Oberon’s concentration broke and the thin shard of mana between his hands dissipated, quickly fading from sight as he stopped forcibly holding the mana together. Leaning back from his seated position he allowed himself to fall back until he felt the ground under him, lying flat on the ground as he recovered from his efforts; although he had not done anything physical he felt drained in some unknown way, probably related to whatever part of him was being used to manipulate magic. More than he felt mentally drained from concentrating so hard on something that required so much attention.
Although he had not received any knew skills from his efforts, he definitely felt as if he had made progress. Even if no breakthroughs had occurred he thought he could understand a little more about mana now and it certainly seemed like it was getting easier towards the end. A little bit more training like this and he imagined he would at least gain a usable version of Mana Shape and possible a new variation of Mana Orb as well.
Hearing a growing commotion over by the remains of the bonfire Oberon sat up to see what was going on. Several people seemed to be gathered around some strange light; different from the soft orange glow the fire had given off earlier. Rising to his feet Oberon flew over to the group, vaguely noticing that the process seemed to be slightly easier now, until he could see the pile of variously coloured crystals hidden under the ash and cinders of the bonfire.
Oberon examined the crystals with his Magic Analysis and saw much the same information as Mourningstar had. The description of the Mana Crystals was interesting but by this point a given, what really grabbed his attention were the Flame-Touched crystals.
“Elemental mana?”Reaching out Oberon picked up one of the small orange crystals and held it up so he could see it better. It felt warm in his hand, whether that was because of its nature of just because it had been buried under a fire pit he didn’t know, but it was a comforting feeling either way.
“So there’s more than one kind of mana, I guess.”1 Flame-Touched Mana Crystal added to inventory.
That there would be multiple types of mana in this world had never occurred to Oberon before, mostly because there had been no reason to think too much about it, but he supposed it made sense; different varieties of mana would result in different kinds of spells, for example a simple projectile made with regular mana would take the form of Mana Orb, whereas the same spell made with fire elemental mana would likely produce a basic fireball spell.
If his hypothesis was correct then it would mean there was a limitation on what kind of spells he could learn when the only mana he could manipulate was non-elemental; Oberon was beginning to find he didn’t like being limited when it came to magic.
The description for the flame-touched crystal suggested it was infused with fire mana in some way; it had probably been created in an area high in fire mana in the same way regular crystals seemed to be formed in areas of high non-elemental mana. And since mana crystals gave off mana when broken which could be absorbed by creatures such as himself, then it stood to reason that when this crystal was broken it would also release mana, albeit explosively due to its nature.
Even so, if the sudden burst of fire mana was similar to low-ranked fire spells as the description suggested then Oberon should still be able to learn something from it if he used Magic Analysis on the blast. With no actual fire magic to observe it was probably his best bet of learning how to manipulate fire elemental mana.
Before he got ahead of himself it was perhaps best if he continued training himself to shape the mana he could already use before trying to learn anything new; if nothing else being able to use Mana Shape would make it easier to create new spells from scratch and might even help in understanding how elemental mana differs from the mana he was already used to using. Reaching back into the pile Oberon grabbed a handful of the blue crystals before flying off back to his previous spot alone.
“Sorry, I have an idea.”3 Mana Crystals added to inventory.
Settling down in the same position he was in before Oberon began the same process as before, diving back into his experimentation with renewed fervour. He started by forming a sphere of mana between his hands and then proceeding to stretch and sharpen it into an arrow; he repeated this multiple times, each time using what he gleaned from the previous attempt to improve the next.
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