi-organic crystal that I had traded from the swamp town, one that Spencer had used to develop the Intelligence-variant nurture.
Maybe it could give what I was looking for.
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