Chapter 59 – Mana Regeneration

When I returned home, Lis sat in the living room with a disassembled transistor on the table.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Trying to work out how to make this thing work with mana."

"Good luck."

The next day, I started traveling between butchers and buying meat. I would put the meat in the car, go inside, and store the meat when no one was looking. After visiting more than twenty butchers, I returned home in the evening, took out the coolers one by one, and arranged the meat inside. I knew it was ridiculous, but I felt it was a “proper” way of storing meat–sometimes it’s hard to let go of ingrained ideas.

The next day, I continued shopping for meat, poultry, and fish until all my coolers were full.

I searched the internet, and late in the evening, I drove to the Evelina London Children's Hospital, cast invisibility on myself, and went in quietly.

I crept quietly between the wards, and whenever a door was open or someone opened the door enough for me to enter, I quietly entered the room, touched only the tip of my finger to the child, and healed them. Some of the children didn't even wake up, and some scratched the spot where I touched and almost touched me, but nobody discovered me. I had to wait for someone to open the door again on several occasions before I could get out.

It was not easy to sneak in there; I was almost bumped into quite a few times, but I managed not to be detected. I continued this until my mana was virtually empty. I left 200 units for Invisibility, and just in case.

I drove back to the Gate, parked the car in a hidden spot, and entered the Gate again.

My channels were fine. I looked at my mana and saw it tick up by 35 every second.

I dismantled the spiral, and my mana regeneration dropped to 20 per second. I built a new spiral with ten rings in each orb and continued to train my channels. When I was full, I removed one of the coolers and saturated the meat with mana. After the second cooler, the itching sensation almost wholly disappeared, so I added mana with the Absorb aspect to my channels and continued to empty and fill up repeatedly.

After three more coolers, my channels could take more mana without a problem. I dismantled the spiral again and built it as densely as I could.

First Spiral Completed

Quality: 95%

 My channels started to tingle and itch again, but it was tolerable. I kept draining and refilling mana, over and over again, until I had ten coolers with mana-rich meat. I was already exhausted at this point, so I left the Gate.

It was an evening on earth. I tiptoed to the car and dropped the Invisibility. I checked my phone and saw that three days had passed on Earth. At this rate, I will be a hundred years old on paper and fifty years old in practice.

I came home and went to sleep.

In the morning, I saw Lis sitting at the table in the living room with the disassembled transistor and thick copper wires. He was engraving something on one of the copper wires with a magnifying glass.

"How's the transistor going?"

"The original electrical wires were too thin; I switched to thicker copper wires."

"Did you get the class?"

"Not yet."

"Good luck. Let me know if you need help."

"Yes, thanks for the reminder. Did you study the book on how to aspect magical materials?"

"Yes."

He took out a pea-sized crystal and said, "I need you to aspect this crystal to lightning."

"I still don't know the lightning aspect. I don't know its flavor."

"Hmm, we'll have to look for a lightning storm. It's winter now, that shouldn't be a problem. I'll check and let you know."

"No problem, I'm here every few days."

"How's training your mana channels going?" He asked.

"Good. They're already almost four millimeters thick."

"Impressive. Soon, you'll start expanding the secondary channels."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Find and read the book Mana Body – Supreme Control. It has a comprehensive explanation."

"Thanks."

That gave me an idea I didn’t think about before.

I spent the whole day cooking for Rue and Lis, gave Lis all the food I had made, and went to the hospital again in the evening.

It was bizarre when I arrived at the Neonatal unit on the sixth floor. All the doors were propped wide open. I shrugged and started doing my rounds. This time, there were fewer children, and that made me happy. When I was done with everyone, I still had 3580 mana, so I moved to the Sky ward to the Pediatric Critical Care Unit and drained my mana until I had 200 units left.

I drove to the Gate again, parked in a secluded spot, and crossed the Gate. This time, instead of saturating meat, I started taking out the books I copied, paying 1,000 mana to learn the language and reading, and storing them back.

That's how I went through twenty or so books one by one and learned their language – spoken and written. At the same time, I also built a second spiral with five rings in each orb and increased my regeneration. Again, my channels itched, but I was already used to the process and didn't worry.

When I took out the next book to learn the language, I felt a warning. I immediately stopped and started looking around and listening. I didn't see or hear anything but knew something was wrong. I sharpened all my senses and felt a disturbance in the mana about two meters away. I didn't want to take any chances, so I jumped through the Gate and back to Earth.

