The Forgotten Legacy

He didn’t delay in getting comfortable on the ground and slipping into his meditative trance while using his mana sight to see into the world around him. As expected, there was more air mana present here, almost twice as much as there had been when he checked after defeating the last boss, and to his disappointment they were also moving around even quicker than he had expected them to be.

There was enough mana around that he didn’t expect to have any issues with being able to fill himself up with them, but the issue he did have was which of his affinities he would use to capture them. Turning his attention to his mana channels, the process of looking inside himself had become second nature at this point so he could switch between his internal and external mana rather easily, he found all three of his affinities moving around with no issues.

He already knew he would be using earth again to form his spheres, but the choice between nature and fire was harder. He had contemplated using all three but that just made the entire process more complicated than it needed to be. He had successfully bonded fire with earth and then nature with earth and fire, using earth, fire and nature to do air though it just seemed like it would cause more issues than it would solve.

Fire would work, but it was a little more uncontrollable and less stable than nature was, he also had never done this with nature before so it was adding in an unknown factor. He tried forming a sphere from both fire and nature and took turns bringing them outside of his body, that solved the issue for him almost immediately, the fire sphere flickered in the wind, much less stable than it had been when bonding to nature, while nature remained more cohesive and strong when being battered by the surrounding wind and air mana.

Having sorted that dilemma rather quickly he went back to forming the spheres inside of his mana channels, using the earth and nature affinity, it would mean that the air stream would form between these two, he didn’t know if that would have any impact on how the affinity worked, or even if it would interact differently inside of him, compared to if he had chosen fire but he had made the decision with the best information he had on hand.

It didn’t take long to form all of the spheres, he had now done this twice before and it had become easier the more affinity he had bonded. Once completed, he reviewed his internal mana channels and found a few places that he had been a little sloppy in forming the spheres, some too close together and others not as solid as he would have liked. The fact he had made the mistakes in the first place annoyed him, it wasn’t his best work and when playing around with forces he really shouldn’t be, he should have been more careful.

This resulted in him having to do another thorough look through of his work, not moving on to the next step until he was certain that there were no more mistakes, it was time that he had to spend fixing things he should have done correctly in the first place. Once he was happy he then moved on to the next step, trying to catch the air mana and bring it inside of him.

He grabbed one of his earth spheres and moved it out towards the air surrounding him, he kept a keen eye on all of the air mana until he found one that was going to be coming towards him soon. He prepared his sphere, knowing he would need to move it quickly and accurately to be able to catch the mote of air, and just as it had come close enough that he could reach out and touch it, he sent the sphere forward to grab it.

It was a disaster, as soon as the sphere got close the air mana kept drifting further away from it, pushed aside by the momentum of the sphere of earth. He kept trying to chase it but failed each time. He decided to reel in the sphere and try again, he waited, found another mote that would be close enough for him to snatch and just like last time it moved away from the sphere.

He attempted this three more times after that until his frustration grew to a point of wanting to just completely give up and just move on. Shaun took some time after that, to just breathe and calm down, repeating the same thing over and over again with no success was stupid, he needed to figure out a way to do this better, more efficiently.

He spent a lot of time just observing the air mana as well as how it moved and interacted with the surroundings. He wouldn’t be able to chase them down, they moved too quickly and seemed to be repelled by any motion around them. What if I use a trap instead? It wasn’t a bad idea, but what kind of trap would work with something that moved away every time you approached it. You don’t approach it, you let it approach you!

A plan started to form, one that would take considerable time and more energy but it just may work. Taking his earth sphere back into his control he moved it out in front of him and opened it up, stretching it so it looked more like a cone than a sphere, the problem he encountered was that the wind was hitting it and with nothing to let the air through it was taking all of his mental control to keep the earth affinity formed.

He started to create holes in the cone, only a few at first and rather small, but he increased the amount and size until his cone looked more like a filter, the holes were big enough that it let the air through but not wide enough that the mana could pass. This might actually work.

He had to wait a while before he saw a mote of air mana come in the right direction, he slowly shifted the placement of his earth affinity until the air mote would be coming straight at it and, hopefully, end up caught in his trap. He shifted the positioning again and again until he was certain that it would catch the mana, he counted down in his head until impact, praying for this to work. When the air mote finally did hit his earth affinity, he closed up the open end of the cone and sealed all of the holes, at the same time reducing the size so it was back to being a small sphere which would be able to fit inside his mana channels.

Oddly enough, the air mana didn’t bounce around inside of the sphere and instead calmed considerably once it was trapped, like the air of a still room. He couldn’t believe he had actually done it, the plan actually worked as expected and he had finally caught his first air mana mote. He continued reeling it in until he was about to force it into his body when he stopped, every time he had done this in the past there had been some reaction to him, he still bore the signs of the impact from the nature mana. When he had burned the effect off of his skin in the nature dungeon it had turned him a deep tan colour, better than being green, but that effect hadn’t gone away, he looked like he had spent a long time in the sun and tanned to a sun kissed brown. It wasn’t too different from his normal shade, but he could tell the difference, it was his body after all.

