Lament of the Slave

Chapter 95: Use with Caution

Mana was everywhere, in every living thing, in every object. Even the air we were breathing was saturated with it. Aspen explained that to me earlier when she taught me how to control my mana. I just wasn't at the point to sense it yet. If all that was true, then there were tons of free mana around us, ready to grab.

So why didn't the mages use it?

She smirked when I raised the issue with her. "I asked the same question when I was learning magic."

Of course, I wasn't the first one to think of that. I didn't even think I would. Still, the question remained. "So?"

"A mage's life would be a lot easier, wouldn't it? Okay, I'll tell you what my teacher told me back then," Aspen said, adjusting her collar and thought, searching for her teacher's words in her memory. "Think of mana as water. Now, your body produces fresh, clean water. You can easily drink it with no issues. The ambient mana, on the other hand, is like stagnant, stale water. You can still drink it, but..."

"But?" I asked when she paused.

"At best, you'll get the trots, for Traiana's sake!" She shook her head when I didn't get the point. To be honest, not the analogy I was expecting. "Drinking it makes you sick. The more you drink, the sicker you get. It's like food poisoning. Except ..." She paused again, expecting me to finish her sentence.

"It," I stammered. "...it'll give me mana poisoning. So ambient mana is what? Foul?"

"Nah, that's just an analogy my teacher used," she shook her head, shifting her weight. I did the same. Sitting cross-legged during hours of training made me stiff. "He compared the mana of plants to oil and that of animals to tar. You might as well compare the ambient mana to raw food, that of plants to spoiled veg and that of the living to rotten eggs. The point is, you can't use it without preparing it first. But preparing it in your body will hurt you."

"All right, I think I get it," I said, quite confident I did and stopped short. It brought to mind Lord Wigram's words regarding beast cores that without runes, he wouldn't be able to use more than half of the mana stored in them. Was this the reason?

"If I find a beast core, I have to cook the rotten eggs inside first, right?" I asked, half in thought.

Aspen gave me a puzzled look, most likely wondering how I'd come to that conclusion. Then her gaze hardened. "No, never use raw mana in the beast core period! Fuck, I think we've gone too far with the water and food analogy. The teacher made it sound better."

All I could give her was a sympathetic look. Me retelling the jokes was tragic.

"Then how will you use it? How will you use a core?" asked I, quite perplexed. How did the Imperial Chief Healer use it?

"Through the runes. Tools and machinery don't care what mana powers them. If you want to use it for storage, you have to empty the core first," she said in a tone that suggested it was a given. Not for me, though.

"Isn't there, I don't know, some neutral mana?" I questioned, not trying to hide my ignorance. "Mana, that all could use?"

She gave me a knowing look. "This is pure mana you're talking about. But hold your horses. No one knows how to refine it, and it's no easier to find it out there. There are records of such places, where it naturally occured, but you can probably imagine how that turned out."

Given the similar nature of the people here on Eleaden as on Earth, I was able to. "Extracted to the last drop, ruined."

"Exactly. Now it's more a thing of legends, the wet dream of the rich and the hope of the poor. Finding a place like that would fetch you a lot of coins," Aspen said, rubbing her fingers together, emphasizing the last word. I could almost hear her saying 'cha-ching'.