Otherworld Adventure

For the next two days the party hunted down monster packs in the forest.

The person who was tasked as the courier was Cecil. He volunteered himself and he was also the fastest person in the party.

Every evening he would shuttle back and forth from the town and the party's campsite within the forest, bringing with him the proofs of subjugation to the town, while returning to the campsite with supplies he bought from the town.

Cecil didn't mind this since he wasn't really able to do any hunting alongside the party. They would only ever need his help during rescue ops when other parties sent SOSs.

During the two days of their hunt. Cecil was only going around helping the rest of his party occasionally, while most of the time he would be sitting down with mana sight activated and scouting out the area.

He was also focusing and meditating on ways he would be able to perfect his new found skill which he dubbed as 'Mana Blade'.

He was still experimenting with the skill, but he had finally found the direction where he should improve upon to be able to make the skill usable even without any good weapons that had a high mana affinity.

During his experimentations in the past 2 days, Cecil concluded that by fully injecting his mana into an object, said object would only be able to hold the mana for a brief moment, around 1-2 seconds or so.

If he didn't launch the mana out of the object then the said object would explode. If he did launch the mana out, then the object would just disintegrate exactly how his previous sword had.

If he injected too little mana in the blade then the amount wouldn't even be enough to cause any significant damage to a tree, let alone any monster.

The only way to cause any fatal damage and to trigger the 'Mana Blade' was to forcefully inject at least 3-4000 units of mana into the object and launch the Mana Blade.

It was a dilemma for Cecil since he wasn't rich enough to use weapons as disposables. Although the technique was powerful, the price that came with its usage was too exorbitant.

But just today he was able to discover a small trick that let him use a pseudo-Mana Blade, instead of the full powered one that eliminated the Blade Ursa tribe.

The trick was to inject as much mana as he could into the object, but instead of overloading the object with his mana, he wouldn't release the mana outside of the object and have it circulate around it, forming a cycle around the object.

This way the mana would act as a literal blade around the object. Cecil first tested it out on a tree branch and used it to slice through a branch the size of his waist.

Although he wouldn't be able to launch the mana like the first time, at least this technique which was the by-product of the Mana Blade wouldn't destroy the weapon Cecil was using.

He named this the 'Mana Cutter.'

It wasn't anything special, since there were similar techniques as that, such as enveloping fire element mana around a sword or enchanting magic such as Lucia's spells.

The only real difference with this any other techniques was that it didn't need any spell chants. All the technique needed was for one to have a delicate control of mana and create a cycle around an object then circulate the mana at high speeds.

It was practically a mana chainsaw. Cecil's knowledge from Earth inspired him to create this skill. It was no Mana Blade, but it was better than nothing and at least he got something out of destroying his sword.

He was able to explain his theory to Lucia, but because of how taxing it was to keep up the circulation of mana around an object and how much concentration one needed to perform such delicate mana control, it was unusable for her.

Although she understood the theory, Lucia didn't have enough mana to create a full mana cycle around the blade.

She also explained to Cecil that she would have a difficult time keeping her concentration on the skill while in a fight.

Cecil took note of this and realized that in order to be able to use 'Mana Cutter', you needed at least 2000 units of mana. Only then would you be able to have enough mana to create the mana cycle around an object.

As for the concentration problem, for Cecil, controlling and manipulating mana was as easy as breathing to him due to the fact that he has mana sight.

For others however, they needed to put their full attention on a chant in order to invoke a spell. Concentration was key for others.

Using the Mana Cutter seemed implausible unless you had mana sight, an elemental physique, or you were specifically skilled at multi-tasking.

Right now for Lucia, she wasn't able to multi-task nor did she have an elemental physique or mana sight. She could only continue practicing her mana control and most importantly, cultivate her mana to 2000 units or more.

From what Mrs. Anna said, since childhood Lucia had an abnormally good control over mana that it was only a few levels lower compared to some very powerful Perfect Stage Spellcasters and Sages.

With due time, Lucia would also be able to use the 'Mana Cutter'.

'Looks like I'll up her training a bit.'

Cecil smirked at the thought and Lucia instantly felt a chill crawl up her spine. She looked around alertly thinking that some terrifying beast was currently eying their party.

When she couldn't find anything in her surroundings, she turned to look at Cecil wondering if he found something and saw that hideous smirk on his face. She knew all too well what Cecil was thinking with that stupid smile of his.

Lucia instantly knew that it had something to do with training.

'He's thinking something bad again... If it's something stupid, I'm gonna knock him up good later.'

Cecil and Lucia were currently on their way back to town alongside Scarlet Blaze. Today was the last day of the event and they were going to cash in their final amount of subjugation proofs just before the event ended.

The results would be announced in 2 days after the committee behind the Monster Hunting Event tallied in all the participating parties and individuals' amount.

The rewards would be split between Parties and Individual categories. Cecil and the rest were aiming for the first place prize in the Party Category in the event.

First Place would get 1000 gold credits and every member would get an opportunity to either pick a full set of equipment from the government's vault or promote their party members individual ranks to Silver if said member were in the 3 lower ranks or promote 2 stars in a rank if they were an adventurer above the 3 lower ranks.

The gold credits and the rank promotion was what Cecil and Lucia were after. As for the other place rankings' rewards; Second Place gets 500 gold credits and one piece of equipment from the government's vault and Third place only gets 250 gold credits.

The individual rewards were also the same. Except the gold credits rewards would only be 500 for First Place, 250 for second, and 100 for third.

Considering the vast amount of monsters and subjugation proofs that Cecil and co. had hunted and collect, they had confidence that they would be able to snatch first place in this time's event.

While everyone was pretty uppity with their harvest and were having conversation with each other, Cecil was still deep in thought.

'Although Mana Cutter is great and all, I still need to find a way to use 'Mana Blade' without destroying any of my weapons... looks like the only way is to buy or craft a weapon that has enough capacity to hold all my mana without self-destructing.'

The only conclusion he got for now was to find materials to craft a weapon that had the capacity to hold all his mana. Buying a weapon of that quality seemed too far for him right now since it seemed impossible to find such a weapon in Forest Hill Town.

'Maybe I'll have some luck when I arrive at Angla City. Hopefully during our journey to the capital we'd be able to stumble upon materials with high magic affinity.'

It was wishful thinking on Cecil's part. Magic Materials isn't so easy to find in Alterna, unless you go dungeon diving.

Cecil and Lucia didn't know this yet, but their first ever dungeon dive would be just around the corner.