After an hour of trying to manually control the brightness of three different glow strips, two with his skills and one with just his mana, Jas had a splitting headache and had to stop.
Thankfully, he had plenty of mana. Using these small items was far, far less draining than so of the more intensive enchantnts he had attempted in the past.
But his current strategy wasn't showing any signs of progress.
Now an hour isn't a long ti to try sothing and is quite a short ti to decide that a strategy, especially for training, isn't going to work.
But after almost a thousand attempts, every one ending the sa way, with no sign of change whatsoever, it seed worth trying so other way of doing things.
Every single ti, he had successfully activated two glow strips with his skills and confird he could independently control the brightness of each strip. Then, using just his mana and no skills, Jas would attempt to activate a third glow strip, which caused him to lose control of his mana, and his skills and enchantnts to deactivate. The entire process took roughly four seconds.
Jas flopped backwards on the pebbly beach, covering his eyes with an arm, and waited for the headache to subside. As he did, relaxing and resting, he could feel his mana cooling and solidifying like a piece of tal pulled from the forge and left to sit.
Normally, he kept it moving by activating an enchantnt, usually his shield. This created a small flow of mana between him and the shield, which in turn ward up his mana and made it easier to activate other enchantnts, usually one of his hamrs.
If he focused, for short bursts, he could force movent in his mana just inside his body, not going anywhere, but it was like trying to push a boulder along the ground. Hard, slow, and as soon as he stopped putting in effort, all movent stopped. Part of the problem was it felt like there was nowhere for his mana to go in the first place, as long as he was out of contact with any enchanted items.
When there was an enchanted item, it was much easier. His mana would move into the item, and the item itself would continue to accept pushed mana.
Thankfully, trying to push his mana around aimlessly didn't cause his headache to get any worse, so he played around with that for a while. It was play, for it was neither work nor training, but it was still intense ntal activity. By the ti Jas' headache dissipated, he was soaked with sweat.
Jas took a break. He ate a hearty al of smoked crab at and so sauerkraut, went to sleep, awoke, tidied up the campsite, killed a crab monster that ca to investigate, harvested its materials, and then sat down again with all his glow strips spread out in front of him on the ground.
First, he confird that what he had been doing the day before hadn't changed. He activated two glow strips with skills, tried to manually push mana into a third, and his concentration broke just like before.
No change when he tried skills first, then manual activation.
For his next attempt, he tried manually activating one enchantnt, then using his skills to activate another. With so effort, but much less than just trying to move his mana without an outlet, he pushed his mana into a glow strip through his fingers, and the strip of iron started to glow, brighter and brighter as he pushed more mana in.
Then he tried to activate two more with his skills and his concentration broke.
Jas sat back up, gazed down at the glow strips – now all dull – and tried to imagine why that had happened.
For several long minutes he sat, but the only thing that ca to mind was that it was impossible to manually push mana into an enchantnt while using skills to control other enchantnts.
And Jas didn't want this to be true, because it would be unproductive if it were. And if he assud it was true, and it wasn't, then he'd be wasting an opportunity to train, here and now, in the safety of his camp, compared to fighting monsters while activating as many enchantnts as he could, which did seem to cause his skills to improve.
Jas put this train of thought aside and tried a new tack. He knew his limits using [Enchantnt Activation] and [Mana Manipulation], but how many glow strips could he activate just by pushing mana into them without using any skills?
Thus far he hadn't tried, because while he wasn't using any skills, he had to be physically touching the item to push mana into it. [Enchantnt Activation] let him activate enchantnts across a short gap, a foot or two at most, which was how he had planned to activate and use his heating strips through the mole monster hide insulation.
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Jas reached out and picked up two of the glow strips, one in each hand. He took a deep breath, and pushed against his stiff, cold mana. With so effort, after a second, both glow strips started to shine. This was unexpected, because Jas had only intended to activate the enchantnt in his right hand first, then try to activate the second in his left.
Intrigued, he picked up another two glow strips, so that he held two in each hand, between his fingers. With another push against his mana, all four of the glow strips started to shine, growing brighter the harder he pushed on his mana.
The sa occurred with six glow strips, and finally at eight glow strips, set out on the ground so that he could touch one with each finger, he felt that he was approaching his limit. He could activate all the enchantnts, but the effort required to push his mana into the enchantnts was increasing and it took more effort to make the glow strips brighter.
