The Reverse Mana System

Alex turned around and walked towards where Lucas and Sheri were talking to the girl wearing the uniform of a receptionist.

"What happened?"

Alex had a rough idea about what was happening, but he asked nonetheless.

"Uhmm..Sir, we had received a mission from a nearby village about two stray Wood Golems that have appeared in a cave near the village. The mission rewards are very good, but...but no one has taken it so far. This mission will reach its deadline in two days, but no one is interested in taking it. Would....Would you please like to take it? Your friends have already agreed to it, and we were only waiting for your approval to register the mission for your party." The receptionist said in a shy voice while bowing.

Her lack of confidence and professional communication skills was evident from her shaky voice.

"Show me the mission first. I will decide only after I have read it." Alex replied.

"T-this is the mission information and rewards." The girl handed a paper to Alex.

Alex took the paper and began reading it. Nothing seemed to be wrong at the first look, but there could still be some error.

"There is nothing wrong with the details and the rewards are also generous, then why has no one taken this mission? According to the date mentioned, it has already been two weeks since this mission was posted. Is the information unverified or wrong?" Alex asked as his brows arched upwards.

"No, no! The information is verified and correct, but it is only a bronze ranked mission and the Wood Golems are also at mid stage Tier 2. But, nearly all the members registered with us are tier 3 and above, so they are not interested in this mission which has a lower pay than silver and copper ranked missions. We did have some new members who were bronze ranked, but..."

There was a long pause as if she was contemplating whether to tell them or not.

"But what?" Alex questioned.

"But they all went with Mr Grahams on a personal mission. They won't be returning for one more week." The girl replied.

"Hey Alex, it's just a tier 2 mana beast. We should be able to manage it, and since we have joined this guild, we can at least take a few missions like this to help them out, right?" Lucas chimed in.

"Are you sure you want to take this mission?" Alex asked.

Lucas immediately replied with a nod. Alex turned to look at Sheri, he had to ask about her opinion as well.

Sheri also nodded. Alex could see Sheri's eyes brimming with excitement. He didn't even need to think to realize that she had mastered some new spear techniques and wanted to try them out in real battles.

Sighing, Alex turned back to the receptionist.

"Alright, we will take this mission, but you will have to register it under your own name and I also want you to search for some missions which have these materials as rewards in return." Alex said while handing her a paper.

These were the materials required for his weapon, but most of them were from level 2 system dungeons, and Alex wasn't very sure if he could complete those system dungeons as of right now, so he had to search for them outside.

"Thank- thank you! I will definitely search for these missions for you." The girl replied while bowing once again.

After registering themselves for this new mission, Alex and his party of three immediately headed out towards the village.

Alex opened the system interface.

[Name : Alex Vermillion]

[Race : Human]

[Level : 32]

[Mana core : Yellow (56)]

[Stats]

[Strength : 256]

[Agility : 261]

[Endurance : 228]

[Intelligence : 249]

[Charisma : 250 (200)]

[Perception : 155]

[HP : 1760]

[MP : 4005]

[exp : 1,540,600]

[+130 free attribute points, +21 skill points]

Alex opened the spells and skills store and browsed through all the available spells and skills. He finally decided to buy three new spells.

[Spell name : Thunder sprites]

[Description : summons thunder from the sky with a lag of 15 seconds to spell casting. Three bolts of lightning strike the opponent simultaneously without any time lag, causing explosive damage.]

[Limitations : no spells can be used for a duration of 25 seconds after casting this spell.]

[Mana Consumption : 800 per casting]

[Cost : 2 skill points.]

This was a classic example of spells with high destructive power that required time to build up after casting was done, and at the same time it also rendered the caster unable to use other spells for a certain period of time.

But, it was not to be underestimated. Even the level 3 fire stream only required 120 MP at a time to be cast. One could estimate the explosive power of this spell just by the mana consumption alone.

[Spell name : water strings.]

[Description : four thin streams of flowing water imbued with mana are released from the user's hand that can be used to cut things. The shape and length of the strings will be controlled by the user's will with a maximum length of 10 meters.]

[Mana consumption : 15 per second]

[Cost : 2 skill points]

[Spell name : Boulder]

[Cost : 1 skill point.]

This was the same spell that Alex had seen when he had chosen wind blades as his first spell. At that time, he could not afford to swap his agility with strength, but now that his agility was above 250, the reduction of 1 Agility point won't hurt that much. And this spell was very useful for melee combat, not to mention that it could overlap continuously. This could be used as another heavy- blow attack if sufficient number of layers were gathered and wouldn't have any side effects of not being able to use spells and others.

Alex entered mental simulations immediately to try out the effects of his newly learned spells.

First was water strings.

Immediately after casting, a blue coloured magic circle appeared in front of his hand, hovering a few centimeters in front of his palm. Four thin thread-like streams of water came out of the four pivots of this magic circle and flowed in a straight line until they were ten meters long.

Just with a thought from Alex, the four strings began taking different shapes and changing their size. Alex walked to a nearby tree. With just a thought, the string impaled the tree and came out from the other side. If one didn't look carefully, they would never be able to tell that there was a very small hole in the tree created by a very thin stream of flowing water.

Alex was amazed by the result and moved his hand in an arc for further testing. The tree was immediately cut into two.

Alex was speechless. This spell was very lethal and could be used flawlessly for assassinations. It was good that this spell had been lost over time and no one knew about it.

Had it been available to people, the already chaotic world would only become more dangerous.

Second was Boulder. Although it didn't feel all that special when compared to the insanely high lethality of water stream, it was good nonetheless.

Last was Thunder Sprite. Alex began casting it. The spell took ten seconds to be cast. Ten seconds was a very long time in battles where even a fraction of seconds would be the difference between life and death. So, the conditions required to cast this spell were also extreme.

As soon as he finished casting, the sky got dark and clouds appeared out of nowhere. There wasn't any rain though. Three spherical structures the size of a basketball each were suspended in the clouds, making the geometrical shape of a triangle.

Over the next fifteen seconds, Alex could see many small streams of lightning appearing out of the clouds and fusing with this basketball like structure and disappearing.

The three thunder sprites continued hovering and expanding until they were completely saturated and couldn't expand further.

Alex also used this time to check something else. He cast his defensive skill, mana barrier.

A translucent blue barrier appeared before Alex's hand, but it was the weakened version of his regular mana barrier. Thunder sprites somehow hindered the mana flow in his body.

Just as the time span was over, thick streams of lightning emerged from all three sprites and landed on a tree that Alex had picked up as a target in his mental simulation world that was designated as the target.

Rumbbblllleeee!

'Booooommmmm!'

With a blinding light, the three streams of lightning landed on the tree at the same time and a defining sound of explosion was created.

When the light scattered, a breathtaking scene was projected in Alex's eyes.

There was a big crater of about five meter radius and a depth of nearly three meters in the ground where the tree once stood.

There was no sign of the tree. Instead, small fist sized pieces of burning charcoal were flung in air with the crater as centre and landed tens of meters away.

The scene of the clusters of small orange and blue flames scattering could be described as beautiful, if only it wasn't the after effect of the destruction that happened a few seconds earlier.

The entire process repeated in Alex's mind repeatedly. He was truly impressed by the might of his new spell.

The streams of lightning were very fast and Alex doubted that anyone below tier 5 would be able to dodge it in time.

This spell was the complete version of the thunder spell of level 2 just like his fire stream and fireball, but the magnitude of destruction was on a completely different scale than its widely used counterpart.

Alex ended his mental simulations and opened his eyes. They had already reached the outskirts of the village.. He had been training his spells for two hours already.