Chapter 42 – Back on Track (2)

Chapter 42 – Back on Track (2)

Rowan marched through the tunnels, smiling to himself. His internal map had been messed up after his detour and the days spent incapacitated, but he knew he was close. He’d just confirmed it, after all.

When he’d realized he’d lost track of where he was, he’d returned to the broodmother’s chamber. It hadn’t been hard. Practically every tunnel led to the huge bloodspawn, after all.

Once he’d found a tunnel looking into the massive cavern—though the tunnel was a bit too close to the ground, and in turn, the hordes of bloodspawn, for comfort—he searched for the tunnel that he’d seen the hunting parties return from.

It took him a while, but eventually, he spotted it.

He’d made sure to memorize what it looked like when he first saw it, so it had taken a surprisingly long time to find. That was because of how close it was.

Rowan had severely underestimated the distance he’d traveled and had spent most of the time looking at the tunnels that were on the opposite side of the cavern, entirely unaware that what he was looking for was just a few hundred feet to the side.

As he walked, Rowan continued cycling mana. The insights he’d gleaned from the presence were truly beginning to show their worth as he moved two types of mana at once with relative ease.

Well, he called them two different types, but he wasn’t sure if they were. They were both compressed, but one was with his old method, meaning that when he released it from his body, it would try to explode outward instantly.

The other kind of mana was what he’d just learned to do not so long ago and would act as a sort of time bomb or grenade when released.

They were both essentially the same when it came to actually moving them around within him, but the real challenge came from something else. That was keeping track of which was which.

While they felt very different, it would still be easy to get confused if he were attacked and unable to take the time to identify what kind he was using.

He didn’t want to release mana, expecting it to explode outwards and destroy his opponent, only for him to discover that he’d used the wrong kind and now had to wait fifteen seconds for it to happen.

He was still trying to figure out what the optimal order to cycle the two types of mana was, and for now, he was just switching through different ones, seeing which worked best for him.

Right now, he was doing an alternating pattern, with a small amount of one kind followed by a small amount of the other.

It had both its ups and downs. While it allowed him to always have a choice of either one of the energies, no matter where he wanted it to release from his body, it was also harder to maintain and meant he couldn’t release quite as much at once.

Still, with some modifications, Rowan thought that it might be the best choice if he could improve his control.

The other option was just having two large collections of mana within him, one of each type. They would swirl around, one following the other.

And while it would be easy to maintain and he would be able to use pretty much all of either type of mana at once, it also had a very obvious downside: if he were attacked from one side but the type of mana he wanted was on the other, he would have no choice but to either release it on the wrong side of his body or to divert his attention to speeding up the cycling so he could get it to the right side.

Rowan thought that while they both worked alright individually, if he could merge them together, they would be far more effective.

There was one final option, though. To simply cycle only uncompressed mana. That meant that he would just have to squeeze the energy down as and where he needed it, rather than having to wait for the pre-prepared mana to arrive where it was needed.

But that was beyond him—for now. Until his mastery had reached those levels, he would have to settle for something between the first two techniques.

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He was shaken out of his thoughts as he realized he’d arrived at approximately the area where he thought the surface was. Now, it was time to execute his plan. And his plan was to wait.

Walking over to an intersection between several different tunnels, Rowan stood. It was a bit risky, since if he looked down the largest of the caves, he could see the horde of bloodspawn in the broodmother’s chamber just a hundred yards away.

Normally, he observed them from above, only going near the huge cavern when he would be high enough up that the creatures wouldn’t be able to notice or even do anything about him if they did.

It was both nerve-wracking and exciting to be so close to a collection of so many bloodspawn, but Rowan forced himself to stay calm.

His plan was simple. Since he didn’t know how often the hunting parties came and went, he would simply wait until he saw them.

Then, he would do his best to follow without being noticed and have them lead him to the surface.