48 – Sources of Mana

‘The shared affliction common to all mages, from the basest novice to the highest arch-magus, is a scarcity of mana,’ Anaster wrote. ‘As such, knowing and properly utilizing the various sources of this precious resource is critical to your success on this path. Most prevalent among them, ordered by increasing value, are the following:

Atmospheric mana is everywhere, in varying amounts. It flows in currents, similar to air and wind. Despite this relative freedom, it tends to gather in certain locations. The reasons for this are oftentimes impossible to determine, but large gatherings of living beings are one common cause.

This form of mana is generally so thin, I pity any mage worth the name that has to rely on purely atmospheric mana to sustain himself. It might be kinder to tell a fish to breathe air. Still useful to novices, since your mana-hearts have only a small capacity anyway. Expect slower progression though, unless you happen to live in an unusually dense gathering.

What I consider the bare minimum for proper mages is food like the mana-rich flesh mentioned in the previous chapter. Less painful to subsist on, though still not comparable to what follows. Once you have tasted rich mana from a powerful beast’s heart, you will never again be satisfied by mere air.

Most valuable in terms of mana is usually the heart, followed by other vital organs. Though really, on a sufficiently powerful beast even the flesh itself is infused with mana. That’s where the strength comes from, after all. It’s a bit similar to how knights work, not that I’d recommend eating those. For many reasons. They’re not too tasty, for one.

Beware when eating monster organs. A lot of them are quite poisonous without proper preparation. Still valuable, just dangerous.

Personally, I eat meals rich with mana whenever I do eat. Not that it’s very often. That’s a topic for later.’

I paused my reading to consider what Anaster had just brushed aside so casually. He didn’t eat often? That implied he had ways of sustaining himself beyond mere sustenance. I suspected that way was mana, or at least mana-based. The much more important question for me personally was, could this work for my body?

If I could somehow replace or at least dampen my thirst for blood with mana, that would be amazing. I doubted I’d be so lucky any time soon.

Hearing Mia moving about in her room, I skimmed the rest of the chapter to the best of my ability.

Other food-mana sources Anaster listed were animal products derived from mana-changed beasts and fruit similar to what the tree in my garden grew. The idea of cheese made from deadly monster-cows was equally funny and intriguing. I wonder what that tastes like? Anaster was apparently feeling particularly mischievous while writing this part, since he only commented that I’d have try it for myself to find out.

Third on his list of mana sources was what he called ‘crystallized mana’. It was similar to ideas from Earth’s fiction I’d read. Mana sometimes gathered in crystalline form, usually underground. Veins of the stuff were rare and very useful, which added up to being incredibly valuable. The sort of value that created noble families and tore them down in bloody feuds. It wasn’t unusual for neighboring kingdoms to go to war over particularly large deposits.

Some creatures also formed crystals as part of their body’s function, making hunting them very lucrative. An example given in the book was of a species of exotic turtles with their shells accumulating mana over time to form a hardened, rocky cover.

In an unusual bout of seriousness, Anaster warned the reader to be extremely careful around crystal deposits. I was encouraged to report any I found to the family and promised to be rewarded in kind. Aside from political risks of sitting on a substance more valuable than gold, these veins also often manifested unusual phenomena and defenders.

He called back to his earlier mention of mana in sufficient concentrations being able to create even life.

Finding a mana crystal deposit was exactly the sort of excitement I didn’t need in my life. Sure, it might make me rich beyond belief, but it would more likely lead to some ‘unfortunate accidents’ befalling me instead. I could only hope I didn’t jinx it with that thought. Damn it, now I’ve definitely done it.

Moving on before I dug my fate hole deeper, the last source Anaster mentioned was another I already knew. Or knew of, at least. Mana wells.

According to the book, they were basically the holy grail in terms of mana sources. Not that Anaster used that phrase, obviously. He also specified that he meant ‘true’ mana wells. Apparently several things were commonly called this same name.

‘False’ mana wells were diverse in type, generally being a location that for some reason emitted mana. Interestingly enough, crystallized mana veins could cause these. If there was a small crack connecting one to the surface, it would appear to ‘generate’ mana. Another source Anaster mentioned were the bodies of powerful creatures, if left to decay.

Especially this second type was very temporary. There was, after all, only so much mana to get there. The mana veins were a bit different, in that the crystals actually attracted mana to themselves. It was how they grew in the first place, and could lead to the appearance of an unlimited source of mana.