He tried to think of the impact of the air mana but he was coming up blank on what the effects might be, so instead of delaying and continuing to think about it he just committed to bringing it inside of him. Passing it through his skin, it started to sting, quite a lot, and when it finally finished entering his body and he had firmly placed it in his mana channel, he opened his eyes and looked down at his arm where he passed the air mana through. It was an angry red colour, it stung and slightly throbbed with pain, but apart from that he felt fine. It's just wind burn? That’s it?

To say he was confused was an understatement, every time he had done this there had been a bigger reaction on his body, but this? It was little more than an annoyance. What has changed? He reviewed everything that had happened since finishing bonding the nature affinity, he had levelled up his profession, increased his stats and upgraded his race. It must be one of the upsides of increasing my race. I felt my body change, from my organs, to my blood and even my skin. The mana is having a lesser effect because of being E grade instead of F.

He hadn’t fully delved into all of the changes of upgrading his race, but the more he thought about it, the more things started to make sense. He didn’t even bother using stone skin to protect his body when the eagles were attacking him, only when the boss tried did he utilise the skill. Being able to run through the forest to the dungeon instead of walking, another change that, although could be his stats at work, also felt like it was related to his race. Then there was the way he was able to move, he had become faster, stronger, and more in control of his body. It was hard at first, especially when he started this dungeon, but the more he focused he realised, the easier it was to leap from island to island, even though the distance was increasing.

He had really underestimated the impact of reaching that milestone, and he couldn’t help but imagine what the difference would be from E to D or even D to C, let alone reaching A. Is there something beyond even A? These were all things he added to his growing list of questions he wanted answers to, but couldn’t actually find any way to get them answered. Soon though, people in the multiverse will know the answers.

He went back to focusing on the task at hand, dwelling on these things wasn’t getting him anywhere in that moment, so he went back to grabbing a sphere and forming his catcher out in the world around him. It was going to take a lot of time doing it this way, and now that he knew the risk of bringing them inside of him had lessened considerably, he decided to play it a little more risky.

Rather than only using one sphere and forming it into a filter he added another on, then another and kept going until he was fully straining his will. In the end he had formed a dozen of his catchers in the world, and waited for his prey to fall in the trap. It still took a while, but eventually he felt a mana mote fall into one of his traps and he quickly closed it up and brought it inside of him. He was only using the earth spheres at this point as it was easier to control the one element rather than two, once he had filled all of the earth spheres he would then move on to the nature ones and repeat the process.

It took longer than he would have liked, but about 8 hours later he had filled all of the spheres for both of his elements and placed them into his mana channels. During this time he just focused on meditating and keeping his awareness throughout each of his traps. It wasn’t the most exciting thing to do but it had worked so he wasn’t going to complain.

Turning back into his mana channels, he knew he had to get them all moving again, his fire element hadn’t been impacted by any of this so he decided to leave it alone unless he found that it was going to interfere with the process of forming his next elemental threat. Just like last time he got them all up to a decent speed and started to release the air mana a few at a time, everything was running smoothly until a stray air mote bounced off one of the unopened spheres and ended up hitting his fire element.

The result of this was explosive, it was like a bomb had gone off inside of his body, it had happened when the mana was running through the thigh of his left leg and he felt that the explosion hadn’t just damaged his mana channel, but if he opened his eyes and looked down at his thigh, he would be missing a large chunk out of his leg.

He didn’t let this distract him though as he had damage control to do with his mana channels. Where the explosion had occurred, each of his affinity streams had been cut off from each other, causing havoc to the surrounding area. Air mana was running rampant and his affinities were starting to fray from both sides, if he didn’t take control of it all at once everything would unravel and he knew that would kill him.

He used what remained of his nature and earth affinity to clean up the air mana that was in the area and then quickly took control of the fraying ends, using all the control he could spare to form the back up and tie them back together. He managed to fix it without further issues, but it was a slow process as he needed to keep all of the loose air mana running through his mana channels from hitting the fire stream at the same time.

Once it was all fixed, he didn’t bother healing his leg, he would get to it when he was done, instead he pushed forward with forming the air bond, he was a lot more cautious of the consequences of doing this wrong now, he had never had a mistake like this occur with any of his other bonding’s, although he had less room to play around with now that he had three affinity already established.

He eventually managed to get to the end of the process, making no more mistakes during the final part of the process, and when the affinity snapped into place he couldn’t help but fall onto his back with relief that it was done. The heritage was not joking when it spoke of risks in bonding so many elements, some played nicely together and others would cause mass damage as soon as they interacted. He couldn’t argue with the gains he could make from bonding them though, they were just incredible.

*Affinity Detected: Air*

*Air (Affinity): The multiverse is made up of many elements but Air is the most essential for allowing mortals to live and breathe. Through your connection to the wind and the sky you will be able to manipulate the air around you to reduce resistance, condense the air into a physical form and use it to aid you through the worlds. +10 Dex, +10 Soul, +5% Dex, +10% Soul*