At nine glow strips, he felt a faint headache coming on. But he had surpassed his previous limit of eight.
At ten glow strips he still did not feel as though he was using much of his mana, but ntal fatigue was accumulating from focusing on his mana so much, and the effort to make the glow strips brighter was growing more and more. Then he felt it.
Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantnt Activation] has reached level 5.
The intrusive thought broke his concentration, and a faint headache remained as he reflected on his achievent.
Without combat, he had managed to improve his skill.
This ti, he tried activating ten of the glow strips with his skill, but he only managed nine.
Still, it was progress. If he kept at it, he expected he could eventually activate all the glow strips manually, and improve his skill enough to be able to activate them all through his skill.
At the end of a day of training, with breaks to kill crab monsters:
Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantnt Activation] has reached level 6.
Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantnt Activation] has reached level 7.
Jas was able manually activate fifteen of the glow strips while touching them, and thirteen of them with his skill. He had also gotten accustod to the ntal effort of pushing his mana around without the aid of a skill. It didn't feel any easier, but he was used to it, and at least a little faster.
The next day he continued. By lunchti he could manually activate eighteen of the glow strips, although his skill didn't improve. It was at the very end of the day, when his ntal fatigue was at its peak and another headache was coming on, that Jas managed to active twenty-one of the glow strips and he felt the intrusive thought.
Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantnt Activation] has reached level 8.
Testing his skill, he found he was able to activate twenty-one of the glow strips at once, just like with his manual activation. But it was far easier, and they all imdiately leapt to full brightness, unlike when manually he had to push harder on his mana to brighten them.
Exhausted, Jas went to sleep.
Finally, at the end of the next day, Jas had done it. He had managed to not only manually activate all twenty-four of the glow strips, but also then activate his shield and one of his war hamrs, for a total of twenty-six simultaneous enchantnts. He practiced activating them manually, trying to do it quickly, for an hour before the intrusive thought ca to him.
Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantnt Activation] has reached level 9.
And now he had done it. With rely a thought and almost no ntal effort, he could activate any number of the glow strips as well as his hamr and shield.
However, he still couldn't control the intensity of that many. In fact, the limit was still four if he wanted to adjust their brightness in sync, and two if he wanted to adjust their brightness independently.
But Jas was exhausted, so he went to sleep.
The next morning, he spent several hours using his skills on two of the glow strips, and eventually determined that he wasn't improving by using the skill.
Jas once again laid out his glow strips and touched ten of them, one with each finger. First, he manually activated one, and adjusted its brightness from dim to bright and back down to dim. Then, while maintaining the activation of that one glow strip, he activated a second, and adjusted that one's brightness while holding the first one constant.
When he added the third, he could feel the ntal strain increase, but he was once again able to maintain the first two glow strips, and adjust the third freely.
At four the headache started to grow, and he noticed that the other three glow strips were unconsciously starting to brighten and dim in sync with the fourth. It took a lot more focus to keep them all separate…
Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 5.
And once again Jas lost his focus and all the enchantnts deactivated. But he knew he was making progress, and he smiled.
After lunch he returned to it, but focused again on manual activation and manipulation of the enchantnts. By the end of the day, he could independently control ten of the glow strips.
Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 6.
And after another three days…
Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 7.
Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 8.
Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 9.
Jas could now independently control all twenty-four of the glow strips, as well as his shield and his hamr.
With his skills, activating each enchantnt was simple, and if he kept all the glow strips in sync, it was nearly effortless, although there was now a noticeable, if slight, drain on his mana from using that many enchantnts. With more ntal effort, he could pick out individual glow strips and adjust their brightness separate from the others, and with full concentration, he could control them all independently at the sa ti.
Enchanter Class has reached level 7.
Jas was shocked that his class had managed to level up from all this training. But he was so ntally exhausted he just accepted it and went to sleep.
The next day, Jas donned his heating system and armor, and gave it a very short test run.
Enchanter Skill [Enchantnt Testing] has reached level 4.
Synergy Skill [Product Testing] has reached level 4.
Success. He was able to control each heating strip and avoid damaging them. He took his shield and hamr in hand and set out, towards the snowy passage once again.
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