This impression was false though, according to the book. Beyond a certain threshold, long term draining of the mana from such a ‘crystal well’ would eventually harm the stability of the vein and potentially even damage the crystals themselves. Using up tiny amounts of the mana could be fine. If left alone for a few months or years, the vein would also usually recover.

For those reasons, it was often a better idea to only use these ‘wells’ to enrich the atmospheric mana. Or to just mine the vein, of course.

‘True’ mana wells were a different thing entirely. Anaster described them as ‘cracks in the world’s fabric, leaking the formless in-between into reality’. Which sounded pretty dangerous, to be honest. The world breaking was not really something I wanted happening anywhere close to my person, if I could help it.

Anaster didn’t seem to share my concerns. Instead, he went on to describe the phenomenon further.

Most of these cracks were too small to even see. Tiny pinpricks of a hole, drip-feeding mana into the surroundings. The book actually addressed one of my fears, now that I’d heard of these invisible rifts in space.

That being, obviously, the risk of walking through one and coming away with a new hole. Luckily for my peace of mind, they were described as not entirely corporeal. Similar to how mana wasn’t really physical, neither were mana wells. In fact, walking through one would disrupt it instead of me.

Overlapping your own body with a mana well was the easiest way to access the bounty of mana that gathered around it. Quoting Anaster, it was ‘similar to drops of water beading near a leak’. If I understood that correctly, while the well would raise the surrounding mana level, the majority of what came through stayed gathered around the breach itself.

A skilled mage was able to siphon this mana beyond what mere contact would impart. This chapter promised I’d be taught techniques for it later. For now, I’d have to use simple touch or proximity.

One page wasn’t enough to fit all of Anaster’s explanations on wells. Beyond those so small they were invisible to the naked eye, there existed larger versions. Of these, the majority were smaller than a finger. Despite their weird, non-physical nature, cracks of this size were easily visible to even those without a mana sense.

Looking into one such reality tear could reveal different things, though most commonly either darkness so pitch-black it appeared to devour all light, or iridescent, shifting colors. The latter’s description reminded me a bit of the way Tristan’s divine blessings manifested, which made me wonder about possible connections.

Lastly in this chapter of the book – though far from least – Anaster addressed something he called ‘rifts’.

Rifts, as the name implied, were similar to portals. In a way, all mana wells were like that, but rifts were those that actually led somewhere.

There was a qualitative difference between mere cracks and a proper rift. First of all, unlike the previously described mana well the size of a finger or smaller, rifts were usually at least a meter or so across. Apparently, intermediate sizes between these two were vanishingly rare.

All rifts, without exception, were absolute treasure troves. Even if there wasn’t actually anything inside, only a small extra-dimensional space, the mana density in a rift was incomparable. If a person could fit inside, mages would go absolutely crazy about it. Smaller interiors could still fit plants, familiars, magical objects, anything one could think of that benefited from mana exposure.

And that was just if a rift happened to be empty. They were almost never empty initially.

Mana veins and rifts were both insanely valuable. They were in different categories though. Objectively, rifts were more valuable as an infinite source of dense mana. However, they couldn’t just be mined and transported away. So the level of resource commitment required to gain continuous use was much higher. Which in turn meant competition between countries was generally lower, surprisingly.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

In return, local powers would go even harder to obtain rifts in or near their territories. The difference such an environment could make to a noble family was great enough that all of sufficient power built their manors around such rifts.

While small rifts themselves were undoubtedly of great help to individuals, the real value came from what was inside. According to Anaster, scholars disagreed where exactly any of the stuff came from. Opinions ranged from different places in the world or places in other worlds, to being formed from pure mana.

Everything originating from a rift was weird. Plants and animals with no similarity to known species. Ores or other materials that didn’t exist otherwise. Sometimes even natural magical artifacts.

Some voices even claimed that most, if not all, life in the world originated and spread from rifts. There was little evidence for this conjecture of course.

At this point, Anaster switched to his serious mode again, strictly warning me that rifts with spaces larger than a cupboard or small closet were incredibly deadly. And not just dangerous to explore, but also to everything in the surroundings. There was no rule that what was inside had to stay inside, after all.

Less than a hundred years ago, a rift had opened up in a kingdom on the other side of the great forest. This rift, with an opening at first only about as wide as my torso, led to a space the size of a large valley. Greed led to the entrance being widened so exploration could be done.

The kingdom didn’t survive the fallout of this action. A wave of monsters – the rift’s inhabitants – spilled out. Due to all the mana they were infused with, these beasts were insurmountably strong for normal people. They swept through the countryside unopposed for weeks.