When my body was halfway through the Gate, I felt a terrible pain in my leg. I fell on the other side of the Gate, half paralyzed by the pain.

Luckily, it was night on Earth, so I immediately dropped the invisibility and looked at my leg. It was torn to shreds and bleeding profusely.

I immediately grabbed the blood to prevent further blood loss, held the flesh with my hand to keep as much in place as possible, and started casting a Healing Touch over and over. I had to regrow the missing parts for some areas that were missing flesh or muscle. It took over an hour until the leg was fine, and I finally stopped panicking. My mana was down to 1300/8800.

I looked at all the blood and didn’t want to leave it. God knows what they can learn from it. I took out a few steaks, cut them into small pieces, and pressed them into the areas with the blood. I also decided to buy a few bottles of bleach, just in case.

I walked cautiously to the car, but the leg was fine and functioning normally. What's more, I was starving and tired.

I marked this Gate with a mental X. I took advantage of it as much as possible, but it was time to move on.

I returned home, had a big meal, and slept.

The following morning, Lis informed me that a storm front was approaching Mainland Europe, so we took the train to Paris. Rue was really unhappy about his leash but accepted it was necessary.  

We found a nice hotel with a balcony for me to “taste” lightning and visited the city a bit. The storm was expected to hit during the night with lightning and thunder.

Lis asked me, “Remind me why we chose London?”

“English.”

“Right, right. We should relocate to Paris; the food is better.”

I laughed and said, “No problem, but first, I want to finish visiting the Gates in the UK and raising my mana regeneration.”

“How’s it going? You advanced some more?”

“Yes, but something attacked me the last time, so I’m switching Gates.”

I felt Rue’s worry and petted him. “Don’t worry, I’m fine. As promised, I was next to the gate and jumped right through it.”

Rue gave me a side-eyed look like he knew I was full of shit.

I decided to come clean, “I did get scratched a bit, but don’t worry. Remember, I’m a healer, so I healed my leg and am fine.”

He was still not wholly convinced but let it go.

We visited five patisseries, got a sugar rush, and returned to the hotel when the rain started.

I waited for the main body of the storm to arrive, and when the lightning started, I went out to the balcony. It was COLD! I shook my head, shivered, and considered my sacrifices for friends.

I concentrated on the mana and tried to zero in on the flavor of lightning. It took a while, but bit by bit, I could distinguish the lightning from everything else. The fact that I was already familiar with water and wind helped a lot. I started to create the aspect with my mana, but it wasn’t quite right. I zeroed in on it more and more and concurrently brought the mana in my hand closer to the correct aspect. When everything clicked, my hand shot an arc of electricity. Surprised, I jumped, slipped on the wet floor, and banged my elbow painfully on the balcony railing. Ouch!

After I rubbed my elbow while grumbling in my mind about the unfairness of the situation, I created the aspect again to verify that I got it and shot another arc of lightning from my hand. It was a small arc, but I knew I could increase it. Ha! I’m a lightning Wizard! Beware of my mighty arc!

I went inside to get dry and saw Lis waiting for me, with a question on his face.

“Yes, yes, I got it. Let me get dry; I’m freezing.” He looked very pleased.

I got dry but was still cold, so I went to take a hot shower. When I returned to the room, he handed me the crystal without saying a word. I laughed and started to aspect the crystal. It was different from channeling mana into one of the crystals in his home. There, when I channeled mana in, it felt almost like the crystal was sucking it out of me. Like it was hungry, and I was feeding it. Now, I had to force the crystal to cooperate–like it didn’t want to be aspected but to stay neutral.

After an arduous battle of will, or a regular battle, the crystal finally got aspected and now was acting like a “normal” crystal, i.e., sucking the mana in like a hungry baby. When it was full, it was silvery-white, and you could see an occasional small arc of electricity inside. I admired the arcs when it was snatched from my hand.

“Hey, I was admiring my creation!”

Lis threw me another small crystal and said, “Aspect this one, and you can gaze at it lovingly as much as you like. I need my crystal.”

“Spoilsport.”

He actually stuck his tongue out at me!

“Lis, my friend, you are spending too much time with Zara from across the hall. You started acting like a ten-year-old.”

“She is a lot of fun, and some gestures are simply too expressive not to use.”

I shook my head in dismay, thinking Earth was ruining my Sensei and turning him into a hooligan.